eat:  for preference tinned peaches in syrup!  Well!  That is the kind of sleep the Antarctic offers you at her worst, or nearly at her worst.  And if the worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than as a gruesome foe.  She treats you thus when you are in the extremity of peril and hardship; perhaps then you can imagine what draughts of deep and healthy slumber she will give a tired sledger at the end of a long day’s march in summer, when after a nice hot supper he tucks his soft dry warm furry bag round him with the light beating in through the green silk tent, the homely smell of tobacco in the air, and the only noise that of the ponies tethered outside, munching their supper in the sun.

And so it came about that during our sojourn at Cape Evans, in our comfortable warm roomy home, we took our full allotted span of sleep.  Most were in their bunks by 10 P.M., sometimes with a candle and a book, not rarely with a piece of chocolate.  The acetylene was turned off at 10.30, for we had a limited quantity of carbide, and soon the room was in complete darkness, save for the glow of the galley stove and where a splash of light showed the night watchman preparing his supper.  Some snored loudly, but none so loud as Bowers; others talked in their sleep, the more so when some nasty experience had lately set their nerves on edge.  There was always the ticking of many instruments, and sometimes the ring of a little bell:  to this day I do not know what most of them meant.  On a calm night no sound penetrated except, perhaps, the whine of a dog, or the occasional kick of a pony in the stable outside.  Any disturbance was the night watchman’s job.  But on a bad blizzard night the wind, as it tore seawards over the hut, roared and howled in the ventilator let into the roof:  in the more furious gusts the whole hut shook, and the pebbles picked up by the hurricane scattered themselves noisily against the woodwork of the southern wall.  We did not get many nights like these the first winter; during the second we seemed to get nothing else.  One ghastly blizzard blew for six weeks.

The night watchman took his last hourly observation at 7 A.M., and was free to turn in after waking the cook and making up the fire.  Frequently, however, he had so much work to do that he preferred to forgo his sleep and remain up.  For instance, if the weather looked threatening, he would take his pony out for exercise as soon as possible in the morning, or those lists of stores were not finished, or that fish trap had to be looked after:  all kinds of things.