leecy
camel-hair stockings and fur boots. In the dim light we examined our feet
for frost-bite.

I do not think it took us less than an hour to get a hot meal to our
lips: pemmican followed by hot water in which we soaked our biscuits. For
lunch we had tea and biscuits: for breakfast, pemmican, biscuits and tea.
We could not have managed more food bags--three were bad enough, and the
lashings of everything were like wire. The lashing of the tent door,
however, was the worst, and it _had_ to be tied tightly, especially if it
was blowing. In the early days we took great pains to brush rime from the
tent before packing it up, but we were long past that now.

The hoosh got down into our feet: we nursed back frost-bites: and we were
all the warmer for having got our dry foot-gear on before supper. Then we
started to get into our bags.

[Illustration: PANORAMA AND MAP OF THE WINTER JOURNEY--Copied at Hut
Point by Apsley Cherry-Garrard from a drawing by E. A. Wilson]

Birdie's bag fitted him beautifully, though perhaps it would have been a
little small with an eider-down inside. He must have had a greater heat
supply than other men; for he never had serious trouble with his feet,
while ours were constantly frost-bitten: he slept, I should be afraid to
say how much, longer than we did, even in these last days: it was a
pleasure, lying awake practically all night, to hear his snores. He
turned his bag inside out from fur to skin, and skin to fur, many times
during the journey, and thus got rid of a lot of moisture which came
out as snow or actual knobs of ice. When we did turn our bags the only
way was to do so directly we turned out, and even then you had to be
quick before the bag froze. Getting out of the tent at night it was quite
a race to get back to your bag before it hardened. Of course this was in
the lowest temperatures.

We could not burn our bags and we tried putting the lighted primus into
them to thaw them out, but this was not very successful. Before this
time, when it was very cold, we lighted the primus in the morning while
we were still in our bags: and in the evening we kept it going until we
were just getting or had got the mouths of our bags levered open. But
returning we had no oil for such luxuries, until the last day or two.

I do not believe that any man, however sick he is, has a much worse time
than we had in those bags, shaking with cold until our backs would almost
break. One of the added troub