urley is stunned by the behavior of the men around him. Ever the Australian with a superiority toward British class-consciousness, he notes that his comrades “conducted themselves in a manner unworthy of gentlemen & British sailors.” Many “were suffering from temporary aberration, walking aimlessly about; others shivering as with palsy.”

Men lay on the ground, hiding their heads in the stones. “They were laughing uproariously,” Shackleton remembered, “picking up stones and letting handfuls of pebbles trickle between their fingers like miners gloating over hoarded gold.” Their smiles and laughter caused their cracked lips to bleed, but they laughed on.

Howling 80-mile-an-hour winds roar down from glacial peaks, shredding tents and sweeping away blankets, ground sheets, cooking utensils.

Yet Hurley, characteristically, exults at the beauty he sees and photographs. “Scenically,” he writes, “our present environments are some of the grandest I have ever set eyes on. Cliffs that throw their serrated scarps a thousand feet into the skies are interspersed with glaciers that tumble in crevassed cascades down to the sea.”

c o n t i n u e . . .