210 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
Birdie Bowers which will not appear extravagant. There 
were times when his optimism appeared forced and formal, 
though I believe it was not really so: there were times 
when I have almost hated him for his infernal cheerfulness. 
To those accustomed to judge men by the standards of 
their fashionable and corseted drawing-rooms Bowers ap- 
peared crude. “You couldn’t kill that man if you tooka 
pole-axe to him,” was the comment of a New Zealander at 
a dance at Christchurch. Such men may be at a discount 
in conventional life ; but give me a snowy ice-floe waving 
about on the top of a black swell, a ship thrown aback, a 
sledge-party almost shattered, or one that has just upset 
their supper on to the floorcloth of the tent (which is much 
the same thing), and I will lie down and cry for Bowers to 
come and lead me to food and safety. 
Those whom the gods love die young. The gods loved 
him, if indeed it be benevolent to show your favourites a 
clear, straight, shining path of life, with plenty of discom- 
fort and not a little pain, but with few doubts and no fears. 
Browning might well have had Bowers in mind when he 
wrote of 
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward ; 
Never doubted clouds would break ; 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph; 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake. 
There was nothing subtle about him. He was trans- 
parently simple, straightforward and unselfish. His capacity 
for work was prodigious, and when his own work happened 
to take less than his full time he characteristically found 
activity in serving a scientist or exercising an animal. So 
he used to help to send up balloons with self-recording | 
instruments attached to them, and track the threads which 
led to them when detached. He was responsible for put- 
ting up the three outlying meteorological screens and read 
them more often than anybody else. At times he looked 
after some of the dogs because at the moment there was | 
nobody else whose proper job it happened to be, and he > 
took a particular fancy to one of our strongest huskies — 
