They had fought unceasingly for three days and they had lost. They accepted their defeat almost apathetically. They were simply too tired to care.

forty-nine huskies from their kennels

By 7 P.M., all essential gear had been transferred to the ice, and a camp of sorts had been established on a solid floe a short distance to starboard. The lifeboats had been lowered the night before.

The floe on which the tents were pitched was itself breaking up.

Shackleton estimated the shelf ice off the Palmer Peninsula—the nearest known land—to be 182 miles WSW of them. But land itself was 210 miles away, was inhabited by neither human beings nor animals, and offered nothing in the way of relief or rescue.

The nearest known place where they might at least find food and shelter was tiny Paulet Island, less than a mile and a half in diameter, which lay 346 miles northwest across the heaving pack ice. There,

The goal of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, as its name implies, was to cross the Antarctic continent overland from west to east.

Cynics might justifiably contend that Shackleton's fundamental purpose in undertaking the expedition was simply the greater glory of Ernest Shackleton—and the financial rewards that would accrue to the leader of a successful expedition of this scope.

The first introduced him to the Antarctic—and his imagination was immediately captivated. The second increased his desire for wealth.

He was perennially entranced with new schemes, each of which in turn he was sure would win his fortune. It would be impossible to list them all, but they included an idea to manufacture cigarettes (a sure-fire plan—with his endorsement), a fleet of taxicabs, mining in Bulgaria, a whaling factory—even digging for buried treasure.

Then in 1907, Shackleton led the first expedition actually to declare the Pole as its goal. With three companions, Shackleton struggled to within 97 miles of their destination and then had to turn back because of a shortage of food.

The sense of loss was compounded by the fact that the British, whose record for exploration had been perhaps unparalleled among the nations of the earth, had to take a humiliating second best to Norway.

above all, an explorer in the classic mold—utterly self-reliant, romantic, and just a little swashbuckling.

Shackleton's unwillingness to succumb to the demands of everyday life and his insatiable excitement with unrealistic ventures left him open to the accusation of being basically immature and irresponsible. And very possibly he was—by conventional standards. But the great leaders of historical record—the Napoleons, the Nelsons, the Alexanders—have rarely fitted any conventional mold, and it is perhaps an injustice to evaluate them in ordinary terms. There can be little doubt that Shackleton, in his way, was an extraordinary leader of men.

in keeping with the motto of his family, Fortitudine vincimus—"By endurance we conquer."

finding volunteers to take part in the expedition proved simple. When Shackleton announced his plans he was deluged by more than five thousand applications from persons (including three girls) who asked to go along.

Almost without exception, these volunteers were motivated solely by the spirit of adventure, for the salaries offered were little more

There is no record of any interview that Shackleton conducted with a prospective expedition member lasting much more than five minutes.

She was powered by a coal-fired, 350-hp steam engine, capable of driving her at speeds up to 10.2 knots. She was designed by Aanderud Larsen so that every joint and every fitting cross-braced something else for the maximum strength.

much of the ice that formed in the Weddell Sea was held there, prevented by the encircling land from escaping into the open ocean where it might have melted.

The ship herself presented an appalling sight. Sixty-nine quarrelsome huskies were tied forward; several tons of coal were heaped on the deck midships; and up in the rigging hung a ton of whale meat for use as dog food. It dripped blood constantly, spattering the deck and keeping the dogs in a near frenzy of anticipation hoping a piece would fall.

They passed a number of very large bergs, some of them more than a mile square, which presented a majestic sight as they rode the swell with the seas breaking against their sides and leaping high into the air, like surf pounding against cliffs. The action of the sea had worn huge ice caverns in many of the bergs, and each breaking wave produced a deep booming sound as it rolled into one of these ice-blue caves.

And though the pack in every direction appeared to stretch in endless desolation, it abounded with life.

A full head of steam was raised, all sails set, and the engines put full speed ahead in an attempt to break through to the crack. For three hours the ship leaned against the ice with all her might—and never moved a foot.

At last on February 24 Shackleton admitted that the possibility of getting free could no longer be seriously considered. The sea watches were canceled and a system of night watchmen was instituted.

One after another of them fell sick and wasted away. On April 6, a dog named Bristol had to be shot, bringing to fifteen the total number of dogs lost since they sailed from South Georgia. Of the original sixty-nine, only fifty-four remained, and several of these were in a bad way.

The Endurance was one microcosmic speck, 144 feet long and 25 feet wide, embedded in nearly one million square miles of ice that was slowly being rotated by the irresistible clockwise sweep of the winds and currents of the Weddell Sea.

In all the world there is no desolation more complete than the polar night. It is a return to the Ice Age—no warmth, no life, no movement. Only those who have experienced it can fully appreciate what it means to be without the sun day after day and week after week. Few men unaccustomed to it can fight off its effects altogether, and it has driven some men mad.

