HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES 293 
cealing each ship from her consort, although they were so 
near that the orders given on one vessel were distinctly 
heard on the other. When the fog lifted it was to show 
the first iceberg, a flat-topped ice-island rising 130 feet 
above the surface of the water, its sides caverned by the 
action of the waves and a long line of loose pieces fallen 
from it tailing away to leeward. This was in latitude 
58° S. and longitude 146° W., the meridian on which 
the new attempt to reach a high latitude was to be made. 
The course was now altered to due south, and on Decem- 
ber 18th, the edge of the ice-pack was met with a little 
south of the sixtieth parallel. The pack was loose and 
the ships sailed through it for about thirty miles before 
it grew heavier and compelled a change of course to the 
southwest. The look-out from the crow’s-nest at the 
masthead guided the ships from one pool of open water 
to another through the lightest part of the intervening 
pack, making slow progress. The life of those seas 
swarmed about the ships, curious but not alarmed. The 
numerous whales seemed almost to take the vessels for 
fellow-cetaceans and they scarcely moved aside for them 
and once the Erebus passed right over a whale and ex- 
perienced a shock which started a discussion as to 
whether the ship had struck the whale or the whale had 
struck the ship. The opportunity was taken to land the 
magnetic instruments on a large piece of the floe in order 
to reverify the correction allowed for the attraction of 
the iron on board. 
The Antarctic Circle was approached on Christmas 
day, the ships working to and fro in the pack wherever 
a lead seemed to open, and usually shrouded in fog. But 
the few miles required to reach the Antarctic regions 
proper were not made until the end of the year. On the 
