The Type-case and Printing Press for the production of the "Aurora Australis" in Joyce's and Wild's Cubicle, known as "The Rouges' Retreat." (See page 100)
It would only be repetition to chronicle our doings from day to day, during the months that passed from the disappearance of the sun until the welcome daylight returned. We lived under conditions of steady routine, and having more than enough to occupy us in our daily work that spectre known as "Polar ennui" never appeared.
At night some of us played bridge, poker and dominoes; but Joyce, Wild, Marston and Day spent much time in the production of the "Aurora Australis," the first book ever written, printed, illustrated and bound in the Antarctic.
Messrs. Joseph Causton & Sons, Ltd., had generously given us a complete printing outfit and the paper for the book, and Joyce and Wild had been instructed in type-setting and printing, Marston being taught etching and lithography.
They had hardly become skilled craftsmen, but although the early days of the printing department were not exactly happy, the work progressed steadily, until at the end of a fortnight or so two pages could be printed a day. Day meanwhile prepared the binding by cleaning, planing and polishing wood taken from the venesta cases, while Marston reproduced the illustrations by printing from aluminium plates.
Marston was handicapped by the fact that all our water had a trace of salt in it, but he managed to produce what we all regarded as creditable pictures. In its final form the book consisted of about 120 pages; and at any rate it had helped to guard us from a dangerous lack of occupation during the polar night.
On March 13 we experienced a very fierce blizzard, and cases weighing from 50 to 80 lb. were actually shifted from their positions; so when the gale was over we put everything that could possibly blow away into places of greater safety.
On this day Murray found living microscopical animals on some fungus that had been thawed out from a lump of ice taken from the bottom of one of the lakes, this being one of the most interesting discoveries that had been made in the Antarctic, for the study of these minute creatures threw a new light on the capability of life to exist under conditions of extreme cold and in the face of great variations of temperature.
From our point of view, it was humorous to see Murray trying to slay the little animals he had found. He used to thaw them from a block of ice, freeze them up again, and repeat this process several times without causing the rotifers any inconvenience. Then he tested them in brine so strongly saline that it would not freeze at a temperature above minus 7° Fahr., and still the animals lived, and a good proportion of them survived a temperature of 200° Fahr. It became a contest between rotifers and scientist, and generally the rotifers seemed to triumph.