IN WINTER QUARTERS 67 
On the nineteenth we lost the lead and tube of 
the Kelvin sounding-machine; the wire kinked and 
broke, so we had to attach another lead and brass 
tube. It was a typical Cape Sheridan day, a 
magnificent morning with hardly any wind and a 
temperature of nineteen below zero. 
Soot had accumulated in the funnel of my cabin 
stove, so that the fire would not bum, and I de¬ 
termined on the twentieth to adopt heroic measures 
to get the soot out. The method which I finally 
hit upon was effective but disturbing. I decided to 
pour a lot of flashlight powder in the stove, as this 
would give a quick puff and blow out the soot. I 
was pouring the powder in, when I inadvertently 
poured too fast and got too much in. Flash! The 
door of the stove came off and sailed past my 
head; if it had hit me it would have killed me. As 
it was the stove lost its bearings and landed with 
a tremendous crash against the side of the room, 
but no particular damage was done—except to the 
soot. 
Murray got a little octopus in the dredge. He 
had been getting stones, small pebbles at first and 
then larger ones, almost perfectly round and very 
smooth. Now, however, he began to get specimens 
of previously unknown animal life again—eleven 
different kinds in one day. He was faithful and 
untiring in his dredging and his work, at which we 
