view of the blue sea framed in the tent door was very
beautiful on a morning in January when two ships sailed into the frame.
Why two? One was of course the Morning; the second proved to be the Terra
Nova.

It seemed that the authorities at home had been alarmed at the reports
brought back the previous year by the relief ship of the detention of the
Discovery and certain outbreaks of scurvy which had occurred both on the
ship and on sledge journeys. To make sure of relief two ships had been
sent. That was nothing to worry about, but the orders they brought were
staggering to sailors who had come to love their ship "with a depth of
sentiment which cannot be surprising when it is remembered what we had
been through in her and what a comfortable home she had proved."[21]
Scott was ordered to abandon the Discovery if she could not be freed in
time to accompany the relief ships to the north. For weeks there was
little or no daily change. They started to transport the specimens and
make the other necessary preparations. They almost despaired of freedom.
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 shatte