206 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
leaden-coloured with rags of purple-grey cloud driving up 
from the west. In places the upper grey sky is ribbed 
like sea sand. 
The sun sets now far to the southward, and scarcely 
dips below the horizon. To-night it has left a long band 
of cold orange between the sea and the level canopy of 
cloud. 
Ahead of us to the east and west are two icebergs, 
forming what seems to us a wide porch to the unknown 
Antarctic seas. 
Saturday, \jth Dec. — The fog came down thick last 
night, and when it cleared up this morning with a fresh 
nor wester we found we had made a passage somehow or 
other between a number of large bergs. A few large 
ragged pieces 
of ice, like the 
roots of huge 
teeth, are roll- 
ing about in the 
swell, with the 
greyseasurging 
over them and 
pouring down 
their sides in 
white streams. The men call these detached pieces of ice 
'growlers/ from their unpleasant nature and the sound the 
sea makes breaking over them. To us they can do little 
harm ; but many an iron ship has had her sides ripped 
by these wandering rocks. 
