15' that she found a free passage through the last iceberg that barred her way.

The final difference between our position and the _Jane_ in a parallel ease, was that the _Jane_ took fifteen days to accomplish the distance of ten degrees, or six hundred miles, which separated her on the 5th of January from Tsalal Island, while on the 19th of December the _Halbrane_ was only about seven degrees, or four hundred miles, off the island.

Bennet Islet, where Captain Guy intended to put in for twenty-four hours, was fifty miles nearer.
Our voyage was progressing under prosperous conditions; we were no longer visited by sudden hail and snow storms, or those rapid falls of temperature which tried the crew of the _Jane_ so sorely.

A few ice-floes drifted by us, occasionally peopled, as tourists throng a pleasure yacht, by penguins, and also by dusky seals, lying flat upon the white surfaces like enormous leeches.

Above this strange flotilla we traced the incessant flight of petrels, pigeons, black puffins, divers, grebe, sterns, cormorants, and the sooty-black albatross of the high latitudes.