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Updated: May 8, 2025
Long leads of open water ran towards the south-west, and the ship smashed at full speed through occasional areas of young ice till brought up with a heavy thud against a section of older floe. Worsley was out on the jib- boom end for a few minutes while Wild was conning the ship, and he came back with a glowing account of a novel sensation.
"It may be so the currents run all manner of ways, and field-ice may pass the shoals, though a berg never can. I do not remember, nevertheless, to have ever seen even a floe within the group nothing beyond large cakes that have got adrift by some means or other." "I have, sir, though only once.
On the 29th, after a few hours of clear weather, the fog came on again as thick as before; fortunately, however, we had previously been enabled to take notice of several pieces of ice, by steering for each of which in succession we came to the edge of a floe, along which our course was to be pursued to the westward.
The doomed ship now lay between the main or fixed frozen shore ice and the immense floe which was impelled by the north wind acting on its whole irregular surface. The force was irresistible. The Wolf backed and butted and got twenty yards into a nook in the main ice, and lay there helpless as an infant.
I had not expected him to last long, but it will be a bad blow if he fails at the start. I'm afraid there is much pony trouble in store for us. Oates is having great trouble with Christopher, who didn't at all appreciate being harnessed on Sunday, and again to-day he broke away and galloped off over the floe.
I took on the job of ice inspector, and three or four times a day I go out and inspect the ice, building snow bridges over the tide cracks and thin places. The ice, excepting the floe to which the ship is fast, is several feet thick. The floe by the 'Terra Nova' is very thin and rather doubtful. We, ashore, had dinner at 10 p.m. and turned in about 11."
We cut a slipway from our floe into a lead which ran alongside, and the boats took the water "like a bird," as one sailor remarked. Our hopes were high in anticipation of an early release. A blizzard sprang up, increasing the next day and burying tents and packing-cases in the drift.
Two men were already on the floe, and the valuable spoil was secured. In the course of a quarter of an hour the beast lay on our deck, flayed and cut up by practised hands; this gave us at one stroke at least four hundredweight of dog food, as well as a good many rations for men. We made the same coup three times more in the course of the day, and thus had over a ton of fresh meat and blubber.
It certainly looked like the former; it was completely free of floating ice, large or small, except the cakes which were broken away by the waves from the edge of the enormous floe just left behind, and they were kept by the wind close to their parent mass; the sea ran so high and was so regular as to convey the idea of a very considerable extent of "fetch;" and, lastly, there was neither ice nor ice-blink to be seen anywhere along the whole stretch of the northern horizon.
The repairs having been completed, we again started. Before us stretched a heavy, old floe, giving us good going until we reached the lead, when the order was given to camp. We built our igloos, and boiled the tea and had what we called supper.
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