At about noon on the 21st, the horizon cleared a little, giving us an opportunity to pass safely from the rocks and bergs around us. Sail Rock was visible on our port, but nothing else except the dim outline of Deception Island and the rocks eastward. Sail Rock is remarkable from a distance; it has the appearance of a ship under sail; but at close range it is more like a house with a gable-roof. It is a solid rock about four hundred feet high, a thousand feet long, and five hundred feet wide. The sides for three or four hundred feet are perpendicular, offering no beach, and no ledge as a resting-place for birds, except at the peak. As we had Sail Rock over our quarter, the weather changed; the bright gray of the waters became black, the sky grew lead-coloured, and penguins jumped out of the water and then rushed through it landward with electric swiftness, as if to warn us of a coming storm. The storm, however, did not come until the morning of the 22d. [Illustration: Cormorants at Home.] [Illustration: Arctowski gathering Geological Specimens, observed by a Megalestris. (Cape Lancaster in the Background.)] This storm proved to us a melancholy affair. The wind at first was not strong or steady, but the sea which rolled under our starboard quarter tossed us about upon its bosom as a child does a toy. Occasionally it broke over us amidship, flooding the laboratory and the galley. There was a large quantity of coal on the decks, and some of this was carried by the swash into the scuppers, making escape of the water impossible. To free the scuppers one of our youngest sailors--Wiencke--was at work periodically during much of his watch. In the afternoon the tempest increased and gathered force hour after hour. Great seas broke over us with increasing violence, while the wind came and went with a cannon-like roar. Everything movable on the decks was swept overboard. At about three o’clock in the afternoon Amundsen and I were on the bridge, straining our eyes and levelling our glasses on a mysterious black object ahead, directly in our course; while thus engaged, we heard an unearthly cry,--a cry which made me shiver because of its force and painful tone. We turned about quickly, but saw nothing to indicate the direction of the noise. Amundsen, thinking there had been an accident in the engine-room, rushed in that direction. I went aft to the quarter-deck, and, looking astern, saw a man struggling among the foamy crests. It was Wiencke--in trying to free the scuppers he had lost his balance, and in falling, he had uttered the awful cry which had startled us. With quick presence of mind he sought the log-line and grasped it. I caught hold of the other end, and began to draw it slowly in, but he slipped until his hand was stopped by the log; upon this he held with a death-like grasp. Before I had pulled in the full length of the line everybody was on deck; but there was little to be done.