Our first night at the whaling-station was blissful.  Crean and I shared a beautiful room in Mr. Sorlle’s house, with electric light and two beds, warm and soft.  We were so comfortable that we were unable to sleep.  Late at night a steward brought us tea, bread and butter and cakes, and we lay in bed, revelling in the luxury of it all.  Outside a dense snow-storm, which started two hours after our arrival and lasted until the following day, was swirling and driving about the mountain-slopes.  We were thankful indeed that we had made a place of safety, for it would have gone hard with us if we had been out on the mountains that night.  Deep snow lay everywhere when we got up the following morning.

After breakfast Mr. Sorlle took us round to Husvik in a motor-launch.  We were listening avidly to his account of the war and of all that had happened while we were out of the world of men.  We were like men arisen from the dead to a world gone mad.  Our minds accustomed themselves gradually to the tales of nations in arms, of deathless courage and unimagined slaughter, of a world-conflict that had grown beyond all conceptions, of vast red battlefields in grimmest contrast with the frigid whiteness we had left behind us.  The reader may not realize quite how difficult it was for us to envisage nearly two years of the most stupendous war of history.  The locking of the armies in the trenches, the sinking of the ‘Lusitania’, the murder of Nurse Cavell, the use of poison-gas and liquid fire, the submarine warfare, the Gallipoli campaign, the hundred other incidents of the war, almost stunned us at first, and then our minds began to compass the train of events and develop a perspective.  I suppose our experience was unique.  No other civilized men could have been as blankly ignorant of world-shaking happenings as we were when we reached Stromness Whaling Station.

I heard the first rumour of the ‘Aurora’s’ misadventures in the Ross Sea from Mr. Sorlle.  Our host could tell me very little.  He had been informed that the ‘Aurora’ had broken away from winter quarters in McMurdo Sound and reached New Zealand after a long drift, and that there was no news of the shore party.  His information was indefinite as to details, and I had to wait until I reached the Falkland Islands some time later before getting a definite report concerning the ‘Aurora’.  The rumour that had reached South Georgia, however, made it more than ever important that I should bring out the rest of the Weddell Sea party quickly, so as to free myself for whatever effort was required on the Ross Sea side.