THE WINTER JOURNEY 273 
We moved into the igloo for the first time, for we had 
to save oil by using our blubber stove if we were to have 
any left to travel home with, and we did not wish to cover 
our tent with the oily black filth which the use of blubber 
necessitates. The blizzard blew all night, and we were 
covered with drift which came in through hundreds of 
leaks : in this wind-swept place we had found no soft snow 
with which we could pack our hard snow blocks. As we 
flensed some blubber from one of our penguin skins the 
powdery drift covered everything we had. 
Though uncomfortable this was nothing to worry about 
overmuch. Some of the drift which the blizzard was bring- 
ing would collect to leeward of our hut and the rocks below 
which it was built, and they could be used to make our hut 
more weather-proof. Then with great difficulty we got the 
blubber stove to start, and it spouted a blob of boiling oil 
into Bill’s eye. For the rest of the night he lay, quite 
unable to stifle his groans, obviously in very great pain: 
he told us afterwards that he thought his eye was gone. 
We managed to cook a meal somehow, and Birdie got the 
stove going afterwards, but it was quite useless to try and 
warm the place. I got out and cut the green canvas out- 
side the door, so as to get the roof cloth in under the 
stones, and then packed it down as well as I could with 
snow, and so blocked most of the drift coming in. 
It is extraordinary how often angels and fools do the 
same thing in this life, and I have never been able to settle 
which we were on this journey. I never heard an angry 
word: once only (when this same day I could not pull Bill 
up the cliff out of the penguin rookery) I heard an im- 
patient one: and these groans were the nearest approach 
to complaint. Most men would have howled. “I think 
we reached bed-rock last night,” was strong language for 
Bill. “I was incapacitated for a short time,” he says in his 
report to Scott.1 Endurance was tested on this journey 
under unique circumstances, and always these two men 
with all the burden of responsibility which did not fall 
upon myself, displayed that quality which is perhaps the 
1 Scott's Last Expedition, vol. ii. p. 42. 
if 
