302 THE VOYAGE OF THE " FRA3I 



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deck. Now and then one hears the penguins' cry, 

 kva, kva, but except these there is no other sound than 

 the tuf, tuff of the motor, 220 times a minute. Ah, 

 that motor! it goes unweariedly. It has now gone for 

 1,000 hours without being cleaned, while on our Atlantic 

 cruise last year it stopped dead after going for eighty 

 hours. . . . Right over us we have the Southern 

 Cross, all round glow the splendid southern lights, and 

 in the darkness can be seen the gleaming outline of an 

 iceberg. . . ." 



On the 26th we crossed the Antarctic Circle, and the 

 same day the temperature both of air and water rose 

 above 32° F. 



It was with sorrow in our hearts that we ate our last 

 piece of " crocodile beef," but I hoped we should get 

 a good many albatrosses, which we saw as soon as we 

 came out of the ice. They were mostly the sooty 

 albatross, that tireless bird that generally circles alone 

 about the ship and is so difficult to catch, as he seldom 

 tries to bite at the pork that is used as bait. When 

 I saw these birds for the first time, as a deck boy, I was 

 told they were called parsons, because they were the 

 souls of ungodly clergymen, who had to wait down here 

 till doomsday without rest. 



More or less in our course to Cape Horn there are 

 supposed to be two groups of islands, the Nimrod group 

 in about long. 158° W., and Dougherty Island in about 

 long. 120° W. They are both marked " D " (Doubtful) 



