SOUTH 
weather cleared. It was during this short run that the captain, 
with semaphore hard-a-port, shouted to the scientist at the 
wheel : " Why in Paradise don't you port ! " The answer 
came in indignant tones : I am blowing my nose." 
The Endurance made some progress on the following day. 
Long leads of open water ran towards the south-west, and the 
ship smashed at full speed through occasional areas of young 
ice till brought up with a heavy thud against a section of older 
floe. Worsley was out on the jib-boom end for a few miimtes 
while Wild was conning the ship, and he came back with a 
glowing account of a novel sensation. The boom was swinging 
high and low and from side to side, while the massive 
bows of the ship smashed through the ice, splitting it across, 
piling it mass on mass and then shouldering it aside. The air 
temperature was 37^ Fahr., pleasantly warm, and the water 
teniperatm^e 29° Fahr, We continued to advance through fine 
long leads till 4 a.m. on December 17, when the ice became 
difficult again. Very large floes of six-months-old ice lay close 
together. Some of these floes presented a square mfle of 
unbroken surface, and among them were patches of thin 
ice and several floes of heavy old ice. Many bergs were 
in sight, and the course became devious. The ship was 
blocked at one point by a wedge-shaped piece of floe, but we 
put the ice-anchor through it, towed it astern, and proceeded 
through the gap. Steermg imder these conditions required 
muscle as well as nerve. There was a clatter aft during the 
afternoon, and Hussey, who was at the wheel, explained that 
The wheel spun round and threw me over the top of it ! " 
The noon position was lat. 62° 13' S., long. 18° 63' W., and 
the run for the preceding twenty-four hours had been 32 miles 
in a south-westerly direction. We saw three blue whales 
during the day and one emperor penguin, a 58-lb. bird, which 
was added to the larder. 
The morning of December 18 fovmd the Endurance pro- 
ceeding amongst large floes with thin ice between them. The 
leads were few. There was a nortlierly breeze with occasional 
snow-flurries. We secured tln:ee crab-eater seals— two cows 
and a bull The buU was a fine specimen, nearly white all 
10 
