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Borup, with their Esquimo companions returned from Cape Jesup, where they had been doing highly important scientific work, taking soundings out on the sea-ice north of the cape as high as 84° 15' north, and also at the cape.
On the wild rocky shores where his ship was set fast, there was a belt of ice lining the margin of the sea, which he termed the "ice-belt," or the "ice-foot." This belt never melted completely, and was usually fast to the shore. In fact it was that portion of the sea-ice which was left behind each spring when the general body of ice was broken up and swept away.
Joyce also had been compelled to relay his load, and all hands laboured strenuously and advanced slowly. They reached the edge of the Barrier on the night of January 30 and climbed an easy slope to the Barrier surface, about thirty feet above the sea-ice.
They had expected to take advantage of the full moon, but by a strange chance they had chosen the period of an eclipse, and the moon was shadowed most of the time they were crossing the sea-ice. The ice was firm, and the three men reached Cape Evans without difficulty.
When, however, Scott hastened in their direction he discovered them to be Wilson and Meares, who were astonished to see him, because they had left Safety Camp before the breakdown of Weary Willy had upset the original program. From them Scott heard alarming reports that the ponies were adrift on the sea-ice.
Hence the sea immediately round the islands was covered with a thick coat of solid ice, which resembled in all respects the ordinary Arctic sea-ice, being hummocky in some places, comparatively smooth in others, with a strong iceberg here and there caught and imprisoned amongst it.
On the latter ship Markham's and Mill's glossary was, of course, used, but apparently not slavishly; founded, as far as sea-ice went, on Scoresby's, made in 1820, it might well have been adopted in its entirety, for no writer could have carried more weight than Scoresby the younger, combining as he did more than ten years' whaling experience with high scientific attainments.
The small stock of salt was exhausted, but the men procured two and a half pounds by boiling down snow taken from the bottom layer next to the sea-ice. The dogs recovered condition rapidly and did some hunting on their own account among the seals. The party started for Cape Evans on July 15.
Richards meanwhile had overhauled the motor and given it some trial runs on the sea-ice. But he reported that the machine was not working satisfactorily, and Mackintosh decided not to persevere with it. "Everybody is up to his eyes in work," runs the last entry in the journal left by Mackintosh at Cape Evans. "All gear is being overhauled, and personal clothing is having the last stitches.
When the pack is squeezed together, so that lumps of it are forced up in the form of rugged mounds, these mounds are called "hummocks." A large mass of flat ice, varying from one mile to many miles in extent, is called a "field," and a mountain of ice is called a "berg." All the ice here spoken of, except the berg, is sea-ice; formed by the freezing of the ocean in winter.
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