THE HEART OF THE ANTARCTIC 



the rudder. In the blinding drift it was impossible to 

 see more than a few yards from the ship, and once a 

 large iceberg suddenly loomed out of the drift close to the 

 weather bow of the Nimrod; fortunately the rudder had 

 just been cleared, and the ship answered her helm, thus 

 avoiding a collision. 



All day on the 20th, through the night, and through- 

 out the day and night of the 21st, the gale raged. Occa- 

 sionally the drift ceased, and we saw dimly bare rocks, 

 sometimes to the east and sometimes to the west, but 

 the upper parts of them being enveloped in snow clouds, 

 it was impossible to ascertain exactly what our position 

 was. At these times we were forced to wear ship; that 

 is, to turn the ship round, bringing the wind first astern 

 and then on to the other side, so that we could head 

 in the opposite direction. It was impossible in face 

 of the storm to tack, i.e., to turn the ship's head into the 

 wind, and round, so as to bring the wind on the other 

 side. About midnight on the 21st, whilst carrying out 

 this evolution of wearing ship, during which the Nimrod 

 always rolled heavily in the trough of the waves, she 

 shipped a heavy sea, and, all the release-water ports and 

 scupper holes being blocked with ice, the water had no 

 means of exit, and began to freeze on deck, where, 

 already, there was a layer of ice over a foot in thickness. 

 Any more weight like this would have made the ship 

 unmanageable. The ropes, already covered with ice, 

 would have been frozen into a solid mass, so we were 

 forced to take the drastic step of breaking holes in the 

 bulwarks to allow the water to escape. This had been 

 done already in the forward end of the ship by the gales 

 we experienced on our passage down to the ice, but as 

 the greater part of the weight in the holds was aft, the 

 water collected towards the middle and stern, and the 

 job of breaking through the bulwarks was a tougher 



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