Solid pack still barred the way to the south on the following morning (January 6).  There was some open water north of the floe, but as the day was calm and I did not wish to use coal in a possibly vain search for an opening to the southward, I kept the ship moored to the floe.  This pause in good weather gave an opportunity to exercise the dogs, which were taken on to the floe by the men in charge of them.  The excitement of the animals was intense.  Several managed to get into the water, and the muzzles they were wearing did not prevent some hot fights.  Two dogs which had contrived to slip their muzzles fought themselves into an icy pool and were hauled out still locked in a grapple.  However, men and dogs enjoyed the exercise.  A sounding gave a depth of 2400 fathoms, with a blue mud bottom.  The wind freshened from the west early the next morning, and we started to skirt the northern edge of the solid pack in an easterly direction under sail.  We had cleared the close pack by noon, but the outlook to the south gave small promise of useful progress, and I was anxious now to make easting.  We went north-east under sail, and after making thirty-nine miles passed a peculiar berg that we had been abreast of sixty hours earlier.  Killer-whales were becoming active around us, and I had to exercise caution in allowing any one to leave the ship.  These beasts have a habit of locating a resting seal by looking over the edge of a floe and then striking through the ice from below in search of a meal; they would not distinguish between seal and man.

The noon position on January 8 was lat. 70° 0´ S., long. 19° 09´ W. We had made 66 miles in a north-easterly direction during the preceding twenty-four hours.  The course during the afternoon was east-south-east through loose pack and open water, with deep hummocky floes to the south.  Several leads to the south came in view, but we held on the easterly course.  The floes were becoming looser, and there were indications of open water ahead.  The ship passed not fewer than five hundred bergs that day, some of them very large.  A dark water-sky extended from east to south-south-east on the following morning, and the ‘Endurance’, working through loose pack at half speed, reached open water just before noon.  A rampart berg 150 ft. high and a quarter of a mile long lay at the edge of the loose pack, and we sailed over a projecting foot of this berg into rolling ocean, stretching to the horizon.  The sea extended from a little to the west of south, round by east to north-north-east, and its welcome promise was supported by a deep water-sky to the south.  I laid a course south by east in an endeavour to get south and east of Ross’s farthest south (lat. 71° 30´ S.).