Though uncomfortable this was nothing to worry about overmuch. Some of
the drift which the blizzard was bringing would collect to leeward of our
hut and the rocks below which it was built, and they could be used to
make our hut more weather-proof. Then with great difficulty we got the
blubber stove to start, and it spouted a blob of boiling oil into Bill's
eye. For the rest of the night he lay, quite unable to stifle his groans,
obviously in very great pain: he told us afterwards that he thought his
eye was gone. We managed to cook a meal somehow, and Birdie got the stove
going afterwards, but it was quite useless to try and warm the place. I
got out and cut the green canvas outside the door, so as to get the roof
cloth in under the stones, and then packed it down as well as I could
with snow, and so blocked most of the drift coming in.
It is extraordinary how often angels and fools do the same thing in this
life, and I have never been able to settle which we were on this journey.
I never heard an angry word: once only (when this same day I could not
pull Bill up the cliff out of the penguin rookery) I heard an impatient
one: and these groans were the nearest approach to complaint. Most men
would have howled. "I think we reached bed-rock last night," was strong
language for Bill. "I was incapacitated for a short time," he says in his
report to Scott.
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