HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES 309 
scraping the rugged face of the berg, we in a few 
minutes reached its western termination ; the “ under- 
tow/' as it is called, or the reaction of the water from 
its vertical cliffs, alone preventing us being driven to 
atoms against it. No sooner had we cleared it, than 
another was seen directly astern of us, against which we 
were running; and the difficulty now was to get the 
ship's head turned round and pointed fairly through be- 
tween the two bergs, the breadth of the intervening space 
not exceeding three times her own breadth; this, how- 
ever, we happily accomplished; and in a few minutes 
after getting before the wind, she dashed through the 
narrow channel, between two perpendicular walls of ice, 
and the foaming breakers which stretched across it, and 
the next moment we were in smooth water under its lee." 
As befits a commander, Ross painted the accident from 
the point of view of the expedition, but McCormick 
added several human touches. All hands had been called 
on deck at a moment's notice, the sense of danger after 
the first collision drove all other ideas from their minds, 
and in the bitter cold of the Antarctic night they rushed 
to their stations in the scantiest of clothing — one officer 
is described as “ clinging to the capstan in his nightshirt 
only." 
Davis in the letter to his sister after describing the 
collision with the Erebus goes on to say: 
“ All this time we had been bodily drifting on the bergs 
so that when we cleared the Erebus we found an enor- 
mous iceberg close under our lee. A dreadful shipwreck 
and death then appeared inevitable ; there was no alterna- 
tive but to run for the dark place we had seen before, 
which might be an opening, or be smashed on the face 
of the cliff. The helm was immediately put a-starboard. 
