Access was now obtained to the wreck by cutting a regular passage to the main hatch through the ice. The schooner stood nearly upright, sustained by fragments of the floe; and there were extensive caverns all around her, produced by the random manner in which the cakes had come up out of their proper element like so many living things. Among these caverns one might have wandered for miles without once coming out into the open air, though they were cold and cheerless, and had little to attract the adventurer after the novelty was abated. In rising from the water, the schooner had been roughly treated; but once sustained by the ice, her transit had been easy and tolerably safe. Several large cakes lay on or over her, sustained more by other cakes that rested on the rocks than by the timbers of the vessel herself. These cakes formed a sort of roof, and as they did not drip, they served to make a shelter against the wind; for, at the point where the wreck lay the south-west gales came howling round the base of the mountain, piercing the marrow itself in the bones. At the hut it was very different. There the heights made a lee that extended all over the cape, and for some distance to the westward; while the whole power the sun possessed in that high latitude was cast, very obliquely it is true, but clearly, and without any other drawback than its position in the ecliptic, fairly on the terrace, the hut above, and the rocks around it. On the natural terrace, indeed, it was still pleasant to walk and work, and even to sit for a few hours in the middle of the day; for winter was not yet come in earnest in that frozen world.