170 
FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
harbour at the same time. This we quite grasped, but 
failed to see why, after finding our own way into this 
natural harbour at our own risk, we should be obliged to 
give the pilot £7, 10s. for standing by while we dropped 
anchor. 
The anchor down, we procured two or three tumblers- 
ful of water and some Sunlight soap, and had a superb 
wash. Then we pulled on our least disreputable and mil- 
dewed finery, plying our pilot meanwhile with many 
questions about his country : ' Can we get tobacco on 
shore? — milk? — butter?' all these we could get. 'Whisky? 7 
( Yes, wiskie too.' He was a Sassenach, poor man, quite 
'appy with wiskie without an h ! £ Price ? ' Some- 
thing fabulous ! beyond a Rothschild's means. 'Cigars?' 
Alas ! at ransom. Everything apparently cost three times 
the price charged at home, from a pound of tobacco at 
24s. to a main yard at ^3000. However, it would have 
taken more heaped up sorrows than these to depress us, so 
we got into our finery and stepped on deck beaming with 
soap, sunburn, and anticipation. It was a queer turn out 
we made — a feeble attempt at respectability. The attempt 
that most nearly reached this standard was the master s 
son James or Jim, as he is commonly called. He ap- 
peared in the garb of his profession of bank clerk — a 
costume that was really superb. How he managed to 
preserve an immaculate white stand-up collar and a bowler 
through these storms and troubles was what none of us 
could make out. But our doctor's costume was a poem, 
a work of art full of suggestion of the Past, the Present, 
To-morrow, and the Future, both of the man and of the 
