SOUTHWARD 55 
would have been, if we had been above water at all. You 
cannot imagine how utterly helpless we felt in such a sea 
with a tiny ship,—the great expedition with all its hopes 
thrown aside for its life. God had shown us the weakness 
of man’s hand and it was enough for the best of us,—the 
people who had been made such a lot of lately—the whole 
scene was one of pathos really. However, at 11 p.m. Evans 
and I with the carpenter were able to crawl through a tiny 
hole in the bulkhead, burrow over the coal to the pump- 
well cofferdam, where, another hole having been easily 
made in the wood, we got down below with Davy lamps 
and set to work. The water was so deep that you had to 
continually dive to get your hand on to the suction. After 
2 hours or so it was cleared for the time being and the 
pumps worked merrily. I went in again at 4.30 a.m. and 
had another lap at clearing it. Not till the afternoon of 
the following day, though, did we see the last of the water 
and the last of the great gale. During the time the pumps 
were working, we continued the baling till the water got 
below the furnaces. As soon as we could light up, we did, 
and got the other pumps under weigh, and, once the ship 
was empty, clearing away the suction was a simple matter. 
I was pleased to find that after all I had only lost about 100 
gallons of the petrol and bad as things had been they might 
have been worse... . 
“You will ask where all the water came from seeing 
our forward leak had been stopped. Thank God we did 
not have that to cope with as well. The water came chiefly 
through the deck where the tremendous strain,—not only 
of the deck load, but of the smashing seas,—was beyond 
conception. She was caught at a tremendous disadvantage 
and we were dependent for our lives on each plank stand- 
ing its own strain. Had one gone we would all have gone, 
and the great anxiety was not so much the existing water as 
what was going to open up if the storm continued. We 
might have dumped the deck cargo, a difficult job at best, 
but were too busy baling to do anything else... . 
“That Captain Scott’s account will be moderate you 
may be sure. Still, take my word for it, he is one of the 
