Soon after breakfast the ice closed again.  We were standing by, with our preparations as complete as they could be made, when at 11 a.m. our floe suddenly split right across under the boats.  We rushed our gear on to the larger of the two pieces and watched with strained attention for the next development.  The crack had cut through the site of my tent.  I stood on the edge of the new fracture, and, looking across the widening channel of water, could see the spot where for many months my head and shoulders had rested when I was in my sleeping-bag.  The depression formed by my body and legs was on our side of the crack.  The ice had sunk under my weight during the months of waiting in the tent, and I had many times put snow under the bag to fill the hollow.  The lines of stratification showed clearly the different layers of snow.  How fragile and precarious had been our resting-place!  Yet usage had dulled our sense of danger.  The floe had become our home, and during the early months of the drift we had almost ceased to realize that it was but a sheet of ice floating on unfathomed seas.  Now our home was being shattered under our feet, and we had a sense of loss and incompleteness hard to describe.

The fragments of our floe came together again a little later, and we had our lunch of seal meat, all hands eating their fill.  I thought that a good meal would be the best possible preparation for the journey that now seemed imminent, and as we would not be able to take all our meat with us when we finally moved, we could regard every pound eaten as a pound rescued.  The call to action came at 1 p.m.  The pack opened well and the channels became navigable.  The conditions were not all one could have desired, but it was best not to wait any longer.  The ‘Dudley Docker’ and the ‘Stancomb Wills’ were launched quickly.  Stores were thrown in, and the two boats were pulled clear of the immediate floes towards a pool of open water three miles broad, in which floated a lone and mighty berg.  The ‘James Caird’ was the last boat to leave, heavily loaded with stores and odds and ends of camp equipment.  Many things regarded by us as essentials at that time were to be discarded a little later as the pressure of the primitive became more severe.  Man can sustain life with very scanty means.  The trappings of civilization are soon cast aside in the face of stern realities, and given the barest opportunity of winning food and shelter, man can live and even find his laughter ringing true.

The three boats were a mile away from our floe home at 2 p.m.  We had made our way through the channels and had entered the big pool when we saw a rush of foam-clad water and tossing ice approaching us, like the tidal bore of a river.  The pack was being impelled to the east by a tide-rip, and two huge masses of ice were driving down upon us on converging courses.  The ‘James Caird’ was leading.  Starboarding the helm and bending strongly to the oars, we managed