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--" [Illustration: Four sailors at the oars, and one at the helm.] 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 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.