326 FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
have given us trouble ; for the main-hatch is still open, 
the scuppers are all choked with seal-skins, and the 
bunkers are open with heaps of coal piled on deck to 
leave room for blubber below. 
This afternoon the boats that were out came back to 
the ship filled to the gunwale with black seal-skins. As 
they arrived each boat sent up lusty cheers, for the mizzen 
rigging was adorned with flags to signify our sealing is 
over. There ought properly to have been great celebra- 
tions on this occasion, but for circumstances over which 
the crew have no control. However, the intensity of the 
unexpressed joy we all felt could scarcely have been greater. 
All that has to be done now, before we leave, is to make 
off the skins on deck, haul the Jack apeak, and turn the 
Baleena's head for home and the North Countrie. 
Just to make my experiences as an Antarctic sealer 
complete, I was seized in the grey of the morning with the 
illness that most of our men have been knocked up with, so 
I am now able to speak from personal experience. The 
sensation of this perhaps uncatalogued malady is as if you 
had been shot at with an express rifle and the expansive 
bullet had caught you fair and true where the little girl 
explained her doll was sore, 'just where the wax meets 
the sawdust.' The pain was so acute that for quite a 
time I wished I had never been born, and kicked horribly 
against the boards that divide my bunk from the doctor's, 
till he got up and ministered to me. 
Thursday, \6th February. — We are lying gently rolling 
in the short, smooth swell. Scattered pieces of ice and 
