282 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
Scotch humour and the high Peterhead voice. Braidy 
steered, and bubbled over with Irish fun all the time, 
encouraging his crew to lay out. The warm sun had 
brought the seals up in numbers. We killed about thirty 
on one piece of ice. Hard and hot work it was flinching 
them and dragging their skins over the waist-deep snow. 
By twelve o'clock we were down to the gunwale with 
skins and as hungry as hawks — a case of * heros peut-Hre 
A Chip off an Antarctic Berg. 
mais les venires avant tout' and the ship-biscuit that we 
could scarcely break at breakfast melted between our 
teeth, and how deliciously sweet the half frozen water 
tasted, sucked out of the bunghole of the breaker ! 
Several times we were jammed in the ice, and once the 
boat was nearly smashed up ; as it was, the gunwales were 
squeezed in till they looked as if they would take the 
