Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/65

 with our eye from the Porpoise, as in the illustration. This measurement gave as a result thirty-two feet. Spray can dash up over a hundred feet, but the waves seldom  run over thirty odd feet, and are never "mountains  high."

On the 1st of March we encountered our first icebergs. They were much worn by the action of the sea and frequent storms. The albatross, gray pigeon, and petrel hovered around, and could be seen at times resting, as it were, on the waves. At noon we made Ridley’s Islands, and in the dog-watch sighted Cape Melville. Bearing south by east, the north foreland of King George’s Island could be seen. After cruising for several weeks in these cold, bleak, icy regions, and visiting Aspland’s, Burgman’s, Elephant, Cornwallis’s, and O’Brien’s Islands, the Seal Rocks, the South Shetlands,  and Palmer’s Land, we found ourselves in latitude 70°  south, the highest ever made up to that time, and south  of the ne plus ultra of Captain Cook. On the 7th William Stuart, captain of the maintop on board the Peacock, fell from aloft overboard. He was seen to float feet upward. A bow-line was thrown over his exploring boots and he was drawn on board; but it was a narrow escape,  for a boat could not have lived in such a sea. Poor William died soon afterward and his body was committed to a watery grave.

Finding no passage through the icy barrier to the pole, and being nearly hemmed in by those frozen bulwarks which extended east and west as far as the eye  could see, it was decided, as the season was growing late,  to turn the ship’s head to the north. Although the