the primus and cooker are passed in. The cooker is
dissected and the two water vessels passed out to be filled with snow.
The cook will have hard work to get the primus started if he does not
shield the spirit flame from the wind, which blows through the tent, by
putting the whole lamp inside the big cooker lid.

In come the pots filled with lumps of snow. The food tank is placed just
outside the entrance, and the proper food-bags for the meal are passed
in to the cook, the tank being retied to keep out drift. The cooker
will now be going at full pressure, and the cook is ready to receive
the gear. Sleeping-bags, "computation bag," hypsometer, "meat block" (a
three-inch-square paper pad on which meteorological notes were taken);
clothes-bag opened, three ditty-bags passed in and bag retied; a final
temperature taken and aneroid read; sledge anchored securely by tow-rope
to the ice-axe, and a final look round to see all gear is safely
strapped down and snow-tight.

In calm weather, camping is a very different thing. On a fine day, half
an hour after the halt would usually find us carefully scraping the last
of the hoosh out of our pannikins, ready for the cocoa.

At the seventy-six-mile camp we tried the experiment of a break-wind.
The tent was so small and light that it was necessary to protect it in
the heavy winds. Hurley and I took about three-quarters of an hour to
build the first one, but later we improved, getting into the knack of
hewing snow with a sharp-pointed shovel.

That night in bag I wrote: "The result of the breakwind is that for once
we have the wind bluffed. It is blowing seventy-five miles per hour--a
full hurricane--but all the viciousness is taken out of the flapping and
there will be no damage done to the tent by morning."

The wind was too strong for travelling early in the day (November 25).
While outside we suddenly observed two snow petrels. It was hard to
realize that they had actually flown seventy-six miles inland to a
height of two thousand four hundred and fifty feet. I dashed inside for
the fishingline; Hurley got out the camera. They were a beautiful sight,
hovering with outspread wings just above the snow, tipping it with their
feet now and then, to poise without a flutter in a sixty-five-mile gale.
Hurley secured a couple of "snaps" at the expense of badly frost-bitten
hands. Just as I arrived with the line hooked and baited, the birds flew
away to the north-east; our visions of f