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yesterdays walk makes my scorbutic muscles
very stiff. I went through my routine of [work] labour
and as usual in this strange disease worked
off my stiffness and my pain.

Bonsall and Petersen are now woodmen
preparing our daily fuel. My own pleasant
duty consists in chopping from an ice berg six
half bushel bags of frozen water, carrying it
to the brig and passing it through the scuttle
into our den, in emptying by three several
jobs some twelve to fifteen bucketfuls from the slop barrel. [some twelve or fifteen
buckets full of filth] in administering both as
nurse and physician to fourteen sick men, [in
picking] in helping to pick eider down from its [dung?], as material for
boat bedding, in writing this wretched daily record,
eating my meals, sleeping my broken sleeps, and
feeling that the days pass without [a] congenial
ocupation or improving pursuit.

Hans has not returned
I give him two days more before I conclude
that Godfrey has waylaid or seized upon
his sledge. This wretched man has been
the very bane of the cruise. My conscience
tells me that almost any measure against
him would be justifiable, as a relief to
the rest, but an instinctive aversion to
to extreme measures [an an ignorance of
what may be legal] binds my hands.

Sunday
Mar. 25

A hard workin busy Sunday it has
been – a cheerless scurvy breeding day and
now by the midnight which is as it were
the evening of its continued light I read
the thermometers unaided except by the
crimson [fires?] of the northern horizon. It
is moreover cold again -37° and the
enemy has a harder grip on my grasshopper.
Bonsall and Kane took the
entire home work on themselves to day