Scott and Wilson got their hands in at dog-driving now, as I did occasionally myself.  Nobody could touch Meares or Dimitri at dog-team work, although later on Cherry-Garrard and Atkinson became the experts.

The hut was finished externally on January 12 and fine stables built up on its northern side.  This complete, Bowers arranged an annexe on the south side from which to do the rationing and provision issues.  How we blessed all this fine weather; it was hardly necessary to wear snow glasses, in spite of so much sunshine, for the glare was relieved by the dark rock and sand around us.  When all the stores had been discharged from the ship she lightened up considerably, and Campbell then set to work to ballast her for Pennell.  Meares amused the naval members of our party by asking, with a childlike innocence, “Had they got all the cargo out of the steamer?” There was nothing wrong in what he said, but the “Terra Nova,” Royal Yacht Squadron—­and “cargo” and “steamer”—­how our naval pride was hurt!

Incidentally we called the sandy strand (before the winter snow came, and covered it, and blotted it all out) Hurrah Beach; the bay to the northward of the winter quarters we christened Happy Bay.  Although our work physically was of the hardest we lived in luxury for a while.  Nelson provided cocoa for Captain Scott and myself at midnight just before we slept.  He used to make it after supper and keep it for us in a great thermos flask.  We only washed once a week and we were soon black with sun and dirt but in splendid training.  In the first three weeks my shore gang, which included the lusty Canadian physicist, Wright, carried many hundreds of cases, walked miles daily, dug ice, picked, shovelled, handed ponies, cooked and danced.  Outwardly we were not all prototypes of “the Sentimental Bloke,” but occasionally in the stillness of the summer nights, we some of us unbent a bit, when the sun stood low in the south and all was quiet and still, and we did occasionally build castles in the air and draw home-pictures to one another, pictures of English summers, of river picnics and country life that framed those distant homes in gold and made them look to us like little bits of heaven—­however, what was more important, the stores were all out of the “Terra Nova,” even to stationery, instruments, and chronometers, and we could have removed into the hut at a pinch a week before we did, or gone sledging, for that matter, had we not purposely delayed to give the ponies a chance to regain condition.  It was certainly better to let the carpenter and his company straighten up first, and in our slack hours we, who were to live in the palatial hut, got the house in order, put up knick-knacks, and settled into our appointed corners with our personal gear and professional impedimenta only at the last moment, a day or two before the big depot-laying sledge journey was appointed to start.  Simpson and Ponting had the best allotments in the