228 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
ships, sat facing each other, and pulled, each his own way. 
Such a £ how to do ' I never did see. I had expected some 
rather smart boat work in a whaler, but on this occasion 
there was enough excitement to launch an ark. Every one 
pulled his own stroke ; they bucketed, rolled, and pulled 
out of time, but they pulled hard, and at thirty yards the 
men in the bow began blazing away at the astonished 
seal. It would have been as easy to hit as a haystack, 
but the excitement was such that it took seven shots 
before the seal was hit. Then we jumped on to the snow 
and despatched the poor beast with ice-picks, and rolled it 
into the boat, using the oars as a gangway, and it was no 
light work doing this, for the seal was full twelve feet, 
with girth in proportion. Later in the day we saw 
many more of these ' white seals/ as we called them ; we 
did not stop to kill them, but steamed ahead to reach our 
rendezvous in Erebus and Terror Gulf. 
The bergs have become so numerous that we 
have been sailing 
through aisles 
of ice-cliffs, the 
beauty of which 
was beyond de- 
scription. Now 
and then our pas- 
sage was blocked 
by barriers of 
floe-ice, twenty 
feet thick, soft and white on top, but under water hard and 
ereen. We ran into these and drove them aside, and it 
