live till then on the
seal and penguin which they could kill. The first dysentery was early in
the winter, and was caused by using the salt from the sea-water. They had
some Cerebos salt, however, in their sledging rations, and used it for a
week, which stopped the disorder and they gradually got used to the
sea-ice salt. Browning, however, who had had enteric fever in the past,
had dysentery almost continually right through the winter. Had he not
been the plucky, cheerful man he is, he would have died.

In June again there was another bad attack of dysentery. Another thing
which worried them somewhat was the 'igloo back,' a semi-permanent kink
caused by seldom being able to stand upright.

Then, in the beginning of September, they had ptomaine poisoning from
meat which had been too long in what they called the oven, which was a
biscuit box, hung over the blubber stove, into which they placed the
frozen meat to thaw it out. This oven was found to be not quite level,
and in a corner a pool of old blood, water and scraps of meat had
collected. This and a tainted hoosh which they did not have the strength
of mind to throw away in their hungry condition, seems to have caused the
outbreak, which was severe. Browning and Dickason were especially bad.

They had their bad days: those first days of realization that they would
not be relieved: days of depression, disease and hunger, all at once:
when the seal seemed as if they would give out and they were thinking
they would have to travel down the coast in the winter--but Abbott killed
two seals with a greasy knife, losing the use of three fingers in the
process, and saved the situation.

But they also had their good, or less-bad, days: such was mid-winter
night when they held food in their hands and did not want to eat it, for
they were full: or when they got through the Te Deum without a hitch: or
when they killed some penguins; or got a ration of mustard plaster from
the medical stores.

Never was a more cheerful or good-tempered party. They set out to see the
humorous side of everything, and, if they could not do so one day, at any
rate they determined to see to it the next. What is more they succeeded,
and I have never seen a company of better welded men than that which
joined us for those last two months in McMurdo Sound.

On September 30 they started home--so they called it. This meant a sledge
journey of some two hundred miles along the coast, and its possibility
d