ed
cleverly when they came within range. The flesh of these creatures
was much relished on board, after Endicott had cooked it in his best
manner.

As for the usual Antarctic birds, petrels, pigeons, and cormorants,
they passed in screaming flocks, and legions of penguins, ranged
along the edges of the icefields, watched the evolutions of the
schooner. These penguins are the real inhabitants of these dismal
solitudes, and nature could not have created a type more suited to
the desolation of the glacial zone.

On the morning of the 17th the man in the crow's-nest at last
signalled the icebergs.

Five or six miles to the south a long dentated crest upreared
itself, plainly standing out against the fairly clear sky, and all
along it drifted thousands of ice-packs. This motionless barrier
stretched before us from the north-west to the south-east, and by
merely sailing along it the schooner would still gain some degrees
southwards.

When the _Halbrane_ was within three miles of the icebergs, she lay-to
in the middle of a wide basin which allowed her complete freedom of
movement.

A boat was lowered, and Captain Len Guy got into it, with the
boatswain, four sailors at the oars, and one at the helm. The boat
was pulled in the direction of the enormous rampart, vain search was
made for a channel through which the schooner could have slipped,
and after three hours of this fatiguing reconnoitring, the men
returned to the ship. Then came a squall of rain and snow which
caused the temperature to fall to thirty-six degrees (2'22 C.
above zero), and shut out the view of the ice-rampart from us.

During the next twenty-four hours the schooner lay within four miles
of the icebergs. To bring her nearer would have been to get among
winding channels from which it might not have been possible to
extricate her. Not that Captain Len Guy did not long to do this, in
his fear of passing some opening unperceived.

"If I had a consort," he said, "I would sail closer along the
icebergs, and it is a great advantage to be two, when one is on such
an enterprise as this! But the _Halbrane_ is alone, and if she were to
fail us--"

Even though we approached no nearer to the icebergs than prudence
permitted, our ship was exposed to great risk, and West was
constantly obliged to change his trim in order to avoid the shock of
an icefield.

Fortunately, the wind blew from east to north-nor'-east without
variation, and it did not freshen. Had