Endurance: Part 2: 4-6, Lansing

The men decide to occupy their time by playing cards and telling stories. The night watchman notices the ship reappear from pressure. The men all come out of their tents and watch as about 15 feet of the ship is finally pushed forever back below the ice and is covered. Shackleton then decides to move the camp westward, because from his calculations land is only about 500 miles away. The men become trapped on a soggy floe and cannot move forward or backwards for the time being. Lansing uses bathos to evoke a pity for Shackleton's crew. Lansing writes, "Even at 3 A.M., the coldest time of the day, the surface of the ice was treacherous" (92). Being trapped on this floe meant that the men had to spend their New Year their. Thus the time changes from 1915 to 1916. Hopes of all of the men were down.