Now follow the course from the Bay of Whales in 1912. Only in about 75º S. was ice seen (almost as in 1911), and we followed it. After that time we saw absolutely no more ice, as the chart shows; therefore in the course of about a month and a half all the ice that we met when going south had drifted out.
The stippled line shows how I assume the ice to have lain; the heavy broken line shows what our course ought to have been.
The midnight sun was not seen till the night of January 7, 1912, to the south of lat. 77º S.; it was already 9.5º above the horizon.
On the night of January 8 we arrived off the Barrier in extremely bitter weather. South-westerly and southerly winds had held for a few days, with fair weather; but that night there was thick snow, and the wind gradually fell calm, after which a fresh breeze sprang up from the south-east, with biting snow, and at the same time a lot of drift-ice. The engine went very slowly, and the ship kept head to wind. About midnight the weather cleared a little, and a dark line, which proved to be the Barrier, came in sight. The engine went ahead at full speed, and the sails were set, so that we might get under the lee of the perpendicular wall. By degrees the ice-blink above the Barrier became lighter and lighter, and before very long we were so close under it that we only just had room to go about. The Barrier here runs east and west, and with a south-easterly wind we went along it to the east. The watch that had gone below at eight o'clock, when we were still in open sea, came up again at two to find us close to the long-desired wall of ice.
Some hours passed in the same way, but then, of course, the wind became easterly -- dead ahead -- so that we had tack after tack till 6 p.m. the same day, when we were at the western point of the Bay of Whales.
The ice lay right out to West Cape, and we sailed across the mouth of the bay and up under the lee of the eastern Barrier, in order, if possible, to find slack ice or open water; but no, the fast ice came just as far on that side. It turned out that we could not get farther south than 78º30' -- that is, eleven nautical miles farther north than the previous year, and no less than fifteen nautical miles from Framheim, taking into consideration the turn in the bay.
We were thus back at the same place we had left on February 14, 1911, and had since been round the world. The distance covered on this voyage of circumnavigation was 25,000 nautical miles, of which 8,000 belong to the oceanographical cruise in the South Atlantic.
We did not lie under the lee of the eastern Barrier for more than four hours; the wind, which had so often been against us, was true to its principles to the last. Of course it went to the north and blew right up the bay; the drift-ice from Ross Sea came in, and at midnight (January 9 -- 10) we stood out again.
I had thought of sending a man up to Framheim to report that we had arrived, but the state of the weather did not allow it. Besides, I had only one pair of private ski on board and should therefore only have been able to send one man. It would have been better if several had gone together.
During the forenoon of the l0th it gradually cleared, the wind fell light and we stood inshore again. As at the same time the barometer was rising steadily, Lieutenant Gjertsen went ashore on ski about one o'clock.