it began our education of
camp work in the dark. Had we now struck the blighting temperature which
we were to meet....

There was just enough wind to make us want to hurry: down harness, each
man to a strap on the sledge--quick with the floor-cloth--the bags to
hold it down--now a good spread with the bamboos and the tent inner
lining--hold them, Cherry, and over with the outer covering--snow on to
the skirting and inside with the cook with his candle and a box of
matches....

That is how we tied it: that is the way we were accustomed to do it, day
after day and night after night when the sun was still high or at any
rate only setting, sledging on the Barrier in spring and summer and
autumn; pulling our hands from our mitts when necessary--plenty of time
to warm up afterwards; in the days when we took pride in getting our tea
boiling within twenty minutes of throwing off our harness: when the man
who wanted to work in his fur mitts was thought a bit too slow.

But now it _didn't_ work. "We shall have to go a bit slower," said Bill,
and "we shall get more used to working in the dark." At this time, I
remember, I was still trying to wear spectacles.

We spent that night on the sea-ice, finding that we were too far in
towards Castle Rock; and it was not until the following afternoon that we
reached and lunched at Hut Point. I speak of day and night, though they
were much the same, and later on when we found that we could not get the
work into a twenty-four-hour day, we decided to carry on as though such a
convention did not exist; as in actual fact it did not. We had already
realized that cooking under these conditions would be a bad job, and that
the usual arrangement by which one man was cook for the week would be
intolerable. We settled to be cook alternately day by day. For food we
brought only pemmican and biscuit and butter; for drink we had tea, and
we drank hot water to turn in on.

Pulling out from Hut Point that evening we brought along our heavy loads
on the two nine-foot sledges with comparative ease; it was the first, and
though we did not know it then, the only bit of good pulling we were to
have. Good pulling to the sledge traveller means easy pulling. Away we
went round Cape Armitage and eastwards. We knew that the Barrier edge was
in front of us and also that the break-up of the sea-ice had left the
face of it as a low perpendicular cliff. We had therefore to find a place
where the snow had formed a