FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 283 
shape of a figure 8. We had been trying to get at three 
seals that lay on the top of an overhanging ledge of snow, 
and as we were struggling to climb on to this, the floe 
came up from behind and hemmed us in. The tongues 
of ice that project under water from the cakes overlapped 
each other, and we found ourselves squeezed out of the 
water. After about an hour's struggling the floe opened 
a little, and we at last managed to get out of the hole by 
dint of much shoving and pulling, and got away minus 
some rollock-pins plus a deck cargo of loaf-sugar snow. 
A great number of whales were blowing in every direc- 
tion, filling the air with the sound of sighing. All round the 
horizon the jets of steam puffed up from behind the white 
islands and hung in the air more like whiffs of cigarette 
smoke than the ponderous spouts you see in whaling 
pictures. Sometimes the black backs rolled so close 
as to threaten us with a capsize, and we had to put 
bullets into them to keep them off. By two o'clock we 
had sixty-five skins in the boat, and the water was lapping 
over the gunwale. As the ship seemed to have no inten- 
tion of coming to us we had to go to it, and having so 
many skins on board we had to sit tailorwise on the top 
of them — an uncommonly awkward position to row in. 
After about two hours' pulling we came alongside and 
clambered on board by the chain-plates, and some of the 
men who had got back to the ship before us, and had 
swallowed their dinner, came into our boat and discharged 
the skins for us. About five minutes after, as it seemed 
to me, Allan came aft, and lost his good opinion of me 
when I absolutely refused to leave my penguin stew : not 
