418 SIEGE OE THE SOUTH POLE 
miles from the imprisoned Discovery. The crews of all 
three vessels now set to work making holes in the ice, in 
which charges of powerful explosives were placed in 
order to form cracks and enable the ocean swell to do its 
work more quickly. On the 12th the breadth of the 
remaining ice was three miles, and on the 14th it broke 
away so rapidly that the relief ships came close up to 
the Discovery, which was sealed into a little bay with ice 
from twelve to seventeen feet thick. On the 16th a final 
explosion set the ship free, too soon as it happened, for a 
furious gale drove her ashore and for some time she 
bumped heavily on a shoal and was in great danger. No 
real harm was done, and when the storm blew over, the 
relief ships proceeded to supply coal to the Discovery 
though the two vessels could spare only 75 tons between 
them, a ridiculously inadequate amount. On February 
1 8th, 1904, the three ships started northward. 
On March 2nd land was sighted, which was thought at 
first to be Ross’s Russell Island, but Scott identified it as 
Sturge Island of the Balleny group, and clearly recog- 
nised the other islands from MacNab’s drawing given in 
the log of the Eliza Scott. The opportunity now pre- 
sented itself of verifying Wilkes’s discoveries of land, 
but the wretched modicum of coal supplied by the relief 
ships barred a most interesting and quite practicable 
piece of research. The relief ships had disappeared. 
Scott made the most of what coal he had, and for two 
and a half days held on his course westward, well to the 
south of the Antarctic circle, in clear weather and open 
sea with icebergs in sight but no appearance of land, and 
a great ocean swell heaving in from the northward over 
the positions assigned to Ringgold’s Knoll and Eld’s 
Peak. No appearance of Cape Pludson could be dis- 
