Читать книгу Into the Frozen South онлайн

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I’d prided myself on overcoming the woes of seasickness before we reached the Tagus, but, alas! I boasted too soon. Once outside the river we hit up against a nasty kind of a sea, worse than anything we’d hitherto experienced, I think; so the old familiar qualms possessed me more vindictively than ever. But I had the poor satisfaction of knowing that others were in as bad case as myself, for very few of the crew escaped on this occasion. They blamed the smallness of the ship and her pronounced lack of comfortable accommodation. Maybe it was so. I wasn’t in a mood to argue, anyhow. So ill were Mooney and Mason that Sir Ernest Shackleton reluctantly decided that, failing an improvement, they would have to leave the ship at Madeira. So far as I was concerned, I think the Boss was quietly giving me a thorough “trying-out” to see if I could endure the still greater rigours that were promised us farther south; for I was set to work very hard—with the cook, stowing stores, in the stokehold, everywhere. It wasn’t pleasant, but I wasn’t going to let the Scouts down if I could help it, so I gritted my teeth and went at it for all I was worth. Praise was not too lavishly bestowed by Sir Ernest Shackleton, because his own standard of efficiency was so high that a man had to be pretty good even to be tolerated; but as he seemed pleased with the way I was carrying on I was satisfied.