had some days before been asking "what we called it when a
father died and left his son nothing." Poor Anton!

He looked long and anxiously for the ship, and with his kit-bag on his
shoulder was amongst the first to trek across the ice to meet her. Having
asked for and obtained a job of work there was no happier man on board:
he never left her until she reached New Zealand. Nevertheless he was
always cheerful, always working, and a most useful addition to our small
community.

It is still usual to talk of people living in complete married happiness
when we really mean, so Mr. Bernard Shaw tells me, that they confine
their quarrels to Thursday nights. If then I say that we lived this life
for nearly three years, from the day when we left England until the day
we returned to New Zealand, without any friction of any kind, I shall be
supposed to be making a formal statement of somewhat limited truth. May I
say that there is really no formality about it, and nothing but the
truth. To be absolutely accurate I must admit to having seen a man in a
very 'prickly' state on one occasion. That was all. It didn't last and
may have been well justified for aught I know: I have forgotten what it
was all about. Why we should have been more fortunate than polar
travellers in general it is hard to say, but undoubtedly a very powerful
reason was that we had no idle hours: there was no time to quarrel.

Before we went South people were always saying, "You will get fed up with
one another. What will you do all the dark winter?" As a matter of fact
the difficulty was to get through with the work. Often after working all
through a long night-watch officers carried on as a matter of course
through the following day in order to clear off arrears. There was little
reading or general relaxation during the day: certainly not before
supper, if at all. And while no fixed hours for work were laid down, the
custom was general that all hours between breakfast and supper should be
so used.

Our small company was desperately keen to obtain results. The youngest
and most cynical pessimist must have had cause for wonder to see a body
of healthy and not unintellectual men striving thus single-mindedly to
add their small quota of scientific and geographical knowledge to the sum
total of the world--with no immediate prospect of its practical utility.
Laymen and scientists alike were determined to attain the objects to gain
which they had set forth.

And I