THE CHALLENGER 
359 
ing the howls. The weather-clew of the maintopsail is 
set aback, the headsails taken in, slowly she gathers stem 
way, keeping her head turning slightly towards the berg, 
a towering, dim white mass looming grimly through the 
driving snow, and then she clears it — a narrow shave! 
The violence of the wind prevented us then from making 
a friend of our enemy by keeping under its lee, so the ship 
was again allowed to drift on, amid dense fog and snow, 
till five o'clock, when another iceberg was seen at a little 
distance ahead, to leeward of which we drifted, where 
the wind being broken, the ship's head was turned by 
means of steam and sail, and all night long we kept dodg- 
ing backwards and forwards between these two bergs, 
where we knew the sea to be clear of dangers. In the 
evening the weather became clearer, though it still blew 
hard ; deck covered with slush ice. Anxious work enough 
for the officers of watches and the Captain, who was on 
deck for I don't know how many continuous hours." 
Released from this peril the Challenger pushed a couple 
of miles into the pack until she was only about fifteen miles 
from the position of Termination Land as charted. See- 
ing nothing of it she turned and steered a northeasterly 
course and passed the parallel of 6o° northward on the 
meridian of 99 ° E. on February 28th, having been south 
of it for 18 days during which the ship sailed over 22 
degrees of longitude. On March 17th she arrived at 
Melbourne and the Antarctic part of the voyage was over. 
The actual exploration amongst the ice on the surface 
was so little that on a superficial view it would seem 
absurd to devote a chapter to it ; but the study of the sur- 
face fauna and flora and of the half dozen deep soundings 
made during that time revealed a wealth of new informa- 
tion. A good deal of the biological work would have been 
