“M’Gary comes next, with the cleaning-up arrangement, inside, outside, and on decks; and Mr Wilson follows with ice-measurements. And last of all comes my own record of the day gone by; every line, as I look back upon its pages, giving evidence of a weakened body and harassed mind.”
Meanwhile we talked encouragingly of spring hopes and summer prospects, and managed sometimes to force an occasion for mirth out of the very discomforts of our unyielding winter life.
This may explain the tone of my diary.
[CHAPTER VI.]
AN ANXIOUS SEARCH.
“Not a man now, except Pierre and Morton, is exempt from scurvy; and, as I look around upon the pale faces and haggard looks of my comrades, I feel that we are fighting the battle of life at disadvantage, and that an Arctic night and an Arctic day age a man more rapidly and harshly than a year anywhere else in all this weary world.
“March 13.—Since January, we have been working at the sledges and other preparations for travel. The death of my dogs, the rugged obstacles of the ice, and the intense cold, have obliged me to reorganise our whole equipment. We have had to discard all our India-rubber fancy-work; canvas shoe-making, fur-socking, sewing, carpentering, are all going on; and the cabin, our only fire-warmed apartment, is the workshop, kitchen, parlour, and hall. Pemmican cases are thawing on the lockers; buffalo-robes are drying around the stove; camp equipments occupy the corners; and our woe-begone French cook, with an infinitude of useless saucepans, insists on monopolising the stove.
“March 17.—It is nine o’clock P.M., and the thermometer outside at -46°. I am anxious to have my depôt party off; but I must wait until there is a promise of milder weather. It must come soon. The sun is almost at the equator. On deck, I can see to the northward all the bright glare of sunset, streaming out in long bands of orange through the vapours of the ice-foot, and the frost-smoke exhaling in wreaths like those from the house-chimneys a man sees in the valleys as he comes down a mountain side.
Start of the Depôt Party