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After half an hour's march we were already at the first important point the connection between the sea-ice and the Barrier. This connection had always haunted our brains. What would it be like? A high, perpendicular face of ice, up which we should have to haul our things laboriously with the help of tackles?
We had before us a great bay, so deep that it was impossible to see the end of it from the crow's-nest; but for the moment there was no chance of getting in. The bay was full of great floes sea-ice recently broken up. We therefore went on a little farther to the eastward to await developments. Next morning we returned, and after the lapse of a few hours the floes within the bay began to move.
Going down to the sea-ice we had to pass through a number of big hummocks a fairly rough surface. Nor was this without consequences; first one sledge, then another, swung round. But no harm was done; we got our gear tested, and that is always an advantage. We also had to pass rather near several large groups of seals, and the temptation was too great.
As regards food almost an unlimited supply of biscuit was available, and during a walk to Pram Point on Monday, March 6, Scott and Wilson found that the sea-ice in Pram Point Bay had not gone out and was crowded with seals, a happy find that guaranteed the party as much meat as they wanted. Wilson as usual leads in the making of useful suggestions and in generally providing for our wants.
The geologist suppressed all thought of rocks, though occasionally they were met with in bottom samples; his work became almost entirely oceanographical, and included a study of the sea-ice, of the physiography of the sea floor as shown by daily soundings, and of the bottom deposits; besides this he helped the biologist in the temperature and salinity observations.
It consisted of the more enduring ice in the bays and the sea-ice along the coast, which only stayed fast for the season. Thus it was most important to get safely over the dangerous part of this Road before the seasonal going-out of the sea-ice. To wait until after the ice went out and the ship could sail to Hut Point would have meant both uncertainty and delay.
Pussi helped and shoved to the best of her small ability, so that Tumbler soon found himself on a ledge which communicated with the sea-ice. Seizing Pussi by her top-knot of hair, he hauled while she scrambled, until he caught a hand, then an arm, then her tail, finally one of her legs, and at last deposited her, flushed and panting, at his side.
The dogs were showing signs of fatigue, and when Mackintosh camped at 6.30 a.m. on January 31, he reckoned that the distance covered in twelve and a half hours had been about two and a half miles. The men had killed a seal at the edge of the sea-ice and placed the meat on a cairn for future use.
Lillie is immensely pleased, feeling that it alone repays the whole enterprise. In the forenoon the ship skirted the Island, and with a telescope those on board could watch the string of ponies steadily progressing over the sea-ice past the Razor Back Islands; and, as soon as they were seen to be well advanced, the ship steamed on to the Glacier Tongue, and made fast in the narrow angle made by the sea-ice with the glacier.
It was so dark that I could hardly see fifty yards ahead. There was a great chasm or hole just in front of me. This was the place where the main body of the sea-ice had been separated from the shore-ice that was aground. Here every rise and fall of the tide had broken it afresh, so that the rent was twenty yards wide, and full of large blocks that had been tossed about in confusion.
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