THE S. S. AURORA
Just arrived at Port Chalmers, N. Z., from the South Pole
MOUNT COOK OF THE NEW ZEALAND ALPS IN SUMMER
Once staid Dunedin was thrilled by a wireless S.O.S. from the direction of the South Pole. The Aurora, Shackleton's ship which had gone down to the polar regions, was calling for help. She had snapped the cables which tied her to land when the ice-packs gave way and had drifted out to sea. Fortunately, most of the officers and crew were at the moment on board, but sixteen men were left marooned. To add to the prospect of tragedy, the ice smashed the rudder, and a jury-rudder, worked by hand from the stern deck, had to be improvised. With these handicaps the vessel made her way slowly till within five hundred miles of New Zealand, the reach of her wireless. Here she was rescued by a Dunedin tug and brought to Port Chalmers.
CIRCULAR QUAY, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
A whirl of pleasure-seeking and business
MONUMENT TO CAPTAIN COOK
At Botany Bay, Australia
I made friends with the mate and the chief engineer and gained access to their superb collection of Emperor Penguin skins and an unusual number of photographs. Months afterward they wanted four men to complete the crew necessary for another journey south and I was tempted to join them, but tallow and bladder and a repressed pen were the negatives, while China and Japan were the positives. So I sailed away with the rising sun in the direction of the great West that is the Far East. Crisp and clear in the bright morning air shone the towering peaks of the New Zealand Alps as I sailed toward Australia and to Botany Bay,—not, however, without being nearly wrecked in the fog which had gathered in Foveaux Strait, which separates Steward Island from the South Island in New Zealand. Bluff, the last little town in New Zealand, is said to have the most southerly hotel in the world. I saw it.