One or two weird things befell us during our return journey, but time presses and I can not pause to record them here.
The party was composed of picked men, one of whom was Ondonarkus. We had one ape-bat.
This going up was a more difficult business, I want to tell you, than our going down had been. There was one consolation: we did not get lost.
Onward and upward we toiled, and at last, on the 28th of June, we reached the Tamahnowis Rocks. Thanks to Rhodes' chronometer-watch and the very careful record which he had kept, we knew the very hour.
This was about ten o'clock in the morning. The way out was completely blocked by the ice. Cool air, however, was flowing in through fissures and clefts in the walls and the roof of the tunnel.
We waited until along towards midnight, for fear some one might be about, that some sound might reveal the secret of the rock.
It was about ten o'clock when we began to dig our way out through the ice. The tunnel was not driven out into the glacier but up alongside the rock wall, through the edge of the ice-stream.
Hurrah! At last our passage was through!
And, as old Dante has it,
"Thence issuing we again beheld the stars."