till the weather cleared. It was during this short run that the
captain, with semaphore hard-a-port, shouted to the scientist at the
wheel: "Why in Paradise don't you port!" The answer came in indignant
tones: "I am blowing my nose."

The 'Endurance' made some progress on the following day. Long leads
of open water ran towards the south-west, and the ship smashed at full
speed through occasional areas of young ice till brought up with a
heavy thud against a section of older floe. Worsley was out on the jib-
boom end for a few minutes while Wild was conning the ship, and he came
back with a glowing account of a novel sensation. The boom was
swinging high and low and from side to side, while the massive bows of
the ship smashed through the ice, splitting it across, piling it mass
on mass and then shouldering it aside. The air temperature was 37°
Fahr., pleasantly warm, and the water temperature 29° Fahr. We
continued to advance through fine long leads till 4 a.m. on December
17, when the ice became difficult again. Very large floes of six-
months-old ice lay close together. Some of these floes presented a
square mile of unbroken surface, and among them were patches of thin
ice and several floes of heavy old ice. Many bergs were in sight, and
the course became devious. The ship was blocked at one point by a
wedge-shaped piece of floe, but we put the ice-anchor through it, towed
it astern, and proceeded through the gap. Steering under these
conditions required muscle as well as nerve. There was a clatter aft
during the afternoon, and Hussey, who was at the wheel, explained that
"The wheel spun round and threw me over the top of it!" The noon
position was lat. 62° 13´ S., long. 18° 53´ W., and the run for the
preceding twenty-four hours had been 32 miles in a south-westerly
direction. We saw three blue whales during the day and one emperor
penguin, a 58-lb. bird, which was added to the larder.