Monday August 12th

Sandy did more than bring John home last night, for he also brought back 6 of the 7 lost dogs. My own work is held up because all the things I want are still on board at the bottom of the hold and Sandy won’t have it emptied till the house is built. Great progress was made in the latter to-day and all the framework of the roof is begun. I spent most of the day helping Karl with the ionosphere hut, and in helping to clear away big boulders for the engine room, and other general duties. In the evening I went out with Andrew in the skiff along the coast to see if we could find Hansigne, the missing bitch, but in vain. It was simply glorious, however, rowing under the cliffs with screes coming right down to the sea, with the sun surrounded by thin cirrus clouds of most delicate structure and passing small icebergs of most fantastic shapes with arches and caves - it’s wonderful how they get worked by the sea. It was a real treat, that row.

Tuesday August 13th - Tuesday August 20th

"Polar" crew help build the hut

Been much too busy to write daily. The crew have been building the hut now, and it is almost finished and is occupied though I still prefer to sleep in the tent. We’ve all been busy with other jobs erecting wireless parts, putting down concrete for one of my spectrographs, building an engine-room, stopping dog fights, and now preparing all the food and equipment for the ice-cap stations. The boat survey party (John, David, Karl) went off yesterday, and “Polar” takes the ice-cap personnel and equipment to the bottom of the bay tomorrow and leaves with the post for England. We had a surprise visit from two other ships, Vesteris and Isbjorn, last Tuesday, with hunters on board who had wintered in Rijps Bay and told us to expect a very hard and cold winter. The weather has been worse; one day it was damp and misty, another dull with a N.W. wind which was very cold; the next day it snowed for quite a time but in the absence of wind it felt warmer. Today it was clear and sunny and warm. Brownie got our wireless going on Sunday. For a long time we’ve had no idea of the time - everybody’s watch differed to the extent of two hours - and one of the first things we heard was the Greenwich time signal, which was not much use as it meant it was only at some quarter. Next we heard Big Ben strike half-past something but we didn’t know whether it was six or seven. Finally we got the time, and lost an hour’s sleep on account of it!