Duet: "Mort de Botheo" COUNT and BARON
[All the others rush in. The two lovers come together and the DOCTOR says, "God bless you, my children."
Chorus: "Auld Lang Syne" COMPANY and AUDIENCE
And
GOD SAVE THE KING
Played by the Society for the Prevention of the Blues.
Saturday, October 12, 1912.
ADELIE HALL
Admission Free. Children Half Price.
October 13 was known as Black Sunday. We were all seated at dinner and the Hut was quivering in the tornado-like gusts which followed a heavy "blow" reaching a maximum hourly average of ninety-one miles. One mighty blast was followed by a crack and the sound of a heavy falling body. For a moment it was thought that something had happened to the Hut. Then the messman ran out to the trap-door and saw that the northern wireless mast had disappeared.
The weather showed but meagre signs of improvement, but the penguins came up in great numbers. They were in groups all along the ice-foot in the lee of rocks and icy pinnacles. They climbed up to their old resorts, and in a few days commenced to build nests of small pebbles. Skua gulls mysteriously appeared, snow petrels hovered along the rocky ridges and odd seals landed on the wind-raked harbour ice. Silver-grey and Antarctic petrels flew along the shore with occasional Cape pigeons. If the weather were indifferent to the fact, the birds did not forget that spring had come.
A Weddell seal calved on the bay-ice on October 18. For a week the pup had a miserable time in winds ranging mostly about the seventies, with the temperature below zero Fahrenheit. At last it became so weak that it thawed a hole in the soft, sludgy ice and could not extricate itself. Both it and the mother were killed and skinned for the biological collection.
On all but the worst days a gang of men worked with picks and shovels digging out the Hangar, so that Bickerton could test the air-tractor sledge. The attack was concentrated upon a solid bank of snow and ice into which heaps of tins and rubbish had been compactly frozen. In soft snow enormous headway can be made in a short space of time, but in that species of conglomerate, progress is slow. Eventually, a cutting was made by which the machine could pass out. The rampart of snow was broken through at the northern end of the Hangar, and the sledge with its long curved runners was hauled forth triumphantly on the 25th. From that time onwards Bickerton continued to experiment and to improve the contrivance.
On October 21 there was a marked thaw inside the Hut. The frost along all the cracks dissolved into water and ran down the walls over pictures, on to book-shelves and bunks. The thick caking of ice on the windows dripped continually, coming away in layers at lunch-time and scattering among the diners at both ends of the table. Every available bucket and tub was in use, and small tin-gutters hooked under each window had to be emptied at frequent intervals.