Our last act before leaving was to pay a visit to the Boss’s grave, for which purpose I gathered together all those who had served under him on the _Endurance_ and had shared with him all the trials and vicissitudes that followed her loss in the ice. There were, in addition to myself, Worsley, Macklin, McIlroy, Kerr, Green and McLeod. That I included none of the newer men who had known him for so short awhile casts no shadow of aspersion upon them. My feelings in the matter are hard to describe. We were joined to each other and to him by ties so strongly welded through the long months of common danger and uncertainty that I felt there would be something wrong in introducing anything in the nature of a less intimate element. So our little party rowed across the bay, walked to the little graveyard and gathered for the last time round his grave. It was deeply snow-covered. We carefully removed the snow and disclosed a number of bronze wreaths: from Lady Shackleton and from numerous friends and relatives at home. There were others from the Uruguayan Republic, the British residents in Uruguay, the Freemasons of Uruguay and the French Maritime Society. Two others hang in the little church, placed there by Hussey: one from His Majesty King George V and the British people, the other from his old school-fellows resident in South America. There was also the flower wreath placed with such kindly thought by the doctor’s wife, Mrs. Aarberg. The graveyard is a simple little place. In it are already a few crosses, some of them very old, mute reminders of forgotten tragedies. Four of them mark the resting places of officers and men of the sailing ship _Esther_, of London. They had died of typhus fever and were buried here in 1846. There is one inscribed to W. H. Dyke, Surgeon, who in his devotion to duty in attending the sick had also contracted the disease and died. There are some newer crosses erected to Norwegian whalers who had lost their lives in the arduous calling which brings them to these stormy waters. All of them are the graves of strong men. It is a fitting environment. Gritviken is a romantic spot. All around are big mountains, bold in outline and snow-covered. Below lies one of the most perfect little harbours in the world, at times disturbed by the fierce winds from the hills and lashed by the gusty squalls to a mass of flying spume and spindrift. Often it lies calm and peaceful, bathed in glorious sunshine and reflecting in its deeps the high peaks around, whilst the sea-birds, “souls of old mariners,” circle in sweeping flights above its surface and fill the air with the melancholy of their cries. An ideal resting-place this for the great explorer who felt, more than most men, the glamour of such surroundings. So we said good-bye to the “Old Boss,” and I who have served with him through four expeditions know that if he could have chosen his own resting-place it would have been just here.