Looking at the fellows’ faces in the ward-room at dinner that night there was no trace of anxiety, worry, or fatigue to be seen.  We drank to sweet-hearts and wives, it being Saturday evening, and those who had no watch were glad to turn in early.

More fresh wind next day but finer weather to follow.  Gran declared he saw an iceberg on the 5th December, but it turned out to be a whale spouting.  Our runs were nothing to boast of, 150 miles being well above the average, but the lengthening days told us that we were rapidly changing our latitude and approaching the ice.

CHAPTER V

ANTARCTICA—­THROUGH THE PACK ICE TO LAND

We sighted our first iceberg in latitude 62 degrees on the evening of Wednesday, December 7.  Cheetham’s squeaky hail came down from aloft and I went up to the crow’s-nest to look at it, and from this time on we passed all kinds of icebergs, from the huge tabular variety to the little weathered water-worn bergs.  Some we steamed quite close to and they seemed for all the world like great masses of sugar floating in the sea.

From latitudes 60 to 63 degrees we saw a fair number of birds:  southern fulmars, whale birds, molly-mawks, sooty albatrosses, and occasionally Cape-pigeons still.  Then the brown-backed petrels began to appear, sure precursors of the pack ice—­it was in sight right enough the day after the brown-backs were seen.  By breakfast time on December 9, when nearly in latitude 65 degrees, we were steaming through thin streams of broken pack with floes from six to twelve feet across.  A few penguins and seals were seen, and by 10 a.m. no less than twenty-seven icebergs in sight.  The newcomers to these regions were clustered in little groups on the forecastle and poop sketching and painting, hanging over the bows and gleefully watching this lighter stuff being brushed aside by our strong stem.

We were passing through pack all day, but the ice hereabouts was not close enough nor heavy enough to stop us appreciably.  The ship was usually conned by Pennell and myself from the crow’s-nest, and I took the ship very near one berg for Ponting to cinematograph it.  We now began to see snow petrels with black beaks and pure white bodies, rather resembling doves.  Also we saw great numbers of brown-backed petrels the first day in the pack, whole flights of them resting on the icebergs.  The sun was just below the horizon at midnight and we had a most glorious sunset, which was first a blazing copper changing to salmon pink and then purple.  The pools of water between the floes caught the reflection, the sea was perfectly still and every berg and ice-floe caught something of the delicate colour.  Wilson, of course, was up and about till long after midnight sketching and painting.  The Antarctic pack ice lends itself to water-colour work far better than to oils.