us spent our off-time basking in the sunshine, yarning, skylarking, and
being happy in general.

We tried to get a white-bellied whale on the 2nd January, but our
whale-gun did not seem to have any buck in it and the harpoon dribbled
out a fraction of the distance it was expected to travel.

The same glorious weather continued on January 2, and Oates took five of
the ponies on to the upper deck and got their stables cleared out. The
poor animals had had no chance of being taken from their stalls for
thirty-eight days, and their boxes were between two and three feet deep
with manure. The four ponies stabled on the upper deck looked fairly well
but were all stiff in their legs.

Rennick took soundings every forty or fifty miles in the Ross Sea, the
depth varying from 357 fathoms comparatively close up to Cape Crozier to
180 fathoms in latitude 73 degrees.

Cape Crozier itself was sighted after breakfast on the 3rd, and the Great
Ice Barrier appeared like a thin line on the southern horizon at 11.30
that morning. We were close to the Cape by lunch time, and by 1.30 we had
furled sail in order to manoeuvre more freely. The "Terra Nova" steamed
close up to the face of the Barrier, then along to the westward until we
arrived in a little bay where the Barrier joins Cape Crozier. Quite a
tide was washing past the cliff faces of the ice; it all looked very
white, like chalk, while the sun was near the northern horizon, but later
in the afternoon blue and green shadows were cast over the ice, giving it
a softer and much more beautiful appearance. Ponting was given a chance
to get some cinema films of the Barrier while we were cruising around,
and then we stopped in the little bay where the Ice Barrier joins Cape