SOUTH 
weather to noon. Much rime aloft. Thick fresh snow on ship 
and floe that glistens brilliantly in the morning sunlight. Little 
clouds of faint violet-coloured mist rise from the lower and 
brinier portions of the pack, which stretches unbroken to the 
horizon. Very great refraction all round. A tabular berg about 
fifty feet high ten miles west is a good index of the amount 
of refraction. On ordinary days it shows from the mast-head, 
clear-cut against the sky ; with much refraction, the pack 
beyond at the back of it lifts up into view ; to-day a broad 
expanse of miles of pack is seen above it. Numerous other 
bergs generally seen in silhouette are, at first sight, lost, but 
after a closer scrutiny they appear as large lumps or dark masses 
well below the horizon. Refraction generally results in too 
big an altitude when observing the sun for position, but to-day 
the horizon is thrown up so much that the altitude is about 12' 
too small. No land visible for twenty miles. No animal life 
observed. Lower Clark's tow-net with 566 fathoms wire, and 
hoist it up at two and a half miles an hour by walking across the 
floe with the wire. Result rather meagre — jelly-fish and some fish 
larv^. Exercise dogs in sledge teams. The young dogs, under 
Crean's care, pull as well, though not so strongly, as the best 
team in the pack. Hercules for the last fortnight or more has 
constituted himself leader of the orchestra. Two or thi'ee times 
in the twenty-four hours he starts a howl — a deep, melodious 
liowl — and in about thirty seconds he has the whole pack in 
full song, the great deep, booming, harmonious song of the 
half-wolf pack.'' 
By the middle of September we were running short of fresh 
meat for the dugs. The seals and penguins seemed to have 
abandoned our neighbourhood altogether. Nearly five months 
had passed since we killed a seal, and penguins had been seen 
seldom. Clark, who was using his trawl as often as possible, 
reported that there was a marked absence of plankton in the 
sea, and we assumed that the seals and the penguins had gone 
in search of their accustomed food. The men got an emperor 
on the 23rd. The dogs, which were having their sledging 
exercise, became wildly excited when the penguin, which had 
risen in a crack, was driven ashore, and the best efiorts of the 
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