Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/82

the wind dropped to light airs the weather looked thick and unsettled, with stratus moving up rapidly from the south.

We spent the whole of our daylight in packing our hut with soft snow, until not a crack or a crevice remained visible anywhere on the outside.

Then we brought up our tent from the hollow below, and pitched it, for the sake of convenience, under the lee end of our hut, quite close to the door. My idea in doing this was to get more efficient heat for drying socks and other gear than was possible in the hut. The large open canvas roof of the hut allowed all the heat to escape at once, but in the double tent the intense heat of the blubber stove dried anything hung in the apex in a very short time.

We cooked our supper in the tent, nearly stifling ourselves with the smoke, but the heating effect was immense. [The blubber stove heated the oil so much that we expected every minute that the whole would flare up. It took a lot of primus to start it. We took our finnesko in to try and dry them there with the rest of the gear when we left. Bill and I, however, took our private bags back into the igloo. After dinner we flenced one of the Emperor skins as hard as we could and boiled down the blubber in the inner cooker—very good stuff—nearly filling the stove up.] We then moved to the hut to sleep, believing it to be as safe and as comfortable as it could be made until we got some covering for the roof, such as sealskins. When we turned in there was practically no wind at all, but the sky was