314 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
force that we marvelled how our timbers stood the 
strain. All through the night we expected to see 
their white teeth let in black night through our sides, 
or at least to have the screw carried away ; but when the 
morning came we were all right, and got into the lee of 
some driving streams of ice, and the men set about their 
work as usual. Cold work it is 'making off' on deck,— 
standing in freezing slush, with the wind yelling through 
the cordage, driving blinding snow almost through us. 
Tutisdaj?.— Still blowing hard ; but we are in splendid 
shelter behind a long ridge of pack ice that was piled up 
last night. It is some thirty feet high— the highest pack- 
that we have seen. The currents and wind have collected 
it between them ; they have piled block upon block, 
and the new snow has rounded off the points and angles 
