Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/127

It is also difficult already, after two nights' rest, with a dozen men all round anticipating your every wish, and with the new comfortable life of the hut all round you, to realise completely how bad the last few weeks have been, how at times one hardly cared whether we got through or not, so long as (I speak for myself) if I was to go under it would not take very long. Although our weights are not very different, I am only 1lb. and Bill and Birdie 3½ lbs. lighter than when we started, we were very done when we got in, falling asleep on the march, and unable to get into our finnesko or eat our meals without falling asleep. Although we were doing good marches up to the end, we were pulling slow and weak, and the cold was getting at us in a way in which it had never touched us before. Our fingers were positive agony immediately we took them out of our mits, and to undo a lashing took a very long time. The night we got in Scott said he thought it was the hardest journey which had ever been made. Bill says it was infinitely worse than the Southern Journey in 1902–3.

I would like to put it on record that Captain Scott considered this journey to be the hardest which had ever been done. This was a well-considered judgment.