August 1/2, Sweethearts and Wives

August 1 & 2—All yesterday it blew very hard, with so much sea that we shipped one or two over the quarter-deck, by which I got a good drenching once. The sea was of the most perfect transparency—a beautiful, delicate, cold-looking green, or ultramarine. Long rollers, as if carved out of the essence of bottle glass, came rolling toward us; now and then topped with a beautiful pot-of-porter head. By evening the wind moderated, and was calm at night. This morning the wind was quite fair, but instead of having clear weather as with the northeast wind, it came to the southeast, and brought hard rain and thick fogs all day.
We are now, however, (11 p.m.), going three knots and a quarter in a fog with the Terror close in on one side for fear of losing sight of us. Sir John will not cut sail and we are having fun navigating the bergs which loom at us out of the fog like huge, ghostly mountains. I calculate we are some forty miles off Cape Horsburgh, the most western extremity of Devon Island, and should raise Cape Warrender tomorrow and be in the Sound.
Reid still amuses us. He has just told me how to boil salt fish when it is very salty. He saw Bridgens, the Officers’ Steward, towing it overboard, and roared out, “What are you making faces at there? That’s no the way to get the sarlt oot.” Apparently, when the saltfish boils it is to be taken off the fire and kept not boiling.

This is Saturday night. Reid and Osmer are drinking ‘Sweethearts and wives;’ and they wanted me to join. I said I had not the one, and did not want the other. Good night.

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