OCEANOGRAPHY AND SEA-ICE 



Christmas Day, and at times the ship (in spite of all its 

 buffeting of the pack) was farther from Antarctica on 

 a succeeding day owing to the general northward drift 

 of the pack. On the twenty-seventh of December we 

 were still drifting aimlessly in the thick pack, for 

 Scott was afraid to waste coal 1)y raising steam if no 

 sign of a ''lead" were apparent. However, towards 

 the evening of the twenty-ninth we began to hope that 

 the pack was showing similar features to those we met 

 on entering. Very beautiful were some of the piled-up 

 pressure-blocks. I remember one of the nature of a 

 glacier-table. A flat-domed slab some three feet across 

 was perched on a slender support above the floe. Pend- 

 ent from the table were numerous long icicles, conse- 

 quent on the warm weather. The lower surface of the 

 table owing to repeated reflection was a beautiful ultra- 

 marine, which was seen through a curtain of icicles. 

 The whole structure reminded me of one of those 

 resplendent medusae which float placidly on a tropic 

 sea with their tentacles hanging from the fringe of 

 the "umbrella." 



Hereabouts the floe became thinner and more uni- 

 form. It was broken into wide subangular pieces with 

 vertical sides, and at nine o'clock we entered a wide 

 lane where the calm water of the "leads" was replaced 

 by short choppy waves. Then we met an area of "pan- 

 cake ice" with rounded outlines and upturned edges, 

 and finally just at midnight we crossed several belts 

 of east- west brash ice and at long length entered the 

 open Ross Sea in latitude 69^2° S. We had traversed 



171 



