As the ship
rose on the crest of one great hill of water the next big ridge was
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 50 deg. each way, and sometimes 55 deg..
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 39 deg. 20' S. and
longitude 66 deg. 9' E., after a very good run, for the Terra Nova, of 200
miles in the last twenty-four hours.
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