272 WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



— 40 F. (seventy degrees of frost), and the feat would be 

 possible, at any rate, as far as loading went ! " 



Outside "Silas" Wright is busy getting "time" from 

 star occultations with a patent telescope. His station is near 

 the rubbish-heap, and is connected by telephone to the hut. 

 It is a cold game, as may be imagined, and to manoeuvre in 

 light gloves with delicate screws would try the patience of a 

 saint. I never heard of a Saint Silas, and when Wright's 

 light blows out, the gentleman inside the hut (with the chro- 

 nometers) blushes at the language carried by the telephone 

 wire. There was a yarn (which it is not necessary to believe) 

 that the said wire had to be drenched with water at regular 

 intervals to prevent the heated remarks from fusing it ! 



Wright had one of Colonel Sterneck's gravity pendulum 

 equipments, and for this he needed to know times to o*ooooo 1 

 part of a second ! Thus he could tell whether his pendulums 

 swung quicker or slower in Antarctica than in New Zealand. 

 If they swung quicker, then they were nearer the centre of 

 the earth " down south." Thus the good old simile in which 

 the shape of the earth is compared to a flat-ended orange is 

 deduced scientifically by a frostbitten scientist at " seventy 

 below freezing " ! 



As soon as Simpson had equipped his main station he 

 fitted up a thermometer screen above the Ramp on the icy 

 slopes of Erebus. Later two more were placed on the sea 

 ice — one towards Tent Island and the other in North Bay. 

 These were labelled A, B, and C at first, but these seemed 

 prosaic names when one had literally a chance of losing one's 

 life when one paid them a visit during disturbed weather in 

 the long winter night. So that the screen in North Bay was 

 dignified into "Archibald," "Bertram " lived above the Ramp, 

 and " Clarence " was " way out in the country " to the south. 



Ponting and I introduced ourselves to Bertram on the 

 last day in June. He lived beyond the rough moraines, so 

 we had to put on leather boots. One of the dogs (Tsigane) 

 accompanied us. We could just see, and managed to climb 

 up the 150-foot Ramp, with some diminution of wind, and in 

 half an hour had reached Bertram, 250 feet up. 



There were two thermometers — one registering maximum 

 temperatures, one giving present reading and also (the most 

 interesting reading) the minimum temperature. On this 



