Huge icebergs crept silently towards or past us, and continually we were observing these formidable objects with range finder and compass to determine the relative movement, sometimes with misgiving as to our ability to clear them.

Under steam the change of conditions was even more marked.

Sometimes we would enter a lead of open water and proceed for a mile or two without hindrance; sometimes we would come to big sheets of thin ice which broke easily as our iron-shod prow struck them, and sometimes even a thin sheet would resist all our attempts to break it; sometimes we would push big floes with comparative ease and sometimes a small floe would bar our passage with such obstinacy that one would almost believe it possessed of an evil spirit; sometimes we passed through acres of sludgy sodden ice which hissed as it swept along the side, and sometimes the hissing ceased seemingly without rhyme or reason, and we found our screw churning the sea without any effect.
'Thus the steaming days passed away in an ever changing environment and are remembered as an unceasing struggle.
'The ship behaved splendidly--no other ship, not even the _Discovery_, would have come through so well.

Certainly the _Nimrod_ would never have reached the south water had she been caught in such pack.

As a result I have grown strangely attached to the _Terra Nova_.