Generally their diet consisted of one mug of “pemmican and seal hoosh” and a biscuit for breakfast, nothing for lunch, a mug and a half of seal, one biscuit and three-quarters of a pint of thin cocoa for supper.  On Sundays weak tea was substituted for cocoa, this they re-boiled for Mondays’ supper, and the dried leaves were used for tobacco on Tuesdays.  Their only luxuries were a piece of chocolate and twelve lumps of sugar, weekly, and twenty-five raisins apiece were kept for birthdays.  One lucky find was thirty-six fish in the stomach of a seal, which fried in blubber proved excellent.  The biscuit ration had to be stopped entirely from July to September.  The six men cooked their food in sea-water as they had no salt, and seaweed was used as a vegetable.  Priestley is reported to have disliked it, and no wonder, for it has probably rotted in the sun for years, and the penguins have trampled it all down, apart from anything worse.

Campbell kept a wonderful discipline in his party, and as they were sometimes confined to the igloo for days, Swedish drill was introduced to keep them healthy.  A glance at their weather record shows how necessary this was.  We find one day snowing hard, next day blowing hard, and the third day blowing and snowing hard, nearly all through the winter.  But there was never a complaint.

On Sunday divine service was performed, which consisted of Campbell reading a chapter of the Bible, followed by hymns.  They had no hymn book, but Priestley remembered several, while Abbott, Browning and Dickason had all been at some time or other in a choir.

To add to their discomfort, owing to the state of their clothing and meagre food supply, they were very susceptible to frostbites, and Jack Frost made havoc with feet, fingers, and faces.

We should here give a little thought to the dark dreariness of their surroundings.  This party was not so very far north of Cape Evans, and their winter was only about three weeks shorter if measured by the sun’s absence below the horizon—­the contrast between the “palace” at Cape Evans and the ice-cave at Campbell’s position is ridiculous, and to think that the little crew remained cheerful and in harmony under such troglodyte conditions, it makes one wonder more and more at the manner of the men.  They had none of the comfort, entertainment, and good feeling of their co-explorers at the base, the very dimensions of their habitation explains for itself the cramped nature of their existence, and yet no complaints, and nothing but unswerving loyalty to their boss.  Weaker minded men would have broken down mentally under the strain of living through that winter.

The sunlight went at the beginning of May, gradually leaving them with those peculiar drawn-out half lights, which we all grew to know so well—­the whimpering purple clouds, the sad-looking hills, and the desolate ice slopes and snow drifts—­the six men were imprisoned with sullen hills and unassailable mountains for jailers, until they had undergone their sentence—­the sea their chief jailer, for the sea had set them there and it was for the sea to decide on the time of their release.