Shackleton in the Antarctic: Being the story of the British Antarctic expedition, 1907-1909Shackleton, Ernest Henry, Sir
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Shackleton in the Antarctic: Being the story of the British Antarctic expedition, 1907-1909
Shackleton, Ernest Henry, Sir
Antarctica -- Discovery and exploration -- British; British Antarctic Expedition (1907-1909)
The dividing curtain between this cubicle and the next--occupied by
Marston and Day--had been adorned with life-sized coloured drawings of
Napoleon and Joan of Arc, and as the colour of Joan and also portions
of Napoleon oozed through, the curtain on Marston's side did not
require to be decorated! This cubicle was known as "The Gables," and
in it was set up the lithographic press. The beds were solid wood, and
as Marston was the artist and Day the handy man of the expedition one
naturally found an ambitious scheme of decoration.
The next cubicle on the same side belonged to Armytage and
Brocklehurst, where everything in the way of shelves and fittings was
very primitive, and next to this cubicle came the pantry.
Beyond the stove, facing the pantry, was Mackay and Roberts' cubicle,
the main feature of which was a ponderous shelf, on which socks and
other light articles chiefly rested, the only thing of weight being our
gramophone and records.
Between this cubicle and the next there was no division, neither
party troubling to put one up. The result was that the four men were
constantly at war regarding encroachments on their ground. Priestley,
who was long-suffering, and who occupied the cubicle with Murray, said
he did not mind a chair or a volume of the "Encyclopædia Britannica"
being occasionally deposited upon him while asleep, but that he
drew the line at wet and dirty boots. This cubicle was garnished on
Priestley's side with bits of rock, ice-axes &c. and on Murray's with
biological requisites.
The next cubicle was occupied by Wild and Joyce, and was known as
the "Rogues' Retreat," a painting of two very tough characters, with
the inscription The Rogues' Retreat painted underneath, adorning the
entrance to the den. The couches in this house were the first to be
built, and the first bed was made in Wild's store-room for secrecy's
sake. It was to burst suddenly upon every one and to create feelings
of admiration and envy. Unfortunately, however, in building it he had
forgotten the size of the doorway through which it had to be taken, and
it had ignominiously to be sawn in half before it could be passed out
of the store-room into the hut.
The last compartment was the dwelling-place of the Professor and
Mawson, and it would be difficult to do justice to the picturesque
confusion of this cubicle. A miscellaneous assortment of cameras,
spectroscopes, microscopes and the like lay in profusion on the
blankets. Everything in the way of tin cans was collected by these two
scientific men, and the Professor made a pile of glittering tins and
coloured wrappers at one end of his bunk, and the heap looked like the
nest of the Australian bower bird.
The name given, though not by the owners, to this cubicle was "The Pawn
Shop."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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