Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/221

are all giving out with this rough walking, and we dare not use our finnesko, but must keep them for spring sledging. Our feet are getting very frequently frostbitten and are beginning to feel as if the circulation might become permanently injured.

April 9.—Warmer to-day. We saw a small seal on a floe but were unable to reach him. The bay remains open still. On the still days a thin film of ice forms, but blows out as soon as the wind comes up. In these early days, before we had perfected our cooking and messing arrangements, a great part of our day was taken up with cooking and preparing the food, but later on we got used to the ways of a blubber stove, and things went more smoothly. We had landed all our spare paraffin from the ship, and this gave us enough oil to use the primus for breakfast, provided we melted the ice over the blubber fire the day before. The blubber stove was made of an old oil-tin cut down. In this we put some old seal-bones taken from the carcases we found on the beach. A piece of blubber skewered on to a marline spike and held over the flame dripped oil on the bones and fed the fire. In this way we could cook hoosh nearly as quickly as we could on the primus. Of course the stove took several weeks of experimenting before it reached this satisfactory state. With certain winds we were nearly choked with a black oily smoke that hurt our eyes and brought on much the same symptoms as accompany snow-blindness.

We take it in turns to be cook and messman, working in pairs: Abbott and I, Levick and Browning, Priestley