You may sleep
dreamlessly nearly all the time, rousing out for meals, or waking
occasionally to hear from the soft warmth of your reindeer bag the deep
boom of the tent flapping in the wind, or drowsily you may visit other
parts of the world, while the drifting snow purrs against the green tent
at your head.
But outside there is raging chaos. It is blowing a full gale: the air is
full of falling snow, and the wind drives this along and adds to it the
loose snow which is lying on the surface of the Barrier. Fight your way a
few steps away from the tent, and it will be gone. Lose your sense of
direction and there is nothing to guide you back. Expose your face and
hands to the wind, and they will very soon be frost-bitten. And this at
midsummer. Imagine the added cold of spring and autumn: the cold and
darkness of winter.
The animals suffer most, and during this first blizzard all our ponies
were weakened, and two of them became practically useless. It must be
remembered that they had stood for five weeks upon a heaving deck; they
had been through one very bad gale: the time during which we were
unloading the ship was limited, and since that time they had dragged
heavy loads the greater part of 200 miles. Nothing was left undone for
them which we could manage, but necessarily the Antarctic is a grim place
for ponies.
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