THE RESCUE 
miles of the island, and we encountered the ice in the half-light. 
I waited for the full day and then tried to push through. The 
little craft was tossing in the heavy swell, and before she had 
been in the pack for ten minutes she came down on a cake of 
ice and broke the bobstay. Then the water-inlet of the motor 
choked with ice. The schooner was tossing like a cork in the 
swell, and I saw after a few bumps that she was actually lighter 
than the fragments of ice around her. Progress under such 
conditions was out of the question. I worked the schooner 
out of the pack and stood to the east. I ran her through a 
line of pack towards the south that night, but was forced to 
turn to the north-east, for the ice trended in that direction as 
far as I could see. We hove to for the night, which was now 
sixteen hours long. The winter was well advanced and the 
weather conditions were thoroughly bad. The ice to the 
southward was moving north rapidly. The motor-engine had 
broken down and we were entirely dependent on the sails. 
We managed to make a little southing during the next day, 
but noon found us 108 miles from the island. That night we 
lay ofi the ice in a gale, hove to, and morning found the schooner 
iced up. The ropes, cased in frozen spray, were as thick as a 
man's arm, and if the wind had increased much we would have 
had to cut away the sails, since there was no possibility of 
lowering them. Some members of the scratch crew were played 
out by the cold and the violent tossing. The schooner was 
about seventy feet long, and she responded to the motions of the 
storm-racked sea in a manner that might have disconcerted 
the most seasoned sailors. 
■ I took the schooner south at every chance, but always the 
line of ice blocked the way. The engineer, who happened to 
be an American, did things to the engines occasionally, but 
he could not keep them running, and the persistent south 
winds were dead ahead. It was hard to turn back a third time, 
but I reaUzed we could not reach the island under those condi- 
tions, and we must turn north in order to clear the ship of 
heavy masses of ice. So we set a northerly course, and after 
a tempestuous passage reached Port Stanley once more. This 
was the third reverse, but I did not abandon my beUef that 
217 
