They were already showing some signs of increasing strength
under a regime of warm quarters and abundant food. The carpenter looked
woefully thin after he had emerged from a bath. He must have worn a lot
of clothes when he landed from the boat, and I did not realize how he
had wasted till I saw him washed and changed. He was a man over fifty
years of age, and the strain had told upon him more than upon the rest
of us. The rescue came just in time for him.
The early part of the voyage down to Elephant Island in the Southern
Sky was uneventful. At noon on Tuesday, May 23, we were at sea and
steaming at ten knots on a south-westerly course. We made good
progress, but the temperature fell very low, and the signs gave me some
cause for anxiety as to the probability of encountering ice. On the
third night out the sea seemed to grow silent. I looked over the side
and saw a thin film of ice. The sea was freezing around us and the ice
gradually grew thicker, reducing our speed to about five knots. Then
lumps of old pack began to appear among the new ice. I realized that
an advance through pack-ice was out of the question. The 'Southern Sky'
was a steel-built steamer, and her structure, while strong to resist
the waves, would not endure the blows of masses of ice. So I took the
ship north, and at daylight on Friday we got clear of the pancake-ice.
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