The floe was not so solid as it appeared. We had reminders
occasionally that the greedy sea was very close, and that the floe was
but a treacherous friend, which might open suddenly beneath us. Towards
the end of the month I had our store of seal meat and blubber brought
aboard. The depth as recorded by a sounding on the last day of March
was 256 fathoms. The continuous shoaling from 606 fathoms in a drift
of 39 miles N. 26° W. in thirty days was interesting. The sea shoaled
as we went north, either to east or to west, and the fact suggested
that the contour-lines ran east and west, roughly. Our total drift
between January 19, when the ship was frozen in, and March 31, a period
of seventy-one days, had been 95 miles in a N. 80° W. direction. The
icebergs around us had not changed their relative positions.

The sun sank lower in the sky, the temperatures became lower, and the
'Endurance' felt the grip of the icy hand of winter. Two north-easterly
gales in the early part of April assisted to consolidate the pack. The
young ice was thickening rapidly, and though leads were visible
occasionally from the ship, no opening of a considerable size appeared
in our neighbourhood. In the early morning of April 1 we listened
again for the wireless signals from Port Stanley. The crew had lashed
three 20-ft. rickers to the mast-heads in order to increase the spread
of our aerials, but still we failed to hear anything. The rickers had
to come down subsequently, since we found that the gear could not carry
the accumulating weight of rime. Soundings proved that the sea
continued to shoal as the 'Endurance' drifted to the north-west. The
depth on April 2 was 262 fathoms, with a bottom of glacial mud. Four
weeks later a sounding gave 172 fathoms. The presence of grit in the
bottom samples towards the end of the month suggested that we were
approaching land again.