136 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [April 
and Dickason, and thus each has one day on in three. 
TJie duties of the cooks are to turn out at 7 and cook 
and serve out the breakfast, the others remaining in their 
bags for the meal. Then we all have a siesta till 10.30, 
when we turn out for the day's work. The cook starts 
the blubber stove and melts blubber for the lamps. The 
messman takes an ice-axe and chips frozen seal meat in the 
passage by the light of a blubber lamp. A cold job this 
and trying to the temper, as scraps of meat fly in all 
directions and have to be carefully collected afterwards. 
The remainder carry up the meat and blubber or look 
for seals. By 5 p.m. all except the cooks are in their 
bags, and we have sapper. After supper the cooks melt 
ice for the morning, prepare breakfast, and clear up. 
Our rations at this time were as follows :— Breakfast, 
I mug of penguin and seal hoosh and i biscuit. Supper 
l i mugs of seal, I biscuit and | pint of thin cocoa, tea, 
or hot water. We were always hungry on this, and to 
swell the hoosh we used occasionally to try putting in 
seaweed, but most of it had deteriorated owing to the heat 
of the sun and the attentions of the penguins. 
The cocoa we could only afford to have five days a 
week and then very thin, but as we had a little tea we 
had weak tea on Sunday and reboilcd the leaves for 
Monday. As already stated we had a little chocolate 
(2 ounces per man a week), and 8 lumps of sugar every 
Sunday. Our tobacco soon ran out, even with the most 
rigid economy, and we were reduced to smoking the much- 
boiled tea and wood shavings — a poor substitute. About 
tJie middle of this month we found we were getting through 
