Aerial navigation is more complicated than navigation on the surface of the sea, but there is no reason why when we know more about the air and its peculiarities it should not be made just as accurate.
5.00 P. M.—Harris unwisely shuts his hand on door of wireless cabin—painful but not serious. Flow of language not audible to me, as the forward engine happened to be running.
6 to 7 P. M.—We are gradually getting farther and farther into the shallow depression which was reported yesterday coming up from the South Atlantic. For the last four hours the sea has been rising and now the wind is south-southeast, forty-five miles an hour. Visibility only a half-mile. Very rough sea and torrents of rain. In spite of this the ship is remarkably steady.
Climbs Through Depression
At 8 P. M. Scott decides to climb right through it, and we evidently came out over the top of it at 3,400 feet.
8.30 P. M.—We have now passed the centre of the depression, exactly as Harris foretold. The rain has ceased and we are travelling quite smoothly again.
To the west the clouds have lifted and we see some extraordinarily interesting sky—black, angry clouds giving place to clouds of a gray-mouse color, then a bright salmon-pink clear sky, changing lower down the horizon to darker clouds with a rich golden lining as the sun sinks below the surface. The sea is not visible, and is covered by a fluffy gray feather-bed of clouds, slightly undulating and extending as far as the eye can reach. The moon is just breaking through the black clouds immediately above it.
On the east we see the black, ominous depression from which we have just emerged, while away more to the south the cloud-bed over which we are passing seems to end suddenly and merge into the horizon.
Valuable Meteorological Data
We are getting some valuable meteorological data on this flight without a doubt, and each fresh phenomenon as it appears is instantly explained by the ever-alert Harris, who has a profound knowledge of his subject.