"It had been arranged that a gun should be fired from the relief ship
when she got near the island," said Wild. "Many times when the
glaciers were 'calving,' and chunks fell off with a report like a gun,
we thought that it was the real thing, and after a time we got to
distrust these signals. As a matter of fact, we saw the 'Yelcho'
before we heard any gun. It was an occasion one will not easily
forget. We were just assembling for lunch to the call of 'Lunch O!'
and I was serving out the soup, which was particularly good that day,
consisting of boiled seal's backbone, limpets, and seaweed, when there
was another hail from Marston of 'Ship O!' Some of the men thought it
was 'Lunch O!' over again, but when there was another yell from Marston
lunch had no further attractions. The ship was about a mile and a half
away and steaming past us. A smoke-signal was the agreed sign from the
shore, and, catching up somebody's coat that was lying about, I struck
a pick into a tin of kerosene kept for the purpose, poured it over the
coat, and set it alight. It flared instead of smoking; but that didn't
matter, for you had already recognized the spot where you had left us
and the 'Yelcho' was turning in."
We encountered bad weather on the way back to Punta Arenas, and the
little 'Yelcho' laboured heavily; but she had light hearts aboard.
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