The two subjects of most interest to us were our rate of drift and the
weather. Worsley took observations of the sun whenever possible, and
his results showed conclusively that the drift of our floe was almost
entirely dependent upon the winds and not much affected by currents.
Our hope, of course, was to drift northwards to the edge of the pack
and then, when the ice was loose enough, to take to the boats and row
to the nearest land. We started off in fine style, drifting north about
twenty miles in two or three days in a howling south-westerly blizzard.
Gradually, however, we slowed up, as successive observations showed,
until we began to drift back to the south. An increasing north-
easterly wind, which commenced on November 7 and lasted for twelve
days, damped our spirits for a time, until we found that we had only
drifted back to the south three miles, so that we were now seventeen
miles to the good. This tended to reassure us in our theories that the
ice of the Weddell Sea was drifting round in a clockwise direction, and
that if we could stay on our piece long enough we must eventually be
taken up to the north, where lay the open sea and the path to
comparative safety.
The ice was not moving fast enough to be noticeable. In fact, the
only way in which we could prove that we were moving at all was by
noting the change of relative positions of the bergs around us, and,
more definitely, by fixing our absolute latitude and longitude by
observations of the sun.
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