57o WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 



ice. At length we were some thirty miles north of Cape 

 Bird making roughly towards Franklin Island. That night 

 we made good progress in fairly open water, and we passed 

 Franklin Island during the day. But the outlook was so 

 bad in the evening (January 24) that we stopped and 

 banked fires. "We lay just where we stopped until at 

 5 a.m. on January 25, when the ice eased up sufficiently 

 for us to get along, and we started to make the same slow 

 progress — slow ahead, stop (to the engine-room) — bump 

 and grind for a bit — then slow astern, stop — slow ahead 

 again, and so on, until at 7 p.m., after one real big bump 

 which brought the dinner some inches off the table, Cheet- 

 ham brought us out into open water." 1 



Mount Nansen rose sheer and massive ahead of us 

 with a table top, and at 3 a.m. on January 26 we were pass- 

 ing the dark brown granite headland of the northern foot- 

 hills. We were soon made fast to a stretch of some 500 

 yards of thick sea-ice, upon which the wind had not left a 

 particle of snow, and before us the foothills formed that 

 opening which Campbell had well named Hell's Gate. 



I wish I had seen that igloo : with its black and blubber 

 and beastliness. Those who saw it came back with faces of 

 amazement and admiration. We left a depot at the head of 

 the bay, marked with a bamboo and a flag, and then we 

 turned homewards, counting the weeks, and days, and 

 then the hours. In the early hours of January 27 we left 

 the pack. On January 29 we were off Cape Adare, "head 

 sea, and wind, and fog, very ticklish work groping along 

 hardly seeing the ship's length. Then it lifts and there is a 

 fair horizon. Everybody pretty sea-sick, including most of 

 the seamen from Cape Evans. All of us feeling rotten." 2 

 Very thick that night, and difficult going. At mid-day 

 (lat. 6 9 50' S.) a partial clearance showed a berg right 

 ahead. By night it was blowing a full gale, and it was not 

 too easy to keep in our bunks. Our object was now to 

 make east in order to allow for the westerlies later on. We 

 passed a very large number of bergs, varied every now and 

 then by growlers. On February 1, latitude 64 15' S. and 



1 My own diary. 2 Hid. 



