That divers islands existed in this quarter of the ocean was a fact recognised in geography long before the Sea Lion was thought of; probably before her young master was actually born; but the knowledge generally possessed on the subject was meagre and unsatisfactory.  In particular cases, nevertheless, this remark would not apply, there being at that moment on board our little schooner several mariners who had often visited the South Shetlands, New Georgia, Palmer’s Land, and other known places in those seas.  Not one of them all, however, had ever heard of any island directly south of the present position of the schooner.

No material change occurred during the night, or in the course of the succeeding day, the little Sea Lion industriously holding her way toward the south pole; making very regularly her six knots each hour.  By the time she was thirty-six hours from the Horn, Gardiner believed himself to be fully three degrees to the southward of it, and consequently some distance within the parallel of sixty degrees south.  Palmer’s Land, with its neighbouring islands, would have been near, had not the original course carried the schooner so far to the westward.  As it was, no one could say what lay before them.

The third day out, the wind hauled, and it blew heavily from the north-east.  This gave the adventurers a great run.  The blink of ice was shortly seen, and soon after ice itself, drifting about in bergs.  The floating hills were grand objects to the eye, rolling and wallowing in the seas; but they were much worn and melted by the wash of the ocean, and comparatively of greatly diminished size.  It was now absolutely necessary to lose most of the hours of darkness it being much too dangerous to run in the night.  The great barrier of ice was known to be close at hand; and Cook’s “Ne Plus Ultra,” at that time the great boundary of antarctic navigation, was near the parallel of latitude to which the schooner had reached.  The weather, however, continued very favourable, and after the blow from the north-east, the wind came from the south, chill, and attended with flurries of snow, but sufficiently steady and not so fresh as to compel our adventurers to carry very short sail.  The smoothness of the water would of itself have announced the vicinity of ice:  not only did Gardiner’s calculations tell him as much as this, but his eyes confirmed their results.  In the course of the fifth day out, on several occasions when the weather cleared a little, glimpses were had of the ice in long mountainous walls, resembling many of the ridges of the Alps, though moving heavily under the heaving and setting of the restless waters.  Dense fogs, from time to time, clouded the whole view, and the schooner was compelled, more than once that day, to heave-to, in order to avoid running on the sunken masses of ice, or fields, of which many of vast size now began to make their appearance.