INTENSE HUNGER 



had been reduced to twenty ounces per man a day, we 

 really thought of little but food. The glory of the great 

 mountains that towered high on either side, the majesty 

 of the enormous glacier up which we travelled so pain- 

 fully, did not appeal to our emotions to any great 

 extent. Man becomes very primitive when he is hungry 

 and short of food, and we learned to know what it is 

 to be desperately hungry. I used to wonder sometimes 

 whether the people who suffer from hunger in the big 

 cities of civilisation felt as we were feeling, and I arrived 

 at the conclusion that they did not, for no barrier of 

 law and order would have been allowed to stand between 

 us and any food that had been available. The man 

 who starves in a city is weakened, hopeless, spiritless, 

 and we were vigorous and keen. Until January 9 the 

 desire for food was made the more intense by our 

 knowledge of the fact that we were steadily marching 

 away from the stores of plenty. 



We could not joke about food, in the way that is 

 possible for the man who is hungry in the ordinary 

 sense. We thought about it most of the time, and on 

 the way back we used to talk about it, but always in 

 the most serious manner possible. We used to plan 

 out the enormous meals that we proposed to have 

 when we got back to the ship and, later, to civihsation. 

 On the outward march we did not experience really 

 severe hunger until we got on the great glacier, and 

 then we were too much occupied with the heavy and 

 dangerous climbing over the rough ice and crevasses 

 to be able to talk much. We had to keep some distance 

 apart in case one man fell into a crevasse. Then on 

 the plateau our faces were generally coated with ice, 

 and the blizzard wind blowing from the south made 

 unnecessary conversation out of the question. Those 

 were silent days, and our remarks to one another were 



5 



