But it was while they were ashore at Mount Terror that one of the most exciting incidents of the whole journey occurred. The party landed at a small beach which lay under cliffs towering five hundred feet above. In order to get photographs of it, the boat was despatched back to the ship for a camera, while Borchgrevinck and Jensen remained ashore. The boat had not gone very far when a great roar sounded in the air. Those on shore feared for the moment that a slide had begun in the cliffs over their heads; but it was not the rocks that were moving. A mighty glacier, which entered the sea near where they were standing, was shedding an iceberg from the parent mass, and the noise was caused by the rending of the ice as the millions of tons mass tore itself free. The beach was barely four feet above the water, and, as the berg crashed into the sea, it sent up a great wave that swept along the coast. The men on the beach barely saw it coming before it was over them. Pressing themselves against the face of the cliff at the highest point they could reach, they held on for dear life while the icy water surged up and over them. After the first wave had passed, others followed, though these only reached up to their arm-pits, and had it not been for a projecting point of rock, which served to break the force of the waves, there is little doubt but that both would have been swept away. The full force of the waves was shown only a few yards away from where the two had stood, stones being torn loose and the mark of the water being left twenty feet up the face of the cliff. Having reached "farthest South," the homeward journey was begun on February 19, and three days later the _Southern Cross_ steamed into Port Ross, in the Island of Auckland. The expedition was then practically at an end, having succeeded so well in its objects that it was able to claim that it had located the Southern Magnetic Pole as being in latitude 73° 20' S. and longitude 146° E.; had discovered insect and plant life on the Antarctic continent; had reached the farthest South, and had added very considerably to the geographical and scientific knowledge of the world. CHAPTER XVI THE REVIVAL OF ANTARCTIC INTEREST Modern Means and Methods--Private Enterprise leads--The _Valdavia_--The _Belgica_ Expedition--International Action adopted--The German Expedition--An Ice-bound Land--Fresh Trade-Winds.