418 WITH SCOTT: THE SILVER LINING 



to give a little, and finally went astern. Then more butting, 

 and a jam or two, and finally we got into looser pancake, 

 where she could do four knots. 



Emperor penguins were interested spectators of our 

 manceuvres, while the distant coast-line was really of great 

 interest when we had time to observe it. Mount Melbourne 

 was a finer sight than Erebus, for its cone was more sym- 

 metrical, recalling that of Etna. Mount Nansen, further 

 south-west, was a huge, flattened scarp, resembling Mount 

 Lister. 



On the 24th we emerged again from the pack to be 

 greeted with a pretty stiff" wind. We steamed south to try 

 and communicate with headquarters. Lillie told me of some 

 of his results. He believed he could apply the teachings of 

 Mendelism to the question of colour in half-caste Maoris. 

 He had made some large collections of fossil plants in New 

 Zealand, and had dredged up enough of the rare tunicate 

 Cephalodiscus (a primitive sessile early vertebrate) to supply 

 every museum in the world ! I found out that my thousand 

 insects were probably Gomphocephalus, of which previously 

 only a few odd heads and legs had been collected in specimens 

 of Antarctic moss. 



We got back to the Sound off Cape Evans about noon on 

 the 25th. A howling gale was blowing so much frost smoke 

 into our teeth that we could only just see Inaccessible Isle, 

 now covered with a pall of snow. We manoeuvred in North 

 Bay with the 1 20-foot wall of the Barne Glacier looming very 

 close. There was a touch of east in the blizzard, so that the 

 glacier was not quite on our lee. Pennell dropped anchor 

 when the soundings showed twenty-five fathoms, but we 

 drifted back quickly, and when we reached fifty fathoms (three 

 hundred feet) the anchor dragged. 



We had an awful job hauling up the anchor ! Whenever 

 I hear the phrase " Merrily round the capstan, boys," I think 

 of that weary time in North Bay. Each capstan bar had 

 two and sometimes three men pushing it round. The foc'sle 

 deck was iced over, and even a layer of ashes afforded little 

 grip, for the blizzard heeled the vessel over, till the deck 

 sloped like a roof. "They tried to help the capstan by a 

 chain to the steam winch, but the latter * took charge ' and 

 nearly flung Bill Heald off the foc'sle ! There was precious 



