LOSS OF THE ENDURANCE 
ing day had four parallel scars, sixteen inches long, on each side 
of its body ; they were fairly deep and one flipper had been 
nearly torn away. The creature must have escaped from the 
jaws of a killer by a very small margin. 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. m"" 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 sHghtly thicker in the early part of September, 
and I assumed that some melting had begim 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. Frost-smoke from 
opening cracks was showing in all directions during October 6. 
It had the appearance in one place of a great prairie fire, rising 
from the surface and getting higher as it drifted ofl before the 
wind in heavy, dark, roUing masses. At another point there 
was the appearance of a train running before the wind, the 
smoke rising from the locomotive straight upwards ; and the 
smoke columns elsewhere gave the effect of warships steaming 
in Hne ahead. During the following day the leads and cracks 
opened to such an extent that if the Endurance could have 
been forced forward for thirty yards we could have proceeded for 
two or three miles ; but the ejSort did not promise any really 
67 
