Our position on Sunday, October 3, was lat. 69° 14´ S., long. 51° 8´ W. During the night the floe holding the ship aft cracked in several places, and this appeared to have eased the strain on the rudder.  The forenoon was misty, with falls of snow, but the weather cleared later in the day and we could see that the pack was breaking.  New leads had appeared, while several old leads had closed.  Pressure-ridges had risen along some of the cracks.  The thickness of the season’s ice, now about 230 days old, was 4 ft. 5 in. under 7 or 8 in. of snow.  This ice had been slightly thicker in the early part of September, and I assumed that some melting had begun below.  Clark had recorded plus temperatures at depths of 150 and 200 fathoms in the concluding days of September.  The ice obviously had attained its maximum thickness by direct freezing, and the heavier older floes had been created by the consolidation of pressure-ice and the overlapping of floes under strain.  The air temperatures were still low, -24.5° Fahr. being recorded on October 4.

The movement of the ice was increasing.  Frost-smoke from opening cracks was showing in all directions during October 6.  It had the appearance in one place of a great prairie fire, rising from the surface and getting higher as it drifted off before the wind in heavy, dark, rolling masses.  At another point there was the appearance of a train running before the wind, the smoke rising from the locomotive straight upwards; and the smoke columns elsewhere gave the effect of warships steaming in line ahead.  During the following day the leads and cracks opened to such an extent that if the ‘Endurance’ could have been forced forward for thirty yards we could have proceeded for two or three miles; but the effort did not promise any really useful result.  The conditions did not change materially during the rest of that week.  The position on Sunday, October 10, was lat. 69° 21´ S., long. 50° 34´ W. A thaw made things uncomfortable for us that day.  The temperature had risen from -10° Fahr. to +29.8° Fahr., the highest we had experienced since January, and the ship got dripping wet between decks.  The upper deck was clear of ice and snow and the cabins became unpleasantly messy.  The dogs, who hated wet, had a most unhappy air.  Undoubtedly one grows to like familiar conditions.  We had lived long in temperatures that would have seemed distressingly low in civilized life, and now we were made uncomfortable by a degree of warmth that would have left the unaccustomed human being still shivering.  The thaw was an indication that winter was over, and we began preparations for reoccupying the cabins on the main deck.  I had the shelter-house round the stern pulled down on the 11th and made other preparations for working the ship as soon as she got clear.  The carpenter had built a wheel-house over the wheel aft as shelter in cold and heavy weather.  The ice was still loosening and no land was visible for twenty miles.