FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
extravagant way of doing business, so they say. I signed 
articles as assistant surgeon, at a shilling a month for pay, 
and I felt grievously disappointed when my modest 
request for one half-month's pay in advance was refused. 
I had intended to do all sorts of things with that six- 
pence. 
I shall never forget the excitement and bustle of that 
afternoon when we left the Camperdown dock. 
The expedition had been much talked of, so all the 
Dundee citizens who could leave their factories were 
down at the dock gates to bid farewell to their friends. 
The decks were still littered with sacks of coal, ropes, 
and spars. And the, crew, up to summer Plimsoll line 
with grog, were staggering on board under deck cargoes 
of mattresses, blankets, and provisions. Some were 
hauling their sea-chests along, and wives and children 
were picking their way about the decks, staring round 
them at the little barque that was to take their men to 
the Southern Seas. Some of the older women, when they 
thought they were not observed, put money into the 
crevices in our rudder head to bring us luck, with who 
knows what result. 
The change from the weary monotony of shore life to 
the sea-going life was marvellously rapid and complete. 
It was as if a great stage-curtain had been rolled up 
before us, and all that we had heard or read of the ways 
of the sea since we read Marryat and Robinson Crusoe 
was acted on the deck before us : each man took up his 
part as if he had played it from the days of the Flying 
Dutchman onward. 
