28 WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
would seem very necessary. Certainly there is no hose 
wanted this morning, and a general kind of tidying up and 
coiling down ropes is more what is done. 
The two stewards, Hooper, who is to land with the 
Main Party, and Neale, who will remain with the Ship’s 
Party, turn out at six and rouse the afterguard for the 
pumps, a daily evolution, and soon an unholy din may be 
heard coming up from the wardroom. “ Rouse and shine, 
rouse and shine: show a leg, show a leg” (a relic of the old 
days when seamen took their wives to sea). “Come on, 
Mr. Nelson, it’s seven o’clock. All hands on the pumps! ”’ 
From first to last these pumps were a source of much 
exercise and hearty curses. A wooden ship always leaks a 
little, but the amount of water taken in by the Terra Nova 
even in calm weather was extraordinary, and could not be 
traced until the ship was dry-docked in Lyttelton, New 
Zealand, and the forepart was flooded. 
In the meantime the ship had to be kept as dry as pos- 
sible, a process which was not facilitated by forty gallons of 
oil which got loose during the rough weather after leaving 
South Trinidad, and found its way into the bilges. As we 
found later, some never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed stevedore 
had left one of the bottom boards only half-fitted into its 
neighbours. In consequence the coal dust and small pieces 
of coal, which was stowed in this hold, found their way into 
the bilges. Forty gallons of oil completed the havoc and 
the pumps would gradually get more and more blocked 
until it was necessary to send for Davies, the carpenter, 
to take parts of them to pieces and clear out the oily coal 
balls which had stopped them. This pumping would some- 
times take till nearly eight, and then would always have 
to be repeated again in the evening, and sometimes every 
watch had totakeaturn. At any rate it was good for our 
muscles. 
The pumps were placed amidships, just abaft the main 
mast, and ran down a shaft adjoining the after hatch, which 
led into the holds which were generally used for coal and 
patent fuel. The spout of the pump opened about a foot 
above the deck, and the plungers were worked by means of 
