266 SCOTT'S LAST EXPEDITION [Januaky 
nothing much that afternoon and I described the weather 
in one word as undercast ! 
We had a chapter of small accidents while we were 
transporting our gear down to the sea ice looo feet below 
us. I found on arrival that the cap of the theodolite 
stand had joggled off. I returned and met Forde. He 
looked at his load and found the handle of the primus 
pump had disappeared. We spent some time searching, 
but it was quite useless among the rough granite blocks. 
Just as we started pulling on the sea ice Debenham 
missed the sight-ruler, an indispensable part of the 
plane table. Luckily he found this about a mile back 
and Forde managed to make some ingenious leather caps 
that served instead of the other lost articles. 
According to orders we now spent the last week 
surveying the neighbourhood of the rendezvous. The 
blubber stove was going strong most of the day to melt 
water or cook supper. We used to light it with paper 
rubbed in the blubber. The black sooty blubber oil 
would leak out and melt the ice on the floor of the hut. 
The soot caked all the cooking utensils, and spread itself 
liberally over us. Gran could always be relied on to 
make any special delicacy such as porridge, for which we 
saved our ' thickers ' and a little oatmeal we had. This 
used to take him about three hours in the cold hut — 
while we worked out sights or wrote notes snugly in the 
comparatively clean tent. 
Moreover on these occasions Gran enlivened the cape 
by carolling grand opera. When he felt the cold and scot 
and smoke rather too much for him ' Pagliacci ' or ' Bertran 
