among which some such remarks as: "Give the jam a wind, Marie"; "After you with the coffee"; "Push along the butter" are frequent. There are few cobwebs that have not been blown away by breakfast-time.
Rennick is busy breakfasting preparatory to relieving Campbell on the bridge. Meanwhile, the hourly and four-hourly ship's log is being made up--force of the wind, state of the sea, height of the barometer, and all the details which a log has to carry--including a reading of the distance run as shown by the patent log line--(many is the time I have forgotten to take it just at the hour and have put down what I thought it ought to be, and not what it was).
The morning watch is finished.
Suddenly there is a yell from somewhere amidships--"STEADY"--a stranger might have thought there was something wrong, but it is a familiar sound, answered by a "STEADY IT IS, Sir," from the man at the wheel, and an anything but respectful, "One--two--three--STEADY," from everybody having breakfast. It is Pennell who has caused this uproar. And the origin is as
follows:
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Pennell is the navigator, and the standard compass, owing to its remoteness from iron in this position, is placed on the top of the
icehouse. The steersman, however, steers by a binnacle compass placed aft in front of his wheel. But these two compasses for various reasons do not read alike at a given moment, while the standard is the truer of the two.
At intervals, then, Pennell or the officer of the watch orders the
steersman to "Stand by for a steady," and goes up to the standard
compass, and watches the needle. Suppose the course laid down is S. 40 E. A liner would steer almost true to this course unless there was a big
wind or sea. But not so the old Terra Nova. Even with a good steersman the needle swings a good many degrees either side of the S. 40 E. But as it steadies momentarily on the exact course Pennell shouts his "Steady," the steersman reads just where the needle is pointing on the compass card before him, say S. 47 E., and knows that this is the course which is to be steered by the binnacle compass.
Pennell's yells were so frequent and ear-piercing that he became famous for them, and many times in working on the ropes in rough seas and big winds, we have been cheered by this unmusical noise over our heads.
We left Simon's Bay on Friday, September 2, 'to make our Easting down' from the Cape of Good Hope to New Zealand, that famous passage in the Roaring Forties which can give so much discomfort or worse to sailing ships on their way.
South Africa had been hospitable. The Admiral Commanding the Station, the
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Naval Dockyard, and H.M.S. Mutine and H.M.S. Pandora, had been more than kind. They had done many repairs and fittings for us and had sent fatigue parties to do it, thus releasing men for a certain amount of freedom on
shore, which was appreciated after some nine weeks at sea. I can remember
my first long bath now.
Scott, who was up country when we arrived, joined the ship here, and Wilson travelled ahead of us to Melbourne to carry out some expedition work, chiefly dealing with the Australian members who were to join us in New Zealand.
One or two of us went out to Wynberg, which Oates knew well, having been invalided there in the South African War with a broken leg, the result of
a fight against big odds when, his whole party wounded, he refused to
surrender. He told me later how he had thought he would bleed to death, and the man who lay next to him was convinced he had a bullet in the middle of his brain--he could feel it wobbling about there! Just now his recollections only went so far as to tell of a badly wounded Boer who lay in the next bed to him when he was convalescent, and how the Boer insisted on getting up to open the door for him every time he left the ward, much to his own discomfort.
Otherwise the recollections which survive of South Africa are an
excellent speech made on the expedition by John Xavier Merriman, and the remark of a seaman who came out to dinner concerning one John, the waiter, that "he moved about as quick as a piece of sticking-plaster!"
Leaving Simon's Town at daybreak we did magnetic work all day, sailing out from False Bay with a biggish swell in the evening. We ran southerly
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in good weather until Sunday morning, when the swell was logged at 8 and the glass was falling fast. By the middle watch it was blowing a full
gale and for some thirty hours we ran under reefed foresail, lower topsails and occasionally reefed upper topsails, and many of us were sick.
Then after two days of comparative calm we had a most extraordinary gale from the east, a thing almost unheard of in these latitudes (38Adeg S. to
39Adeg S.). All that we could do was to put the engines at dead slow and sail northerly as close to the wind as possible. Friday night, September
9, it blew force 10 in the night, and the morning watch was very lively with the lee rail under water.
Directly after breakfast on Saturday, September 10, we wore ship, and directly afterwards the gale broke and it was raining, with little wind, during the day.
The morning watch had a merry time on Tuesday, September 13, when a fresh gale struck them while they were squaring yards. So unexpected was it
that the main yards were squared and the fore were still round, but it did not last long and was followed by two splendid days--fine weather with sun, a good fair wind and the swell astern.
[Illustration: THE ROARING FORTIES--E. A. Wilson, del.]
The big swell which so often prevails in these latitudes is a most inspiring sight, and must be seen from a comparatively small ship like the Terra Nova for its magnitude to be truly appreciated. As the ship rose on the crest of one great hill of water the next big ridge was
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nearly a mile away, with a sloping valley between. At times these seas are rounded in giant slopes as smooth as glass; at others they curl over, leaving a milk-white foam, and their slopes are marbled with a beautiful spumy tracery. Very wonderful are these mottled waves: with a following sea, at one moment it seems impossible that the great mountain which is overtaking the ship will not overwhelm her, at another it appears inevitable that the ship will fall into the space over which she seems to
be suspended and crash into the gulf which lies below.
But the seas are so long that they are neither dangerous nor uncomfortable--though the Terra Nova rolled to an extraordinary extent, quite constantly over 50Adeg each way, and sometimes 55Adeg.
The cooks, however, had a bad time trying to cook for some fifty hands in the little galley on the open deck. Poor Archer's efforts to make bread sometimes ended in the scuppers, and the occasional jangle of the ship's bell gave rise to the saying that "a moderate roll rings the bell, and a
big roll brings out the cook."
Noon on Sunday, September 18, found us in latitude 39Adeg 20A S. and longitude 66Adeg 9A E., after a very good run, for the Terra Nova, of 200 miles in the last twenty-four hours. This made us about two days' run from St. Paul, an uninhabited island formed by the remains of an old volcano, the crater of which, surrounded as it were by a horse-shoe of
land, forms an almost landlocked harbour. It was hoped to make a landing
here for scientific work, but it is a difficult harbour to make. We ran
another two hundred miles on Monday, and on Tuesday all preparations were made for the landing, with suitable equipment, and we were not a little
excited at the opportunity.
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At 4.30 A.M. the next morning all hands were turned out to take in sail preparatory to rounding St. Paul which was just visible. The weather was squally, but not bad. By 5 A.M., however, it was blowing a moderate gale, and by the time we had taken in all sail