THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



painful. Some of us have big blisters that burst 

 occasionally. 



February 17. — I thought we were in for it and was 

 not wrong. To-day we have been marching in a blind- 

 ing blizzard, with 42° of frost, but, thank heaven, the 

 wind was behind us and we have done 19 miles, the sledge 

 with the sail up often overrunning us, and then at 

 other times getting into a patch of soft snow and 

 bringing us up with a jerk. The harness round our weak- 

 ened stomachs gives us a good deal of pain when we are 

 brought up suddenly. We started at 6.40 a.m. and 

 marched till 6 p.m., and to-day we had three pannikins 

 of semi-cooked horse-meat and six biscuits on the strength 

 of the good march. We all have tragic dreams of 

 getting food to eat, but rarely have the satisfaction of 

 dreaming that we are actually eating. Last night I 

 did taste bread and butter. We look at each other 

 as we eat our scanty meals and feel a distinct grievance 

 if one man manages to make his hoosh last longer than 

 the rest of us. Sometimes we do our best to save a bit 

 of biscuit for the next meal, but it is a much debated 

 question whether it is best to eat all the food at once or 

 to save. I eat all my lunch biscuit, but keep a bit from 

 dinner to eat in the bag so as to induce sleep. The 

 smaller the quantity of biscuits grows the more delicious 

 they taste. 



February 18. — The wind dropped during the night, 

 and at 4.40 a.m. we got up, picked our buried sledge out 

 of the drift, and were under way by 7 a.m. There was 

 little wind, and the temperature was minus 20° Fahr. 

 at noon. This afternoon we sighted old Discovery. 

 What a home-like appearance it has. Its big, bluff form 

 showed out in the north-west, and we felt that the same 

 mountain might at that very moment be drawing the eyes 

 of our own people at winter quarters. It seemed to be 



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