WE BEGIN OUR SLEDGING 
115 
sledge journeys later on and so we might as well 
get used to going without it as soon as possible. 
Some of the men happened to have some with them 
when they left the ship, however, and we smoked 
that while it lasted but it was already getting to 
be a scarce article. A good many odds and ends 
were continually turning up under the snow, how¬ 
ever, and some of the men had an idea that if they 
looked for tobacco they might find some. So Me- 
Kinlay set out to investigate. 
In due time he returned, saying nothing but 
looking as if he knew something. We waited for 
him to hand over the tobacco or tell us where it was 
and at last we became so aroused that we made him 
guide us to the spot where he had been looking. 
He brought us to a place where a box was covered 
up in the snow, dug it up and handed it over, while 
we imagined the good smoke we were to have at last. 
It was a box of cocoa. McKinlay had the time of 
his life about it and we all laughed with him, though 
the joke was on us; I felt it incumbent on me, how¬ 
ever, to show the joker that he couldn't trifle with 
our feelings with impunity, so I chased him laugh¬ 
ing over the ice and scrubbed his face in a snow¬ 
bank. 
As a consolation prize I hunted through the 
supply tent for a little tobacco which I knew was 
