358 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
berg and the top-sails were close reefed. Whilst keeping 
head to wind under the berg, steaming slowly, a sudden 
lull for a minute, by removing the force against which the 
screw was acting, caused the ship to gather headway, and 
before the engines could be stopped the vessel ran into 
the berg and carried away the jib-boom, martingale, and 
one of the whiskers. The ship was backed astern clear 
of the berg, and having finished reefing, and furled the 
top-sails, laid-to under fore and aft sails on the port tack 
to get in the wreck of the jib-boom. The weather con- 
tinued to get gradually worse and the heavy snow-fall 
obscuring the view, rendered the position an anxious one.” 
In his racy “ Log Letters from the Challenger,” Lord 
George Campbell, who was one of the officers, gives a 
more animated account of the circumstances following 
the loss of the jib-boom, though no less permeated by 
technicalities and not to be understood without some 
vague doubts by land-lubbers: 
“ We drifted on all forenoon, seeing no bergs through 
the fog and blinding showers of snow though we knew 
that they were close around somewhere. In the mean- 
time we were hard at work getting in the wreck of the 
head gear — no easy work in the intense cold and violent 
wind — when suddenly, at three o’clock, in the middle of a 
tremendous thick squall, comes the hail from the fore- 
castle, < Iceberg close to under the lee bow, Sir ! ’ There 
is no room to steam ahead, so ‘ full speed astern ! 9 Rattle, 
rattle, goes the screw, sixty revolutions a minute ; ‘ Clear 
lower deck, make sail ! ’ shriek the boatswain’s mates ; on 
deck flies everybody ; 4 Maintopmen aloft ; loose the main- 
topsail !’ ‘ Forepart, take in the fore try-sail !’ The Cap- 
tain and Commander howling out orders from the bridge, 
hardly heard in the roaring of the wind ; officers repeat- 
