Our party spent a quiet day, attending to clothing and gear, checking stores, eating and resting.  Some more of the young albatrosses made a noble end in our pot.  The birds were nesting on a small plateau above the right-hand end of our beach.  We had previously discovered that when we were landing from the boat on the night of May 10 we had lost the rudder.  The ‘James Caird’ had been bumping heavily astern as we were scrambling ashore, and evidently the rudder was then knocked off.  A careful search of the beach and the rocks within our reach failed to reveal the missing article.  This was a serious loss, even if the voyage to the head of the sound could be made in good weather.  At dusk the ice in the cove was rearing and crashing on the beach.  It had forced up a ridge of stones close to where the ‘James Caird’ lay at the edge of the tussock-grass.  Some pieces of ice were driven right up to the canvas wall at the front of our cave.  Fragments lodged within two feet of Vincent, who had the lowest sleeping-place, and within four feet of our fire.  Crean and McCarthy had brought down six more of the young albatrosses in the afternoon, so we were well supplied with fresh food.  The air temperature that night probably was not lower than 38° or 40° Fahr., and we were rendered uncomfortable in our cramped sleeping quarters by the unaccustomed warmth.  Our feelings towards our neighbours underwent a change.  When the temperature was below 20° Fahr, we could not get too close to one another—­every man wanted to cuddle against his neighbour; but let the temperature rise a few degrees and the warmth of another man’s body ceased to be a blessing.  The ice and the waves had a voice of menace that night, but I heard it only in my dreams.

The bay was still filled with ice on the morning of Saturday, May 13, but the tide took it all away in the afternoon.  Then a strange thing happened.  The rudder, with all the broad Atlantic to sail in and the coasts of two continents to search for a resting-place, came bobbing back into our cove.  With anxious eyes we watched it as it advanced, receded again, and then advanced once more under the capricious influence of wind and wave.  Nearer and nearer it came as we waited on the shore, oars in hand, and at last we were able to seize it.  Surely a remarkable salvage!  The day was bright and clear; our clothes were drying and our strength was returning.  Running water made a musical sound down the tussock slope and among the boulders.  We carried our blankets up the hill and tried to dry them in the breeze 300 ft. above sea-level.  In the afternoon we began to prepare the ‘James Caird’ for the journey to the head of King Haakon Bay.  A noon observation on this day gave our latitude as 54° 10´ 47´´ S., but according to the German chart the position should have been 54° 12´ S. Probably Worsley’s observation was the more accurate.  We were able to keep the fire alight until we went to sleep that night, for while climbing the rocks above the cove I had seen at the foot of a cliff a broken spar, which had been thrown up by the waves.  We could reach this spar by climbing down the cliff, and with a reserve supply of fuel thus in sight we could afford to burn the fragments of the ‘James Caird’s’ topsides more freely.