hours on either side of noon, so Gran and I went without our lunch,
taking a few biscuits and some chocolate out with us on our survey days,
and as we worked farther and farther from our base we found it necessary
to start out in the darkness in order to take full advantage of what
light was vouchsafed us. It was good healthy work and we developed
glorious appetites, so that our mouths ran with water when perhaps we met
a couple of fellows leading the little white ponies on the sea ice for
exercise, and they told us what they had had for lunch and what was being
kept for us. We found it all most interesting and, although I detested
that sunless winter, I loved the changing scenery, which never seemed
monotonous when there was any daylight or moonlight. To mark our
"stations" we used red and black bunting flags, and they showed up very
well. We gave them all sorts of weird names, such as Sardine, Shark, and
so forth, and we knew almost to a yard their distances from one another,
as also their bearings, which helped us when we were overtaken by bad
weather. Eventually it became too dark for any survey work, but there was
always plenty to do indoors for the majority of us. Apart from our
specialist duties some one was always to be found who could give
employment to the willing--there were no idlers or unwilling folk amongst
us. Simpson, for example, would employ as many volunteers as he could get
to follow the balloons which he frequently sent up to record temperature
and pressure. To each of these balloons a fine silk thread was attached,
or rather the thread was attached to the little instrument it carried.
When any strain was put on the thread it broke the thread connecting the
small temperature and pressure instrument to the balloon, the former
dropped on to the ice and was recovered by one of the volunteers, who
followed the silk thread up until he came to the instrument where it had
fallen. One required good eyesight for this work as for everything else
down here, and I have never ceased to marvel at the way Cherry-Garrard
got about and worked so well when one considers that he was very