All things considered, the winter passed quickly enough: we had three lectures a week, and our professional occupations, our recreations and different interests soon sped away the four months' winter darkness. The lectures embraced the technical and the practical side of the Expedition; thus, besides each of the scientific staff lecturing on his individual subject, Oates gave us two lectures on the care and management of horses; Scott outlined his plans for the great southern journey, giving probable dates and explaining the system of supporting parties which he proposed to employ; Ponting told us about Japan, and illustrated his subject with beautiful slides made from photographs that he himself had taken; Bowers lectured on Burma, until we longed to be there; and Meares gave us a light but intensely interesting lecture on his adventures in the Lolo country, a practically unknown land in Central Asia.
In connection with the work of Simpson at the base station, I must not forget the telephones. Certain telephones and equipment sufficient for our needs were presented to us in 1910 by the staff of the National Telephone Co., and they were very largely used in scientific work at the base station as well as for connecting Cape Evans to Hut Point, fifteen miles away. Simpson made the Cape Evans-Hut Point connection in September, 1911, by laying the bare aluminium wire along the surface of the snow-covered sea ice, and for a long time there was no difficulty in ringing up by means of magnetos. However, when the sun came back and its rays became reasonably powerful, difficulty in ringing and speaking was experienced.
We used the telephones almost daily for taking time, and Simpson used to stand inside the hut at the sidereal clock whilst I took astronomical observations outside in the cold. We also telephoned time to the ice cave in which the pendulums were being swung when determining the force of gravity. Telephones were quite efficient in temperatures of 40 degrees and more below zero.
Midwinter Day arrived on June 22, and here one must pay an affectionate and grateful tribute to Bowers, Wilson, Cherry-Garrard, and Clissold the cook.
To start with, we had to discuss whether we would hold the midwinter festival on the 22nd or 23rd of June, because in reality the sun reached its farthest northern Declination at 2.30 a.m. on the 23rd by the standard time which we were keeping. We decided to hold it on the evening of the 22nd, this being the dinner time nearest the actual culmination. A Buszard's cake extravagantly iced was placed on the tea-table by Cherry-Garrard, his gift to us, and this was the first of the dainties with which we proceeded to stuff ourselves on this memorable day. Although in England it was mid-summer we could not help thinking of those at home in Christmas vein. The day here was to all intents and purposes Christmas Day; but it meant a great deal more than that, it meant that the sun was to come speeding back slowly to begin with, and then faster and faster until in another four months or so we should find ourselves setting out to achieve our various purposes. It meant that before another year had passed some of us, perhaps all of us, would be back in civilisation taking up again the reins of our ordinary careers which, of necessity, would lead us to different corners of the earth. The probability was that we should never all sit down together in a peopled land, for Simpson was bound to be racing back to India with Bowers and probably Oates, whose regiment was at Mhow; Gran would away to Norway, and the other Ubdugs to Australia. One or two of us had been tempted to settle in New Zealand, and the old Antarctics amongst us knew how useless it had been to arrange those Antarctic dinners which never came off as intended.
But to return to the menu for Midwinter Day. When we sat down in the evening we were confronted with a beautiful water-colour drawing of our winter quarters, with Erebus's gray shadow looming large in the background, from the summit of which a rose-tinted smoke-cloud delicately trended northward, and, standing out from the whole picture a neatly printed tablet which proclaimed the nature of this much-looked-forward-to meal:
Consomme Seal.
Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding.
Horseradish Sauce.
Potatoes a la mode and Brussels Sprouts.
Plum Pudding. Mince Pies.
Caviare Antarctic.
Crystallised fruits. Chocolate Bonbons.
Butter Bonbons. Walnut Toffee.
Almonds and Raisins.
Wines.
Sherry, Champagne, Brandy Punch, Liqueur.
Cigars, Cigarettes, and Tobacco.
Snapdragon.
Pineapple Custard. Raspberry jellies.
and what was left of the Buszard's cake!