82 
FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
Jth October. — Lat 29.31 ; long. 20.35. Ifc was a great 
idea drowning that cat ; the result has been a whole 
week of perfect sailing winds. Just enough wind to keep 
us cool, excepting at mid-day, when it becomes a little 
too warm for perfect comfort. Wish we had more cats 
now. 
We had 6 the awning' up this afternoon — the awning 
that the newspapers wrote so much about before we left 
Dundee, which was to shelter our northern sailors from 
the vertical rays of the tropical sun, to create cool draughts 
in the sweltering heat of the Doldrums. The awning was 
a torn sail, the size of a blanket, and all holes and dirty ; 
it was dangled in the middle of the poop, and shaded 
about a couple of square yards of deck at a time. If you 
kept dodging about you could keep in the patch of shadow, 
but it was scarcely worth the trouble. Our sails give us 
all the shelter we require, and our Arctic sailors, instead of 
objecting to the heat, seem to take ' to it very kindly. 
Blue — blue — blue, and hot, so hot that it is undiluted 
pleasure to do nothing, and our bare feet burn with the heat 
of the deck, and hold to the melting tar in the seams. 
The men go about their work very quietly, and scarcely 
speak ; the only sound is the click-click of the carpenter's 
caulking mallet as he hammers oakum into the seams of 
the deck. He comes from Peterhead, but he doesn't care 
about the heat ; he is squatting there on deck, with the 
full blaze of the sun on his flat, brown neck, hammer- 
ing away as contentedly as if there were some 50 degrees 
of frost. 
