In a crouching or lying posture, within a confined space, this means the expenditure of much patience, not to mention the exhaustion of all invective. A crowbar decides the question. One part of the channel is undermined, into this the end of the crowbar is thrust and the penguin shoots up and hits the floor of the Hut.
The storeman, plastered with snow, reappears hot and triumphant before the cook, but this dignitary is awkwardly kneading the dough of wholemeal scones, and the messman is feeding the fire with seal-blubber to ensure a "quick" oven. Every one is too busy to notice the storeman, for, like the night-watchman, his day is over and he must find another job.
Jobs in the Hut were the elixir of life, and a day's cooking was no exception to the rule. It began at 7 A.M., and, with a brief intermission between lunch and afternoon tea, continued strenuously till 8.30 P.M. Cooks were broadly classified as "Crook Cooks" and "Unconventional Cooks" by the eating public. Such flattering titles as "Assistant Grand Past Master of the Crook Cooks' Association" or "Associate of the Society of Muddling Messmen" were not empty inanities; they were founded on solid fact—on actual achievement. If there were no constitutional affiliation, strong sympathy undoubtedly existed between the "Crook Cooks' Association" and "The Society of Muddling Messmen." Both contained members who had committed "championships."
"Championship" was a term evolved from the local dialect, applying to a slight mishap, careless accident or unintentional disaster in any department of Hut life. The fall of a dozen plates from the shelf to the floor, the fracture of a table-knife in frozen honey, the burning of the porridge or the explosion of a tin thawing in the oven brought down on the unfortunate cook a storm of derisive applause and shouts of "Championship! Championship!"
Thawing-out tinned foods by the heroic aid of a red-hot stove was a common practice. One day a tin of baked beans was shattered in the "port" oven, and fragments of dried beans were visible on the walls and door for weeks. Our military cook would often facetiously refer to "platoon-firing in the starboard oven."
One junior member of the "Crook Cooks' Association" had the hardihood to omit baking powder in a loaf of soda-bread, trusting that prolonged baking would repair the omission. The result was a "championship" of a very superior order. Being somewhat modest, he committed it through the trap-door to the mercy of the wind, and for a time it was lost in the straggling rubbish which tailed away to the north. Even the prowling dogs in their wolfish hunger could not overcome a certain prejudice. Of course some one found it, and the public hailed it with delight. A searching inquiry was made, but the perpetrator was never discovered. That loaf, however, like the proverbial bad penny, turned up for months. When the intricate system of snow-tunnels was being perfected, it was excavated. In the early summer, when the aeroplane was dug out of the Hangar, that loaf appeared once more, and almost the last thing we saw when leaving the Hut, nearly two years after, was this petrifaction on an icy pedestal near the Boat Harbour.
No one ever forgot the roly-poly pudding made without suet; synthetic rubber was its scientific name. And the muddling messman could never be surpassed who lost the cutter of the sausage machine and put salt-water ice in the melting-pots.
There appeared in the columns of 'The Adelie Blizzard' an article by the meteorologist descriptive of an occasion when two members of the "Crook Cooks' Association" officiated in the kitchen:
TEREBUS AND ERROR IN ERUPTION An 'Orrible Affair in One Act BY A SURVIVOR
Dramatis Personae