some day. I want to thank you for the friendship you gave me of late years, and to tell you how extraordinarily pleasant I found it to serve under you. I want to tell you that I was not too old for this job. It was the younger men that went under first. . . . After all we are setting a good example to our countrymen, if not by getting into a tight place, by facing it like men when we were there. We could have come through had we neglected the sick. Good-bye, and good-bye to dear Lady Bridgeman.
Excuse writing—it is −40, and has been for nigh a month.
To Vice-Admiral Sir George le Clerc Egerton, K.C.B.
My dear Sir George,
I fear we have shot our bolt—but we have been to Pole and done the longest journey on record.
I hope these letters may find their destination some day.
Subsidiary reasons of our failure to return are due to the sickness of different members of the party, but the real thing that has stopped us is the awful weather and unexpected cold towards the end of the journey.
This traverse of the Barrier has been quite three times as severe as any experience we had on the summit.
There is no accounting for it, but the result has thrown out my calculations, and here we are little more than 100 miles from the base and petering out.
