A Day of Rest

On 15 January 1911 - the British Antarctic Expedition, with eleven grueling days of work behind them - rested. They celebrated the Church of England's Divine Service under the wide Antarctic skies. This would have been the second Sunday after Epiphany. According to a 1913 OUP edition of the Book of Common Prayer, and the Biblical texts read that day should have included Romans 12.6 and St. John 2.1. Maybe Scott would have chosen a "prayer and thanksgiving" for "fair weather" as part of the litany that day:

O Almighty God, who for the sin of man didst once drown all the world,
except eight persons, and afterward of thy great mercy didst promise never to destroy it so again; We humbly beseech thee, that we for our iniquities have worthily deserved a plague of rain and waters, yet upon our true repentance thou wilt send us such weather, as that we may receive the fruits of the earth in due season; and learn both by thy punishment to amend our lives, and for thy clemency to give thee praise and glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Surely, floods were not the company's greatest concern. Yet, they might have been forgiven for invoking God's protection in the harsh Antarctic climate. A plague of ice, cold, and snow is the only way to imagine the inhospitable climate.