SOUTH 
action on ice is not often as marked as it was that day. The 
advancing ice, accompanied by a large wave, appeared to be 
travelling at about three knots, and if we had not succeeded 
in pulling clear we would certainly have been swamped. 
We pulled hard for an hour to windward of the berg that lay 
in the open water. The swell was crashing on its perpendicular 
sides and tin-owing spray to a height of sixty feet. Evidently 
there was an ice-foot at the east end, for the swell broke before 
it reached the berg-face and flmig its white spray on to the blue 
ice-wall. We might have paused to have admired the spectacle 
under other conditions ; but night was coming on apace, and 
we needed a camping-place. As we steered north-west, still amid 
the ice-floes, the Dudley Docker got jammed between two masses 
while attempting to make a short cut. The old adage about 
a short cut being the longest way round is often as true in the 
Antarctic as it is in the peaceful comitryside. The James Caird 
got a line aboard the Dudley Docker, and after some hauling the 
boat was brought clear of the ice again. We hastened forward 
in the twilight in search of a flat, old floe, and presently found a 
fairly large piece rocking in the swell. It was not an ideal camp- 
ing-place by any means, but darkness had overtaken us. We 
hauled the boats up, and by 8 p.m. had the tents pitched and 
the blubber-stove burning cheerily. Soon all hands were well 
fed and happy in their tents, and snatches of song came to me 
as I wrote up my log. 
Some intangible feeling of uneasiness made me leave my tent 
about 11 p.m. that night and glance around the quiet camp. 
The stars between the snow-flurries showed that the floe had 
swimg round and was end on to the swell, a position exposing 
it to sudden strains. I started to walk across the floe in order 
to warn the watchman to look carefully for cracks, and as I 
was passing the men's tent the floe lifted on the crest of a swell 
and cracked right under my feet. The men were in one of 
the dome-shaped tents, and it began to stretch apart as the 
ice opened. A muffled sound, suggestive of suffocation, came 
from beneath the stretching tent. I rushed forward, helped 
some emerging men from mider the canvas, and caUed out, 
Are you all right ? " There are two in the water," some- 
124 
