concern was to protect the propeller and rudder.  If a collision seemed to be inevitable the officer in charge would order “slow” or “half speed” with the engines, and put the helm over so as to strike floe a glancing blow.  Then the helm would be put over towards the ice with the object of throwing the propeller clear of it, and the ship would forge ahead again.  Worsley, Wild, and I, with three officers, kept three watches while we were working through the pack, so that we had two officers on deck all the time.  The carpenter had rigged a six-foot wooden semaphore on the bridge to enable the navigating officer to give the seamen or scientists at the wheel the direction and the exact amount of helm required.  This device saved time, as well as the effort of shouting.  We were pushing through this loose pack all day, and the view from the crow’s-nest gave no promise of improved conditions ahead.  A Weddell seal and a crab-eater seal were noticed on the floes, but we did not pause to secure fresh meat.  It was important that we should make progress towards our goal as rapidly as possible, and there was reason to fear that we should have plenty of time to spare later on if the ice conditions continued to increase in severity.

On the morning of December 12 we were working through loose pack which later became thick in places.  The sky was overcast and light snow was falling.  I had all square sail set at 7 a.m. in order to take advantage of the northerly breeze, but it had to come in again five hours later when the wind hauled round to the west.  The noon position was lat. 60° 26´ S., long. 17° 58´ W., and the run for the twenty-four hours had been only 33 miles.  The ice was still badly congested, and we were pushing through narrow leads and occasional openings with the floes often close abeam on either side.  Antarctic, snow and stormy petrels, fulmars, white-rumped terns, and adelies were around us.  The quaint little penguins found the ship a cause of much apparent excitement and provided a lot of amusement aboard.  One of the standing jokes was that all the adelies on the floe seemed to know Clark, and when he was at the wheel rushed along as fast as their legs could carry them, yelling out “Clark!  Clark!” and apparently very indignant and perturbed that he never waited for them or even answered them.

We found several good leads to the south in the evening, and continued to work southward throughout the night and the following day.  The pack extended in all directions as far as the eye could reach.  The noon observation showed the run for the twenty-four hours to be 54 miles, a satisfactory result under the conditions.  Wild shot a young Ross seal on the floe, and we manoeuvred the ship alongside.  Hudson jumped down, bent a line on to the seal, and the pair of them were hauled up.  The seal was 4 ft. 9 in. long and weighed about ninety pounds.  He was a young male and proved very good eating, but when dressed and minus the blubber made little more than a square meal for our twenty-eight men, with a few scraps for our breakfast and tea.  The stomach contained only amphipods about an inch long, allied to those found in the whales at Grytviken.