the troubles have thickened his dauntless spirit ever shone brighter and he has remained cheerful, hopeful and indomitable to the end. . . .
To Sir J. M. Barrie
My dear Barrie. We are pegging out in a very comfortless spot. Hoping this letter may be found and sent to you, I write a word of farewell . . . Good-bye. I am not at all afraid of the end, but sad to miss many a humble pleasure which I had planned for the future on our long marches. I may not have proved a great explorer, but we have done the greatest march ever made and come very near to great success. Good-bye, my dear friend. Yours ever,
We are in a desperate state, feet frozen, etc. No fuel and a long way from food, but it would do your heart good to be in our tent, to hear our songs and the cheery conversation as to what we will do when we get to Hut Point.
Later. We are very near the end, but have not and will not lose our good cheer. We have four days of storm in our tent and nowhere's food or fuel. We did intend to finish ourselves when things proved like this, but we have decided to die naturally in the track.[1]
The following extracts are from letters written to other friends:
". . . 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."
"Wilson, the best fellow that ever stepped, has sacrificed himself again and again to the sick men of the party. . . ."
". . . Our journey has been the biggest on record, and nothing but the most exceptional hard luck at the end would have caused us to fail to return."
- ↑ Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. pp. 584–599.
