About 11 a.m. the boat suddenly fell off into the trough of the sea.  The painter had parted and the sea-anchor had gone.  This was serious.  The ‘James Caird’ went away to leeward, and we had no chance at all of recovering the anchor and our valuable rope, which had been our only means of keeping the boat’s head up to the seas without the risk of hoisting sail in a gale.  Now we had to set the sail and trust to its holding.  While the ‘James Caird’ rolled heavily in the trough, we beat the frozen canvas until the bulk of the ice had cracked off it and then hoisted it.  The frozen gear worked protestingly, but after a struggle our little craft came up to the wind again, and we breathed more freely.  Skin frost-bites were troubling us, and we had developed large blisters on our fingers and hands.  I shall always carry the scar of one of these frost-bites on my left hand, which became badly inflamed after the skin had burst and the cold had bitten deeply.

We held the boat up to the gale during that day, enduring as best we could discomforts that amounted to pain.  The boat tossed interminably on the big waves under grey, threatening skies.  Our thoughts did not embrace much more than the necessities of the hour.  Every surge of the sea was an enemy to be watched and circumvented.  We ate our scanty meals, treated our frost-bites, and hoped for the improved conditions that the morrow might bring.  Night fell early, and in the lagging hours of darkness we were cheered by a change for the better in the weather.  The wind dropped, the snow-squalls became less frequent, and the sea moderated.  When the morning of the seventh day dawned there was not much wind.  We shook the reef out of the sail and laid our course once more for South Georgia.  The sun came out bright and clear, and presently Worsley got a snap for longitude.  We hoped that the sky would remain clear until noon, so that we could get the latitude.  We had been six days out without an observation, and our dead reckoning naturally was uncertain.  The boat must have presented a strange appearance that morning.  All hands basked in the sun.  We hung our sleeping-bags to the mast and spread our socks and other gear all over the deck.  Some of the ice had melted off the ‘James Caird’ in the early morning after the gale began to slacken; and dry patches were appearing in the decking.  Porpoises came blowing round the boat, and Cape pigeons wheeled and swooped within a few feet of us.  These little black-and-white birds have an air of friendliness that is not possessed by the great circling albatross.  They had looked grey against the swaying sea during the storm as they darted about over our heads and uttered their plaintive cries.  The albatrosses, of the black or sooty variety, had watched with hard, bright eyes, and seemed to have a quite impersonal interest in our struggle to keep afloat amid the battering seas.  In addition to the Cape pigeons an occasional stormy petrel flashed overhead.  Then there was a small bird, unknown to me, that appeared always to be in a fussy, bustling state, quite out of keeping with the surroundings.  It irritated me.  It had practically no tail, and it flitted about vaguely as though in search of the lost member.  I used to find myself wishing it would find its tail and have done with the silly fluttering.