Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/135

 o’clock a field of ice close under our lee. Wore ship instantly and just in time to avoid coming into contact  with it. After lasting nearly thirty hours the gale abated, and then we made sail.

February 2. Found ourselves sixty miles to the westward of Piner’s Bay.

February 3, 4, and 5. Foggy, chilly, and uncomfortable. Our sick list increasing rapidly.

February 6. The same thick weather. The sailors are much afflicted, here in these cold regions, with salt-water boils.

February 7. Weather much pleasanter. Sailed all day along a perpendicular, icy barrier, one hundred and  fifty to two hundred feet high, with high land behind it.

February 8. Weather the same as yesterday. The night very unpleasant.

February 9. Another fair and pleasant day. At midnight we had a splendid display of the aurora australis. It extended around the northern horizon and was very brilliant, glowing with all the colors of the rainbow. This continued about half an hour.

February 10. Weather fair, with glorious sunshine. This gave us a chance to air the ship and dry our wet clothes.

February 11. Fair and pleasant.

February 12. Sailed through a great deal of floe ice. Came up with a solid barrier which prevented our further progress. Land could be seen twenty or thirty miles distant. The air was very clear and the water smooth. We landed on an iceberg; and in a valley at the foot of a knoll, by cutting through a thin skim of ice,