ESCAPE FROM THE ICE 
Rowing carefully and avoiding the blind rollers which 
showed where sunken rocks lay, we brought the Stancomh Wills 
towards the openmg in the reef. Then, with a few strong strokes 
we shot through on the top of a swell and ran the boat on to a 
stony beach. The next swell hfted her a little farther. This 
was the first landing ever made on Elephant Island, and a 
thought came to me that the honour should belong to the 
youngest member of the Expedition, so I told Blackborrow to 
jump over. He seemed to be in a state almost of coma, and 
in order to avoid delay I helped him, perhaps a little roughly, 
over the side of the boat. He promptly sat down in the surf 
and did not move. Then I suddenly realized what I had 
forgotten, that both his feet were frost-bitten badly. Some of 
us jumped over and pulled him into a dry place. It was a 
rather rough experience for Blackborrow, but, anyhow, he is 
now able to say that he was the first man to sit on Elephant 
Island, Possibly at the time he would have been willing to 
forgo any distinction of the kind. We landed the cook with 
his blubber-stove, a supply of fuel and some packets of dried 
milk, and also several of the men. Then the rest of us pulled 
out again to pilot the other boats through the channel. The 
James Caird was too heavy to be beached directly, so after 
landing most of the men from the Dudley Docker and the 
Stancomh Wills I superintended the transhipment of the James 
Caird' s gear outside the reef. Then we all made the passage, 
and within a few minutes the three boats were aground. A 
curious spectacle met my eyes when I landed the second time. 
Some of the men were reeling about the beach as if they had 
found an unlimited supply of alcoholic liquor on the desolate 
shore. They were laughing uproariously, picking up stones and 
letting handfuls of pebbles trickle between their fingers hke 
misers gloating over hoarded gold. The smiles and laughter, 
which caused cracked lips to bleed afresh, and the gleeful 
exclamations at the sight of two live seals on the beach made 
me think for a moment of that glittering hour of childhood 
when the door is open at last and the Christmas-tree in all 
its wonder bursts upon the vision. I remember that Wild, who 
always rose superior to fortune^ bad and good, came ashore as 
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