Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/148

134 ice, again had reached land. That afternoon began the first of a series of vain journeys ashore to examine headlands, capes and promontories where cairns, if cairns were to be found, surely ought to be. Now the sun disappeared for longer and longer hours each night, and circled closer to the horizon in the shortening periods of light. Snow swirled from over-clouded skies when the gale blew from the north. The Viborg skirted the shores of other islands; the landing parties, which now sometimes included Margaret herself, tramped up and down the rocks in vain. Again and again piles of stones sighted from the ship brought a boat hurrying to the beach; but each time the piles proved natural heaps. Bones found gave no evidence that any man, with a rifle or without, had hunted in any of those lands.

By the chart with which the Aurora party had been provided and by which the Viborg also sailed, there were but two routes which any man travelling south over the ice would have followed or tried to follow. The first, taken by the four who got away from Mason