Owing to the stove refusing to burn, the wardroom was cold, and we gathered round the dinner-table feeling pretty miserable. Green had prepared a big dish of hot potatoes in their jackets. I placed the biggest I could find under my jersey and it warmed me up finely. I kept moving it round so as to warm as much of my body as possible, and finally ate it, warming also my inside. One has to be economical these hard times. As the light failed the ice began to thicken, and as the swell was causing the floes to grind heavily together I lay to till daybreak. All night long we heard the moaning and complaining of the grinding floes, a number of which, with long underwater tongues, drifted down upon us, causing the ship to take some very bad bumps. To economize our now much-depleted coal I had given Kerr instructions to let the steam fall off, and we had to be constantly sheeting home the topsail and pointing the yards to get her to fall away from our unpleasant neighbours, contact with which might prove dangerous. The floes looked very weird in the darkness as they surged up on the swell and fell back again into the trough of the sea, the water sucking and gurgling amongst the cracks and chasms and making the most uncanny noises. At daybreak on the 24th steam was raised and we continued south, pushing through pancake ice which contained many heavy floes. Seen from aloft the pancake formation makes a most beautiful mosaic. Much of our finest art is surpassed by Nature, and in these southern regions there is much to attract those who have an artistic temperament.