328 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
was looked for in 6° E., naturally enough nothing was 
seen of it. Moore knew from Ross's failure that the po- 
sition must be wrong and he might have deduced the 
fact that since Cook and Ross had proved that the Island 
did not lie east of 6° E. it would probably be found con- 
siderably farther west in or near the given latitude, for 
the mistake in position would most likely be in longi- 
tude, but he turned southward before reaching 3 0 E., 
and added one more to the list of unnecessary failures. 
The Admiralty sought no more for the island which has 
never been seen by a British naval officer, and it was left 
to be picked up by a pertinacious German merchant cap- 
tain under the direction of a German man of science half a 
century later. 
When in latitude about 6o° 45' S. and longitude about 
4° E. a singular rock was seen capped by a mass of ice. 
It looked so like land that Moore sounded, and at first 
thought that bottom had been found at 250 fathoms, but 
the ship was drifting rapidly before a strong wind, and it 
remains uncertain whether this was an islet or merely an 
almost submerged iceberg carrying a great mass of rock. 
Hie Pagoda proceeded southeastward, and at length, on 
February 5th, after seeing a strong ice-blink in the south, 
she crossed the Antarctic Circle in 30° 45' E. The edge 
of the ice-pack was met with on the nth; it extended in 
an unbroken line along one-third of the horizon and 
checked further progress to the south in latitude 67° 50' 
S., longitude 39 0 41' E., the farthest point toward the 
pole reached on the cruise. A course was then set for 
Enderby Land, but a succession of calms and contrary 
gales made it impossible to reach the assigned position. 
Moore had no choice but to try to obey orders, but it 
would almost seem as if those in authority had issued 
