1.61/FreeBSD load average (ouch)

In my continuing attempts to break... uh, _evaluate_ exim I've just hit
the following beauty:

1997-03-19 14:22:56 Abandon queue run (load 0.13, max 10.00): pid = 3300
1997-03-19 14:42:29 Abandon queue run (load 0.00, max 10.00): pid = 4317

There seems to be something slightly wrong with those figures...

1997-03-19 17:34:48 Abandon queue run (load 115.96, max 10.00): pid = 13882

Now, that's more like what I'm used to seeing with PP... and accurate.

I've 104 of these messages generated today, and there doesn't seem to be
any logic to the numbers at all -- 13 of them were below the max figure.

Any ideas, anyone? This is 1.61 with FreeBSD 3.0 (pretty sure it's the
same with 2.2 as well).

TIA,

Ian.