That is the gift of
sleep. Perhaps it is true of others as is certainly the case with me,
that the more horrible the conditions in which we sleep, the more
soothing and wonderful are the dreams which visit us. Some of us have
slept in a hurricane of wind and a hell of drifting snow and darkness,
with no roof above our heads, with no tent to help us home, with no
conceivable chance that we should ever see our friends again, with no
food that we could eat, and only the snow which drifted into our
sleeping-bags which we could drink day after day and night after night.
We slept not only soundly the greater part of these days and nights, but
with a certain numbed pleasure. We wanted something sweet to eat: for
preference tinned peaches in syrup! Well! That is the kind of sleep the
Antarctic offers you at her worst, or nearly at her worst. And if the
worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes
disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than as
a gruesome foe. She treats you thus when you are in the extremity of
peril and hardship; perhaps then you can imagine what draughts of deep
and healthy slumber she will give a tired sledger at the end of a long
day's march in summer, when after a nice hot supper he tucks his soft dry
warm furry bag round him with the light beating in through the green silk
tent, the homely smell of tobacco in the air, and the only noise that of
the ponies tethered outside, munching their supper in the sun.
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