Part 14 (2/2)

When the intricate system of snow-tunnels was being perfected, it was excavated. In the early summer, when the aeroplane was dug out of the Hangar, that loaf appeared once more, and almost the last thing we saw when leaving the Hut, nearly two years after, was this petrifaction on an icy pedestal near the Boat Harbour.

No one ever forgot the roly-poly pudding made without suet; synthetic rubber was its scientific name. And the muddling messman could never be surpa.s.sed who lost the cutter of the sausage machine and put salt-water ice in the melting-pots.

There appeared in the columns of 'The Adelie Blizzard' an article by the meteorologist descriptive of an occasion when two members of the ”Crook Cooks' a.s.sociation” officiated in the kitchen:

TEREBUS AND ERROR IN ERUPTION An 'Orrible Affair in One Act BY A SURVIVOR

Dramatis Personae

TEREBUS

Crook Cooks ERROR

Other Expedition Members

Scene: Kitchen, Winter Quarters.

Time: 5.30 P.M.

ERROR. Now, Terebus, just bring me a nice clean pot, will you?

TEREBUS [from his bunk]. Go on, do something yourself!

ERROR. Do something? I've done everything that has been done this afternoon.

TEREBUS. Well, you ought to feel pretty fresh.

ERROR. And all the melting-pots are empty and I'm not going to fill them. Besides, it's not in the regulations.

Voices. Who's going crook? Error!

[TEREBUS climbs from his bunk and exit for ice. ERROR attempts to extricate a pot from the nails in the shelves. Loud alarums.

Voices. Champ-ion-s.h.i.+p!

[Alarums without. Loud cries of ”Door!” Enter TEREBUS with box of ice; fills all the pots on the stove.

ERROR. Good heavens, man, you've filled up the tea water with ice.

TEREBUS [with hoa.r.s.e laugh]. Never mind, they won't want so much glaxo to cool it.

ERROR [who has meanwhile been mixing bread]. What shall we bake the bread in? I believe it is considered that a square tin is more suitable for ordinary ovens, but, on the other hand, Nansen in his 'Farthest North' used flat dishes.

TEREBUS. Use a tin. There'll be less surface exposed to the cold oven.

ERROR. What's all this water on the floor? I thought my feet seemed cold. Some one must have upset a bucket.

TEREBUS. Oh, it's one of the taps turned on. Never mind, there's plenty more ice where that came from. Get your sea-boots.

[Enter METEOROLOGICAL STAFF and others with snow-covered burberrys, mitts, etc., crowd kitchen and hang impedimenta round the stove. Great tumult.

TEREBUS. Here, out of the kitchen. This isn't the time to worry the cooks.

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