"Well?" said Captain Barrington, breaking the silence at length, with a smile; "pretty big proposition, eh?"
The boys gazed up at him awe-struck.
"We never dreamed it was anything like this," said Frank. "I always pictured the Great Barrier as something more or less imaginary."
"Pretty solid bit of imagination, that ice-wall yonder," laughed
Captain Hazzard.
"How are we ever going to get on the top of it?" asked Billy.
"We must steam along to the westward till we find a spot where it shelves," was the reply.
"Then it is not as high as this all the way round the polar regions?"
"No, in places it shelves down till to make a landing in boats is simple. We must look for one of those spots."
"What is the nature of the country beyond?" asked Frank, deeply interested.
"Ice and snow in great plateaus, with here and there monster glaciers," was the reply of Captain Hazzard. "In places, too, immense rocky cliffs tower up, seeming to bar all further progress into the mystery of the South Pole."