At 10 P.M. on the 19th, the ice fields still remaining loose and navigable, a dark line of open water was observed ahead. From the crow's-nest it was seen to the south stretching east and west within the belt of pack-ice—the Davis Sea. We had broken through the pack less than twenty-five miles north of where the 'Gauss' (German Expedition, 1902) had wintered.
All next day the 'Aurora' steamed into the eye of an easterly wind towards a low white island, the higher positions of which had been seen by the German Expedition of 1902, and charted as Drygalski's High Land. Dr. Jones' party had, the year before, obtained a distant view of it and regarded it as an island, which proved to be correct, so we named it Drygalski Island. To the south there was the dim outline of the mainland. Soundings varied between two hundred and three hundred fathoms.
On January 21, Drygalski Island was close at hand, and a series of soundings which showed from sixty to seventy fathoms of water deepening towards the mainland proved beyond doubt that it was an island. In shape it is like a flattened dome about nine miles in diameter and twelve hundred feet in height, bounded by perpendicular cliffs of ice, and with no visible evidence of outcropping rock.
The dredge was lowered in sixty fathoms, and a rich assortment of life was captured for the biologists—Hunter and Hamilton. A course was then made to the south amidst a sea of great bergs; the water deepening to about four hundred fathoms.
During the evening the crevassed slopes of the mainland rose clear to the south, and many islets were observed near the coast, frozen in a wide expanse of bay-ice. Haswell Island, visited by Jones, Dovers and Hoadley of the Western Party, was sighted, and the ship was able to approach within eight miles of it; at ten o'clock coming up to flat bay-ice, where she anchored for the night. Before we retired to bunk, a Ross seal was discovered and shot, three-quarters of a mile away.
Next day, January 22, an unexpected find was made of five more of this rare species of seal. Many Emperor penguins were also secured. It would have been interesting to visit the great rookery of Emperor penguins on Haswell Island, but, as the ship could only approach to within eight miles of it, I did not think it advisable to allow a party to go so far.
On the night of the 22nd, the 'Aurora' was headed northeast for the Shackleton Ice-Shelf. In the early hours of the 28rd a strong gale sprang up and rapidly increased in violence. A pall of nimbus overspread the sky, and blinding snow commenced to fall.
We had become used to blizzards, but on this occasion several factors made us somewhat apprehensive. The ship was at least twenty-five miles from shelter on an open sea, littered with bergs and fragments of ice. The wind was very strong; the maximum velocity exceeding seventy miles per hour, and the dense driving snow during the midnight hours of semi-darkness reduced our chances of navigating with any certainty.
The night of the 23rd had a touch of terror. The wind was so powerful that, with a full head of steam and steering a few points off the eye of the wind, the ship could just hold her own. But when heavy gusts swooped down and the propeller raced on the crest of a mountainous wave, Davis found it impossible to keep steerage-way.
Drift and spray lash the faces of officer and helmsman, and through the grey gloom misty bergs glide by on either hand. A long slow struggle brings us to a passage between two huge masses of ice. There is a shock as the vessel bumps and grinds along a great wall. The engine stops, starts again, and stops once more. The yards on the foremast are swung into the wind, the giant seas are broken by the stolid barriers of ice, the engine commences to throb with its old rhythm, and the ship slowly creeps out to meet the next peril. It comes with the onset of a "bergy-bit" which smashes the martingale as it plunges into a deep trough. The chain stay parts, dragging loose in the water, while a great strain is put by the foremast on the bowsprit.