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The slide down the glacier face made me smile and this book is not fraught with reasons to smile. I was put in mind of Butch and Sundance jumping from the cliff into the river.

End of Part IV and they have found land. I do not know how they managed to maintain the strength to pull those boats through, but the land they have found is very inhospitable and many of these men have severe frostbite and other serious ailments. The test is not completed.

Off the floes and into the water with land in sight but still chancy. It is amazing how every time it looked desperate for these men a door of opportunity opened. More than chance.

Have to stop and fix something to eat. I am totally engrossed in this book and marveling at the amount of resilience people can have in the face of what must have been so mentally, as well as physically, taxing. I always read these kinds of accounts and think what a woos I am.

End of Part II - "Hogmany (the Scottish feast of New Year's) and a bitter one too, being adrift on the ice instead of enjoying the pleasures of life like most people. But as the saying is, there must be some fools in this world."

One cannot help wondering how they did endure.

In some ways they had come to know themselves better. In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited time of contentment. They had been tested and found not wanting."

The value of such an experience is what it helps you find in the way of strength inside yourself. It is very unlifting to read of how they not only faced this adversity, but profited from it.

I understand the necessity to kill Sirius and the others, but that was a very sad moment for me and sets the tone for how heartbreaking this journey is going to be.

Part I complete - Difficult to even imagine this kind of situation. I do not, in fact, understand why men are willing to put themselves in such peril to make an exploration of this kind, but we would all be the poorer had no one ever had that kind of courage. I shivered with both cold and fright while reading this section...and the Endurance is already lost.