never forget his strong, brown face illuminated by a hanging lamp as he stood amongst those suffering little beasts.  He was a fine, powerful man, and on occasions he seemed to be actually lifting the poor little ponies to their feet as the ship lurched heavily to leeward and a great sea would wash the legs of his charges from under them.  One felt somehow, glancing into the ponies’ stalls, which Captain Scott and I frequently visited together, that Oates’s very strength itself inspired his animals with confidence.  He himself appeared quite unconscious of any personal suffering, although his hands and feet must have been absolutely numbed by the cold and wet.

In the middle watch Williams, the Chief Engineer, reported that his pumps were choked and that as fast as he cleared them they choked again, the water coming into the ship so fast that the stoke-hold plates were submerged and water gaining fast.  I ordered the watch to man the hand-pump, but that was soon choked too.  Things now looked really serious, since it was impossible to get to the pump-well while terrific seas were washing over the ship and the afterhatch could not be opened.  Consequently we started to bail the water out with buckets and also rigged the small fire-engine and pumped with this as well.

The water in the engine room gradually gained until it entered the ashpit of the centre furnace and commenced to put the fires out.  Both Williams and Lashly were up to their necks in water, clearing and re-clearing the engine room pump suctions, but eventually the water beat them and I allowed Williams to let fires out in the boiler.  It could not be otherwise.  We stopped engines, and with our cases of petrol being lifted out of their lashings by the huge waves, with the ponies falling about and the dogs choking and wallowing in the water and mess, their chains entangling them and tripping up those who tried to clear them, the situation looked as black and disheartening as it well could be.

When dawn broke the greater part of the lee bulwarks had been torn away and our decks laid open to the sea, which washed in and out as it would have over a rock.  The poor ship laboured dreadfully, and after consultation with Captain Scott we commenced to cut a hole in the engine room bulkhead to get at the hand pump-well.

Meanwhile I told the afterguard off into watches, and, relieving every two hours, they set to work, formed a chain at the engine room ladder way and bailed the ship out with buckets.  In this way they must have discharged between 2000 and 3000 gallons of water.  The watch manned the hand pump, which, although choked, discharged a small stream, and for twenty-four hours this game was kept up, Scott himself working with the best of them and staying with the toughest.

It was a sight that one could never forget:  everybody saturated, some waist-deep on the floor of the engine room, oil and coal dust mixing with the water and making every one filthy, some men clinging to the iron ladder way and passing full buckets up long after their muscles had ceased to work naturally, their grit and spirit keeping them going.  I did admire the weaker people, especially those who were unhardened by the months of physical training of the voyage out from England.