There was no sleep for
anybody owing to the severe cold, and we dare not pull fast enough to
keep ourselves warm since we were unable to see more than a few yards
ahead. Occasionally the ghostly shadows of silver, snow, and fulmar
petrels flashed close to us, and all around we could hear the killers
blowing, their short, sharp hisses sounding like sudden escapes of
steam. The killers were a source of anxiety, for a boat could easily
have been capsized by one of them coming up to blow. They would throw
aside in a nonchalant fashion pieces of ice much bigger than our boats
when they rose to the surface, and we had an uneasy feeling that the
white bottoms of the boats would look like ice from below. Shipwrecked
mariners drifting in the Antarctic seas would be things not dreamed of
in the killers' philosophy, and might appear on closer examination to
be tasty substitutes for seal and penguin. We certainly regarded the
killers with misgivings.
Early in the morning of April 12 the weather improved and the wind
dropped. Dawn came with a clear sky, cold and fearless. I looked
around at the faces of my companions in the 'James Caird' and saw
pinched and drawn features. The strain was beginning to tell. Wild sat
at the rudder with the same calm, confident expression that he would
have worn under happier conditions; his steel-blue eyes looked out to
the day ahead.
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