Macklin reported another fifteen inches of water in the hold, requiring an extra spell at the pumps to clear. There can be no doubt that the continual bumping and jarring of the ship against the ice caused a starting of the timbers which had then no chance to settle and swell. Everybody was in wonderful health and spirits, and appetites were keen. For lunch on that day we had the seal brains taken the day before; they were delicious. All hands took to the seal meat, with the exception of Jeffrey and Carr. Carr tasted it and said that it produced a sickly feeling, but with the former it was a case of pure prejudice, for he would not even taste it, and preferred to live on what else might be going. Stefansson, in his books, dilates upon the theory that men who in their normal lives have been used to all sorts and varieties of food take more readily to kinds which they are experiencing for the first time than those whose dietary has been more monotonous and composed of much the same thing day after day and week after week. That this is very true there can be no doubt, but it does not hold in the case of Jeffrey and Carr, for out of the whole party I doubt if there was anyone more used to the highly faked and varied dishes which the modern chef succeeds in producing. Hunger is a wonderful sauce and will break down most prejudices. Those of us who accompanied Sir Ernest Shackleton on his previous expedition lived entirely on seal and penguin meat for eleven months, and except that we were thin at the time of rescue as a result of not having enough of it, we were otherwise healthy and fit and had no sign of scurvy. Stefansson, in speaking of scurvy, attributes his freedom from it to eating his meat raw or “rare done,” and states definitely that this is the secret of preventing and curing scurvy, whatever the food may be. On the occasion to which I have referred we always cooked our meat, except when circumstances or the exigencies of the moment did not permit of it and when we were short of fuel.