52 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
morning we lie rolling on a leaden grey sea, with the 
sails flapping, and all the blocks creaking and complaining. 
George, the second mate, is walking up and down the poop 
whistling quietly and looking hopelessly round the horizon 
for the least air. We may not boil the kettle (steam), for 
the coals must be economised, so we resort to the bag- 
pipes and play half-a-dozen pibrochs and a lament or two, 
to bring up a fresh breeze. If you play the- right tune, 
and play it long enough, you can always work up a breeze, 
even a gale, possibly. The pipes brought the breeze, but 
unfortunately it was dead ahead ; still it was better to 
move, even in the wrong direction, than to lie bucketing our 
masts out on a glassy swell. And it was also satisfactory, 
to prove finally that piping has an effect on the wind. I 
have long known this from personal experience, but it 
has other effects that are perhaps not so generally recog- 
nised. For instance, a pipe-tune will make salmon take 
and pike revive on the hottest day in summer and feed 
voraciously. They make wakeful children sleep, enchant 
red deer, and seals come out of the sea and listen in such 
rapt attention, that you can shoot them — if you so please. 
Mais a nos wotitons, the various impressions of an artist at 
sea. Impressions innumerable, so many varied and new, 
that, seeing them, I can do no serious work — an ideal state 
of affairs. The broad daylight and the flood of sunlight 
is so bright and dazzling that the colours and forms of 
the groups of workers on deck are blurred together, and 
each figure is blotted into the patch of intense shadow 
which it throws on the hot, yellow decks. Up aloft the men 
