and "The Society of Muddling Messmen."
Both contained members who had committed "championships."

"Championship" was a term evolved from the local dialect, applying to
a slight mishap, careless accident or unintentional disaster in any
department of Hut life. The fall of a dozen plates from the shelf to the
floor, the fracture of a table-knife in frozen honey, the burning of the
porridge or the explosion of a tin thawing in the oven brought down
on the unfortunate cook a storm of derisive applause and shouts of
"Championship! Championship!"

Thawing-out tinned foods by the heroic aid of a red-hot stove was a
common practice. One day a tin of baked beans was shattered in the
"port" oven, and fragments of dried beans were visible on the walls
and door for weeks. Our military cook would often facetiously refer to
"platoon-firing in the starboard oven."

One junior member of the "Crook Cooks' Association" had the hardihood
to omit baking powder in a loaf of soda-bread, trusting that prolonged
baking would repair the omission. The result was a "championship" of a
very superior order. Being somewhat modest, he committed it through the
trap-door to the mercy of the wind, and for a time it was lost in the
straggling rubbish which tailed away to the north. Even the prowling
dogs in their wolfish hunger could not overcome a certain prejudice.
Of course some one found it, and the public hailed it with delight. A
searching inquiry was made, but the perpetrator was never discovered.
That loaf, however, like the proverbial bad penny, turned up for months.
When the intricate system of snow-tunnels was being perfected, it was
excavated. In the early summer, when the aeroplane was dug out of the
Hangar, that loaf appeared once more, and almost the last thing we saw
when leaving the Hut, nearly two years after, was this petrifaction on
an icy pedestal near the Boat Harbour.

No one ever forgot the roly-poly pudding made without suet; synthetic
rubber was its scientific name. And the muddling messman could never be
surpassed who lost the cutter of the sausage machine and put salt-water
ice in the melting-pots.

There appeared in the columns of 'The Adelie Blizzard' an article by the
meteorologist descriptive of an occasion when two members of the "Crook
Cooks' Association" officiated in the kitchen:

TEREBUS AND ERROR IN ERUPTION An 'Orrible Affair in One Act BY A
SURVIVOR

Dramatis Personae

TEREBUS | | Crook Cooks
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