all thoughts of song disappear as we realize what we are in for.  A night with one one-man bag between two men!  There is a whole world of discomfort in the very thought, and no one feels inclined to jest about that for the moment.  Those jests will come all right to-morrow when the night is safely past, but this evening it is anything but a cheery subject of contemplation.  There is no help for it, however, and each of us prepares to take another man in so far as he can."[27]

In such spirit and under very similar conditions this dauntless party set about passing through one of the most horrible winters which God has invented.  They were very hungry, for the wind which kept the sea open also made the shore almost impossible for seals.  There were red-letter days, however, such as when Browning found and killed a seal, and in its stomach, “not too far digested to be still eatable,” were thirty-six fish.  And what visions of joy for the future.  “We never again found a seal with an eatable meal inside him, but we were always hoping to do so, and a kill was, therefore, always a gamble.  Whenever a seal was sighted in future, some one said, ‘Fish!’ and there was always a scramble to search the beast first."[28]

They ate blubber, cooked with blubber, had blubber lamps.  Their clothes and gear were soaked with blubber, and the soot blackened them, their sleeping-bags, cookers, walls and roof, choked their throats and inflamed their eyes.  Blubbery clothes are cold, and theirs were soon so torn as to afford little protection against the wind, and so stiff with blubber that they would stand up by themselves, in spite of frequent scrapings with knives and rubbings with penguin skins, and always there were underfoot the great granite boulders which made walking difficult even in daylight and calm weather.  As Levick said, “the road to hell might be paved with good intentions, but it seemed probable that hell itself would be paved something after the style of Inexpressible Island.”

But there were consolations; the long-waited-for lump of sugar:  the sing-songs—­and about these there hangs a story.  When Campbell’s Party and the remains of the Main Party forgathered at Cape Evans in November 1912, Campbell would give out the hymns for Church.  The first Sunday we had ‘Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore Him,’ and the second, and the third.  We suggested a change, to which Campbell asked, “Why?” We said it got a bit monotonous.  “Oh no,” said Campbell, “we always sang it on Inexpressible Island.”  It was also about the only one he knew.  Apart from this I do not know whether ‘Old King Cole’ or the Te Deum was more popular.  For reading they had David Copperfield, the Decameron, the Life of Stevenson and a New Testament.  And they did Swedish drill, and they gave lectures.