We were determined not to think of this. Heaven would come to our aid. We should be picked up by some ship. This the boatswain asserted confidently, and we were bound to believe the boatswain. * * * * * For six entire days, until the 2nd of April, the _Paracuta_ held her course among the ice-barrier, whose crest was profiled at an altitude of between seven and eight hundred feet above the level of the sea. The extremities were not visible either on the east or the west, and if our boat did not find an open passage, we could not clear it. By a most fortunate chance a passage was found on the above-mentioned date, and attempted, amid a thousand risks. Yes, we required all the zeal, skill, and courage of our men and their chiefs to accomplish such a task. At last we were in the South Pacific waters, but our boat had suffered severely in getting through, and it had sprung more than one leak. We were kept busy in baling out the water, which also came in from above. The breeze was gentle, the sea more calm than we could have hoped, and the real danger did not lie in the risks of navigation. No, it arose from the fact that not a ship was visible in these waters, not a whaler was to be seen on the fishing-grounds. At the beginning of April these places are forsaken, and we arrived some weeks too late. We learned afterwards that had we arrived a little sooner, we should have met the vessels of the American expedition. In fact, on the 1st of February, by 95° 50' longitude and 64° 17' latitude, Lieutenant Wilkes was still exploring these seas in one of his ships, the _Vincennes_, after having discovered a long extent of coast stretching from east to west. On the approach of the bad season, he returned to Hobart Town, in Tasmania. The same year, the expedition of the French captain Dumont d'Urville, which started in 1838, discovered Adélie Land in 66° 30' latitude and 38° 21' east longitude, and Clarie Coast in 64° 30' and 129° 54'. Their campaign having ended with these important discoveries, the _Astrolabe_ and the _Zélée_ left the Antarctic Ocean and returned to Hobart Town. None of these ships, then, were in those waters; so that, when our nutshell _Paracuta_ was "alone on a lone, lone sea" beyond the ice-barrier, we were bound to believe that it was no longer possible we could be saved. We were fifteen hundred miles away from the nearest land, and winter was a month old! Hurliguerly himself was obliged to acknowledge the last fortunate chance upon which he had counted had failed us. On the 6th of April we were at the end of our resources; the sea began to threaten, the boat seemed likely to be swallowed up in the angry waves. "A ship!" cried the boatswain, and on the instant we made out a vessel about four miles to the north-east, beneath the mist which had suddenly risen. Signals were made, signals were perceived; the ship lowered her largest boat and sent it to our rescue.