Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/244

four of us most of the day, and I left the two sick men in the hut, cleaning the cookers, until the last load.

It came on very thick with snow in the afternoon and it was 6.30 p.m. before we pulled out. Snow drifts made the pulling heavy and by 8.30 we had only pulled a mile, and as we were all pretty tired after our long day's carrying we camped. Dickason was bad in the night, but we are all very cheerful at being on the march again, and the change from the dirt and dark of the igloo will do us all good. Our sledging rations also seemed sumptuous, the daily ration per man being:

At the commencement of the winter we had some spare wind clothing, sweaters, mits, and underclothing, which we had landed from the ship. This I put on one side for the journey down and only issued it before leaving the igloo. There was not enough of everything to go round, but by making the clothes into lots and drawing for them we all got something. To keep them clean we only changed into them just before leaving the igloo, but the luxury of getting into dry clean clothing after the greasy rags we discarded was indescribable. We had been in the same clothes for nine months, carrying, cooking, and handling blubber, and all our garments were black and soaked through and through with grease. We were fairly well off for paraffin as we had only used the primus to cook our morning hoosh. Dickason's generosity in volunteering to work