endurance shackleton's incredible voyage

The animal had tracked his shadow across the ice. By then, Orde-Lees had nearly reached the opposite side of the floe he was about to cross to safe ice when the sea leopard’s head exploded out of the water directly ahead of him. After a half-dozen leaps, the sea leopard had almost caught up with Orde-Lees when it unaccountably wheeled and plunged again into the water. The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long, serpentine neck. The animal-a sea leopard-sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking-horse gait of a seal on land. He turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle. “Returning from a hunting trip, Orde-Lees, traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice, had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him. ― quote from Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage If they were to get out-they had to get themselves out. Thus their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity. It was 1915, and there were no helicopters, no Weasels, no Sno-Cats, no suitable planes.

They had no radio transmitter with which to notify any would-be rescuers, and it is doubtful that any rescuers could have reached them even if they had been able to broadcast an SOS. Nobody in the outside world knew they were in trouble, much less where they were. It had been very nearly a year since they had last been in contact with civilization.

They were for all practical purposes alone in the frozen Antarctic seas. Though he certainly was aware that their situation was desperate, he could not possibly have imagined then the physical and emotional demands that ultimately would be placed upon them, the rigors they would have to endure, the sufferings to which they would be subjected. Few men have borne the responsibility Shackleton did at that moment. The position was 69★´ South, 51☃0´ West-deep in the icy wasteland of the Antarctic’s treacherous Weddell Sea, just about midway between the South Pole and the nearest known outpost of humanity, some 1,200 miles away.

Endurance shackleton's incredible voyage