The boat party - John, David and Karl - returned on Sept 14th - they had come back a bit earlier than expected owing to bad surveying conditions and also because it was getting late for Karl to get his traps ready. The boat was a wonderful sight as it came in; the motor had broken down and they had to sail the last bit home. They also had on board 14 reindeer carcasses, several seals and several stoves and much wood they had collected from other huts on the island. The boat was deep in the water and its a good thing it wasn’t rough. they seem to have had a successful time and made a good survey of the coast to the east as far a Rijps Bay.
On the 16th David and John departed to the Advance Base to make a dog house there, leaving Karl with us. He had to make a hut for himself to live in on the other side of the bay, and, poor man, he only had a few big pieces of wood and no long nails. “Ach, the pins, without you can’t do nothing” he would say, but with his few boards and some packing cases he made a most ingenious hut, about 6ft square with a sloping roof from 4 to 6 ft high; in it he got a bunk, a table, chair and stove.
The interior of Karl's hut
But the funniest thing was to see it taken away; on the 20th David returned with Dan and Andrew (leaving John at Advance Base) in the big boat and the outboard and they all helped with the transportation. Since it had been made of scraps he had to make it all in one piece and couldn’t take it to bits again, so the whole house had to be shipped intact.
taking the hut to the boats
They lashed the big boat to the whale boat and tied the house to planks over the two boats and eventually got off. It was quite roughish and it looked most unsafe as we watched it leave the base with the whale boat shipping a lot of water, but after a great deal of anxiety they got it safe to the other side of the bay, baling as hard as they could all the way.
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