Aboard Endurance

Orde-Lees Journal, October 23, 1915

Waiting, waiting, waiting, that is about all one can say each day if one were merely to write down each day's events chronologically.

The routine & trivialities, the meandering cliques and passing animosities of the day are all unworthy of being placed on record & yet each day has its little enlivening incidents that make life worth living & emancipate the soul from the rut that isolation & an artificial existence drive it into.

The companionship of the dogs is much to be grateful for, much more so than many of us realize, I believe, even though these wild creatures are rather inferior as the friend of man to the sagacious animals of our English homes.

I am afraid I get chaffed a good deal for being a namby pamby sentimentalist and, may be you reader will agree that I deserve it. As a plausible justification would be my only comment I refrain from making one & will leave the reader to form his own opinion. Sir Ernest knows my temperament intimately and at least does not disapprove of what I write.

Poor dogs, they feel the confinement on board of the last week as much as we do; it was, therefore, a welcome relief for them to get an hours run yesterday, but it was a short hour for the ice commenced to work and the recall was hoisted. There was no gangway rigged so that the dogs were shot out down a sort of improvised fire escape made out of a sail. They didn't seem to mind it a bit.

The ice is opening up a bit, thank goodness, late this evening & things look a little more hopeful. Moreover there is a very strong water sky to the North indicating open water not more than a hundred miles away.