Shackleton Rescues All 27 Men of the Endurance

The oars dipped once more and the James Caird slid clear of the shingle. Six men bent to the work while the rest of us stood in the wind on the narrow beach, counting strokes without speaking. Shackleton raised one hand from the stern. Wild answered with a short wave. The boat took the first swell and dropped from sight, then rose again, smaller already.

We turned to the upturned boats that formed our hut. The canvas walls flapped against the frames we had lashed from oars and sledge runners. Inside, the blubber stove gave off more smoke than heat. McIlroy checked the frostbite on his fingers by the light of a seal-oil lamp. I stacked the last of the penguin skins against the wall and counted them again. Twenty-two men, six weeks of food if the weather held.

Wild set the watches the same day the boat left. Two hours on the ridge, two hours mending, two hours trying to sleep. The ridge gave the only view of open water. From there the pack ice showed as a white line that never moved closer. Some nights the wind carried the sound of the sea breaking on distant bergs. We listened and said nothing.

April gave way to May without a ship. The sun stayed low and the snow drifted higher against the boats. Wild kept the men at small tasks. Hurley developed plates in the dark corner of the shelter and passed them around so we could see our own faces. The prints showed hollow cheeks and eyes that had already begun to look past one another.

June brought the first real storm. The canvas tore in three places. We patched it with strips cut from an old sail and weighted the edges with stones. Inside, the temperature stayed just above freezing when the stove burned. When it went out, ice formed on the inside of the walls. We ate the meat raw then and slept in our clothes.

Wild read the same page from the Bible each Sunday. The words did not change. Neither did the horizon. Twice we thought we saw smoke. Both times the line on the water proved to be only mist. The men who had cheered the first time did not cheer the second.

By July the stores were down to biscuit and the occasional seal. We hunted when the ice opened enough to reach the water. One afternoon a leopard seal came close to the beach. Orde-Lees shot it cleanly. We dragged the carcass above the tide line and worked by lamplight until the meat was cut and the blubber rendered. The oil lasted three days in the lamps.

August arrived with longer light but no ship. The ice began to loosen. We could see leads of dark water from the ridge. Wild ordered the boats made ready again, though no one said where we would go. The work kept hands busy. At night the wind still carried the same sound of distant surf.

On the thirtieth the lookout called down from the ridge at midday. A steamer stood off the point, hull black against the ice. We climbed the slope in single file. The ship flew no flag we recognized at first. Then the hull turned and we saw the name on the stern. Yelcho. The men on deck waved. One figure stood apart at the rail.