roar of the breakers against the sheer walls of rock.  I ordered the double-reefed mainsail to be set in the hope that we might claw off, and this attempt increased the strain upon the boat.  The ‘James Caird’ was bumping heavily, and the water was pouring in everywhere.  Our thirst was forgotten in the realization of our imminent danger, as we baled unceasingly, and adjusted our weights from time to time; occasional glimpses showed that the shore was nearer.  I knew that Annewkow Island lay to the south of us, but our small and badly marked chart showed uncertain reefs in the passage between the island and the mainland, and I dared not trust it, though as a last resort we could try to lie under the lee of the island.  The afternoon wore away as we edged down the coast, with the thunder of the breakers in our ears.  The approach of evening found us still some distance from Annewkow Island, and, dimly in the twilight, we could see a snow-capped mountain looming above us.  The chance of surviving the night, with the driving gale and the implacable sea forcing us on to the lee shore, seemed small.  I think most of us had a feeling that the end was very near.  Just after 6 p.m., in the dark, as the boat was in the yeasty backwash from the seas flung from this iron-bound coast, then, just when things looked their worst, they changed for the best.  I have marvelled often at the thin line that divides success from failure and the sudden turn that leads from apparently certain disaster to comparative safety.  The wind suddenly shifted, and we were free once more to make an offing.  Almost as soon as the gale eased, the pin that locked the mast to the thwart fell out.  It must have been on the point of doing this throughout the hurricane, and if it had gone nothing could have saved us; the mast would have snapped like a carrot.  Our backstays had carried away once before when iced up and were not too strongly fastened now.  We were thankful indeed for the mercy that had held that pin in its place throughout the hurricane.

We stood off shore again, tired almost to the point of apathy.  Our water had long been finished.  The last was about a pint of hairy liquid, which we strained through a bit of gauze from the medicine-chest.  The pangs of thirst attacked us with redoubled intensity, and I felt that we must make a landing on the following day at almost any hazard.  The night wore on.  We were very tired.  We longed for day.  When at last the dawn came on the morning of May 10 there was practically no wind, but a high cross-sea was running.  We made slow progress towards the shore.  About 8 a.m. the wind backed to the north-west and threatened another blow.  We had sighted in the meantime a big indentation which I thought must be King Haakon Bay, and I decided that we must land there.  We set the bows of the boat towards the bay and ran before the freshening gale.  Soon we had angry reefs on either side.  Great glaciers came down to the sea and offered no landing-place.