When each two-hour shift was relieved, the party, coughing and spluttering, would make their way into the ward-room where Hooper and Neale, the stewards, mere boys, supplied them with steaming cocoa.  How on earth the cooks kept the galley fires going I could never understand:  they not only did this, but fed us all at frequent intervals.

By 10 p.m. on the 2nd December the hole in the engine room bulkhead was cut completely.  I climbed through it, followed by Bowers, the carpenter, and Teddy Nelson, and when we got into the hold there was just enough room to wriggle along to the pump-well over the coal.  We tore down a couple of planks to get access to the shaft and then I went down to the bottom to find out how matters stood.  Bowers came next with an electric torch, which he shone downwards whilst I got into the water, hanging on to the bottom rungs of the ladder leading to the bilge.  Sitting on the keel the water came up to my neck and, except for my head, I was under water till after midnight passing up coal balls, the cause of all the trouble.  Though, of course, we had washed out the bilges in New Zealand, the constant stream of water which leaked in from the topsides had carried much coal-dust into them.  This, mixed with the lubricating oil washed down from the engines, had cemented into buns and balls which found their way down and choked both hand and engine pump suctions.  I sent up twenty bucketfuls of this filthy stuff, which meant frequently going head under the unspeakably dirty water, but having cleared the lower ends of the suction pipe the watch manning the hand pump got the water down six inches, and it was obvious by 4 o’clock in the morning that the pump was gaining.  We therefore knocked the afterguard off bailing, and the seamen worked steadily at the pump until 9 a.m. and got the water right down to nine inches, so we were able to light fires again and once more raise steam.  We made a serviceable wire grating to put round the hand pump suction to keep the bigger stuff from choking the pipes in future.  It was days before some of us could get our hair clean from that filthy coal-oil mixture.

One more pony died during the gale, but when the weather moderated early on the 3rd, the remaining seventeen animals bucked up and, when not eating their food, nonchalantly gnawed great gaps in the stout planks forming the head parts of their stalls.  At last the sun came out and helped to dry the dogs.  Campbell and his seamen cleared up the decks and re-secured the top hamper in the forenoon, we reset sail, and after tea Scott, Oates, Atkinson, and a few more of us hoisted the two dead ponies out of the forecastle, through the skylight, and over the side.  It was a dirty job, because the square of the hatch was so small that a powerful purchase had to be used which stretched out the ponies like dead rabbits.

We only made good twenty-three miles that day and, although the gale had abated, it left us a legacy in the shape of a heavy uncomfortable swell.  Most of the bunks were in a sad state, the ship having worked so badly that the upper deck seams opened everywhere and water had literally poured into them.