In Endurance, Alfred Lansing recounts the unsuccessful Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition. What do you need to know before learning about the Endurance shipwreck? Was Ernest Shackleton qualified to lead an Antarctic expedition? Like this article? Sign up for a free trial here. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading. They attack without provocation, looking on man as a penguin or seal.This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Endurance" by Alfred Lansing. In his diary that night, Worsley observed: “A man on foot in soft, deep snow and unarmed would not have a chance against such an animal as they almost bound along with a rearing, undulating motion at least five miles an hour. The sea leopard’s jawbone, which measured nearly 9 inches across, was given to Orde-Lees as a souvenir of his encounter. When it was butchered, balls of hair 2 and 3 inches in diameter were found in its stomach-the remains of crabeater seals it had eaten. It was a predatory species of seal, and resembled a leopard only in its spotted coat-and its disposition. It measured 12 feet long, and they estimated its weight at about 1,100 pounds.
Two dog teams were required to bring the carcass into camp. It was less than 30 feet away when it finally dropped. Wild dropped to one knee and fired again and again at the onrushing beast. The sea leopard spotted Wild, and turned to attack him.
The animal leaped out of the water again in pursuit just as Wild arrived with his rifle. Orde-Lees’ shouts for help rose to screams and he turned and raced away from his attacker. It made a savage lunge for Orde-Lees with its mouth open, revealing an enormous array of sawlike teeth. The animal had tracked his shadow across the ice. By then, Orde-Lees had nearly reached the opposite side of the floe he was about to cross to safe ice when the sea leopard’s head exploded out of the water directly ahead of him. After a half-dozen leaps, the sea leopard had almost caught up with Orde-Lees when it unaccountably wheeled and plunged again into the water.
The beast looked like a small dinosaur, with a long, serpentine neck. The animal-a sea leopard-sprang out of the water and came after him, bounding across the ice with the peculiar rocking-horse gait of a seal on land. He turned and fled, pushing as hard as he could with his ski poles and shouting for Wild to bring his rifle. “Returning from a hunting trip, Orde-Lees, traveling on skis across the rotting surface of the ice, had just about reached camp when an evil, knoblike head burst out of the water just in front of him.
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