70 6©6WORST JOURNEY IN THE WORLD 
the back and fin as the whale goes down, to guide him. In 
the pack he sometimes gets more, as in the case of Balae- 
noptera acutorostrata (Piked whale) on March 3, 1g1tt. 
The ship “ was ploughing her way through thick pack-ice, 
in which the water was freezing between the floes, so that 
the only open spaces for miles around were those made by 
the slow movement of the ship. We saw several of these 
whales during the day, making use of the holes in the ice 
near the ship for the purpose of blowing. There was 
scarcely room between the floes for the whales to come up 
to blow in their usual manner, which consists in rising 
almost horizontally, and breaking the surface of the water 
with their backs. On this occasion they pushed their snouts 
obliquely out of the water, nearly as far as the eye, and 
after blowing, withdrew them below the water again. Com- 
mander Pennell noted that several times one rested its 
head on a floe not twenty feet from the ship, with its nos- 
trils just on the water-line ; raising itself a few inches, it 
would blow and then subside again for a few minutes to its 
original position with its snout resting on the floe. They 
took no notice of pieces of coal which were thrown at them 
by the men on board the ship.” } 
But no whale which we saw in the pack, and we often 
saw it elsewhere also, was so imposing as the great Blue 
whale, some of which were possibly more than 100 feet 
long. ‘‘ We used to watch this huge whale come to the 
surface again and again to blow, at intervals of thirty to 
forty seconds, and from the fact that at each of four or five 
appearances no vestige of a dorsal fin was visible, we began 
to wonder whether we had not found the Right whale that 
was once reported to be so abundant in Ross Sea. Again 
and again the spout went up into the cold air, a white 
twelve-foot column of condensed moisture, followed by a 
smooth broad back, and yet no fin. For some time we re- 
mained uncertain as to its identity, till at last in sounding 
for a longer disappearance and a greater depth than usual, 
the hinder third of the enormous beast appeared above the 
1 Terra Nova Natural History Report, Zoology, vol. i. No. 3, Cetacea, by D. G. Lillie, 
p- 114. 
