246 COOK IN THE ANTARCTIC 



dering crash. The wind howled as it rushed past us, and came with a force 

 that made us grasp the rails to keep from being thrown into the churning seas. 

 The good old ship kept up a constant scream of complaints as she struck piece 

 after piece of the masses of ice. Occasionally we would try to talk, but the 

 deafening noises of the storm, the squeaking strains of the ship and the thump- 

 ing of the ice made every effort at speech inaudible. With our stomachs dis- 

 satisfied, and our minds raised to a fever height of excitement, and with a 

 prospect of striking an iceberg at any moment and going to the bottom of 

 the sea, we were, to say the least, uncomfortable. When we had entered 

 sufficiently into the body of the pack, and were snugly surrounded by closely 

 packed ice floes, the sea subsided, and here the overworked ship rested for 

 night." 



And this is what the Belgica and her crew endured for more than a year ! 



To further illustrate the woes of travel on shipboard in polar seas, there 

 may be given here an experience of one of the parties in the last century. This 

 was the crew of the Investigator, one of the ships that went north in an en- 

 deavor to find traces of Sir John Franklin's expedition. 



Says the description of this mishap: 



"It was a very narrow escape from destruction. A light breeze springing 

 up the day after open water appeared among the floes, the pack to which the 

 Investigator was attached began to drift. It was carried towards a shoal upon 

 which a huge mass of ice was grounded. A corner of the pack came in con- 

 tact with the great stationary mass with a grinding shock that sent pieces of 

 twelve and fourteen feet square flying completely out of the water, and as the 

 immense weight of the moving pack pressed forward, there was a sound as of 

 distant thunder as it crushed onwards. The weight at the back caused an 

 enormous mass to upheave in the middle of the pack, as though under the in- 

 fluence of a volcanic eruption. The great field was rent asunder, the block 

 to which the Investigator was attached taking the ground and remaining fixed, 

 while the lighter portion swung round and, with accelerated speed, came 

 directly towards the vessel's stern. 



"To let go every cable and hawser which held her to the block was the 

 work of a moment, for every one was on deck keenly on the lookout. The 

 moving mass caught her stern and forced her ahead and from between the 

 moving floe and the stationary mass. The two came into grinding collision, 

 and the men on the deck of the vessel saw the great bulk to which they had been 

 attached slowly rise. It went up and up until it had risen thirty feet above 



