[81] Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. pp. 73-75.
[82] Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. p. 62.
[83] Scott's Last Expedition, vol. i. pp. 68, 69.
CHAPTER IV
Land
Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wilde, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; all else deep snow and ice....
Milton, Paradise Lost, II.
"They say it's going to blow like hell. Go and look at the glass." Thus Titus Oates quietly to me a few hours before we left the pack.
I went and looked at the barograph and it made me feel sea-sick. Within a few hours I was sick, very sick; but we newcomers to the Antarctic had yet to learn that we knew nothing about its barometer. Nothing very terrible happened after all. When I got up to the bridge for the morning watch we were in open water and it was blowing fresh. It freshened all day, and by the evening it was blowing a southerly with a short choppy North Sea swell, and very warm. By 4 a.m. the next morning there was a big sea running and the dogs and ponies were having a bad time. Rennick had the morning watch these days, and I was his humble midshipman.