size of our camp.  When the floes retreated to attack again the water swirled over the ice-foot, which was rapidly increasing in width.  The launching of the boats under such conditions would be difficult.  Time after time, so often that a track was formed, Worsley, Wild, and I, climbed to the highest point of the berg and stared out to the horizon in search of a break in the pack.  After long hours had dragged past, far away on the lift of the swell there appeared a dark break in the tossing field of ice.  Aeons seemed to pass, so slowly it approached.  I noticed enviously the calm peaceful attitudes of two seals which lolled lazily on a rocking floe.  They were at home and had no reason for worry or cause for fear.  If they thought at all, I suppose they counted it an ideal day for a joyous journey on the tumbling ice.  To us it was a day that seemed likely to lead to no more days.  I do not think I had ever before felt the anxiety that belongs leadership quite so keenly.  When I looked down at the camp to rest my eyes from the strain of watching the wide white expanse broken by that one black ribbon of open water, I could see that my companions were waiting with more than ordinary interest to learn what I thought about it all.  After one particularly heavy collision somebody shouted sharply, “She has cracked in the middle.”  I jumped off the look-out station and ran to the place the men were examining.  There was a crack, but investigation showed it to be a mere surface break in the snow with no indication of a split in the berg itself.  The carpenter mentioned calmly that earlier in the day he had actually gone adrift on a fragment of ice.  He was standing near the edge of our camping-ground when the ice under his feet parted from the parent mass.  A quick jump over the widening gap saved him.

The hours dragged on.  One of the anxieties in my mind was the possibility that we would be driven by the current through the eighty-mile gap between Clarence Island and Prince George Island into the open Atlantic; but slowly the open water came nearer, and at noon it had almost reached us.  A long lane, narrow but navigable, stretched out to the south-west horizon.  Our chance came a little later.  We rushed our boats over the edge of the reeling berg and swung them clear of the ice-foot as it rose beneath them.  The ‘James Caird’ was nearly capsized by a blow from below as the berg rolled away, but she got into deep water.  We flung stores and gear aboard and within a few minutes were away.  The ‘James Caird’ and ‘Dudley Docker’ had good sails and with a favourable breeze could make progress along the lane, with the rolling fields of ice on either side.  The swell was heavy and spray was breaking over the ice-floes.  An attempt to set a little rag of sail on the ’Stancomb Wills’ resulted in serious delay.  The area of sail was too small to be of much assistance, and while the men were engaged in this work the boat drifted down towards the ice-floe, where her position was likely