Evidently
life beneath the pack is not always monotonous. We noticed that several
of the bergs in the neighbourhood of the ship were changing their
relative positions more than they had done for months past. The floes
were moving.
Our position on Sunday, October 3, was lat. 69° 14? S., long. 51° 8? W.
During the night the floe holding the ship aft cracked in several
places, and this appeared to have eased the strain on the rudder. The
forenoon was misty, with falls of snow, but the weather cleared later
in the day and we could see that the pack was breaking. New leads had
appeared, while several old leads had closed. Pressure-ridges had
risen along some of the cracks. The thickness of the season's ice, now
about 230 days old, was 4 ft. 5 in. under 7 or 8 in. of snow. This
ice had been slightly thicker in the early part of September, and I
assumed that some melting had begun below. Clark had recorded plus
temperatures at depths of 150 and 200 fathoms in the concluding days
of September. The ice obviously had attained its maximum thickness by
direct freezing, and the heavier older floes had been created by the
consolidation of pressure-ice and the overlapping of floes under
strain. The air temperatures were still low, -24.5° Fahr. being
recorded on October 4.
The movement of the ice was increasing.
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