a tempest arisen I know not
what would have become of the schooner--yes, though, I do know too
well: she would have been lost and all on board of her. In such a
case the _Halbrane_ could not have escaped; we must have been flung on
the base of the barrier.

After a long examination Captain Len Guy had to renounce the hope
of finding a passage through the terrible wall of ice. It remained
only to endeavour to reach the south-east point of it. At any rate,
by following that course we lost nothing in latitude; and, in fact,
on the 18th the observation taken made the seventy-third parallel
the position of the _Halbrane_.

I must repeat, however, that navigation in the Antarctic seas will
probably never be accomplished under more felicitous
circumstances--the precocity of the summer season, the permanence
of the north wind, the temperature forty-nine degrees at the lowest;
all this was the best of good-fortune. I need not add that we
enjoyed perpetual light, and the whole twenty-four hours round the
sun's rays reached us from every point of the horizon.

Two or three times the captain approached within two miles of the
icebergs. It was impossible but that the vast mass must have been
subjected to climateric influences; ruptures must surely have taken
place at some points.

But his search had no result, and we had to fall back into the
current from west to east.

I must observe at this point that during all our search we never
descried land or the appearance of land out at sea, as indicated on
the charts of preceding navigators. These maps are incomplete, no
doubt, but sufficiently exact in their main lines. I am aware that
ships have often passed over the indicated bearings of land. This,
however, was not admissible in the case of Tsalal. If the _Jane_ had
been able to reach the islands, it was because that portion of the
Antarctic sea was free, and in so "early" a year, we need not
fear any obstacle in that direction.

At last, on the 19th, between two and three o'clock in the
afternoon, a shout from the crow's-nest was heard.

"What is it?" roared West.

"The iceberg wall is split on the south-east."

"What is beyond?" "Nothing in sight."

It took West very little time to reach the point of observation, and
we all waited below, how impatiently may be imagined. What if the
look-out were mistaken, if some optical delusion?--But West, at all
events, would make no mistake.

After ten interminable minutes his cl