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To his right and left stretched the drying yard, gangway on gangway formed by the serried rows of lumber-piles, the hoop-horses placidly feeding from their nosebags while the strong-armed fellows who piled the lumber sat about in little groups conversing with the mill-hands. As Bryce looked, a puff of white steam appeared over the roof of the old sawmill, and the one o'clock whistle blew.
We camped disconsolately at last in a forlorn garden among grey boulders where stumps of trees were burning. We found no trouble in building up a good night fire of half-burnt logs. We gave our ponies their nosebags and ate our own bread and bully rather silently. Then we surmised with some weariness and gloom over our pipes. At last we slept under the many eyes of the heavens.
Every one was in good humour; it was an event, a fête for the entire neighbourhood. Vandover and his party came at last to the first engines violently pumping and coughing, the huge gray horses standing near by, already unhitched and blanketed, indifferently feeding in their nosebags.
The poor ponies look wistfully for the food of which so very little remains, yet they are not hungry, as recent savings have resulted from food left in their nosebags. They look wonderfully fit, all things considered. Everything looks more hopeful to-night, but nothing can recall four lost days. Saturday, December 9. Camp 31.
Damn all they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss. Gelded too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.
What with the pianola going all out, the gramophone giving us Melba records, and the ship's company's gramophone squawking out Harry Lauder's opposition numbers, Ponting cinematographing everything of interest and worthy of pictorial record, little Anton rushing round with nosebags for the ponies, Meares and Dimitri careering with the dog teams over ice, beach, packing cases, and what not, sailors with coloured tam-o'-shanters bobbing around in piratical style, the hot sun beating down and brightening up everything, one might easily have imagined this to be the circus scene, in the great Antarctic joy-ride film.
What are your personal recollections of NAPOLEON, Rufus? Chestnut. You blinkin' conscripts, you! Black. Shiss! no bad language, Rufus ladies present. Chestnut. Ladies, huh. Behave nice and ladylike when they catch sight of the nosebags, don't they? A skewbald mare. Well, we gotta stand up for our rights. Chestnut. S'truth you do, tooth and hoof. What were you in civil life, Baby? A Suffragette?
The rugs come off the animals, the harness is put on, tents and camp equipment are loaded on the sledges, nosebags filled for the next halt; one by one the animals are taken off the picketing rope and yoked to the sledge. Oates watches his animal warily, reluctant to keep such a nervous creature standing in the traces.
There horses stood, champing quietly from their nosebags. 'Good, I thought; 'a feed of oats before a big effort. There were nine beasts for nine riders. We mounted without a word and filed through a grove of trees to where a broken paling marked the beginning of cultivated land. There for the matter of twenty minutes Hussin chose to guide us through deep, clogging snow.
It is chilling work for the fingers and not too warm for the feet. The rugs come off the animals, the harness is put on, tents and camp equipment are loaded on the sledges, nosebags filled for the next halt; one by one the animals are taken off the picketing rope and yoked to the sledge. Oates watches his animal warily, reluctant to keep such a nervous creature standing in the traces.
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