MAROONED EXPLORERS.

To be marooned in the great Antarctic Continent; to live for twelve dreary months in an abandoned boat which they converted into a hut; cut off from civilisation; practically surrounded by huge mountains of ice; dependent for fresh food supplies upon penguins and seals which they could catch and kill, to hear continually the crashing of tons of ice down the mountain side and falling with terrifying roars like thunder; to experience the terrors of the raging blizzards of the Antarctic winter; to watch the sea ice daily piling up and pressing closer and closer, threatening and menacing their rude shelter from the cruel winds and storms; to be prepared at any moment to abandon the comparative comfort of the “boat hut” and make a last attempt to exist amid the ice and snow in a tent – such have been the astounding experiences, as told to the Central News, of two youthful Britons, who landed at Newcastle-on-tyne on Sunday, brought from the Great White Continent by Norwegian whalers, who effected their rescue. Scarcely more than youths – one, in fact, has still to celebrate his 21st birthday – they have returned to England undaunted and ready to face fresh dangers. In September, 1920, the British Imperial Antarctic Expedition left London for the Great White South, intending to chart the western shores of the Weddell Sea, the vast ice stronghold where the late Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, was crushed and sunk, and carry out other scientific work. The party who were to undertake this great task, involving as it did, even if all went well, a march of considerably over 1,000 miles in absolutely unknown territory, consisted of but four members, and of these the two adventurers who have now reached home, Mr T, Bagshawe, of Cambridge University, and Mr M. C. Lester, a young officer of the British Mercantile Marine, sailed as geologist and navigator respectively.