It was then 5 P.M., so we did not wait to discuss the evident proposition as to which of the three parties should occupy the Cave, but climbed down into it at once and boiled up hoosh and tea. Borrowing tobacco from the supporting parties, we reclined at ease, and then in that hazy atmosphere so dear to smokers, its limpid blue enhanced by the pale azure of the ice, we introduced the subject of occupation as if it were a sudden afterthought. It was soon decided to enlarge the Cave to accommodate five men, the other four consenting to squeeze into Stillwell's big tent. McLean volunteered to join Stillwell's party in the tent, while Correll and I were to stay in the Cave with Murphy and company. I went outside and selected ten weeks' provisions from the pile of food-tanks and piled them beside the sledge. McLean attended to the thermograph which Bage and I had installed in the autumn. Meanwhile, in a fifty-mile wind, Stillwell and his men erected the tent. Hunter and Laseron started with picks and shovels to enlarge the Cave, and, working in relays, we had soon expanded it to eight feet by seven feet. The men from the tent came down to "high dinner" at eight o'clock. They reported weather conditions unimproved and the temperature -3 degrees F. Early next morning I dug my way out and found that the surface drift had increased with a wind of fifty-five miles per hour. It was obviously impossible to start. After breakfast it was arranged that those outside should have their meals separately, digging down at intervals to let us know the state of the weather. It was not pleasant for us, congested as we were in the Cave, to have visitors sliding down through the opening with a small avalanche of snow in their train. Further, to increase their own discomfort, they arrived covered in snow, and what they were unable to shake off thawed and wet them, subsequently freezing again to the consistency of a starched collar. The opening was, therefore, kept partly closed with a food-tank. The result was that a good deal of snow came in, while the hole diminished in size. For a man to try to crawl out in stiff burberrys appeared as futile as for a porcupine to try to go backwards up a canvas hose.