CHAPTER XVIII 



THE POLAR JOURNEY (continued) 



This happy breed of men, this little world, 



This precious stone set in the silver sea, 



Which serves it in the office of a wall, . . . 



This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England, 



This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings, . . . 



This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land. 



Shakespeare. 



VI. Farthest South 



Stevenson has written of a traveller whose wife slumbered 

 by his side what time his spirit re-adventured forth in 

 memory of days gone by. He was quite happy about it, and 

 I suppose his travels had been peaceful, for days and nights 

 such as these men spent coming down the Beardmore will 

 give you nightmare after nightmare, and wake you shriek- 

 ing — years after. 



Of course they were shaken and weakened. But the 

 conditions they had faced, and the time they had been out, 

 do not in my opinion account entirely for their weakness 

 nor for Evans' collapse, which may have had something 

 to do with the fact that he was the biggest, heaviest and 

 most muscular man in the party. I do not believe that this 

 is a life for such men, who are expected to pull their weight 

 and to support and drive a larger machine than their com- 

 panions, and at the same time to eat no extra food. If, as 

 seems likely, the ration these men were eating was not 

 enough to support the work they were doing, then it is 

 clear that the heaviest man will feel the deficiency sooner 



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