Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 1.djvu/136

Rh would have been, if we had been above water at all. You cannot imagine how utterly helpless we felt in such a sea with a tiny ship,—the great expedition with all its hopes thrown aside for its life. God had shown us the weakness of man's hand and it was enough for the best of us,—the people who had been made such a lot of lately—the whole scene was one of pathos really. However, at 11 Evans and I with the carpenter were able to crawl through a tiny hole in the bulkhead, burrow over the coal to the pump-well cofferdam, where, another hole having been easily made in the wood, we got down below with Davy lamps and set to work. The water was so deep that you had to continually dive to get your hand on to the suction. After 2 hours or so it was cleared for the time being and the pumps worked merrily. I went in again at 4.30 and had another lap at clearing it. Not till the afternoon of the following day, though, did we see the last of the water and the last of the great gale. During the time the pumps were working, we continued the baling till the water got below the furnaces. As soon as we could light up, we did, and got the other pumps under weigh, and, once the ship was empty, clearing away the suction was a simple matter. I was pleased to find that after all I had only lost about 100 gallons of the petrol and bad as things had been they might have been worse

"You will ask where all the water came from seeing our forward leak had been stopped. Thank God we did not have that to cope with as well. The water came chiefly through the deck where the tremendous strain,—not only of the deck load, but of the smashing seas,—was beyond conception. She was caught at a tremendous disadvantage and we were dependent for our lives on each plank standing its own strain. Had one gone we would all have gone, and the great anxiety was not so much the existing water as what was going to open up if the storm continued. We might have dumped the deck cargo, a difficult job at best, but were too busy baling to do anything else

"That Captain Scott's account will be moderate you may be sure. Still, take my word for it, he is one of the