Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/116

44 veering round to the northward, and in the evening increased to a strong north-westerly breeze, with so heavy and irregular a sea that we spent the night in great anxiety, and in momentary expectation that our boats would be washed away by some of the broken waves that fell on board, or, that from the frequent shocks the ship sustained when the seas struck her, we should lose some of the masts, although we had taken every precaution to secure them. This dangerous commotion we attributed to the current by which for several days we had been carried to the south-westward, but which had during the last day changed its course to the north-westward, and which was running at the extraordinary rate of sixty-eight miles per diem, or nearly three miles an hour, in direct opposition to the wind.

The temperature of the surface of the sea fell so rapidly from 73° to 61°, that I concluded we were approaching a body of ice, and some indications in the sky favoured this belief. We did not however see any, and before midnight the temperature had again risen to 67°, so that, if its fall were occasioned by ice, we had probably passed it in the dark.

At noon we were in lat. 41° 24′ S. and long. 25° E., and detected another change in the current, it having carried us N. 75 E., twenty-two miles during the last twenty-four hours; and again we found a gradual depression in the temperature of the sea from 68° at 1h. to 58° at noon, without any