Several men failed to pass the doctor’s examination after the month, and yet they were men fit for any condition of climate, perhaps, save that with which our heroes were now quite prepared to do battle.
A month is certainly not a long time in which to train in athletics, but it must be remembered that those whom Dr. Wright had chosen had been fit and well at the time they commenced to train.
So strong and willing were their hearts, that it was no unusual thing for some of them to lie down naked of a morning at the ablution hour before breakfast, and roll in the snow, or be covered over for half a minute by their comrades. This is really not such a terrible ordeal as you lads who hug the fire and live in stuffy rooms might imagine. The snow is often warmer than the air around it.
There was a dinner on board the Sea Elephant on the night before Curtis and his crew of sledgelings, as he called them, departed on their long and marvellous inland tour. But there was no boisterous merriment thereat, and no wine was permitted, no splicing of the main-brace.
Every one of the sledgelings wrote a letter, or letters, to the old country. These were to be taken by the Sea Elephant to New Zealand, and posted there.
It is needless to say that Curtis wrote to Marie, and so did Ingomar. Ingomar wrote also a most filial letter to his father and mother. No bombast about it, and no boasting about what they were going to do. They were simply going into the interior in the direction of the South Pole. They could not reach that, he said, but they wanted to winter just as near it as possible, and, if possible, break the world’s record, as every American and British subject had the right at least to try to do.
That was about all.
Ingomar’s heart was a brave one. There was sentiment, romance, and love too, in it, but no such thing as hysteria. Yet was there moisture in his eyes as he closed and sealed his letters and placed them in the bag.
Next morning farewells were said almost in silence, and these heroes of the wild Antarctic prepared to mount. Perhaps Dr. Wright was trying to encourage a little merriment, or a laugh at least, when he said—
“You haven’t forgotten the salt, have you, Curtis?”