The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-02-29

along her length, grooming the while like living thing
 The party found themselves left with three small boats upon ice floes that were splitting in some places and pill ing themselves into hillocks in others drifting airnlessly about the Antorc- tic ocean. And there was nothing to do but to sit still and drift. Even so they were beset with constant peril. The ice floe cracked right through their camp-right through the depres- sion made by Shackletons body on the spot where he had slept for many months. These cracks were continually occurring. On another occasion man fell through one of the gaps, which opened with appalling suddenness, moment after Shackleton had pulled him back on to the floe, the ice closed again with a snap like the jaws of hungry wolf. Continually the men had to fly from one disintegrating floe to sanother, and a ceaseless watch was imperative. At last the surrounding ice fell away, and they were left, twenty eight of them, on one small precarious floe. The boats were launch ed and they set out, pulling night and day, with bleeding lips, sea sick and frostbitten, in search of lyand. They reached Elephant island, a bleak un- habited rock. They were woefully short of food and their nearest help was $50 miles away.
 Then came the most thrilling part ot this Odyssey of the Antarctic. Shaclle- ton and five men out for South Georgia to fetch assistance. They set out in 8 twenty-foot boat i'll the depth of an Antarctic winter, to sail over $50 miles of the most tempestuous, storm-swept area of waters in the world.
 They came near 10 death They were ill They encountered terrible storms. One wave, indeed, was so gigantic that Shack teton, in tWenty-six years spent at sea- had never seen it's equal. They threw their sleeping bags overheard to tighten the boat. It was only sheer wiilpower that kept them alive Their fresh water had gone long before they sighted land. And then, after sixteen days of this nightmare voyage, they landed. emaciated and exhausted, on the wrong side of the island. lcng and terrible journey lay ahead of them across the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia before they could reach civilization. Save for those twenty-two men slowly starv- ing on Elephant Island, they would have i>in down and died But the thought Of their comrades who trusted solely to them for their lives lgoaded them on to the effort, and they struggled forward over the icebound peaks. At length-tat- tered remnants of men, half starved, un- washed for months-they staggered into the whaling stations at Husyfk.
 Tell us, when was the war over?" was the first question they asked the Norwe- gian whalers. Ut is not over," was the deply. The world is mad"
 The South American peoples of whose assistance Shackleton cannot speak too highly, gave him ungrudging help in pre- pairing the work of relief. After three unsuccessful attempts Shackleton slipped in between the ice in a frail cocklesheIl of a boat and got his men off Elephant Island The thankfulness of those twenty two men who had endured for four months in darkness. at the end of the food, housed between two upturned boats, can be imagined But it is typical of the spirit in which those men endured that the first word they said when they saw Shackleton's figure coming down the side of the rescue ship was: Thank God, the boss is safe"
 The expedition was failure for science. But what a victory for the human race.
 It only needs to be added that of the 5s original members that. left England in the Endurance flfty-three returned to fight in the war and to gain honors and distinctions