“May 7.—­A blizzard with heavy drift has been blowing all day, so it was a good job we got the penguins.  We have got the roof on the shaft now, but in these blizzards the entrance is buried in snow, and we have a job to keep the shaft clear.  Priestley has found his last year’s journal, and reads some to us every evening.

“From now till the end of the month strong gales again reduced our outside work to a minimum, and most of our energies were directed to improving our domestic routine.

“We have now a much better method for cutting up the meat for the hoosh.  Until now we had to take the frozen joints and hack them in pieces with an ice-axe.  We have now fixed up an empty biscuit tin on a bamboo tripod over the blubber fire.  The small pieces of meat we put in this to thaw:  the larger joints hang from the bamboo.  In this way they thaw sufficiently in the twenty-four hours to cut up with a knife, and we find this cleaner and more economical.

“We celebrated two special occasions on this month, my wedding day on the 10th, and the anniversary, to use a paradox, of the commissioning of the hut on the 17th, and each time the commissariat officer relaxed his hold to the extent of ten raisons each.

“Levick is saving his biscuit to see how it feels to go without cereals for a week.  He also wants to have one real good feed at the end of the week.  His idea is that by eating more blubber he will not feel the want of the biscuit very much.”

“July 4.—­Southerly wind, with snow, noise of pressure at sea and the ice in the Bay breaking up.  Evidently there is wind coming, and the sea ice which has recently formed will go out again like the rest.  It is getting rather a serious question as to whether there will be any sea ice for us to get down the coast on.  I only hope that to the South of the Drygalski ice tongue, where the south-easterlies are the prevailing winds, we shall find the ice has held.  Otherwise it will mean that we shall have to go over the plateau, climbing up by Mount Larsen, and coming down the Ferrar Glacier, and if so we cannot start until November, and the food will be a problem.

“We made a terrible discovery in a hoosh tonight:  a penguin’s flipper.  Abbott and I prepared the hoosh.  I can remember using a flipper to clean the pot with, and in the dark Abbott cannot have seen it when he filled the pot.  However, I assured every one it was a fairly clean flipper, and certainly the hoosh was a good one.”

In this diary are some remarkable entries.  Attempts were made to vary the flavour of the “Hooshes”—­one entry is very queer reading:  it related how after trying one or two other expedients Levick used a mustard plaster in the pemmican and seal stew.  The unanimous decision was that it must have been a linseed poultice, for mustard could not be tasted at all, yet the flavour of linseed was most distinct.