might arise. Even the dogs seemed to feel the tense anxiety of the
moment. But the ship resisted valiantly, and just when it appeared that
the limit of her strength was being reached the huge floe that was
pressing down upon us cracked across and so gave relief.

"The behaviour of our ship in the ice has been magnificent," wrote
Worsley. "Since we have been beset her staunchness and endurance have
been almost past belief again and again. She has been nipped with a
million-ton pressure and risen nobly, falling clear of the water out on
the ice. She has been thrown to and fro like a shuttlecock a dozen
times. She has been strained, her beams arched upwards, by the fearful
pressure; her very sides opened and closed again as she was actually
bent and curved along her length, groaning like a living thing. It
will be sad if such a brave little craft should be finally crushed in
the remorseless, slowly strangling grip of the Weddell pack after ten
months of the bravest and most gallant fight ever put up by a ship."

The 'Endurance' deserved all that could be said in praise of her.
Shipwrights had never done sounder or better work; but how long could
she continue the fight under such conditions? We were drifting into
the congested area of the western Weddell Sea, the worst portion of the
worst sea in the world, where the pack, forced on irresistibly by wind
and current, impinges on the western shore and is driven up in huge
corrugated ridges and chaotic fields of pressure. The vital question
for us was whether or not the ice would open sufficiently to release
us, or at least give us a chance of release, before the drift carried
us into the most dangerous area. There was no answer to be got from
the silent bergs and the grinding floes, and we faced the month of
October with anxious hearts.