Page:Scott's Last Expedition, Volume 2.djvu/547

pack had to be the signal to heave to till daylight, which often meant till 6 a.m., as the morning twilight was found very bad for picking a way through the pack.

The sea was now frozen over in the sort of large lakes or pools of still, open water that were found in this sea, and though this ice was never more than a few inches thick, it made a considerable difference to our speed.

On March 2, while working through fairly loose pack, the wind that had been light westerly turned to E.N.E., March 2, 1911, 67° 35′ S., 160° 16′ E. with the immediate effect of closing the floes in, and the ship was completely held up. During that night the wind shifted again to the southward and so topsails and foresail were set. It was merely waste of coal to try and steam through this ice, but the steady pressure of the ship under sail let her gradually, though very slowly, work through; often held up by a floe for an hour or more, in the end she would manage to turn it and run ahead half a ship's length or so. This meant that in her wake was generally to be found a small pool of water clear of ice.

A number of whales (lesser rorquals) were in this pack, and they soon discovered this clear water and took advantage of it to come and blow; as there was not room for them to come up in the ordinary way, they had to thrust their heads up vertically and blow in a sort of standing-on-their-tails position. Several times one rested its head on a floe, not twenty feet from the ship, with its nostrils just on the water-line; raising itself a few inches, it would blow and then subside again for a few minutes to its original