What do the two incidents described in Paragraphs 47 and 48 tell you about Byrd's personal character?
47 Our altitude was then between 10,500 and 11,000 feet. We were "riding" the engines, conscious of the fact that if one should fail we must come down. Once the starboard engine did sputter a bit, and Balchen nosed down while June rushed to the fuel valves. But it was nothing; to conserve fuel, Balchen had "leaned" the mixture too much. A quick adjustment corrected the fault; and, in a moment, the engine took up its steady rhythm. Moments like this one make a pioneering flight anything but dull; one moment everything is lovely, and the next is full of foreboding.

48 From time to time, June "spelled" Balchen at the controls, and Balchen would walk back to the cabin, flexing his cramped muscles. There was little thought of food for any of us--a beef sandwich, stiff as a board from frost, and tea and coffee from a thermos bottle. It was difficult to believe that two decades or so before the most resolute men who had ever attempted to carry a remote objective, Scott and Shackleton, had plodded over this same plateau, a few miles each day, with hunger, fierce, unrelenting hunger, stalking them every step of the way.
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