work to ballast her for Pennell. Meares amused the naval members of our
party by asking, with a childlike innocence, "Had they got all the cargo
out of the steamer?" There was nothing wrong in what he said, but the
"Terra Nova," Royal Yacht Squadron--and "cargo" and "steamer"--how our
naval pride was hurt!

Incidentally we called the sandy strand (before the winter snow came, and
covered it, and blotted it all out) Hurrah Beach; the bay to the
northward of the winter quarters we christened Happy Bay. Although our
work physically was of the hardest we lived in luxury for a while. Nelson
provided cocoa for Captain Scott and myself at midnight just before we
slept. He used to make it after supper and keep it for us in a great
thermos flask. We only washed once a week and we were soon black with sun
and dirt but in splendid training. In the first three weeks my shore
gang, which included the lusty Canadian physicist, Wright, carried many
hundreds of cases, walked miles daily, dug ice, picked, shovelled, handed
ponies, cooked and danced. Outwardly we were not all prototypes of "the
Sentimental Bloke," but occasionally in the stillness of the summer
nights, we some of us unbent a bit, when the sun stood low in the south
and all was quiet and still, and we did occasionally build castles in the
air and draw home-pictures to one another, pictures of English summers,
of river picnics and country life that framed those distant homes in gold
and made them look to us like little bits of heaven--however, what was
more important, the stores were all out of the "Terra Nova," even to
stationery, instruments, and chronometers, and we could have removed into
the hut at a pinch a week before we did, or gone sledging, for that
matter, had we not purposely delayed to give the ponies a chance to
regain condition. It was certainly better to let the carpenter and his
company straighten up first, and in our slack hours we, who were to live
in the palatial hut, got the house in order, put up knick-knacks, and