“The cook deserves much praise for the way he has stuck to his job through all this severe blizzard.  His galley consists of nothing but a few boxes arranged as a table, with a canvas screen erected around them on four oars and the two blubber-stoves within.  The protection afforded by the screen is only partial, and the eddies drive the pungent blubber-smoke in all directions.”

After a few days we were able to build him an igloo of ice-blocks, with a tarpaulin over the top as a roof.

“Our rations are just sufficient to keep us alive, but we all feel that we could eat twice as much as we get.  An average day’s food at present consists of ½ lb. of seal with ¾ pint of tea for breakfast, a 4- oz. bannock with milk for lunch, and ¾ pint of seal stew for supper.  That is barely enough, even doing very little work as we are, for of course we are completely destitute of bread or potatoes or anything of that sort.  Some seem to feel it more than others and are continually talking of food; but most of us find that the continual conversation about food only whets an appetite that cannot be satisfied.  Our craving for bread and butter is very real, not because we cannot get it, but because the system feels the need of it.”

Owing to this shortage of food and the fact that we needed all that we could get for ourselves, I had to order all the dogs except two teams to be shot.  It was the worst job that we had had throughout the Expedition, and we felt their loss keenly.

I had to be continually rearranging the weekly menu.  The possible number of permutations of seal meat were decidedly limited.  The fact that the men did not know what was coming gave them a sort of mental speculation, and the slightest variation was of great value.

“We caught an adelie to-day (January 26) and another whale was seen at close quarters, but no seals.

“We are now very short of blubber, and in consequence one stove has to be shut down.  We only get one hot beverage a day, the tea at breakfast.  For the rest we have iced water.  Sometimes we are short even of this, so we take a few chips of ice in a tobacco-tin to bed with us.  In the morning there is about a spoonful of water in the tin, and one has to lie very still all night so as not to spill it.”

To provide some variety in the food, I commenced to use the sledging ration at half strength twice a week.

The ice between us and Ocean Camp, now only about five miles away and actually to the south-west of us, was very broken, but I decided to send Macklin and Hurley back with their dogs to see if there was any more food that could be added to our scanty stock.  I gave them written instructions to take no undue risk or cross any wide-open leads, and said that they were to return by midday the next day.  Although they both fell through the thin ice up to their waists more than once, they managed to reach the camp.  They found the surface soft and sunk about two feet.  Ocean Camp, they said, “looked like a village that had been razed to the ground and deserted by its inhabitants.”  The floor-boards forming the old tent-bottoms had prevented the sun from thawing the snow directly underneath them, and were in consequence raised about two feet above the level of the surrounding floe.