Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/86

oil into tins and lamps for the journey home in case our candles ran out, and for drying or thawing out socks and mits.

We then considered matters in the light of a shortage of oil and absence of tent. We decided first to go as long as we could without a hot meal so long as the blizzard kept us inactive. We also saw that we could not afford to start our last can of oil with the vague chance of getting a seal and improvising a blubber stove and so staying on here. We still had a fill of oil in our fifth can. As for the tent, we believed we should at any rate find part of it, if only the legs, and we saw no impossibility in improvising a tent cover of some sort from the canvas roof of our hut, even if the tent and lining were both lost.

Lying in our bags in the hut we were very wet, and got wetter from the fine drift every time we moved in or out of them. Everything was buried in a pile of soft, fine drift. But we were not cold. We finished our breakfast on the primus when the blubber stove gave out, and this was our last meal for a good many hours as it happened. [At intervals during the next 24 hours Birdie, who was absolutely magnificent, was up and about, stopping up every crevice where wind or drift was working in with socks, mits, and anything handy. A drift hole was especially bad in the middle of the windward wall, drifting us all up lightly, and putting a lot in Birdie's corner. The only possible thing to do for the roof would have been lashings over it outside, and in that wind that was out of the question. Our position, with the tent gone, was bad.]