If they went under the ice at some point eastward, how were they to find the seventieth line of longitude?
They could not take observations down there; and they might have to go south on some other line, which would take them nobody knew where.

Mr.Gibbs said little, but he believed that it would be well to go back the way they came.
At last a plan was proposed by Mr.Marcy, and adopted without dissent.
The whole country which lay in the direction they wished to travel seemed to be an immense plain of ice and snow, with mountains looming up towards the west and in the far southeast.

In places great slabs of ice seemed to be piled up into craggy masses, but in general the surface of the country was quite level, indicating underlying water.

In fact, a little east of the point where they had entered the polar sea great cracks and reefs, some of them extending nearly a mile inward, broke up the shore line.

The party on the Dipsey were fully able to travel over smooth ice and frozen snow, for this contingency had been thought of and provided for; but to take the Dipsey on an overland journey would, of course, be impossible.