ESCAPE FROM THE ICE 
We ran before the wind through the loose pack, a man 
in the bow of each boat trying to pole of! with a broken oar 
the lumps of ice that could not be avoided. I regarded speed 
as essential Sometimes collisions were not averted. The James 
Caird was in the lead, where she bore the brunt of the encounters 
with lurking fragments, and she was holed above the water-line 
by a sharp spur of ice, but this mishap did not stay us. Later 
the wind became stronger and we had to reef sails, so as not to 
strike the ice too heavily. The Dvdley Docker came next to the 
J ames Caird and the Stancomh ]Vills followed, I had given orders 
that the boats should keep 30 or 40 yds, apart, so as to reduce 
the danger of a collision if one boat was checked by the ice. 
The pack was thinning, and we came to occasional open areas 
where thin ice had formed during the night. When we encoun- 
tered this new ice we had to shake the reef out of the sails in 
order to force a way through. Outside of the pack the wind 
must have been of hurricane force. Thousands of small dead 
fish were to be seen, killed probably by a cold current and the 
heavy weather. They floated in the water and lay on the 
ice, where they had been cast by the waves. The petrels and 
skua-gulls were swooping down and picking them up like 
sardines oS toast. 
We made our way through the lanes till at noon we were 
suddenly spewed out of the pack into the open ocean. Dark 
blue and sapphire green ran the seas. Our sails were soon up, 
and with a fair wind we moved over the waves like three 
Viking ships on the quest of a lost Atlantis. With the sheets 
well out and the sun shining bright above, we enjoyed for a 
few hours a sense of the freedom and magic of the sea, compen- 
sating us for pain and trouble in the days that had passed. 
At last we were free from the ice, in water that our boats could 
navigate. Thoughts of home, stifled by the deadening weight 
of anxious days and nights, came to birth once more, and the 
difficulties that had still to be overcome dwindled in fancy 
almost to nothing. 
During the afternoon we had to take a second reef in the 
sails, for the wind freshened and the deeply laden boats were 
shipping much water and steering badly in the rising sea. 
135 
