Descending to the camp I told the others, and in intense excitement we watched the chronometer for seven o'clock, when the whalers would be summoned to work.

Right to the minute the steam-whistle came to us, borne clearly on the wind across the intervening miles of rock and snow.

Never had any one of us heard sweeter music.

It was the first sound created by outside human agency that had come to our ears since we left Stromness Bay in December 1914.

That whistle told us that men were living near, that ships were ready, and that within a few hours we should be on our way back to Elephant Island to the rescue of the men waiting there under the watch and ward of Wild.