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Updated: May 11, 2025
A fine lead appeared in the pack this morning, as I had expected, and we were able to cast off our ice-anchor, and steam about twelve miles in a west-sou'-westerly direction. We were then brought to a halt by a great floe as massive as any which we have left behind us.
Yet, he was not too quick, for the murderous knife was swinging above Dave's chest and a hand was at his throat, when Jarvis clove the assailant's skull with his ice-anchor. With a groan the man collapsed. The knife clattered to the deck. Jarvis dropped to the floor panting. "Are you hurt?" he gasped. "No! Are you?" "Not a scratch. Some jolly little weapon, them ice-h'anchors.
"He was so large and heavy that we had to fix the ice-anchor, and drag him up with block and tackle, as if he had been a walrus.
We were stopped first by floes closing around us, and then about noon the 'Endurance' got jammed between two floes heading east-north-east. The pressure heeled the ship over six degrees while we were getting an ice-anchor on to the floe in order to heave astern and thus assist the engines, which were running at full speed. The effort was successful.
The position was lat. 69° 59´ S., long. 17° 31´ W. We made a move again at 7 p.m., when we took in the ice-anchor and proceeded south, and at 10 p.m. we passed a small berg that the ship had nearly touched twelve hours previously. Obviously we were not making much headway. Several of the bergs passed during this day were of solid blue ice, indicating true glacier origin.
Quickly he and the engineer crouched behind the conning-tower. Their breath coming hard, their hearts beating fast, they waited. The throbbing of the engine stopped. The submarine glided silently on. The deathlike stillness was ended by the dull groan of a hatchway lifting. Armed each with a knife and a heavy ice-anchor, the two men waited.
Then another rope was run out over the stern of the ship, and, this being made fast to an ice-anchor in the same way as the other, the ship was soon drawn up with her whole broadside close to the ice, as snug as if she were lying alongside of a dock in New Bedford. "And now began the seal-hunt.
Just then a low berg came driving up from the southward, dashing the spray over its sides, and with its fore-head ploughing up the smaller ice as if in scorn. A happy thought flashed across the captain's mind. "Down the quarter boat," he cried. In an instant it struck the water, and four men were on the thwarts. "Cast an ice-anchor on that berg."
"As soon as we had reached the ice, we sprang out of the boat on to it, and, after digging a hole into it with a long, sharp bar of iron, called an ice-chisel, we put therein one end of a large, heavy, crooked hook, called an ice-anchor, and then to a ring in the other end of this ice-anchor we made fast the end of the rope that we had brought with us.
Swinging his ice-anchor, an ugly cudgel of bent iron with a chilled steel point, he sent two of the villains sprawling at a single blow. Meanwhile, Dave, who had grappled with the third man, made a misstep and together they plunged down the hatchway. His opponent landed full on Dave's stomach, and so crushed the breath from him that for a second the lad could not move.
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