“To detail the whole of what I said to Cheetham would merely bore the reader; suffice to say that the conversation turned upon whether we would reach England by May of this year, and I expressed my opinion that that was practically impossible. What in the world Crean, of all people, wanted to put a spoke in my wheel for, one cannot imagine.

“It is well to record these little sidelights on expeditionary life as they are usually expunged from the published books, or at the most left to be read between the lines. That they occur, nevertheless, on all expeditions is a matter of fairly common knowledge and herein an endeavour has been made to refer to them truly and impartially, irrespective of who is to blame.”

— Thomas Orde-Lees