p. 72, May 6, 1915: Outside, they heard the bluster grow to gale force winds. Irvine Gaze and Stevens went early to their bunks. Spencer-Smith, as ever, was reading a book by the light of the acetylene lamp.
p. 109, Dec 15, 1915 on depot sledging trip: Spencer-Smith wrote his impression of travelling with wind power: ‘Run! Slip! Stumble! With poor visibility ahead the order of the day…. Hold her into the wind!’ He was ravenous that night, and took a book from his calico bag to read before sleep. It was Gentleman of London, and ‘almost every page speaks of eating.’
p. 112-13: Shackleton didn’t even take along the Bible that had been given to the ship by Queen Alexandra; but he did tear out the flyleaf with her handwritten inscription as well as the page he treasured from the Book of Job…. “Out of whose womb came the ice? …And the face of the deep is frozen.”
p. 162, Robert Service quoted from memory—no indication his works were there.
p. 207, on loss of vision for Ernest Joyce: He could not see well enough to read the few books they had carried with them—books that were read over and over again in the months of seclusion. Among these, notably, was For the Term of his Natural Life, and with Wild or Richards reading passages to him, Joyce solved one of their shortages [i.e. how to extract salt from sea water].
p. 209: There were reading sessions, Wild and Richards speaking the lines from a dog-eared copy of Lorna Doone or one of the Padre’s [Spencer-Smith] books, which had been brought in with his effects.