e the horizon for
four months of the summer (October-February) and entirely below the
horizon for four months in the winter (April 21-August 21). About
February 27, the end of summer, he begins to set and rise due south at
midnight; the next day he sets a little earlier and dips a little deeper.
During March and April he is going deeper and deeper every day, until, by
the middle of April, he is set all the time except for just a peep over
the northern horizon at mid-day, which is his last farewell before he
goes away.

The reverse process takes place from August 21 onwards. On this date the
sun just peeped above the sea to the north of our hut. The next day he
rose a little higher and longer, and in a few weeks he was rising well in
the east and sinking behind the Western Mountains. But he did not stop
there. Soon he was rising in the S.E. until in the latter days of
September he never rose, for he never set; but circled round us by day
and night. On Midsummer Day (December 21) at the South Pole the sun
circles round for twenty-four hours without changing his altitude for one
minute of a degree, but elsewhere he is always rising in the sky until
mid-day in the north and falling from that time until midnight in the
south.

Often, far too often, it was blizzing, and it was impossible to go out
except into the camp to take the observations, to care for the dogs, to
get ice for water or to bring in stores. Even a short excursion of a few
yards had to be made with great care under such circumstances, and
certainly no one went outside more than was necessary, if only because
one was obliged to dig the accumulated drift from the door before it was
possible to proceed. Blizzard or no blizzard, most men were back in the
hut soon after four, and from then until 6.30 worked steadily at their
jobs. As supper time approached some kindly-disposed person would sit
down and play on the Broadwood pianola which was one of our blessings,
and so it was that we came to supper with good tempers as well as keen
appetites.

Soup, in which the flavour of tomatoes occurred all too frequently,
followed by seal or penguin, and twice a week by New Zealand mutton, with
tinned vegetables, formed the basis of our meal, and this was followed by
a pudding. We drank lime juice and water which sometimes included a
suspicious penguin flavour derived from the ice slopes from which our
water was quarried.

During our passage out to New Zealand in the sh