Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Author:Alfred Lansing
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-11-14T16:51:59+00:00

Chapter One

The first few minutes were crucial - and they were maddening. The oarsmen did their best to pull together, but they were clumsy and out of practice, and hampered by their own anxiety. The encircling ice fouled the oars, and collisions were unavoidable. Men crouched in the bow of each boat and tried to pole off the bigger pieces of ice, but a great many outweighed the boats themselves.

The raised sides of the Jairles Cairo and the Dudley Docker were an added hindrance. They made the seats too low for proper rowing, and though cases of stores were placed under the four oarsmen in each boat, it was still an awkward business.

The sledge astern of the Dudley Docker continually got hung up on bits of ice, and after a few minutes Worsley angrily cut it loose.

And yet, to their surprise and almost in spite of themselves and the jealous hands that tried to hold them back, they were making headway. With each boat-length the ice seemed looser. It was difficult to tell whether the pack was opening or whether they were escaping from the ice surrounding Patience Camp. In either case, for the moment, luck was on their side.

The overcast sky seemed almost alive with birds - Cape pigeons, terns, fulmars, and Antarctic, silver-gray and snow petrels by the thousands. The birds were so thick their droppings spattered on the boats and forced the rowers to keep their heads lowered. Whales, too, seemed everywhere. They surfaced on all sides, sometimes frighteningly close - especially the killers.

The Jai,ies Caird was in the lead with Shackleton at the tiller. So far as the ice permitted he set a course for the northwest. Next came Worsley steering the Dudley Docker, then Hudson in the Staricomb Wills.The sound of their voices chanting, `stroke ... stroke ... stroke ... ' mingled with the cries of the birds overhead and the surge of the swell through the pack.With each stroke, the oarsmen fell more into the rhythm of their task.

In fifteen minutes, Patience Camp was lost in the confusion of ice astern. But Patience Camp no longer mattered.That soot-blackened floe which had been their prison for nearly four months - whose every feature they knew so well, as convicts know each crevice of their cells; which they had come to despise, but whose preservation they had prayed for so often - belonged now to the past. They were in the boats ... actually in the boats, and that was all that mattered. They thought neither of Patience Camp nor of an hour hence. There was only the present, and that meant row ... get away ... escape.

Within thirty minutes they had entered an area of very open pack, and by two-thirty they were easily a mile away from Patience Camp. They could not have found it again even if they had wanted. Their course carried them close to a high, flat-topped berg which was taking a terrific pounding from the northwest swell. The seas broke against its ice-blue sides, flinging spray 6o feet into the air.

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