ELEPHANT ISLAND 
each man in turnj were called about 7 a.m., and breakfast was 
generally ready by about 10 a.m. 
Provision-cases were then arranged in a wide circle round 
the stove, and those who were fortunate enough to be next to 
it could dry their gear. So that all should benefit equally by 
this, a sort of General Post " was carried out, each man 
occupying his place at meal-times for one day only, moving 
up one the succeeding day. In this way eventually every man 
managed to dry his clothes, and life began to assume a much 
brighter aspect. 
The great trouble in the hut was the absence of light. The 
canvas walls were covered with blubber-soot, and with the 
snow-drifts accumulating round the hut its inhabitants were 
living in a state of perpetual night. Lamps were fashioned out 
of sardine-tins, Avith bits of surgical bandage for wicks ; but 
as the oil consisted of seal-oil reiidered down from the blubber, 
the remaining fibrous tissue being issued very sparingly at 
lunch, by the by, and being considered a great deHcacy, they 
were more a means of conserving the scanty store of matches 
than of serving as illuminants. 
Wild was the first to overcome this difficulty by sewing 
into the canvas wall the glass lid of a chronometer box. Later 
on three other windows Avere added, the material in this case 
being some celluloid panels from a photograph case of mine 
which I had left behind in a bag. This enabled the occupants 
of the floor billets who were near enough to read and sew, which 
relieved the monotony of the situation considerably. 
" Our reading material consisted at this time of two books 
of poetry, one book of ' Nordenskj old's Expedition,' one or two 
torn volumes of the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica,' and a penny 
cookery book, owned by Marston. Our clothes, though never 
presentable, as they bore the scars of nearly ten months of 
rough usage, had to be continually patched to keep them 
together at all." 
As the floor of the hut had been raised by the addition of 
loads of clean pebbles, from which most of the snow had been 
removed, during the cold weather it was kept comparatively 
dry. When, however, the temperature rose to just above 
227 
