114 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
science. One of his patients then drops the bucket, mouth 
down, into the foaming sea at our fore-foot and hauls it 
up ; the density and temperature are recorded with the 
utmost exactness, and copious notes are taken of sky, air, 
and water, and by breakfast-time there is little to be 
known that we have not written down in the meteoro- 
logical log. In the meantime I have been wisely pre- 
paring an appetite by assisting at the already overmanned 
pumps. At 8 Nick comes round the deck and murmurs 
something about breakfast being on the table. Breakfast 
does not stay there long — the porridge disappears in a 
twinkling. We have porridge — what is breakfast without 
it ? Unfortunately we have neither cream nor milk, but 
we have molasses instead, and feel fairly contented there- 
with. Then coffee — and such coffee! — not freshly ground, 
with a rank, fresh taste, but ground ages ago, with all the 
tastes contracted in its many journeyings, infused in water 
of many flavours. We drink thic with our eyes shut 
when oppressed with thirst. Then we trifle with ship- 
biscuits and margerine, but the chef d'ceuvre is curried tin 
a la mattre cPhotel^ and when we have not this we have the 
stand by salt horse. 
After breakfast we gather our stock in trade together 
and seek some sequestered nook on the poop, where the 
sun shines and there's no fresh paint or men at work to 
disturb our thoughts — I nearly wrote down slumbers — 
and then start our day's work. Bruce attends patients 
and the calls of science, and the artist paints many things 
that pertain to life at sea. 
At seven bells there is another spell of ten minutes at 
