The 21st was quite an exciting day.  Captain Scott woke me at 4 a.m. to tell me that the ship was in difficulties.  I got up at once, called the four seamen, and with Uncle Bill we all went out on to the floe.  The ice to which the ship was fast had broken away, and so we helped her re-moor with her ice-anchors.  Petty Officer Evans went adrift on the floe, but we got him back in the pram.  We turned in again at 5.15 and set a watch, but at 6.30 the “Terra Nova” hoisted an ensign at the main, a pre-arranged signal, and so all hands again went out and got her ice anchors; she slipped the ends of the wire hawsers holding them and stood out into the Sound.  The ice was breaking up fast, a swell rolling in causing the big floes to grind and crunch in rather alarming fashion.  Fortunately, Pennell had raised steam, which was just as well for before he got clear the ship was only half a cable from Cape Evans, which lay dead to leeward—­she was well out of it.  We took the wire hawsers, pram and ice anchors to our winter quarters and kept them in readiness for the ship’s return, then had a delightful breakfast, with appetites sharpened from the early morning exercise and chill wind.  Afterwards we continued the preparations for the depot trip and got eight out of eleven sledges fitted up with the bulk of their gear and a portion of stores.

At about 3 p.m. the “Terra Nova” came in, and just as she was turning to come alongside the fast ice she struck a rock with only twelve feet of water on it.  This pinnacle, as it proved to be, lay within twenty feet of a sounding of eleven fathoms.  Pennell immediately sounded all round, shifted several tons weight aft, and with the engines going full speed astern, he made his crew run from side to side and roll ship.  Scott sent me out in the whaler with a party to assist the ship; we sounded all round and quickly made a plan of the relative disposition of the soundings round the “Terra Nova.”  However, as we finished, the ship moved astern and successfully floated, the crew gave three cheers, and we cheered lustily from the whaler.  Pennell, as usual, was quite equal to the occasion when the ship struck; he was absolutely master of the situation, cool, decided, and successful.  I was thankful to see the ship floating again, for, unlike the “Discovery” expedition, we had no plans for a relief ship.

When I told Captain Scott that the “Terra Nova” had run ashore he took it splendidly.  We ran down to the beach, and when we beheld the ship on a lee shore heeling over to the wind, a certain amount of sea and swell coming in from the northward, and with the ultimate fate of the Expedition looking black and doubtful, Scott was quite cheerful, and he immediately set about to cope with the situation as coolly as though he were talking out his plans for a sledge journey.

After the “Terra Nova” got off this intruding rock she was steamed round to the edge of the fast ice, near the glacier tongue which juts out between Cape Evans and Cape Barne.  We placed her ice-anchors, and after that Wilson and I went on board and had a yarn with Pennell, whom we brought back to tea.  Scott was awfully nice to him about the grounding and told him of his own experience in 1904, when the “Discovery” was bumping heavily in a gale just after freeing herself from the ice at Hut Point.