Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/122

greater heat supply than other men ordinarily have. He never had serious trouble with his feet, while ours were constantly frostbitten. He slept I should be afraid to say how much longer than we did, even in the last days. It was a pleasure to lie awake, practically at any rate all night, and hear his snores. Largely owing to the arrangement of toggles, also not having shipped his eiderdown bag, but mainly due to his extraordinary energy, he many times turned his bag during the journey, and thus he got rid of a lot of the moisture in his bag, which came out as snow or actual knobs of ice. When we did turn our bags, the only way was directly we turned out, and even then you had to be quick before the bag froze. Getting out of the tent at night, it was quite a race to get back to your bag, before it began to get hard again. Of course this was in the lowest temperatures.

On the return journey we never rolled our bags up, but let them freeze out straight—arranging them carefully so that they should freeze in the best shape for getting into them again. On the Barrier they were literally as hard as boards, but coming back down the Sound they never got so hard that they would not bend. I cannot say what a self-sacrifice I consider it to have been that Birdie handed over his dry eiderdown to me when we were coming back. At the time a dry sleeping-bag would have been of more value to any of us than untold wealth.

Our bags were of course much worse after lying out a blizzard in them.

Clothes.—The details of our clothes were all taken down by Scott after we got in, and I will not repeat. We