THE AURORA'S DRIFT 
numbers, but they could not be taken unless they approached 
the ship closely, owing to the soft conditio^ of the ice. The 
wireless plant, which had been idle during the months of day- 
hght, had been rigged again, and Hooke resumed his calls to 
Macquarie Island on February 2. He listened in vain for any 
indication that he had been heard. The pack was showing 
much movement, but the large floe containing the ship remained 
firm. 
The break-up of the floe came on February 12. Strong 
north-east to south-east winds put the ice in motion and brought 
a perceptible swell. The ship was making some water, a fore- 
taste of a trouble to come, and all hands spent the day at the 
pumps, reducing the water from three feet eight and a half 
inches in the well to twelve inches, in spite of frozen pipes and 
other difificulties. Work had just finished for the night when the 
ice broke astern and quickly split in all directions u.nder the 
influence of the swell. The men managed to save some seal 
meat which had been cached in a drift near the gangway. They 
lost the flagstaff, which had been rigged as a wireless mast out on 
the floe, but drew in the aerial. The ship was floating now amid 
fragments of floe, and bumping considerably in the swell. A 
fresh southerly wind blew duiing the night, and the ship started 
to forge ahead gradually without sail. At 8.30 a.m. on the 13th 
Stenhouse set the foresail and foretopmast staysail, and the 
Aurora moved northward slowly, being brought up occasionally 
by large floes. Navigation under such conditions, without steam 
and without a rudder, was exceedingly difficult, but Stenhouse 
wished if possible to save his smaD remaining stock of coal until 
he cleared the pack, so that a quick run might be made to 
McMurdo Sound. The jury-rudder could not be rigged in the 
pack. The ship was making about three and a half feet of water 
in the twenty-four hours, a quantity easily kept in check by the 
pumps. 
During the 14th the Aurora worked very slowly northward 
through heavy pack. Occasionally the yards were backed or 
an ice-anchor put into a floe to help her out of difficult places, 
but much of the time she steered herself. The jury-rudder 
boom was topped into position in the afternoon, but the rudder 
329 
