I found the place would do well, and was quite big enough for all my store, while the face of the rock was too steep to climb, even for a bear. I made a rope of seal-skin, fastened it to a projection in the rock over the hole, and lowered myself down. This hole was not like mine, on a level with the ground, but was on the face of a smooth cliff about forty feet high.
At last I determined to put it in a hole something like that I had made into a den for myself. I knew that there was a chance of bears coming, and that they would scent it out however I might hide it. What had bothered me most of all was where I was to store my stock of frozen meat and blubber. "By the end of May the ground was covered deep with snow, and the cold set in bitter. To these I had fastened with seal sinews two sharp and strong bones, and they made very fair spears. Among the drift-wood I had luckily found a couple of broken oars. I could not cook them, because I had nothing to boil the water in, and they were rather bitter to eat raw but they were better than nothing with the flesh, and I knew that I must eat green food if I wanted to keep healthy. From the first I had eaten the cabbages regular with my food. "I had made several bowls and plates out of the seals' skins, and had fashioned myself, in a mighty rough way, some suits of young seal-skins with a hood that covered all my head and face except just my mouth and eyes. I killed some more seals and by the time the winter set in in earnest I had a stock of meat enough to last me for months, and two or three hundredweight of cakes of blubber. You may guess I tried the experiment that night I made six big wicks and put them in one of the cakes of blubber and lighted them, and found that they burned famously and gave out a lot of heat. I thanked God, and picked a lot more of it and put it to soak. At the end of that time I took it out, let it dry, and then bruised it between flat stones, and found that it had a tough fibre.
I put a bundle of this in a pool, and let it lay there for a week for I was a North of Ireland boy, and knew how they worked flax. At last, after trying different things, I found that some of the grass was very tough. The thought of how I was to make wicks bothered me. Then I got a bit of one of the fresh skins, bent it up all round, of the right size for the squares to fit into, fastened it, and spread it on the rocks to dry. I set to work and stripped the blubber off all the seals, and cut it in squares of about six inches. I might use the blubber as candles, sticking wicks into it. As I was sitting on the ground by them next morning, lamenting I had nothing to boil down their blubber in, an idea struck me. I killed five or six of them, and found that some of the young ones were furry enough to make coats of. There were none of the sort that you get fur from, and there was not much warmth to be had from the skins, still they would do to block up the entrance to my den. "Every day I could feel that it got colder, and at night there was a sharp frost so I determined now to set-to at the seals. Then I bethought me that the penguins could furnish me with feathers, and I set to work at them with earnest, and in a week had filled my cave two feet deep with feathers. When I had finished my hut I began to hunt about to see if I could find drift-wood, but I could only find a few pieces in the cove, and gave it up, for I did not see how I could anyhow keep up a fire through the winter. I thought of oil from their blubber, but I had nothing to hold it. I did not want any of them until the weather got cold enough to freeze their flesh. "I had been careful not to disturb the seals. I made a shift to cook them over fires made of dry tufts of grass. I had only to go and pick up a few stones and go among the penguins and knock them over. Then I levelled the bottom of the cave with sand and spread it thickly with dried grass. Then I brought up smaller stones and piled against them, shooting in sand from the beach till I had made a regular solid bank, four feet thick, against the wall. First of all I brought up some big stones and built a wall and filled up the crevices with tufts of grass. I chose a spot where a hole was about eight feet long, and made up my mind to close up the front of this, just leaving a hole big enough for me to crawl in and out. It was more gone in some places than others. "This soft rock was about four feet thick.
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