54 
OUR CONDITION. 
must look the lion in the face. The scurvy is steadily 
gaining on us. I do my best to sustain the more des¬ 
perate cases; but as fast as I partially build up one, 
another is stricken down. The disease is perhaps less 
malignant than it was, but it is more diffused through¬ 
out our party. Except William Morton, who is dis¬ 
abled by a frozen heel, not one of our eighteen is 
exempt. Of the six workers of our party, as I counted 
them a month ago, two are unable to do out-door work, 
and the remaining four divide the duties of the ship 
among them. Hans musters his remaining energies to 
conduct the hunt. Petersen is his disheartened moping 
assistant. The other two, Bonsall and myself, have 
all the daily offices of household and hospital. We 
chop five largo sacks of ice, cut six fathoms of eight- 
inch hawser into junks of a foot each, serve out the 
meat when we have it, hack at the molasses, and hew 
out with crowbar and axe the pork and dried apples, 
pass up the foul slop and cleansings of our dormitory; 
and, in a word, cook, scidlionize, and attend the sick. 
Added to this, for five niglits running I have kept 
watch from 8 p.m. to 4 a.ji., catching cat-naps as I 
could in the day without changing my clothes, but 
carefully waking every hour to note thermometers. 
“ Such is the condition in which February leaves us, 
with forty-one days more ahead of just the same cha¬ 
racter in prospect as the tw r enty-eight which, thank 
God! are numbered now with the past. It is sadden¬ 
ing to think how much those twenty-eight days have 
impaired our capacities of endurance. Yet there are 
