All day, with a gentle breeze on our port bow, we sailed and pulled through a clear sea.  We would have given all the tea in China for a lump of ice to melt into water, but no ice was within our reach.  Three bergs were in sight and we pulled towards them, hoping that a trail of brash would be floating on the sea to leeward; but they were hard and blue, devoid of any sign of cleavage, and the swell that surged around them as they rose and fell made it impossible for us to approach closely.  The wind was gradually hauling ahead, and as the day wore on the rays of the sun beat fiercely down from a cloudless sky on pain-racked men.  Progress was slow, but gradually Elephant Island came nearer.  Always while I attended to the other boats, signalling and ordering, Wild sat at the tiller of the ‘James Caird’.  He seemed unmoved by fatigue and unshaken by privation.  About four o’clock in the afternoon a stiff breeze came up ahead and, blowing against the current, soon produced a choppy sea.  During the next hour of hard pulling we seemed to make no progress at all.  The ‘James Caird’ and the ‘Dudley Docker’ had been towing the ‘Stancomb Wills’ in turn, but my boat now took the ‘Stancomb Wills’ in tow permanently, as the ’James Caird’ could carry more sail than the ‘Dudley Docker’ in the freshening wind.

We were making up for the south-east side of Elephant Island, the wind being between north-west and west.  The boats, held as close to the wind as possible, moved slowly, and when darkness set in our goal was still some miles away.  A heavy sea was running.  We soon lost sight of the ‘Stancomb Wills’, astern of the ‘James Caird’ at the length of the painter, but occasionally the white gleam of broken water revealed her presence.  When the darkness was complete I sat in the stern with my hand on the painter, so that I might know if the other boat broke away, and I kept that position during the night.  The rope grew heavy with the ice as the unseen seas surged past us and our little craft tossed to the motion of the waters.  Just at dusk I had told the men on the ‘Stancomb Wills’ that if their boat broke away during the night and they were unable to pull against the wind, they could run for the east side of Clarence Island and await our coming there.  Even though we could not land on Elephant Island, it would not do to have the third boat adrift.

It was a stern night.  The men, except the watch, crouched and huddled in the bottom of the boat, getting what little warmth they could from the soaking sleeping-bags and each other’s bodies.  Harder and harder blew the wind and fiercer and fiercer grew the sea.  The boat plunged heavily through the squalls and came up to the wind, the sail shaking in the stiffest gusts.  Every now and then, as the night wore on, the moon would shine down through a rift in the driving clouds, and in the momentary light I could see the ghostly faces of men, sitting up to trim the boat as she heeled over to the wind.  When the