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He could not promise us that this route would be practicable, but he had heard that there was a beach for at least a part of the distance between the Viliga and Yamsk, and he thought that we might make our way along this beach and the pripaika, or ice-foot, to a ravine, twenty-five or thirty miles farther west, which would lead us up on the tundra beyond the mountains.
Following the trail four miles farther north, we passed the Captain's second igloo. He had unloaded his three sledges here and gone on to Parr Bay to hunt musk-oxen. We caught up with the Doctor and his party at the end of the ice-foot and pushed on to Cape Columbia. We found but one igloo here and I did the "after you my dear Alphonse," and the Doctor got the igloo.
The barrier at midnight was low and distant, and at 8 a.m. there was merely a narrow ice-foot about two hundred yards across separating it from the open water. By noon there was only an occasional shelf of ice-foot. The barrier in one place came with an easy sweep to the sea. We could have landed stores there without difficulty.
The 'road' afforded level going below the cliffs of the ice-foot, except where disturbed by the descending glacier, and there it was necessary to cross the body of the glacier itself. It consisted of the more enduring ice in the bays and the sea-ice along the coast, which only stayed fast for the season.
We endeavoured without success to scale the steep ice-foot under the cliffs, and then proceeded up the bay. Pulling along the edge of perpendicular ice, we turned into a bay in the ice-cliff and came to a cul-de-sac, at the head of which was a grotto. At the head of the grotto and on a ledge of snow were perched some adelie penguins.
Seals were lying along the ice-foot as far as the eye could reach great, fat mountains of flesh; food enough to last us and the dogs for years. The going was ideal; our ski glided easily and pleasantly through the newly fallen loose snow. But none of us was exactly in training after the long five months' sea voyage, so that the pace was not great.
Although the sky was overcast, it was broad daylight, the daylight of a dull winter afternoon, and as the cutter passed along, Colwell could recognize the familiar landmarks of the year before; the long sweep of the rocky coast, with its ice-foot spanning every cove, the snow gathered in the crevices, the projecting headlands, and the line of the ice-pack which had ground up the "Proteus," dimly seen in the mists to the north, across the tossing waters of Kane Sea.
Meanwhile, as there was a lead of open water to the northward as far as they could see, the youth Arbalik had been despatched with a small sledge and four of the strongest dogs along the strip of land-ice, or "ice-foot," which clung to the shore.
'I knew, he wrote on the night of that eventful day, 'that in spite of our heavy anchor the holding ground was poor, and I watched anxiously to see if the ship dragged. 'It came at last, just as Skelton sent a promise of steam in half an hour. The sea was again breaking heavily on the ice-foot astern and I walked up and down wondering which was coming first, the steam or this wave-beaten cliff.
Our original hypothesis that this bay was due to underlying land seemed, therefore, to be immediately confirmed. It did not take long to moor the vessel to the fixed ice-foot, which here extended for about a mile and a quarter beyond the edge of the Barrier. Everything had been got ready long before. Bjaaland had put our ski in order, and every man had had his right pairs fitted.
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