Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/379

] were obliged throughout the darkness of night to proceed at a slow pace, steering to the northwest.

Early in the morning, whilst running before a strong easterly breeze, we found ourselves embayed in a deep bight of the pack, which was seen stretching across our bows, as far as the true north. We were also at this time much hampered by extensive fields of pancake ice, which at this period of the season always form near the margin of a pack; we immediately hauled to the wind, but had great difficulty in extricating the ships, although still favoured by a fresh breeze.

At noon we were in lat. 65° 31′ S., long. 162° 9′ E., and again in clear water, but it soon after fell quite calm, and the heavy easterly swell was driving us down again upon the pack, in which were counted from the mast-head eighty-four large bergs, between S. and N.N.W., and some hundreds of smaller dimensions.

We found we were fast closing this chain of bergs, so closely packed together that we could distinguish no opening through which the ships could pass, the waves breaking violently against them, dashing huge masses of pack ice against the precipitous faces of the bergs; now lifting them nearly to their summit, then forcing them again far beneath their water-line, and sometimes rending them into a multitude of brilliant fragments against their projecting points.

Sublime and magnificent as such a scene must