meagre—­jelly-fish and some fish larvae.  Exercise dogs in sledge teams.  The young dogs, under Crean’s care, pull as well, though not so strongly, as the best team in the pack.  Hercules for the last fortnight or more has constituted himself leader of the orchestra.  Two or three times in the twenty-four hours he starts a howl—­a deep, melodious howl—­and in about thirty seconds he has the whole pack in full song, the great deep, booming, harmonious song of the half-wolf pack.”

By the middle of September we were running short of fresh meat for the dogs.  The seals and penguins seemed to have abandoned our neighbourhood altogether.  Nearly five months had passed since we killed a seal, and penguins had been seen seldom.  Clark, who was using his trawl as often as possible, reported that there was a marked absence of plankton in the sea, and we assumed that the seals and the penguins had gone in search of their accustomed food.  The men got an emperor on the 23rd.  The dogs, which were having their sledging exercise, became wildly excited when the penguin, which had risen in a crack, was driven ashore, and the best efforts of the drivers failed to save it alive.  On the following day Wild, Hurley, Macklin, and McIlroy took their teams to the Stained Berg, about seven miles west of the ship, and on their way back got a female crab-eater, which they killed, skinned, and left to be picked up later.  They ascended to the top of the berg, which lay in about lat. 69° 30´ S., long. 51° W., and from an elevation of 110 ft. could see no land.  Samples of the discoloured ice from the berg proved to contain dust with black gritty particles or sand-grains.  Another seal, a bull Weddell, was secured on the 26th.  The return of seal-life was opportune, since we had nearly finished the winter supply of dog-biscuit and wished to be able to feed the dogs on meat.  The seals meant a supply of blubber, moreover, to supplement our small remaining stock of coal when the time came to get up steam again.  We initiated a daylight-saving system on this day by putting forward the clock one hour.  “This is really pandering to the base but universal passion that men, and especially seafarers, have for getting up late, otherwise we would be honest and make our routine earlier instead of flogging the clock.”

During the concluding days of September the roar of the pressure grew louder, and I could see that the area of disturbance was rapidly approaching the ship.  Stupendous forces were at work and the fields of firm ice around the ‘Endurance’ were being diminished steadily.  September 30 was a bad day.  It began well, for we got two penguins and five seals during the morning.  Three other seals were seen.  But at 3 p.m. cracks that had opened during the night alongside the ship commenced to work in a lateral direction.  The ship sustained terrific pressure on the port side forward, the heaviest shocks being under the forerigging.  It was the worst squeeze