It is a remarkable fact that, though we had
playing cards with us none of our company appeared desirous to use them.
In fact I cannot remember seeing a game of cards played except in the
ship on the voyage from England.
[Illustration: THE SEA'S FRINGE OF ICE]
With regard to books we were moderately well provided with good modern
fiction, and very well provided with such authors as Thackeray, Charlotte
Bronte, Bulwer-Lytton and Dickens. With all respect to the kind givers
of these books, I would suggest that the literature most acceptable to
us in the circumstances under which we did most of our reading, that is
in Winter Quarters, was the best of the more recent novels, such as
Barrie, Kipling, Merriman and Maurice Hewlett. We certainly should have
taken with us as much of Shaw, Barker, Ibsen and Wells as we could lay
our hands on, for the train of ideas started by these works and the
discussions to which they would have given rise would have been a godsend
to us in our isolated circumstances. The one type of book in which we
were rich was Arctic and Antarctic travel. We had a library of these
given to us by Sir Lewis Beaumont and Sir Albert Markham which was very
complete. They were extremely popular, though it is probably true that
these are books which you want rather to read on your return than when
you are actually experiencing a similar life.
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