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I took charge of the small pole-tent, No. 1, with Hudson, Hurley, and James as companions; Wild had the small hoop-tent, No. 2, with Wordie, McNeish, and McIlroy. These hoop-tents are very easily shifted and set up.
Clark and Wordie lived opposite in a room called "Auld Reekie." Next came the abode of "The Nuts" or engineers, followed by "The Sailors' Rest," inhabited by Cheetham and McNeish. "The Anchorage" and "The Fumarole" were on the other side. The new quarters became known as "The Ritz," and meals were served there instead of in the ward room.
Breakfast was at 9 a.m., lunch at 1 p.m., tea at 4 p.m., and dinner at 6 p.m. Wild, Marston, Crean, and Worsley established themselves in cubicles in the wardroom, and by the middle of the month all hands had settled down to the winter routine. I lived alone aft. Worsley, Hurley, and Wordie made a journey to a big berg, called by us the Rampart Berg, on the 11th.
A barrier-berg bearing north-west appeared to be about 25 miles long. We pushed the ship against a small banded berg, from which Wordie secured several large lumps of biotite granite. While the 'Endurance' was being held slow ahead against the berg a loud crack was heard, and the geologist had to scramble aboard at once.
The weather cleared a little, and after lunch we struck camp. I took Rickenson, Kerr, Wordie, and Hudson as a breakdown gang to pioneer a path among the pressure-ridges. Five dog teams followed. Wild's and Hurley's teams were hitched on to the cutter and they started off in splendid style. They needed to be helped only once; indeed fourteen dogs did as well or even better than eighteen men.
The distance out was 7½ miles, and the party covered a total distance of about 17 miles. Hurley took some photographs and Wordie came back rejoicing with a little dust and some moss. "Within a radius of one mile round the berg there is thin young ice, strong enough to march over with care," wrote Worsley.
In the porches of her ear the hateful courtship purled on with its tender third-personal terms and its amorous diminutives, suffixed ridiculously. "Zada was afaid her booful Peterkin had forgotten her and gone to the big old house." "Without coming home first?" "Home! that's the wordie I want. This is his homie, isn't it, Peterkin?" "Yessy." "He doesn't love old villain who keeps us apart?"
The pioneer sledge party, consisting of Wordie, Hussey, Hudson, and myself, carrying picks and shovels, started to break a road through the pressure-ridges for the sledges carrying the boats. The boats, with their gear and the sledges beneath them, weighed each more than a ton. The cutter was smaller than the whaler, but weighed more and was a much more strongly built boat.
Wordie went to France with the Royal Field Artillery and was badly wounded at Armentières. Hussey was in France for eighteen months with the Royal Garrison Artillery, serving in every big battle from Dixmude to Saint-Quentin.
Worsley examined a spot where a killer had smashed a hole 8 ft. by 12 ft. in 12½ in. of hard ice, covered by 2½ in. of snow. Big blocks of ice had been tossed on to the floe surface. Wordie, engaged in measuring the thickness of young ice, went through to his waist one day just as a killer rose to blow in the adjacent lead. His companions pulled him out hurriedly.
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