A big berg drove in just after the ship had got away, and grounded where she had been lying.  The ship returned in the afternoon, and it seems that she was searching round for an anchorage, and trying to look behind this berg.  There was a strongish northerly wind blowing.  The currents and soundings round Cape Evans were then unknown.  The current was setting strongly from the north through the strip of sea which divides Inaccessible Island from Cape Evans, a distance of some two-thirds of a mile.  The engines were going astern, but the current and wind were too much for her, and the ship ran aground, being fast for some considerable distance aft—­some said as far as the mainmast.

“Visions of the ship failing to return to New Zealand and of sixty people waiting here arose in my mind with sickening pertinacity, and the only consolation I could draw from such imaginations was the determination that the southern work should go on as before—­meanwhile the least ill possible seemed to be an extensive lightening of the ship with boats as the tide was evidently high when she struck—­a terribly depressing prospect.

“Some three or four of us watched it gloomily from the shore whilst all was bustle on board, the men shifting cargo aft.  Pennell tells me they shifted 10 tons in a very short time.

“The first ray of hope came when by careful watching one could see that the ship was turning very slowly, then one saw the men running from side to side and knew that an attempt was being made to roll her off.  The rolling produced a more rapid turning movement at first, and then she seemed to hang again.  But only for a short time; the engines had been going astern all the time and presently a slight movement became apparent.  But we only knew she was getting clear when we heard cheers on board, and more cheers from the whaler.

“Then she gathered stern way and was clear.  The relief was enormous."[115]

All this took some time, and Scott himself came back into the hut with us and went on bagging provisions for the Depot journey.  At such times of real disaster he was a very philosophical man.  We were not yet ready to go sledging, but on January 23 the ice in North Bay all went out, and that in South Bay began to follow it.  Because this was our road to the Barrier, it was suddenly decided that we must start on the Depot journey the following day or perhaps not at all.  Already it was impossible to get sledges south off the Cape:  but there was a way to walk the ponies along the land until they could be scrambled down a steep rubbly slope on to sea-ice which still remained.  Would it float away before we got there?  It was touch and go.  “One breathes a prayer that the Road holds for the few remaining hours.  It goes in one place between a berg in open water and a large pool of the Glacier face—­it may be weak in that part, and at any moment the narrow isthmus may break away.  We are doing it on a very narrow margin."[116]