only as full of bilge water
as she always is and the position was practically solved.

There was one thrilling moment in the midst of the worst hour on Friday
when we were realising that the fires must be drawn, and when every
pump had failed to act, and when the bulwarks began to go to pieces
and the petrol cases were all afloat and going overboard, and the word
was suddenly passed in a shout from the hands at work in the waist of
the ship trying to save petrol cases that smoke was coming up through
the seams in the after hold. As this was full of coal and patent fuel
and was next the engine-room, and as it had not been opened for the
airing, it required to get rid of gas on account of the flood of water
on deck making it impossible to open the hatchways; the possibility
of a fire there was patent to everyone and it could not possibly have
been dealt with in any way short of opening the hatches and flooding
the ship, when she must have floundered. It was therefore a thrilling
moment or two until it was discovered that the smoke was really steam,
arising from the bilge at the bottom having risen to the heated coal.

_Note_ 4, _p_. 15.--_December_ 26. We watched two or three immense blue
whales at fairly short distance; this is _Balaenoptera Sibbaldi_. One
sees first a small dark hump appear and then immediately a jet of grey
fog squirted upwards fifteen to eighteen feet, gradually spreading as
it rises vertically into the frosty air. I have been nearly in these
blows once or twice and had the moisture in my face with a sickening
smell of shrimpy oil. Then the bump elongates and up rolls an immense
blue-grey or blackish grey round back with a faint ridge along the
top, on which presently appears a small hook-like dorsal fin, and
then the whole sinks and disappears. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

_Note_ 5, _p_. 21.--_December_ 18. Watered ship at a tumbled floe. Sea
ice when pressed up into large hummocks gradually loses all its
salt. Even when sea water freezes it squeezes out the great bulk of
its salt as a solid, but the sea water gets into it by soaking again,
and yet when held out of the water, as it is in a hummock, the salt
all drains out and the melted ice is blue and quite good for drinking,
engines, &c. [Dr. Wilson's Journal.]

_Note_ 6, _p_. 32.--It may be added that in contradistinction to
the nicknames of Skipper conferred upon Evans, and Mate on Campbell,
Scott himself was known among the afterguard as The Owne