Chapter &tUn 



THE LANDING OF STORES AND EQUIPMENT 



WE returned to the ship to start discharging our 

 equipment, and with this work commenced the 

 most uncomfortable fortnight, and the hardest work, full 

 of checks and worries, that I or any other member of the 

 party had ever experienced. If it had not been for 

 the whole-hearted devotion of our party, and their 

 untiring energy, we would never have got through the 

 long toil of discharging. Day and night, if such 

 terms of low latitudes can be used in a place where 

 there was no night, late and early, they were always 

 ready to turn to, in face of most trying conditions, and 

 always with a cheerful readiness. If a fresh obstacle 

 appeared there was no time lost in bemoaning the cir- 

 cumstance, but they all set to work at once to remove the 

 obstruction. The first thing to be landed was the motor- 

 car, and after that came the ponies, for it was probable 

 that any day might see the break-up of the bay ice, and 

 there being only two fathoms of water along the shore, 

 as we had ascertained by sounding down the tide crack, 

 the ship could not go very close in. It would have been 

 practically impossible to have landed the ponies in boats, 

 for they were only half -broken in, and all in a highly 

 strung, nervous condition. At 10.30 p.m. on February 3 

 we swung the motor over on to the bay ice, and 

 all hands pulled it up the snow slope across the tide- 

 crack and left it safe on the solid ground. This done, 

 we next landed one of the lifeboats which we intended 

 to keep down there with us. Joyce ran the dogs ashore 



