Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/210

182 considerably, enabling us to make better speed through the pack, which was also more open, and with a heavy westerly swell amongst it. At noon we had the equivocal satisfaction of finding ourselves a few miles to the southward of our predecessors on this meridian, Cook and Bellinghausen, being in latitude 67° 28′ S., longitude 156° 28′ W.

The wind again fell light in the afternoon, and we pressed all sail on our ships, towing along the piece of ice that was moored between them until 9:30, when, getting into a clearer space, we cast off, and bored our way to the south-eastward; but, after running a few miles, we were again stopped by the pack being too close for us to make any way through it; towards midnight, the swell had increased so much, that the vessels sustained many violent shocks, in pushing and warping through a belt of heavy ice that interposed between us and a large hole of open water that we were for several hours engaged in trying to reach, and which we had only just accomplished when it fell nearly calm; by the assistance of towing with the boats, we gained ten or eleven miles to the south-east before we were again stopped by ice too close to attempt to penetrate with so light an air of wind. The barometer was down to 28.8 all day, and heavy clouds hung loweringly along the horizon, whilst the threatening aspect of the sky, which kept us in a state of much anxiety, ill accorded with the glassy smoothness of the clear blue sea; the scud flying