Early next morning Stenhouse lowered a jury-rudder, with steering pennants to drag through the water, and moved north to north-west through heavy pack.  He made sixteen miles that day on an erratic course, and then spent an anxious night with the ship setting back into the pack and being pounded heavily.  Attempts to work forward to an open lead on the morning of the 13th were unsuccessful.  Early in the afternoon a little progress was made, with all hands standing by to fend off high ice, and at 4.50 p.m. the ‘Aurora’ cleared the main pack.  An hour was spent shipping the jury-rudder under the counter, and then the ship moved slowly northward.  There was pack still ahead, and the bergs and growlers were a constant menace in the hours of darkness.  Some anxious work remained to be done, since bergs and scattered ice extended in all directions, but at 2 p.m. on March 14 the ‘Aurora’ cleared the last belt of pack in lat. 62° 27.5´ S., long. 157° 32´ E.  “We ‘spliced the main brace,’” says Stenhouse, “and blew three blasts of farewell to the pack with the whistle.”

The ‘Aurora’ was not at the end of her troubles, but the voyage up to New Zealand need not be described in detail.  Any attempt to reach McMurdo Sound was now out of the question.  Stenhouse had a battered, rudderless ship, with only a few tons of coal left in the bunkers, and he struggled northward in heavy weather against persistent adverse winds and head seas.  The jury-rudder needed constant nursing, and the shortage of coal made it impossible to get the best service from the engines.  There were times when the ship could make no progress and fell about helplessly in a confused swell or lay hove to amid mountainous seas.  She was short-handed, and one or two of the men were creating additional difficulties.  But Stenhouse displayed throughout fine seamanship and dogged perseverance.  He accomplished successfully one of the most difficult voyages on record, in an ocean area notoriously stormy and treacherous.  On March 23 he established wireless communication with Bluff Station, New Zealand, and the next day was in touch with Wellington and Hobart.  The naval officer in New Zealand waters offered assistance, and eventually it was arranged that the Otago Harbour Board’s tug Plucky should meet the ‘Aurora’ outside Port Chalmers.  There were still bad days to be endured.  The jury-rudder partially carried away and had to be unshipped in a heavy sea.  Stenhouse carried on, and in the early morning of April 2 the ‘Aurora’ picked up the tug and was taken in tow.  She reached Port Chalmers the following morning, and was welcomed with the warm hospitality that New Zealand has always shown towards Antarctic explorers.

CHAPTER XVII

THE LAST RELIEF