Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/69

There was again some frost smoke over the sea ice under the Cape Cliffs and a small shining open lead of water in the offing.

Thursday, July 20, 1911.—We turned out at 3 a.m. in order to get our hut roof fixed on and made safe in calm weather, and we had decided to make another attempt when day came at 9.30 a.m. to reach the Emperor rookery and get the blubber which we now really began to need. We got the roof on the hut and made it all safe. [Little did we think what that roof had in store for us as we packed it in with snow blocks, stretching it over our second 8-ft. sledge which we put athwartships in the middle of the wall. The windward end came right down to the ground, and we tied it down securely to rocks before packing it in. To do this we had a good two feet or more of slack all round, and in every case we tied it to rocks by lanyards at intervals of every two feet. The door was the difficulty, and for the present we left the cloth arching over the stones, forming a kind of portico. The whole was well packed over with slabs of hard snow, but there was no soft snow with which to fill up the gaps between the blocks.] We then had breakfast and got away in good time for the pressure ridges before day broke. We had the same equipment as yesterday, and crampons of the new canvas pattern which Cherry and I found most reliable and comfortable, though Bowers preferred the old pattern used at Hut Point. Going down to-day we made for a different and rather narrow slope leading much more directly down to the foot of the land ice cliffs. We had missed it yesterday in the