The prospect of a relief from the monotony of life on the floe raised all our spirits.

One man wrote in his diary: "It's a hard, rough, jolly life, this marching and camping; no washing of self or dishes, no undressing, no changing of clothes.
We have our food anyhow, and always impregnated with blubber-smoke; sleeping almost on the bare snow and working as hard as the human physique is capable of doing on a minimum of food." We marched on, with one halt at 6 a.m., till half-past eleven.

After a supper of seal steaks and tea we turned in.

The surface now was pretty bad.

High temperatures during the day made the upper layers of snow very soft, and the thin crust which formed at night was not sufficient to support a man.