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The ship was hove stern up by the pressure, and the driving floe, moving laterally across the stern, split the rudder and tore out the rudder- post and stern-post. Then, while we watched, the ice loosened and the 'Endurance' sank a little. The decks were breaking upwards and the water was pouring in below. Again the pressure began, and at 5 p.m. I ordered all hands on to the ice.
They drifted away with the wind and soon looked like two white spots on the almost black water. Nansen and Johansen wanted their meat, the more because the bears had torn and mangled all the walrus meat lying outside the hut. The kayaks were pushed out and were soon on the farther side of the floe with the bear cubs.
Access was now obtained to the wreck by cutting a regular passage to the main hatch through the ice. The schooner stood nearly upright, sustained by fragments of the floe; and there were extensive caverns all around her, produced by the random manner in which the cakes had come up out of their proper element like so many living things.
There are fewer heavy old floes; on the other hand, the one year's floes, tremendously screwed and doubtless including old floes in their mass, have now enormously increased in area. A floe which we have just passed must have been a mile across this argues lack of swell and from that one might judge the open water to be very far.
Also, the strong current which sets east out of Lancaster Sound carried with it mile upon mile of what they call pack-ice rough ice that has not frozen into fields; and this pack was bombarding the floe at the same time that the swell and heave of the storm-worked sea was weakening and undermining it.
At 6 a.m. we converted a large coir-spring into a fender, and slipped it under the port quarter, where a pressured floe with twenty to thirty feet underfoot was threatening try knock the propeller and stern-post off altogether. At 9 a.m., after pumping ship, the engineer reported a leak in the way of the propeller-shaft aft near the stern-post on the port side.
One of the blocks was only held on by a narrow strip. "Come," said Nadia. And the two crouched on the piece of ice, which their weight detached from the floe. It began to drift. The river widened, the way was open. Michael and Nadia heard the shots, the cries of distress, the yells of the Tartars. Then, little by little, the sounds of agony and of ferocious joy grew faint in the distance.
One floe of bay-ice had black earth upon it, apparently basaltic in origin, and there was a large berg with a broad band of yellowish brown right through it. The stain may have been volcanic dust. Many of the bergs had quaint shapes. There was one that exactly resembled a large two-funnel liner, complete in silhouette except for smoke.
At the beginning of the month of March the ice reached Cumberland Gulf, and on the 11th of that month it broke up with direful noises, leaving the whole party on a small piece, which being fortunately very thick continued its journey southward very gently. Seals were now captured in abundance. One of the Esquimaux also shot a bear. Then the floe was quitted, and the pack ice reached.
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.
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