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Whilst Worsley and Crean were digging a hole for the lamp and starting the cooker I climbed a ridge above us, cutting steps with the adze, in order to secure an extended view of the country below. At 6.30 a.m. I thought I heard the sound of a steam-whistle. I dared not be certain, but I knew that the men at the whaling-station would be called from their beds about that time.
From the time when we had to reckon with any likelihood of meeting icebergs, the temperature of the water was also taken every two hours during the night. As Kerguelen Island lay almost directly in the course we intended to follow, it was decided for several reasons that we should call there, and pay a visit to the Norwegian whaling-station.
I learned later that men from the whaling-station at Stromness sometimes go round to Fortuna Bay by boat to shoot seals. Noon found us well up the slope on the other side of the bay working east-south-east, and half an hour later we were on a flat plateau, with one more ridge to cross before we descended into Husvik.
Just at dusk on Monday afternoon they entered Stromness Bay, where the men of the whaling-station mustered on the beach to receive the rescued party and to examine with professional interest the boat we had navigated across 800 miles of the stormy ocean they knew so well.
A course was laid for Royal Sound, where we supposed the whaling-station to be situated. We were going well in the fresh morning breeze, and were just about to round the last headland, when all at once a gale sprang up again, the bare and uninviting coast was hidden in heavy rain, and we had the choice of waiting for an indefinite time or continuing our voyage.
We had "suffered, starved, and triumphed, grovelled down yet grasped at glory, grown bigger in the bigness of the whole." We had seen God in His splendours, heard the text that Nature renders. We had reached the naked soul of man. Shivering with cold, yet with hearts light and happy, we set off towards the whaling-station, now not more than a mile and a half distant.
Dicky Barrett, head-man of the Taranaki whaling-station, helped the Ngatiawa to repulse a noteworthy raid by the Waikato tribe.
I realized that the condition of the party generally, and particularly of McNeish and Vincent, would prevent us putting to sea again except under pressure of dire necessity. Our boat, moreover, had been weakened by the cutting away of the topsides, and I doubted if we could weather the island. We were still 150 miles away from Stromness whaling-station by sea.
His first missionary found two years at a whaling-station quite enough, if we may judge from his greeting to his successor, which was "Welcome to Purgatory, Brother Creed!" The harpooning and lancing of the whale were wild work; and when bones were broken, a surgeon's aid was not always to be had.
One feels "the dearth of human words, the roughness of mortal speech" in trying to describe things intangible, but a record of our journeys would be incomplete without a reference to a subject very near to our hearts. Our first night at the whaling-station was blissful. Crean and I shared a beautiful room in Mr. Sorlle's house, with electric light and two beds, warm and soft.
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