The next evening the fever had spread throughout the crew. Everyone, including Shackleton, had his hair trimmed down to the scalp. After that, there were many pranks.

the first half of June, the average reading was—17 degrees. But the scene from the deck of the Endurance was often fantastically beautiful. In clear weather, if the moon was out, it swept in bold, high circles through the starlit skies for days on end, casting a soft, pale light over the floes. At other times, there were breathtaking displays of the aurora australis, the Antarctic equivalent of the northern lights. Incredible sunbursts of green and blue and silver shot up from the horizon into the blue-black sky, shimmering, iridescent colors that glinted off the rock-hard ice below. But apart from the increasing cold, the weather remained remarkably stable and free from gales.

Shackleton said there once was a mouse who lived in a tavern. One night the mouse found a leaky barrel of beer, and he drank all he could hold. When the mouse had finished, he sat up, twirled his whiskers, and looked around arrogantly. "Now then,

Even Worsley, whose spirits rarely flagged, reflected the general anxiety in his diary:
"Many of the tabular bergs appear like huge warehouses and grain elevators, but more look like the creations of some brilliant architect when suffering from delirium, induced by gazing too long on this damned infernal stationary pack that seems . . . doomed to drift to and fro till the Crack of Doom splits and shivers it N., S., E. & W. into a thousand million fragments—and the smaller the better. No

In the Antarctic, plankton—tiny one-celled plants and animals—is the basis for all life. The smallest fishes subsist on it, and they in turn become the food of larger fish, which are eaten by squids and seals and penguins, who constitute the food for killer whales, sea leopards, and giant sperm whales. The cycle of life begins with plankton, and when it is present, the other creatures

All night long they kept at it . . . fifteen minutes on the pumps, fifteen minutes off, then over the side or back to the engine room. Though they were lean and hard after a year's tough work on the ship and on the sledges, ten hours at the pumps and saws left even the strongest so exhausted they stumbled as they walked. At dawn, Shackleton ordered an hour's rest, and Green ladled out a bowl of porridge for each man. Then it was time to begin again. Toward

Nevertheless, there was a remarkable absence of discouragement. All the men were in a state of dazed fatigue, and nobody paused to reflect on the terrible consequences of losing their ship. Nor were they upset by the fact that they were now camped on a piece of ice perhaps 6 feet thick. It was a haven compared with the nightmare of labor and uncertainty of the last few days on the Endurance. It was quite enough to be alive—and they were merely doing what they had to do to stay that way.
There was even a trace of mild exhilaration in their attitude. At least, they had a clear-cut task ahead of them. The nine months of indecision, of speculation about what might happen, of aimless drifting with the pack were over. Now they simply had to get themselves out,

Tom Crean, tough and practical as ever, took the younger puppies and Mrs. Chippy some distance from camp and shot them without a qualm, but it was Macklin's duty to destroy Sirius, and he could hardly face the task. Reluctantly he got a 12-gauge shotgun from Wild's tent; then he led Sirius off toward a distant pressure ridge. When he found a suitable spot he stopped and stood over the little dog. Sirius was an eager, friendly puppy, and he kept jumping up, wagging his tail and trying to lick Macklin's hand. Macklin kept pushing him away until finally he got up nerve enough to put the shotgun to Sirius' neck. He pulled the trigger, but his hand was shaking so he had to reload and fire a second time to finish the puppy off.

Their progress was slow and arduous, for all hands had to retrace their steps every thousand yards or so. By 5 P.M., after three hours on the trail, they were 1 mile from the ship in a direct line, though with detours they had traveled perhaps twice that far. Some of the dog teams, which had gone back time after time to bring up equipment, had probably covered more than 10 miles altogether.

For supper that night, Shackleton ordered Green to put some lumps of blubber into the seal meat stew so that the party might get accustomed to eating it. Some of the men, when they saw the rubbery, cod-liver-oil–flavored chunks floating around in their "hoosh," meticulously removed every trace.

But the majority were so hungry they were delighted to gobble down every mouthful, blubber included.

And yet they had adjusted with surprisingly little trouble to their new life, and most of them were quite sincerely happy. The adaptability of the human creature is such that they actually had to remind themselves on occasion of their desperate circumstances. On November 4, Macklin wrote in his diary: "It has been a lovely day, and it is hard to think we are in a frightfully precarious situation."

By the end of the day, nearly 3½ tons of flour, rice, sugar, barley, lentils, vegetables, and jam had been rescued and sledged back to camp.

It did last for forty-eight hours, and when the weather cleared, Worsley obtained a sight which showed they had been blown 16 miles northwest—a highly satisfactory run.

