Their stove was the bottom of an oil tin, and they cooked by dripping blubber on to seal bones, which became soaked with the blubber, and Campbell tells me they cooked almost as quickly as a primus.  Of course they were filthy.  Their main difficulty was dysentery and ptomaine poisoning.

Their stories of the winter are most amusing—­of “Placing the Plug, or Sports in the Antarctic”; of lectures; of how dirty they were; of their books, of which they had four, including David Copperfield.  They had a spare tent, which was lucky, for the bamboos of one of theirs were blown in during a big wind, and the men inside it crept along the piedmont on hands and knees to the igloo and slept two in a bag.  How the seal seemed as if they would give out, and they were on half rations and very hungry:  and they were thinking they would have to come down in the winter, when they got two seals:  of the fish they got from the stomach of a seal—­“the best feed they had”—­the blubber they have eaten.

But they were buried deep in the snow and quite warm.  Big winds all the time from the W.S.W., cold winds off the plateau—­in the igloo they could hear almost nothing outside—­how they just had a biscuit a day at times, sugar on Sundays, etc.

And so all is well in this direction, and we have done right in going south, and we have at least succeeded in getting all records.  I suppose any news is better than no news.

Evening. The Pole Party photos of themselves at the Pole and at the Norwegian cairn (a Norwegian tent, post and two flags) are very good indeed—­one film is unused, one used on these two subjects:  taken with Birdie’s camera.  All the party look fit and well, and their clothes are not iced up.  It was calm at the time:  the surface looks rather soft.

Atkinson and Campbell have gone to Hut Point with one dog-team, and we are all to forgather here.  The ice still seems good from here to Hut Point:  all else open water as far as can be seen.

A steady southerly wind has been blowing here for three days now.  The mules should get into Hut Point to-day.

It is the happiest day for nearly a year—­almost the only happy one.

FOOTNOTES: 

   [291] My own diary.

   [292] Wright’s diary.

   [293] Wright’s diary.

CHAPTER XVII

THE POLAR JOURNEY

DON JUAN.  This creature Man, who in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will fight for an idea like a hero.  He may be abject as a citizen; but he is dangerous as a fanatic.  He can only be enslaved while he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason.  I tell you, gentlemen, if you can show a man a piece of what he now calls God’s work to do, and what he will later on call by many new names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences