We left Simon’s Bay on Friday, September 2, ‘to make our Easting down’ from the Cape of Good Hope to New Zealand, that famous passage in the Roaring Forties which can give so much discomfort or worse to sailing ships on their way.

South Africa had been hospitable.  The Admiral Commanding the Station, the Naval Dockyard, and H.M.S.  Mutine and H.M.S.  Pandora, had been more than kind.  They had done many repairs and fittings for us and had sent fatigue parties to do it, thus releasing men for a certain amount of freedom on shore, which was appreciated after some nine weeks at sea.  I can remember my first long bath now.

Scott, who was up country when we arrived, joined the ship here, and Wilson travelled ahead of us to Melbourne to carry out some expedition work, chiefly dealing with the Australian members who were to join us in New Zealand.

One or two of us went out to Wynberg, which Oates knew well, having been invalided there in the South African War with a broken leg, the result of a fight against big odds when, his whole party wounded, he refused to surrender.  He told me later how he had thought he would bleed to death, and the man who lay next to him was convinced he had a bullet in the middle of his brain—­he could feel it wobbling about there!  Just now his recollections only went so far as to tell of a badly wounded Boer who lay in the next bed to him when he was convalescent, and how the Boer insisted on getting up to open the door for him every time he left the ward, much to his own discomfort.

Otherwise the recollections which survive of South Africa are an excellent speech made on the expedition by John Xavier Merriman, and the remark of a seaman who came out to dinner concerning one John, the waiter, that “he moved about as quick as a piece of sticking-plaster!”

Leaving Simon’s Town at daybreak we did magnetic work all day, sailing out from False Bay with a biggish swell in the evening.  We ran southerly in good weather until Sunday morning, when the swell was logged at 8 and the glass was falling fast.  By the middle watch it was blowing a full gale and for some thirty hours we ran under reefed foresail, lower topsails and occasionally reefed upper topsails, and many of us were sick.

Then after two days of comparative calm we had a most extraordinary gale from the east, a thing almost unheard of in these latitudes (38 deg.  S. to 39 deg.  S.).  All that we could do was to put the engines at dead slow and sail northerly as close to the wind as possible.  Friday night, September 9, it blew force 10 in the night, and the morning watch was very lively with the lee rail under water.

Directly after breakfast on Saturday, September 10, we wore ship, and directly afterwards the gale broke and it was raining, with little wind, during the day.

The morning watch had a merry time on Tuesday, September 13, when a fresh gale struck them while they were squaring yards.  So unexpected was it that the main yards were squared and the fore were still round, but it did not last long and was followed by two splendid days—­fine weather with sun, a good fair wind and the swell astern.