254 THE VOYAGE OF THE 'DISCOVERY' [Feb. 



thin as to be scarcely discernible, but if one watches on for ten 

 minutes or more, one can detect the fact that they are very gradu- 

 ally opening ; half an hour later they may be a quarter of an inch 

 in width, and then it is possible to see that the ice on each side 

 is moving unequally. This is the beginning of the end, for in 

 an hour or two the broken floe, small enough in area but con- 

 taining many hundreds of tons of ice, will quietly detach itself 

 and float calmly away to the north. 



' It is in this manner, therefore, that we now hope to reach 

 the " Discovery," if only the swell will hold. We have advanced 

 about a third of a mile to-day, though how much is due to our 

 own efforts, and how much to the ordinary course of Nature, 

 we cannot tell, nor do we much care as long as the advance is 

 made.' 



^February 7. — We certainly have curious ups and downs of 

 fortune. This forenoon nothing happened after our explosion, 

 and I felt very despondent, but after lunch as I was sitting in 

 Colbeck's cabin, he suddenly rushed down to say that an 

 enormous piece was breaking away — and sure enough when 

 I got on deck I found that a floe from a half to three-quarters 

 of a mile across was quietly going out to sea. The men of the 

 relief ships are working like Trojans at the hole-digging ; they 

 are taking a keen interest in the proceedings and are especially 

 delighted with the explosions. There is a competition in 

 cutting the holes, and some take particular care in making 

 them very neat and round regardless of the fact that in half 

 an hour their handiwork will be blown to pieces. The best 

 implement for this work is a sort of spud with a sharp cutting 

 edge at the bottom. We are short of good tools of this sort, 

 but the " Terra Nova's " blacksmith and our own engineers are 

 busy making more.' 



February 8. — Wretched luck to-day. It is quite calm, and 

 the swell has almost vanished ; the floes that broke away last 

 night are still hanging about the ice-edge and damping what 

 little swell remains. Barne has a bad attack of snow-blindness, 

 and so Evans, of the " Morning," relieves him for the present 

 in the charge of explosive operations.' 



