would be summoned to work.  Right to the minute the steam-whistle came to us, borne clearly on the wind across the intervening miles of rock and snow.  Never had any one of us heard sweeter music.  It was the first sound created by outside human agency that had come to our ears since we left Stromness Bay in December 1914.  That whistle told us that men were living near, that ships were ready, and that within a few hours we should be on our way back to Elephant Island to the rescue of the men waiting there under the watch and ward of Wild.  It was a moment hard to describe.  Pain and ache, boat journeys, marches, hunger and fatigue seemed to belong to the limbo of forgotten things, and there remained only the perfect contentment that comes of work accomplished.

My examination of the country from a higher point had not provided definite information, and after descending I put the situation before Worsley and Crean.  Our obvious course lay down a snow-slope in the direction of Husvik.  “Boys,” I said, “this snow-slope seems to end in a precipice, but perhaps there is no precipice.  If we don’t go down we shall have to make a detour of at least five miles before we reach level going What shall it be?” They both replied at once, “Try the slope.”  So we started away again downwards.  We abandoned the Primus lamp, now empty, at the breakfast camp and carried with us one ration and a biscuit each.  The deepest snow we had yet encountered clogged our feet, but we plodded downward, and after descending about 500 ft., reducing our altitude to 2000 ft. above sea-level, we thought we saw the way clear ahead.  A steep gradient of blue ice was the next obstacle.  Worsley and Crean got a firm footing in a hole excavated with the adze and then lowered me as I cut steps until the full 50 ft. of our alpine rope was out.  Then I made a hole big enough for the three of us, and the other two men came down the steps.  My end of the rope was anchored to the adze and I had settled myself in the hole braced for a strain in case they slipped.  When we all stood in the second hole I went down again to make more steps, and in this laborious fashion we spent two hours descending about 500 ft.  Halfway down we had to strike away diagonally to the left, for we noticed that the fragments of ice loosened by the adze were taking a leap into space at the bottom of the slope.  Eventually we got off the steep ice, very gratefully, at a point where some rocks protruded, and we could see then that there was a perilous precipice directly below the point where we had started to cut steps.  A slide down a slippery slope, with the adze and our cooker going ahead, completed this descent, and incidentally did considerable damage to our much-tried trousers.