On the morning of February 6 we started work with sledges, hauling provisions and pieces of the hut to the shore. On the previous night the foundation posts of the hut had been sunk and frozen into the ground with a cement composed of volcanic earth and water, and the digging of the foundations had proved extremely hard work.
Now that the ponies were ashore it was necessary to have a party living on shore to look after them, and the first shore-party consisted of Adams, Marston, Brocklehurst, Mackay and Murray. Two tents were set up close to the hut, with the usual sledging requisites such as sleeping-bags, cookers, &c. The first things landed this day were fodder for the ponies, and sufficient petroleum and provisions for the shore-party in case the ship had to put suddenly to sea owing to bad weather.
The work of hauling the sledge-loads right up to the land was so heavy, that I decided to let the stores remain on the snow slope beyond the tide-crack, whence they could be taken at leisure. Our attempt to substitute mechanical haulage for man haulage was not successful, and we soon had to go back to our original plan.
Delays at once occurred, for during the afternoon of the 6th a fresh breeze sprung up, and the ship had to stand out to the fast ice in the strait and anchor there. Thus two valuable working days were lost.
When, however, I went ashore again I found that the little shore-party had not only managed to get all the heavy timber that had been landed up to the site of the hut, but also had stacked the cases of provisions, which previously had been lying on the snow slope, upon bare land. While we were engaged on the increasingly difficult task of landing stores, &c., the hut-party were working day and night and the building was rapidly assuming an appearance of solidity. The uprights were in and the brace ties were fastened together, so that if it began to blow there was small fear of the structure being destroyed. This was something to be thankful for, but while the hut-party were getting on so well, we who were engaged on landing the stores had—owing to the breaking away of the ice—to move our spot.
The stores had now to be dragged a distance of nearly three hundred yards from the ship to the landing-place, but this work was made easier by our being able to use four of the ponies. A large amount of stores was landed in this way, but a new and serious situation arose through the breaking away of the main ice-foot. Prudence suggested that it would be wiser to shift the stores already landed to a safer place before discharging any more from the ship, and on this work we were engaged during the evening of the 10th.
The "Nimrod" lying off the Penguin Rookery, Cape Royds
Next we had to find a safer place on which to land the rest of the coal and stores, and Back Door Bay, as we named the chosen spot, became our new depot. This was a still longer journey from the ship, but there was no help for it, and after laying a tarpaulin on the rocks to keep the coal from mixing with the earth, we started landing the coal.
By this time there were several ugly looking cracks in the bay ice, and these kept opening and closing, having a play of seven or eight inches between the floes. We improvised bridges, from the motor-car case, so that the ponies could cross the cracks, and presently were well under way with the work.