Page:The Worst Journey in the World volume 2.djvu/347

570 ice. At length we were some thirty miles north of Cape Bird making roughly towards Franklin Island. That night we made good progress in fairly open water, and we passed Franklin Island during the day. But the outlook was so bad in the evening (January 24) that we stopped and banked fires. "We lay just where we stopped until at 5 on January 25, when the ice eased up sufficiently for us to get along, and we started to make the same slow progress—slow ahead, stop (to the engine-room)—bump and grind for a bit—then slow astern, stop—slow ahead again, and so on, until at 7, after one real big bump which brought the dinner some inches off the table, Cheetham brought us out into open water."

Mount Nansen rose sheer and massive ahead of us with a table top, and at 3 on January 26 we were passing the dark brown granite headland of the northern foothills. We were soon made fast to a stretch of some 500 yards of thick sea-ice, upon which the wind had not left a particle of snow, and before us the foothills formed that opening which Campbell had well named Hell's Gate.

I wish I had seen that igloo: with its black and blubber and beastliness. Those who saw it came back with faces of amazement and admiration. We left a depôt at the head of the bay, marked with a bamboo and a flag, and then we turned homewards, counting the weeks, and days, and then the hours. In the early hours of January 27 we left the pack. On January 29 we were off Cape Adare, "head sea, and wind, and fog, very ticklish work groping along hardly seeing the ship's length. Then it lifts and there is a fair horizon. Everybody pretty sea-sick, including most of the seamen from Cape Evans. All of us feeling rotten." Very thick that night, and difficult going. At mid-day (lat. 69° 50′ S.) a partial clearance showed a berg right ahead. By night it was blowing a full gale, and it was not too easy to keep in our bunks. Our object was now to make east in order to allow for the westerlies later on. We passed a very large number of bergs, varied every now and then by growlers. On February 1, latitude 64° 15′ S. and