Explosions in the ice were started in the beginning of February with
little effect. But suddenly there came a change, and on the 11th, amidst
intense excitement, the ice was breaking up fast. The next day the relief
ships were but four miles away. On the 14th a shout of "The ships are
coming, sir!" brought out all the men racing to the slopes above Arrival
Bay. Scott wrote:
"The ice was breaking up right across the Strait, and with a rapidity
which we had not thought possible. No sooner was one great floe borne
away than a dark streak cut its way into the solid sheet that remained,
and carved out another, to feed the broad stream of pack which was
hurrying away to the north-west.
"I have never witnessed a more impressive sight; the sun was low behind
us, the surface of the ice-sheet in front was intensely white, and in
contrast the distant sea and its leads looked almost black. The wind had
fallen to a calm, and not a sound disturbed the stillness about us.
"Yet in the midst of this peaceful silence was an awful unseen agency
rending that great ice-sheet as though it had been naught but the
thinnest paper. We knew well by this time the nature of our prison bars;
we had not plodded again and again over those long dreary miles of snow
without realizing the formidable strength of the great barrier which held
us bound; we knew that the heaviest battle-ship would have shattered
itself ineffectually against it, and we had seen a million-ton iceberg
brought to rest at its edge.
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