FROM ENGLAND TO SOUTH AFRICA 19 
we got a good rope from the whaler, which had anchored 
well out, to the shore. I then manceuvred the pram, and 
everybody plunged into the surf and hauled himself out 
with the rope. All well, but minus our belongings, and got 
back to the ship; very wet and ravenous was a mild way to 
put it. During my 12 to 4 watch that night the surf roared 
like thunder, and the ship herself was rolling like anything, 
and looked horribly close to the shore. Of course she was 
quite safe really. It transpired that Atkinson and the sea- 
man had a horrible night with salt water soaked food, and 
the crabs and white terns which sat and watched them all 
night, squawking in chorus whenever they moved. It 
must have been horrible, though I would like to have 
stayed, and had I known anybody was staying would have 
volunteered. This with the noise of the surf and the cold 
made it pretty rotten for them. In the morning, Evans, 
Rennick, Oates and I, with two seamen and Gran, took 
the whaler and pram in to rescue the maroons. At first we 
thought we would do it by a rocket line to the end of the 
sheer cliff. The impossibility of such an idea was at once 
evident, so Gran and I went 1n close in the pram, and hove 
them lines to get off the gear first. I found the spoon- 
shaped pram a wonderful boat to handle. You could go in 
to the very edge of the breaking surf, lifted like a cork on 
top of the waves, and as long as you kept head to sea and 
kept your own head, you need never have got on the rocks, 
as the tremendous back-swish took you out like a shot 
every time. It was quite exciting, however, as we would 
slip in close in a lull, and the chaps in the whaler would 
yell, ‘Look out !’ if a big wave passed them, in which case 
you would pull out for dear life. Our first lines carried 
away, and then, with others, Rennick and I this time took 
the pram while Atkinson got as near the edge as safe to 
throw us the gear. I was pulling, and by watching our 
chances we rescued the cameras and glasses, once being 
carried over 12 feet above the rocks and only escaping by 
the back-swish. Then the luckiest incident of the day 
occurred, when in a lull we got our sick man down, and I 
jumped out, and he in, as I steadied the boat’s stern. The 
