LOSS OF THE ENDURANCE 
route to the camp. The pressure now was rapid in movement 
and our floe was suffering from the shakes and jerks of the 
ice. At 3 p.m., after hmch, we got under way, leaving Dump 
Camp a mass of debris. The order was that personal gear must 
not exceed two pounds per man, and this meant that nothing 
but bare necessaries was to be taken on the march. We could 
not afford to cumber ourselves with unnecessary weight. Holes 
had been dug in the snow for the reception of private letters 
and little personal trifles, the Lares and Penates of the members 
of the Expedition, and into the privacy of these white graves 
were consigned much of sentimental value and not a little of 
intrinsic worth. I rather giudged the two pounds allowance per 
man, owing to my keen anxiety to keep weights at a minimum, 
but some personal belongings could fairly be regarded as indis- 
pensable. The journey might be a long one, and there was a 
possibility of a winter in improvised quarters on an inhospitable 
coast at the other end. A man under such conditions needs 
something to occupy his thoughts, some tangible memento of 
his home and people beyond the seas. So sovereigns were 
thrown away and photographs were kept. I tore the fly-leaf 
out of the Bible that Queen Alexandra had given to the ship, 
with her own writing in it, and also the wonderful page of 
Job containing the verse : 
Out of wJiose ivomb came the ice ? 
And the hoar y frost of Heaven, who hath gendered it ? 
The waters are hid as with a stone, 
And the face of the deep is f rozen. 
The other Bible, which Queen Alexandra had given for the 
use of the shore party, was down below in the lower hold in 
one of the cases when the ship received her death-blow. Suit- 
cases were thrown away ; these were retrieved later as material 
for making boots, and some of them, marked solid leather/' 
proved, to our disappointment, to contain a large percentage 
of cardboard. The manufacturer would have had difficulty in 
convincing us at the time that the deception was anything short 
of criminal. 
The pioneer sledge party, consisting of Wordie, Hussey, 
83 
