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FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
ticularly fine effects, with mist hanging over the ice like a 
muslin veil, the sun shining through, lighting the blue 
feet of the bergs and the packed ice with many tints. 
The Jason and our barque pushed their way through 
the pack, sometimes within a few hundred yards of each 
other, their boats skirmishing on either flank. From the 
boats the effects of the dark ships coming looming out of 
the mist with their tall spars and rigging lost in the thick- 
ness aloft, and the vague figures of the men appearing and 
disappearing in the fog on the ice islands was beautiful in 
the extreme. 
In the evening, when the seals had gone off the ice, we 
lay at rest, with wonderfully beautiful pack-ice stretching 
round us as far as the eye could reach ; islands all shapes 
and all pale colours, white, blue and creamy, hollowed 
with green caves and fringed with icicles, jammed 
together into the most lovely disorder. The Jason lay a 
quarter of a mile off. After tea they began making a 
tremendous uproar on board her, firing harpoon-guns, 
blowing fog-horns, and shouting altogether at times. We 
thought one of her boats had not returned, had got 
jammed in the ice, perhaps, and the row was intended to 
give the crew an idea where the ship was. So the pipes 
were ordered up to help the din and wailed into the white 
silence. By and bye a boat came off from the Jason, and 
the first mate came up over our side and asked us to 
come aboard. It was their king's birthday they were 
celebrating, and there was no boat lost. We were in- 
vited to join in the celebration, and were not long before 
we had our best rags on and the rough of the blood off 
