On March 1 Victor Campbell selected a hard snow slope for the winter home, and into this he and his men cut and burrowed until they had constructed an igloo or snow house, 13 feet by 9: They insulated this with blocks of snow and seaweed. A trench roofed with sealskins and snow formed the entrance, and at the sides of this passage they had their store rooms and larder.
All the time this house was under construction a party was employed killing penguins and seals, for which they kept a constant lookout. By March 15 their larder contained 120 penguins and 11 seals. After this date gale succeeded gale and the winter set in with a long run of bad weather. Campbell and his companions led a very primitive existence here for six and a half months.
They only had their light summer sledging clothes to wear, and these soon became saturated with blubber: their hair and beards grew, and they were soon recognisable only by their voices. Some idea of their discomforts will be gleaned by a description of their diet. Owing to their prospective journey to Cape Evans, Campbell had first to reduce the biscuit supply from eight to two biscuits a day, and then to one.
Generally their diet consisted of one mug of "pemmican and seal hoosh" and a biscuit for breakfast, nothing for lunch, a mug and a half of seal, one biscuit and three-quarters of a pint of thin cocoa for supper. On Sundays weak tea was substituted for cocoa, this they re-boiled for Mondays' supper, and the dried leaves were used for tobacco on Tuesdays. Their only luxuries were a piece of chocolate and twelve lumps of sugar, weekly, and twenty-five raisins apiece were kept for birthdays. One lucky find was thirty-six fish in the stomach of a seal, which fried in blubber proved excellent. The biscuit ration had to be stopped entirely from July to September. The six men cooked their food in sea-water as they had no salt, and seaweed was used as a vegetable. Priestley is reported to have disliked it, and no wonder, for it has probably rotted in the sun for years, and the penguins have trampled it all down, apart from anything worse.
Campbell kept a wonderful discipline in his party, and as they were sometimes confined to the igloo for days, Swedish drill was introduced to keep them healthy. A glance at their weather record shows how necessary this was. We find one day snowing hard, next day blowing hard, and the third day blowing and snowing hard, nearly all through the winter. But there was never a complaint.
On Sunday divine service was performed, which consisted of Campbell reading a chapter of the Bible, followed by hymns. They had no hymn book, but Priestley remembered several, while Abbott, Browning and Dickason had all been at some time or other in a choir.
To add to their discomfort, owing to the state of their clothing and meagre food supply, they were very susceptible to frostbites, and Jack Frost made havoc with feet, fingers, and faces.
We should here give a little thought to the dark dreariness of their surroundings. This party was not so very far north of Cape Evans, and their winter was only about three weeks shorter if measured by the sun's absence below the horizon—the contrast between the "palace" at Cape Evans and the ice-cave at Campbell's position is ridiculous, and to think that the little crew remained cheerful and in harmony under such troglodyte conditions, it makes one wonder more and more at the manner of the men. They had none of the comfort, entertainment, and good feeling of their co-explorers at the base, the very dimensions of their habitation explains for itself the cramped nature of their existence, and yet no complaints, and nothing but unswerving loyalty to their boss. Weaker minded men would have broken down mentally under the strain of living through that winter.
The sunlight went at the beginning of May, gradually leaving them with those peculiar drawn-out half lights, which we all grew to know so well—the whimpering purple clouds, the sad-looking hills, and the desolate ice slopes and snow drifts—the six men were imprisoned with sullen hills and unassailable mountains for jailers, until they had undergone their sentence—the sea their chief jailer, for the sea had set them there and it was for the sea to decide on the time of their release.
Boots had long since given out, and they had to guard against ruining their finneskoe or it would have been good-bye to any sledging round to Cape Evans when the sea did freeze. Seal blubber was utilised for cooking, and whenever seals were killed the chunks of this greasy stuff had to be carried to the igloo on the men's backs—this meant that their clothes soon smelt very badly, which circumstance added to the misery of their living conditions.