42 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [July 
in my mit to put in the cooker ; it never got there, but 
on the return journey I had my mits far more easily 
thawed out than Birdie's (Bill had none), and I believe 
the grease in the egg did them good. When we got into 
the hollows under the ridge where we had to cross, it 
was too dark to do anything but feel our way — which we 
did over many crevasses, found the ridge and crept over it. 
Higher up we could see more, but to follow our tracks 
soon became impossible, and we plugged straight ahead 
and luckily found the slope down which we had come. 
It began to blow, and as we were going up the slope 
to the tent, blew up to 4 ; it was such a bad light that 
we missed our way entirely and got right up above our 
knoll, and only found it after a good deal of search ; 
meanwhile the weather was getting thick.] 
On returning to the stone hut we flenced one of the 
penguin skins and cooked our supper on the blubber stove, 
which burnt furiously. I was incapacitated for the time 
being by a sputter of the hot oil catching me in one eye. 
We slept in the hut for the first time. 
[We moved into the igloo and began a wretched night. 
The wind was coming in all round. It began to drift, 
and the drift came in by a back draught under the door 
and covered everything — bags, socks, and all our gear. 
Bill started up the blubber stove with the blubber ready 
in it. The first thing it did was to spurt a blob of boiling 
blubber into his eye : for the rest of the night he lay, 
quite unable to stifle his groans, in obviously very great 
pain — and 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 
