During dinner the Blizzard will render the usual accompaniment—the Tempest. For Ever and Ever etc.
[TEXT ILLUSTRATION] MIDWINTER'S DAY MENU AT THE MAIN BASE, ADELIE LAND, 1912 [ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]
CHAPTER X THE PREPARATION OF SLEDGING EQUIPMENT
The world of fashion insists on its minute vagaries in dress not always with an eye to utility and an explorer in the polar regions is a very fastidious person, expending a vast amount of care on his attire, but with the sole idea of comfort, warmth, and usefulness. The clothes he wears are many and often cumbersome, but they have gradually been perfected to meet the demands of the local weather conditions. After a sojourn in the ice-lands, he returns to civilization with a new concept of the value of dress. At last he can stand still without being reminded that his feet are chilly; he experiences the peculiar sensation of walking about in an airily light suit, in glove-tight boots, without helmet or mitts. It gives him such a delicious feeling of freedom that his energy is unbounded and life is a very pleasant and easy thing. Then it is that he can turn in retrospect to the time in exile, appreciate his altered circumstances and recall the many ingenuities which were evolved to make him master of his environment.
It is sufficient to say that we found the proposition of clothing one of unusual interest. Any one who was not a practised needleman and machinist was handicapped for a time, until he fell into the ways of the through-and-through and blanket-stitch, thimbles, shuttles, spools and many other things he had once affected to despise as belonging to the sphere of women's work. It was not long before he was an enthusiast in many arts attaining to a stage of independence, in which he patented new ideas and maintained them in hot opposition to the whole community of the Hut. On some fundamental points all were in agreement, and one of them was that Adelie Land was the country par excellence for the wind-proof, drift-tight burberry.
Outside all other garments the burberry gabardine was worn. The material was light and loosely fitting, but in wind and drift it had to be hermetically sealed, so to speak, for the snow crept in wherever there was an aperture. The trousers were of double thickness, as they were exposed to the greatest wear. Attached by large buttons, toggles or lampwick braces, they reached as high as the lower part of the chest. Below, they had lamp-wick lashings which were securely bound round the uppers of boots or finnesko. In walking, the trousers would often work off the leather boots, especially if they were cut to a tailor's length, and snow would then pour up the leg and down into the boots in a remarkably short time. To counteract this, Ninnis initiated the very satisfactory plan of sewing a short length of canvas on to the boots to increase the length of the upper.
The burberry helmet and blouse were either in one piece or separate. For use round the Hut, in thick drifts, the combination of helmet and blouse was handy and time-saving. For sledging, when low temperatures and strong winds might be expected all the time, it met the conditions well; there being no necessity to worry about keeping the neck drift-tight. Under ordinary circumstances it was very convenient to have a blouse and helmet detached, as one so often could wear the former with a well-padded woollen helmet and be reduced only as a last resource to wearing the burberry helmet.
The blouse was roomy, giving great freedom of movement. Around the neck was a draw-string, which bunched in the jacket tightly over the lower part of the helmet. There was also a draw-string round the waist. It was here that we had the greatest difficulty in making the garment fit snow-tight. If simply tied, the blouse would soon slip up from below, especially if one were working with pick and shovel, carrying cases or blocks of ice. To obviate this, some of the men sewed loops or tags of lamp-wick on to the sides of the trousers, to connect with corresponding attachments on the blouse. As an additional security, others wore an outside belt which was, even if the blouse slipped up for some distance, a line of defence against the drift-snow.
The burberry helmet completely enclosed the head except for the face, which remained uncovered at the bottom of a funnel stiffened by several rings of copper-wire. Lampwick, the universal polar "cord," was sewn in short strips in front of the ears and tied at the back of the head, firmly securing the helmet. Since the voyage of the 'Discovery' (1901-1904) lamp-wick had been used widely in sledging on account of its width, softness, comparative warmth and because of the fact that ordinary cord is not so easy to manipulate in cold weather. Large buttons of leather or bone were not nearly so popular as small, smooth lengths of stick engaging cross-wise with loops of cord—known as toggles, which became quite a mania with some members of the Expedition. Whetter, for instance, was known as the "Toggle King," because of the multitude of these stick-and-cord appendages which hung from every part of his clothing.
Under the burberrys thick, but light, suits of Jaeger fleece were worn. They combined trousers and a sleeveless coat, over which a woollen jersey was worn. In calm weather these with underclothing were all-sufficient, but in the average fifty-mile wind at any temperature in the neighbourhood of zero Fahrenheit, they felt distinctly porous.