A NARROW ESCAPE 



inhabitants were safe on board the ship, but it would 

 have been infinitely worse if we had landed there whilst 

 the place was still in existence, and that when the ship 

 returned to take us off she should find the place gone. 

 The thought of what might have been made me decide 

 then and there that under no circumstances would 1 

 winter on the Barrier, and that wherever we did land 

 we would secure a solid rock foundation for our winter 

 home. 



We had two strings to our bow, and I decided to use 

 the second at once and push forward towards King Ed- 

 ward VII Land. Just after eight a.m. on the 24th we 

 turned a corner in the Barrier, where it receded about half 

 a mile, before continuing to the eastward again. The line 

 of its coast here made a right angle and the ice sloped down 

 to sea-level at the apex of the angle, but the slope was 

 too steep and too heavily crevassed for us to climb 

 up and look over the surface if we had made a 

 landing. 



We tied the ship up to a fairly large floe, and I went 

 down to England's cabin to talk the matter over. In 

 the corner where we were lying there were comparatively 

 few pieces of floe ice, but outside us lay a very heavy 

 pack, in which several large bergs were locked. Our 

 only chance was to go straight on, keeping close to the 

 Barrier, as a lane of open water was left between the 

 Barrier and the edge of the pack to the north of us. 

 Sights were taken for longitude by four separate obser- 

 vers, and the positions calculated showed us we were not 

 only well to the eastward of the place where Barrier Inlet 

 was shown on the chart, but also that the Barrier had 

 receded at this particular point since January 1902. 



About nine o'clock we cast off from the floe and headed 

 the ship to the eastward, again keeping a few hundred 

 yards off the Barrier, for just here the cliff overhung, 



75 



