“In our endeavor to reach Mr. Bellot’s encampment of the 16th,” continues Mr. Kennedy, “we continued on foot longer than we should have done, and the consequence was, that being overtaken by night before looking for camping ground, we found ourselves, before we were aware or had time to reflect on the predicament we had got into, groping about, in the darkness, and with a heavy shower of snow falling, for some bit of terra firma, (for we had been all day upon the ice), where we could pitch the tent. We stumbled at last, after making our shins more freely acquainted than was altogether agreeable with the sharp edges of the broken ice, into a fine square of clear beach, between some heavy masses of stranded ice. Choosing out the softest part of a shelving rock of limestone of which the beach was composed, we pitched the tent, spread the oilcloth, and with some coals, which we had brought with us from Whaler Point, boiled a good kettle of tea for all hands.
“All these preparations were, however, but introductory to another, which we found a most difficult problem indeed—namely, to contrive how we were all to pass the night in the single little tent we had brought with us. We all got in, certainly, and got the kettle in the middle; but as for lying down to sleep it was utterly out of the question. A London omnibus on a racing day after five o’clock, was the only parallel I could think of to our attempt to stow thirteen men, including our colossal carpenter, into a tent intended for six. At last, after some deliberation, it was arranged that we should sit down six in a row, on each side, which would leave us about three feet clear to stretch our legs. Mr. Bellot, who formed the thirteenth, being the most compact and stowable of the party, agreed to squeeze in underneath them, stipulating only for a clear foot square for his head alongside the tea-kettle. Being unprovided with a candlestick, even if there had been room to place one anywhere, it was arranged that each of us should hold the candle in his hand for a quarter of an hour, and then pass it to his neighbor, and thus by the aid of our flickering taper, through the thick steam of the boiling kettle, we had just enough light to prevent us putting our tea into our neighbor’s mouth, instead of our own.