THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



plenty to occupy his time, and generally when the men 

 came in from a walk they had some information as to 

 the movement of the smoke cloud on Erebus or the obser- 

 vation of a parhelion or parselene to record. 



As soon as the ice was strong enough to bear in the 

 bay, Murray commenced his operations there. His 

 object was the collection of the different marine crea- 

 tures that rest on the bottom of the sea or creep about 

 there, and he made extensive preparations for their 

 capture. A hole was dug through the ice, and a trap 

 let down to the bottom; this trap was baited with a 

 piece of penguin or seal, and the shell-fish, Crustacea 

 and other marine animals found their way in through 

 the opening in the top, and the trap was usually left 

 down for a couple of days. When it was hauled up, 

 the contents were transferred to a tin containing water, 

 and then taken to the hut and thawed out, for the 

 contents always froze during the quarter of a mile 

 walk homeward. As soon as the animals thawed out 

 they were sorted into bottles and then killed by various 

 chemicals, put into spirits and bottled up for examina- 

 tion when they reached England. Later on Murray 

 found that the trap business was not fruitful enough, 

 so whenever a crack opened in the bay ice, a line was 

 let down, one end being made fast at one end of the 

 crack, and the length of the line allowed to sink in the 

 water horizontally for a distance of sixty yards. A 

 hole was dug at each end of the line and a small dredge 

 was let down and pulled along the bottom, being hauled 

 up through the hole at the far end. By this means 

 much richer collections were made, and rarely did the 

 dredge come up without some interesting specimens. 

 When the crack froze over again, the work could still be 

 continued so long as the ice was broken at each end of 

 the line, and Priestley for a long time acted as Murray's 



204 



