We gather around the fire seated on packing-cases to receive them with a hunk of butter and a steaming pannikin of tea, and life is well worth living. After lunch we are out and about again; there is little to tempt a long stay indoors and exercise keeps us all the fitter.

The falling light and approach of supper drives us home again with good appetites about 5 or 6 o'clock, and then the cooks rival one another in preparing succulent dishes of fried seal liver....

April Blizzard blowing and no start possible. All the ice gone out to within half a mile of Hut Point and a wide crack open at Hut Point.

Walked out to the Second Crater with Scott—much drift and frost smoke. Saw the last skuas today.

...and a reliable stove erected out of petrol tins and scrap-iron. Our engineers in this work of art were Oates and Meares. For a short while we burnt wood in the stove, but the day soon came when seal blubber was substituted, and the heat from the burning grease was sufficient to cook any kind of dish likely to be available, and...

Yes, just as I guessed, the plans fell through; bad weather has set in, the ice has broken up, and we are pretty crestfallen.