THE DEPOT JOURNEY 161 
of getting to the top without a spell. After the second 
sledge was up Atkinson said : ‘I don’t mind you as a rule, 
but there are times when I positively hate you.’ ”’ 
Defoe could have written another Robinson Crusoe with 
Hut Point instead of San Juan Fernandez. Our sledging 
supplies were mostly exhausted and we depended upon the 
seals we could kill for food, fuel and light. We were smutty 
as sweeps from the blubber we burned ; and a more black- 
guard-looking crew would have been hard to find. We 
spent our fine days killing, cutting up and carrying in seal 
when we could find them, or climbing the various interest- 
ing hills and craters which abound here, and our evenings 
in long discussions which seldom settled anything. Some 
looked after dogs, and others after ponies ; some made geo- 
logical collections; others sketched the wonderful sunsets ; 
but before and above all we ate and slept. We must have 
spent a good twelve hours asleep in our bags every day 
after our six weeks’ sledging. And we rested. Perhaps this 
is not everybody’s notion of a very good time, but it was 
good enough for us. 
The Weddell seal which frequents the seas which fringe 
the Antarctic continent was a standby for most of our 
wants ; for he can at a pinch provide not only meat to eat, 
fuel for your fire and oil for your lamp, but also leather for 
your finnesko and an antidote toscurvy. As he lies out on 
the sea-ice, a great ungainly shape, nothing short of an 
actual prod will persuade him to take much notice of an 
Antarctic explorer. Even then he is as likely as not to 
yawn in your face and go to sleep again. His instincts 
are all to avoid the water when alarmed, for he knows his 
enemies the killer whales live there: but if you drive him 
into the water he is transformed in the twinkling of an 
eye into a thing of beauty and grace, which can travel and 
turn with extreme celerity and which can successfully chase 
the fish on which he feeds. 
We were lucky now in that a small bay of sea-ice, about 
an acre in extent, still remained within two miles of us at 
a corner where Barrier, sea, and land meet, called Pram 
Point by Scott in the Discovery days. 
M 
