The first three attempts at their rescue unfortunately coincided with
the times when the island was beset with ice, and though on the second
occasion we approached close enough to fire a gun, in the hope that
they would hear the sound and know that we were safe and well, yet so
accustomed were they to the noise made by the calving of the adjacent
glacier that either they did not hear or the sound passed unnoticed.
On August 16 pack was observed on the horizon, and next day the bay was
filled with loose ice, which soon consolidated. Soon afterwards huge
old floes and many bergs drifted in. "The pack appears as dense as we
have ever seen it. No open water is visible, and 'ice-blink' girdles
the horizon. The weather is wretched--a stagnant calm of air and ocean
alike, the latter obscured by dense pack through which no swell can
penetrate, and a wet mist hangs like a pall over land and sea. The
silence is oppressive. There is nothing to do but to stay in one's
sleeping-bag, or else wander in the soft snow and become thoroughly
wet." Fifteen inches of snow fell in the next twenty-four hours,
making over two feet between August 18 and 21. A slight swell next day
from the north-east ground up the pack-ice, but this soon subsided, and
the pack became consolidated once more. On August 27 a strong west-
south-west wind sprang up and drove all this ice out of the bay, and
except for some stranded bergs left a clear ice-free sea through which
we finally made our way from Punta Arenas to Elephant Island.
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