SOUTH 
possibility was scarcely thinkable. Over on Elephant Island 
twenty-two men were waiting for the relief that we alone could 
secure for them. Their plight was worse than ours. We must 
push on somehow. Several days must elapse before our strength 
would be sufficiently recovered to allow us to row or sail the 
last nine miles up to the head of the bay. In the meantime we 
could make what preparations were possible and dry our clothes 
by taking advantage of every scrap of heat from the fires we lit 
for the cooking of our meals. We turned in early that night, and 
I remember that I dreamed of the great wave and aroused my 
companions with a shout of warning as I saw with half-awakened 
eyes the towering clifE on the opposite side of the cove. 
Shortly before midnight a gale sprang up suddenly from 
the north-east with rain and sleet showers. It brought quan- 
tities of glacier-ice into the cove, and by 2 a.m. (May 12) our 
little harbour w^as filled with ice, which surged to and fro in 
the swell and pushed its way on to the beach. We had solid 
rock beneath om- feet and could watch without anxiety. When 
daylight came rain was falling heavily, and the temperature 
was the liighest we had experienced for many months. The 
icicles overhanging our cave were melting down in streams 
and we had to move smartly when passing in and out lest we 
should be struck by falling lumps. A fragment weighing fifteen 
or twenty pounds crashed down while we w^ere having breakfast. 
We foimd that a big hole had been burned in the bottom of 
Worslcy's reindeer sleeping-bag during the night. Worsley 
had been awakened by a burning sensation in his feet, and had 
asked the men near him if his bag was all right ; they looked 
and could see nothing wrong. We were all superficially frost- 
bitten about the feet, and this condition caused the extremities 
to burn painfully, while at the same time sensation was lost 
in the skin, Worsley thought that the uncomfortable heat of 
his feet was due to the frost-bites, and he stayed in his bag and 
presently went to sleep agaii3. He discovered when he turned 
out in the morning that the tussock-grass which we had laid 
on the floor of the cave had smouldered outwards from the 
fire and had actually burned a large hole in the bag beneath 
his feet. Fort/unately, his feet were not harmed. 
186 
