“[Two icebergs suddenly accelerated] and came charging towards us, ploughing through the pack ice as though this had been tissue-paper. Huge floes were lifted and flung aside by the cliff-like fronts of these monsters… For miles behind them there was a wake of chaos, floe piled on floe and crashing in all directions. Our camp was straight in their path and it seemed as though destruction was inevitable. Shackleton, clinging to what then seemed a forlorn hope, had ordered all preparations to be made to try to move out of their track, although this would necessitate leaving our supplies, since it would have been an impossibility to transport them in the time. Nearer and nearer the mountains of ice approached. We stood together watching them, Shackleton waiting to give the word which would send us scrambling over the heaving ice-floes — on which we should have had small chance of escaping starvation. He was quite cool, and smoking a cigarette.”

— Frank Worsley