The Endurance_ Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition - Caroline Alexander [59]
The good weather held, affording them “a day's grace,” as Worsley said. On May 5, the twelfth day at sea, the Caird made an excellent run of ninety-six miles — the best of the journey — in lumpy swell that raked the boat. Willis Island, off the western tip of South Georgia, was 155 miles away. On May 6, a return of heavy seas and a northwest gale caused them to lay to again, with a reefed jib sail. The next day, the gale moderated, and they set course once more.
Worsley was now increasingly worried about getting his observational sights for their position. Since leaving Elephant Island fourteen days earlier, he had been able to sight the sun only four times. “Two of these,” he noted, were “mere snaps or guesses through slight rifts in the clouds.” He continued:
It was misty, the boat was jumping like a flea, shipping seas fore and aft and there was no “limb” to the sun so I had to observe the centre by guesswork. Astronomically, the limb is the edge of sun or moon. If blurred by cloud or fog it cannot be accurately “brought down” to the horizon. The centre is the spot required, so when the limb is too blurred you bring the centre of the bright spot behind the clouds down to the horizon. By practice and taking a series of “sights” you can obtain an average that has no bigger error than one minute of arc.
When Worsley informed Shackleton that he “could not be sure of our position to ten miles,” it was decided that they would aim for the west coast of South Georgia, which was uninhabited, rather than the east coast where the whaling stations—and rescue—lay. This ensured that if they missed their landfall, the prevailing westerlies would carry them towards the other side of the island. Were they to fail to make an eastern landfall directly, the westerlies would carry them out to sea. If Worsley's calculations were correct, the James Caird was now a little more than eighty miles from South Georgia Island.
Before darkness fell on May 7, a piece of kelp floated by. With mounting excitement the crew sailed east-northeast through the night, and at dawn on the fifteenth day, they spotted seaweed. The thrill of anticipation made them momentarily forget the most recent setback: One of the kegs of water was discovered to have become brackish from seawater that evidently had got in when the Caird had almost capsized shortly before leaving Elephant Island. They were now plagued with mounting thirst.
Cape pigeons such as they had admired so many months before at Grytviken made frequent appearances, along with mollyhawks and other birds whose presence hinted at land. Worsley continued anxiously to monitor the sky, but heavy fog obscured the sun, and all else that might lie ahead. Two cormorants were spotted, birds known not to venture much beyond fifteen miles from land. There were heavy, lumpy cross swells, and when the fog cleared around noon low, hard-driving clouds bore in from the west-northwest, with misty squalls. Then at half past noon, McCarthy cried out that he saw land.
“There, right ahead through a rift in the flying scud our glad but salt-rimmed eyes saw a towering black crag with a lacework of snow around its flank,” wrote Worsley. “One glimpse, and it was hidden again. We looked at each other with cheerful foolish grins. The thoughts uppermost were ‘We've done it.'” The land, Cape Demidov, was only ten miles distant, and it was on course with Worsley's calculations.
By three in the afternoon, the men were staring at patches of green tussock grass that showed through the snow on the land ahead—the first living vegetation they had beheld since December 5, 1914, seventeen months before. It was impossible to make for the whaling stations: The