Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 1.djvu/83

1910] 8 —We are getting on with much bumping and occasional 'hold ups.'

Tuesday, December 13.—I was up most of the night. Never have I experienced such rapid and complete changes of prospect. Cheetham in the last dog-watch was running the ship through sludgy new ice, making with all sail set four or five knots. Bruce, in the first, took over as we got into heavy ice again; but after a severe tussle got through into better conditions. The ice of yesterday loose with sludgy thin floes between. The middle watch found us making for an open lead, the ice around hard and heavy. We got through, and by sticking to the open water and then to some recently frozen pools made good progress. At the end of the middle watch trouble began again, and during this and the first part of the morning we were wrestling with the worst conditions we have met. Heavy hummocked bay ice, the floes standing 7 or 8 feet out of water, and very deep below. It was just such ice as we encountered at King Edward's Land in the Discovery. I have never seen anything more formidable. The last part of the morning watch was spent in a long recently-frozen lead or pool, and the ship went well ahead again.

These changes sound tame enough, but they are a great strain on one's nerves—one is for ever wondering whether one has done right in trying to come down so far east, and having regard to coal, what ought to be done under the circumstances.

In the first watch came many alterations of opinion; time and again it looks as though we ought to stop when