I arranged that Worsley should go with the relief ship to show the exact spot where the carpenter and his two companions were camped, while I started to prepare for the relief of the party on Elephant Island.  The whaling-vessel that was going round to King Haakon Bay was expected back on the Monday morning, and was to call at Grytviken Harbour, the port from which we had sailed in December 1914, in order that the magistrate resident there might be informed of the fate of the ‘Endurance’.  It was possible that letters were awaiting us there.  Worsley went aboard the whaler at ten o’clock that night and turned in.  The next day the relief ship entered King Haakon Bay and he reached Peggotty Camp in a boat.  The three men were delighted beyond measure to know that we had made the crossing in safety and that their wait under the upturned ‘James Caird’ was ended.  Curiously enough, they did not recognize Worsley, who had left them a hairy, dirty ruffian and had returned his spruce and shaven self.  They thought he was one of the whalers.  When one of them asked why no member of the party had come round with the relief, Worsley said, “What do you mean?” “We thought the Boss or one of the others would come round,” they explained.  “What’s the matter with you?” said Worsley.  Then it suddenly dawned upon them that they were talking to the man who had been their close companion for a year and a half.  Within a few minutes the whalers had moved our bits of gear into their boat.  They towed off the ’James Caird’ and hoisted her to the deck of their ship.  Then they started on the return voyage.  Just at dusk on Monday afternoon they entered Stromness Bay, where the men of the whaling-station mustered on the beach to receive the rescued party and to examine with professional interest the boat we had navigated across 800 miles of the stormy ocean they knew so well.

When I look back at those days I have no doubt that Providence guided us, not only across those snowfields, but across the storm-white sea that separated Elephant Island from our landing-place on South Georgia.  I know that during that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.  I said nothing to my companions on the point, but afterwards Worsley said to me, “Boss, I had a curious feeling on the march that there was another person with us.”  Crean confessed to the same idea.  One feels “the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech” in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts.

CHAPTER XI

THE RESCUE