red
itself ineffectually against it, and we had seen a million-ton iceberg
brought to rest at its edge. For weeks we had been struggling with this
mighty obstacle ... but now without a word, without an effort on our
part, it was all melting away, and we knew that in an hour or two not a
vestige of it would be left, and that the open sea would be lapping on
the black rocks of Hut Point."[22]

Almost more dramatic was the grounding of the Discovery off the shoal at
Hut Point owing to the rise of a blizzard immediately after her release
from the ice. Hour after hour she lay pounding on the shore, and when it
seemed most certain that she had been freed only to be destroyed, and
when all hope was nearly gone, the wind lulled, and the waters of the
Sound, driven out by the force of the wind, returned and the Discovery
floated off with little damage. The whole story of the release from the
ice and subsequent grounding of the Discovery is wonderfully told by
Scott in his book.

Some years after this I met Wilson in a shooting lodge in Scotland. He
was working upon grouse disease for the Royal Commission which had been
appointed, and I saw then for the first time something of his magnetic
personality and glimpses also of his methods of work. He and Scott both
meant to go back and finish the job, and I then settled that when they
went I would go too if wishing could do anything. Meanwhile Shackleton
was either in the South or making his preparations to go there.

He left England in 1908, and in the following Antarctic summer two
wonderful journeys were made. The first, led by Shackleton himself,
consisted of four men and four ponies. Leaving Cape Royds, where the
expedition wintered in a hut, in November, they marched due south on the
Barrier outside Scott's track until they were stopped by the eastward
trend of the range of mountains, and by the chaotic pressure caused by
the discharge of a Brobdingnagian glacier.

But away from the main stream of the glacier, and separated from it by
land now known as Hope Island, was a narrow and steep snow slope forming
a gateway which opened on to the main glacier stream. Boldly plunging
through this, the party made its way up the Beardmore Glacier, a giant of
its kind, being more than twice as large as any other known. The history
of their adventures will make anybody's flesh creep. From the top they
travelled due south toward the Pole under the trying conditions of the
plateau and reac