Their first care was to go up to the huts and examine them, with a result that could scarcely be called encouraging.  The huts had been built some years—­whether by the expedition which, in 1874, came thither to observe the transit of Venus, or by former parties of shipwrecked mariners, they never discovered—­and were now in a state of ruin.  Mosses and lichens grew plentifully upon the beams, and even on the floor; while great holes in the roof let in the wet, which lay in little slimy puddles beneath.  Still, with all their drawbacks, they were decidedly better than the open beach; a very short experience of which, in that inclement climate, would certainly have killed them; and they thankfully decided to make the best of them.  Accordingly, the smaller of the two huts was given up to Augusta and the boy Dick, while Mr. Meeson and the sailors took possession of the large one.  Their next task was to move up their scanty belongings (the boat having first been carefully beached), and to clean out the huts and make them as habitable as possible by stretching the sails of the boat on the damp floors and covering up the holes in the roof as best they could with stones and bits of board from the bottom of the boat.  The weather was, fortunately, dry, and as they all (with the exception of Mr. Meeson, who seemed to be quite prostrated) worked with a will, not excepting Master Dick—­who toddled backwards and forwards after Augusta in high glee at finding himself on terra firma—­and by midday everything that could be done was done.  Then they made a fire of some drift-wood—­for, fortunately, they had a few matches—­and Augusta cooked the two fowls they had got out of the floating hen-coop as well as circumstances would allow—­which, as a matter of fact, was not very well—­and they had dinner, of which they all stood sadly in need.

After dinner they reckoned up their resources.  Of water there was an ample supply, for not far from the huts a stream ran down into the fjord.  For food they had the best part of a bag of biscuits weighing about a hundred pounds.  Also there was the cask of rum, which the men had moved into their own hut.  But that was not all, for there were plenty of shellfish about if they could find means to cook them, while the rocks around were covered with hundreds of penguins, including specimens of the great “King penguin,” which only required to be knocked on the head.  There was, therefore, little fear of their perishing of starvation, as sometimes happens to ship wrecked people.  Indeed, immediately after dinner, the two sailors went out and returned with as many birds’ eggs—­mostly penguin—­as they could carry in their hats.  Scarcely had they got in, however, when the rain, which is the prevailing characteristic of these latitudes, set in, in the most pitiless fashion; and soon the great mountains with which they were surrounded, and those before them, were wrapped in dense veils of fleecy vapour.  Hour after hour the rain fell