SOUTH 
tte ice would not remain fast around Elephant Island during 
the winter, whatever the arm-chair experts at home might say. 
We reached Port Stanley in the schooner on August 8, and 
I learned there that the ship Discovery was to leave England 
at once and would be at the Falkland Islands about the middle 
of September. My good friend the Governor said I could 
settle down at Port Stanley and take things quietly for a few 
weeks. The street of that port is about a mile and a half long. 
It has the slaughter-house at one end and the graveyard at 
the other. The chief distraction is to walk from the slaughter- 
house to the graveyard. For a change one may walk from 
the graveyard to the slaughter-house. EUaline Terriss was 
born at Port Stanley— a fact not forgotten by the residents, 
but she has not lived there much since. I could not content 
myself to wait for six or seven weeks, knowing that six hundred 
miles away my comrades were in dire need. I asked the Chilian 
Government to send the Yelclio, the steamer that had towed 
us before, to take the schooner across to Pimta Arenas, and 
they consented promptly, as they had done to every other 
request of mine. So in a north-west gale we went across, 
narrowly escaping disaster on the way, and reached Punta 
Arenas on August 14. 
There was no suitable ship to be obtained. The weather 
was showing some signs of improvement, and I begged the 
Chilian Government to let me have the Yelcho for a last attempt 
to reach the island. She was a small steel-built steamer, quite 
unsuitable for work in the pack, but I promised that I would 
not touch the ice. The Government was willing to give me 
another chance, and on August 25 I started south on the fourth 
attempt at relief. This time Providence favoured us. The 
little steamer made a quick run down in comparatively fine 
weather, and I found as we neared Elephant Island that the 
ice was open. A southerly gale had sent it northward tempo- 
rarily, and the Yelcho had her chance to slip through. We 
approached the island in a thick fog. I did not dare to wait 
for this to clear, and at 10 a.m. on August 30 we passed some 
stranded bergs. Then we saw the sea breaking on a reef, 
and I knew that we were just outside the island. It was an 
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