After breakfast, the men went about their customary chores. Green spent the morning making "bannocks." These were lumps of fried flour, frequently mixed with dog pemmican or

lentils or anything that would give them some flavor. And there was always ice to be melted into water.

squeamish about this seemingly cold-blooded method of hunting. But not for long. The will to survive soon dispelled any hesitancy to obtain food by any means.

lunch, which usually consisted of a bannock or two per man, with some jam and tea,

supper for the men was at five-thirty—most often seal hoosh, a bannock, and a mug of hot watered cocoa.

Similarly, the camp was divided on the matter of eating into the savers and the nonsavers. Worsley headed the nonsavers, who gobbled down anything they could get whenever they could get it. Orde-Lees, with his all-consuming fear of starving to death, was the leading advocate of the savers' school of thought. He rarely ate his entire ration at any meal. Instead, he stored a little piece of cheese or a bit of bannock somewhere in his clothing to be eaten later or saved for the leaner days he was sure would come. He could and often did produce from his pocket a lump of food that had been issued a week, two weeks, three weeks before.

The final loss of the Endurance was a shock in that it severed what had seemed their last tie with civilization. It was a finality. The ship had been a symbol, a tangible, physical symbol that linked them with the outside world.

Within forty-eight hours, the popularity of the game reached epidemic proportions.

Shackleton was concerned. Of all their enemies—the cold, the ice, the sea—he feared none more than demoralization.

Shackleton had purposely refrained from leaving the note until after the party had left Ocean Camp for fear that the men might find it and interpret it as a sign that their leader was not sure they would survive.

Many of them, it seemed, finally grasped for the first time just how desperate things really were. More correctly, they became aware of their own inadequacy, of how utterly powerless they were. Until the march from Ocean Camp they had nurtured in the backs of their minds the attitude Shackleton strove so unceasingly to imbue them with, a basic faith in themselves—that they could, if need be, pit their strength and their determination against any obstacle—and somehow overcome it.
But then came the march, a journey which was to carry them nearly 200 miles. Yet after only five days and 9 small miles in a straight line to the northwest, they had been stopped completely, and even forced to retreat. A gale could easily have carried them that far in twenty-four hours. So now they sat in Mark Time Camp, disillusioned and humbly aware how truly pygmy they were to overcome the forces they faced, regardless of how much strength and determination they put forth. The realization was not so much humiliating as frightening.
Their ultimate goal was still to get themselves out, but now it was an empty phrase. They wouldn't get themselves out. Only if the pack chose, they might be permitted to escape, but for the present they were powerless; there was no goal, not even the smallest achievable objective to aim for. They were faced with total uncertainty. Their position was if anything worse than it had been.

Greenstreet was right. Like most of the others, he considered the laying in of all possible meat the prudent thing to do, as any ordinary individual might. But Shackleton was not an ordinary individual. He was a man who believed completely in his own invincibility, and to whom defeat was a reflection of personal inadequacy. What might have been an act of reasonable caution to the average person was to Shackleton a detestable admission that failure was a possibility.

He tacitly expected those around him to reflect his own extreme optimism, and he could be almost petulant if they failed to do so. Such an attitude, he felt, cast doubt on him and his ability to lead them to safety.

Worsley got another sight which put their position at 65°32½' South, 52°4'

"We also suffer from 'Amenomania'" [literally—wind-madness], he wrote later. "This disease may be exhibited in two forms: Either one is morbidly anxious about the wind direction and gibbers continually about it, or else a sort of lunacy is produced by listening to the other Amenomaniacs. The second form is more trying to hear. I have had both."

by February 24

The first real sign of the open sea, the tantalizing promise of escape for which they had waited so long, had been dangled in front of them briefly—then snatched away.

There were some intrepid attempts to make jokes about cannibalism.

At twelve-forty, Shackleton gave the order in a quiet voice.
"Launch the boats."

The sight that the Caird presented was one of the most incongruous imaginable. Here was a patched and battered 22-foot boat, daring to sail alone across the world's most tempestuous sea, her rigging festooned with a threadbare collection of clothing and half-rotten sleeping bags. Her crew consisted of six men whose faces were black with caked soot and half-hidden by matted beards, whose bodies were dead white from constant soaking in salt water. In addition, their faces, and particularly their fingers were marked with ugly round patches of missing skin where frostbites had eaten into their flesh. Their legs from the knees down were chafed and raw from the countless punishing trips crawling across the rocks in the bottom. And all of them were afflicted with salt water boils on their wrists, ankles, and buttocks. But had someone unexpectedly come upon this bizarre scene, undoubtedly the

A peculiar thing to stir a man—the sound of a factory whistle heard on a mountainside. But for them it was the first sound from the outside world that they had heard since December, 1914—seventeen unbelievable months before. In that instant, they felt an overwhelming sense of pride and accomplishment. Though they had failed dismally even to come close to the expedition's original objective, they knew now that somehow they had done much, much more than ever they set out to do.