Part I: Seals teeth and whales ears - Scott Polar Research Institute ...

condensing provided an artificial halo. Sometimes too there was a natural halo - like
a rainbow, except that it was a ring around the moon, not opposite to it and the
colouring was fainter and more delicate.
Some nights too the snowies (snow petrels) were in. They flew back and forth
outside their nests along the face of the forbidding black crags, sometimes provoking
the occupants of another nest to chatter at them for coming too close, but usually
quite silent. If I sat still near the nests they might land at my side, as the prions often
did, mistaking me for a rock. Usually they appeared quite suddenly like ghosts and
disappeared just as quickly. Sometimes they were outlined against the moon for a
moment and its light shone through the feathers of their wings and they might hover
for a second framed by the lunar halo - incredibly beautiful and spiritual they were.
Then I would begin to feel a bit chilly after a time - remember that the temperature
was probably -7°C or so - and feel really cold. Sometimes I climbed a bit higher so as
to look down into Paal Harbour, the sea corrie on the other side of the ridge behind
the hut and, warmed by the exertion, could sit for a while longer, with the snowies
wafting about in the stillness. I had a view out over the pack towards the Antarctic
continent at the other side of the Weddell Sea a thousand miles to the southeast. Then
down again to the warmth of the hut and off to bed. These clear nights (and days)
were one of the bonuses of the winter period.
At other times, while the weather was poor I would have been doing some
enlarging. I must have accumulated about 500 negatives by then and most of them
were quite good. I might also have completed another watercolour; I still had a
number of them to be worked up from the sketches made over the last year. So I
would plan on a session the next week and try to get photos and paintings done
before we went out sledging - I expected to have a lot more material to work up
when we got back.
On another typical evening everyone would be the picture of industry. In one
corner Charlie would be mending a pair of boots with great exertion and constant
thumps. John perched on his stool at the set calling amateur radio operators -
perhaps there was a Russian on at the moment – Moscow, or Hawaii. Derek, sitting
near the stove, would be working out some angles in connection with the survey.
Perhaps I had a great wash of socks that week - there might be about l5 pairs in the
tub and they would already have had three changes of water without any
appreciable effect. They got very oily working with the seals - and the birds, which
ejected evil smelling oil.
Painting: During the two winters I completed a number of paintings and sketches. I
also did four oil paintings but two were unfinished as I ran out of pigments. I
enjoyed drawing exactly and realistically from nature and in earlier years I had put
in a lot of time and hard work to achieve control over pencil, pen and brush.
However, it was in the Antarctic that my painting really began to take-off. I had
brought a stock of sketchbooks, paper and watercolour materials, of the best quality I
could afford. On the voyage out, although the ship was very small and cramped for
space, there was plenty of time; in the tropics it was very hot and the paint dried very
quickly on the paper, posing difficulties. I did a little sketching in the Falklands, but
the early months at Signy were very busy indeed, so I didn't begin drawing and
painting until the beginning of winter, when the elephant seals had left.
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