I kept a keen look out for a convenient floe with seals on it, for I was anxious to obtain fresh meat. Our food stores included an ample and varied supply of all foods, with the exception of meat, for which we were prepared “to live on the country.” Seal meat is quite palatable when one is used to it, and has the advantage over tinned stuff of being fresh. It is also a valuable antiscorbutic, and I was relying on its regular consumption to prevent the onset of scurvy.
Sighting a good solid floe with three seals on it, I put the ship alongside and shot them all with my heavy rifle. I went over on to the floe with Macklin to bleed them, which done, they were hoisted aboard, and McIlroy, Dell and Macklin flensed and cut them up. The blubber went to the bunkers to eke out our supply of coal. Practically the whole of the meat of the seal can be used for eating; whilst the liver, kidneys and heart make very dainty fare. Fried seal’s brain is a dish that can hardly be excelled anywhere in the world. The seal’s brain is large and well developed, and when shooting these animals I always make a point of aiming at the neck just behind the skull so as not to spoil the brain for cooking. There is quite an art in removing the brain, and the heads were usually handed over to Macklin and McIlroy, who took them out complete and unbroken. Whilst the flensing was going forward Worsley seized the opportunity to take a sounding, finding it lat. 66° 12´ S. and 16° 21´ E. long., 2,330 fathoms of water.
On February 6th we continued pushing on through fairly heavy pack. Often the Quest was brought to a stop by heavy pieces of ice across her bows, which she was powerless to move or break up. When this occurred we backed down the lane formed in our wake, where her short length usually enabled her to turn, and getting her nose inserted between two floes, we pushed ahead with all the power the engines could give us till she finally worried through. So far we had not been held up for any considerable time.
Macklin reported another fifteen inches of water in the hold, requiring an extra spell at the pumps to clear. There can be no doubt that the continual bumping and jarring of the ship against the ice caused a starting of the timbers which had then no chance to settle and swell.
Everybody was in wonderful health and spirits, and appetites were keen. For lunch on that day we had the seal brains taken the day before; they were delicious. All hands took to the seal meat, with the exception of Jeffrey and Carr. Carr tasted it and said that it produced a sickly feeling, but with the former it was a case of pure prejudice, for he would not even taste it, and preferred to live on what else might be going. Stefansson, in his books, dilates upon the theory that men who in their normal lives have been used to all sorts and varieties of food take more readily to kinds which they are experiencing for the first time than those whose dietary has been more monotonous and composed of much the same thing day after day and week after week. That this is very true there can be no doubt, but it does not hold in the case of Jeffrey and Carr, for out of the whole party I doubt if there was anyone more used to the highly faked and varied dishes which the modern chef succeeds in producing. Hunger is a wonderful sauce and will break down most prejudices. Those of us who accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton on his previous expedition lived entirely on seal and penguin meat for eleven months, and except that we were thin at the time of rescue as a result of not having enough of it, we were otherwise healthy and fit and had no sign of scurvy.
Stefansson, in speaking of scurvy, attributes his freedom from it to eating his meat raw or “rare done,” and states definitely that this is the secret of preventing and curing scurvy, whatever the food may be. On the occasion to which I have referred we always cooked our meat, except when circumstances or the exigencies of the moment did not permit of it and when we were short of fuel.
Nature has providentially arranged that most of the animals of south polar regions, for example the seals, provide in addition to meat the fuel necessary to cook it in the form of blubber. It is true that the use of heat in cooking meat does very slightly destroy the antiscorbutic principle, but when the consumption is sufficiently large this factor can be neglected. Much depends upon the method of cooking, for a more thorough investigation of the subject shows that the detrimental influence is not heat but oxidization. It is also stated that scurvy may be cured by eating meat which has gone bad. It is possible that a few isolated cases may have recovered in spite of the additional intoxication, but this teaching must be regarded as a most dangerous one. The subject is one of the greatest importance to explorers, for scurvy has caused the failure of many well-found expeditions. I cannot enter more fully into it here. The investigation of scurvy and other food deficiency diseases is at present occupying the minds of the medical profession, much new knowledge is being brought to light, and it is probable that the next few years will show great advances. I am greatly opposed to the making of generalizations based upon one or two isolated observations by writers with little or no knowledge of the fundamental facts; they are of little value for guidance and are apt to prove misleading.
Query was in great spirits at this time, never having been in better condition since we left England; his coat was thick and bushy, and his tail made a fine brush. He was really a most handsome dog. He became a thorough ship’s dog, and climbed all over the place. Wilkins fixed a camera case to the front of the deck-house, and Query discovered via it a way to the top. So delighted was he with his new discovery that he ran up and down just for the joy of doing it. All day long he pestered one to play with him, bringing in his mouth a stick or tin or a lump of coal, or even a potato looted from the galley, which he wished thrown for him to fetch. Of this game he never tired, and no matter where one threw the object, he searched until it was found, when he brought it back, calling one’s attention to the fact by a short bark or a dig in the calves with his nose.
Another game which he was very fond of was to drop things from the deck-house on to the head of someone standing below, whose share in the game was to return the thing dropped so that he could do it again. He was greatly excited by a seal which followed the ship and whenever we were stopped by floes rose high out of the water alongside us as though trying to come aboard. Possibly it regarded us as a strangely elusive and inaccessible piece of land. Up to now we had not seen any penguins in the pack.
On coming on deck at 4.0 a.m. on February 7th I discovered that during Jeffrey’s watch the ship had entered a cul-de-sac and that further progress was impossible. From the crow’s nest I could see nothing but dense pack stretching away to the southward as far as the eye could reach, with no sign of a water sky beyond it. To the east and west the same conditions prevailed, and there was no hope of working the ship in any direction except that in which we had come. I therefore decided to stay where we were for a day (lat. 67° 40´ S. and 17° 6´ E. long), and if there was no sign of opening of the ice at the end of that time to retrace my steps and look for open leads farther to the west.