Worsley now started to go on the bridge and keep a watch, though of course he was compelled to take things very quietly, at any rate in so far as his movements were concerned. Quiet in other respects his watch certainly was not, for members of it carried on long-continued, and often argumentative, dialogues, usually at the top of their voices. This was especially the case with one of them, and many times I have leapt on deck with a sense of impending danger, wakened by shouting that proved to be the most trivial of remarks.
The weather was fair during the day, with a moderate southerly wind, no sunshine, and occasional snow squalls. At 7.30 p.m. we had made thirty-five miles to the northward. This was all to the bad and a bit disappointing. However, we hoped for a change before long. Seals appeared on the floe in quantity during the day and also a number of emperor penguins standing, as usual, stately and alone.
Killers were about and a large number of birds—Antarctic petrels, Wilson’s petrels, and a few pretty pure white snow petrels.
During the night (February 9th) our luck changed and we were able to make southerly again. Throughout the morning we met loose pack and a number of leads of open water, so that by 12.0 noon we were only eleven miles north of the previous position. We had the same conditions till 4.0 p.m., when we met with dense pack. From the crow’s nest, however, I saw “water sky” to the southward and determined to push on to the utmost ability of the ship. We progressed very slowly and only with the greatest difficulty. It took much hard steaming and consumption of valuable coal for the Quest to make any impression on this heavy floe.
The evening of this day was fine, beautiful and still, the sort that takes hold of one and sends mind and memory wandering far afield. There was not a ripple on the small pools between the floes, in which were numbers of small euphausiæ swimming about. Four or five seals came about the ship and accompanied us, rubbing themselves against the sides and popping their heads out to regard us with large eyes of a beautiful soft brown colour. They were evidently in a playful mood. On the ice seals are sluggish and very helpless, but in the water they are wonderful, and their swimming movements are most graceful as they dart about twisting and turning and occasionally rising to look round.
Killers were about earlier in the day, but no penguins. An ugly-looking sea-leopard put his head out of the water and gazed malignantly over the edge of the floe. In a pool at some distance from the ship I caught sight of a black mass rising and falling, and through my binoculars witnessed what appeared to be a fight between two sea-leopards. One of them leapt continually from the water to a height of some six feet, and the water was churned to a mass of foam. Suddenly it all ceased. What tragedy was enacted on that perfect evening? On such a night, amidst the pure whiteness of one’s surroundings, it was hard to realize that in the struggle for existence the unrelenting laws of Nature must hold.
We passed close alongside a floe with a seal on it. I shot it; Macklin jumped off on to the floe and made fast a line, scarcely taking time to stop we hauled it aboard and proceeded on our way. Looking back I saw the surface of the snow smirched with its blood. So Man passed leaving a red stain; and yet but a few moments before I had been moralizing on “Nature red in tooth and claw.”
Very few birds were about, with the exception of snow petrels, a few Antarctic petrels and a single young Dominican gull.
