Strange as it may seem, the greater part of this story had been enacted before I realised that it would devolve on me to narrate it in book form. When first I saw vaguely this unwelcome task before me there was fresh in my mind not only the benefit which we had derived from studying the records of former Polar voyages, but the disappointment which we had sometimes suffered from the insufficient detail which they provided. It appeared to me in consequence that the first object in writing an account of a Polar voyage was the guidance of future voyagers the first duty of the writer was to his successors.
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