SOUTH 
Worslcy. Since we have been beset her staiinclmess and 
endurance have been almost past behef again and again. She 
has^ been nipped with a miUion-ton pressure and risen nobly, 
falling clear of the water out on the ice. She has been throwoi 
to and fro like a shuttlecock a dozen times. She has been 
strained, her beams arched upwards, by the fearful pressure ; 
her very sides opened and closed again as she was actually bent 
and curved along her length, groaning hke a hving thing. It 
will be sad if such a brave little craft should be finally crushed 
in the remorseless, slowly strangHng grip of the Weddell pack 
after ten months of the bravest and most gallant fight ever 
put up by a ship." 
The Endurance deserved all that could be said in praise of 
her. Shipwrights had never done sounder or better work ; 
but how long could she continue the fight under such con- 
ditions ? We were drifting into the congested area of the 
western Weddell Sea, the worst portion of the worst sea in the 
world, where the pack, forced on irresistibly by wind and 
current, impinges on the western shore and is driven up in 
huge corrugated ridges and chaotic fields of pressure. The 
vital question for us was whether or not the ice would open 
sufficiently to release us, or at least give us a chance of release, 
before the drift carried us into the most dangerous area. There 
was no answer to be got from the silent bergs and the grinding 
floes, and we faced the month of October with anxious hearts. 
The leads in the pack appeared to have opened out a little 
on October 1, but not sufficiently to be workable even if we 
had been able to release the Endurance from the floe. The 
day was calm, cloudy and misty in the forenoon and clearer in 
the afternoon, when we observed well-defined parhelia. The 
ship was subjected to slight pressure at intervals. Two bull 
crab-eaters climbed on to the floe close to the ship and were 
shot by Wild. They were both big animals in prime condition, 
and I felt that there was no more need for anxiety as to the 
supply of fresh meat for the dogs. Seal-liver made a welcome 
change in our own menu. The two bulls were marked, like many 
of their kind, with long parallel scars about tlu-ee inches apart, 
evidently the work of the killers. A bull we killed on the f ollow- 
66 
