HAIRBREADTH ESCAPES 303 
So intense was the cold, on this occasion that a small 
fish which was dashed against the bows of the Terror was 
frozen to the ship and speedily buried in a block of ice. 
When hacked out and set aside for scientific description 
the ship's cat unfortunately spied the specimen and dis- 
cussed it with a satisfaction not shared by the disap- 
pointed surgeon, who hoped to have made the discovery 
of a species “ new to science." The Terror’s cat indeed 
seemed possessed by a rooted hatred of scientific work, 
for not long before she had got into a drawer in the 
chart-table and torn up several of the original track- 
charts, to the sorrow and trouble of the second master, 
who was responsible for them. 
On February 22nd in latitude 76° 42' S. a sounding 
was obtained in 190 fathoms and the surrounding ice- 
bergs seemed to be aground. With a fair north wind the 
ships were speeding southward, when, just before mid- 
night the great barrier was sighted at last. Next morn- 
ing the ships turned eastward five or six miles from the 
vertical cliffs of ice and hopes once more rose high that 
in spite of the lateness of the season they might reach 
the end of the huge ice-wall and there find a way open 
to the south. Young ice soon blocked the way, but on 
February 28th the ships sailed to within a mile and a half 
of the barrier where progress was stopped by masses of 
broken fragments cemented together by young ice. This 
was the extreme point reached by Ross, and for sixty 
years it remained the highest southern latitude attained 
by any man. The mean latitude calculated from the 
observations of the two ships was 78° 9' 30" S., and the 
longitude at that point was i6i°27'W. The sea was 
290 fathoms deep, and as the ice-cliffs forming the bar- 
rier were only 107 feet high at the highest part and very 
