But now it _didn't_ work. "We shall have to go a bit slower," said Bill,
and "we shall get more used to working in the dark." At this time, I
remember, I was still trying to wear spectacles.
We spent that night on the sea-ice, finding that we were too far in
towards Castle Rock; and it was not until the following afternoon that we
reached and lunched at Hut Point. I speak of day and night, though they
were much the same, and later on when we found that we could not get the
work into a twenty-four-hour day, we decided to carry on as though such a
convention did not exist; as in actual fact it did not. We had already
realized that cooking under these conditions would be a bad job, and that
the usual arrangement by which one man was cook for the week would be
intolerable. We settled to be cook alternately day by day. For food we
brought only pemmican and biscuit and butter; for drink we had tea, and
we drank hot water to turn in on.
Pulling out from Hut Point that evening we brought along our heavy loads
on the two nine-foot sledges with comparative ease; it was the first, and
though we did not know it then, the only bit of good pulling we were to
have. Good pulling to the sledge traveller means easy pulling. Away we
went round Cape Armitage and eastwards. We knew that the Barrier edge was
in front of us and also that the break-up of the sea-ice had left the
face of it as a low perpendicular cliff.
Pages:
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443