Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/33

Rh ice-armoured ships could have penetrated some miles through this ice by charging and recharging, by sawing and blasting, and, if there had been a sign of open water at the back of the ice, it might have been worth doing this to see if the whale, reported by Ross in 1843 and described by him as greatly resembling the Bowhead Whale, was seeking safe retreat there. But all the evidence indicated that there was no water at the back and to the south of this ice, but that it continued in a more or less solid field till it came up against land, which was invisible from the ship's deck, except to the W. and S.W., and even from the crow's nest at the ship's mainmast-head.

In technical whalers' language we "fastened on to the floe" that night and lay there during the whole of Christmas Day, the only day of rest we had for the next two months. The scene was of wonderful beauty, and I cannot do better than quote the graceful description by the able artist-chronicler of the voyage.

"Those who have felt," says Burn Murdoch (From Edinburgh to the Antarctic, by W. G. Burn Murdoch), "the peace of a summer night in Norway or Iceland, where the day sleeps with wide-open eyes, can fancy the quiet beauty of such a night among the white floes of the Antarctic. To-day has passed, glistering in silky white, decked with sparkling jewels