"It's going to be a nasty night," said Johnson, after supper.
"It won't be cold, but stormy," answered the doctor; "let us take precautions, and make the tent firm with large stones."
"You are right, Doctor; if the wind should carry away the canvas, Heaven alone knows where we should find it again."
Hence they took every precaution against such a danger, and the wearied travellers lay down to sleep. But they found it impossible. The tempest was loose, and hastened northward with incomparable violence; the clouds were whirling about like steam which has just escaped from a boiler; the last avalanches, under the force of the hurricane, fell into the ravines, and their dull echoes were distinctly heard; the air seemed to be struggling with the water, and fire alone was absent from this contest of the elements.
Amid the general tumult their ears distinguished separate sounds, not the crash of heavy falling bodies, but the distinct cracking of bodies breaking; a clear snap was frequently heard, like breaking steel, amid the roar of the tempest. These last sounds were evidently avalanches torn off by the gusts, but the doctor could not explain the others. In the few moments of anxious silence, when the hurricane seemed to be taking breath in order to blow with greater violence, the travellers exchanged their suppositions.
"There is a sound of crashing," said the doctor, "as if icebergs and ice-fields were being blown against one another."
"Yes," answered Altamont; "one would say the whole crust of the globe was falling in. Say, did you hear that?"
"If we were near the sea," the doctor went on, "I should think it was ice breaking."
"In fact," said Johnson, "there is no other explanation possible."
"Can we have reached the coast?" asked Hatteras.
"It's not impossible," answered the doctor. "Hold on," he said, after a very distinct sound; "shouldn't you say that was the crashing of ice? We may be very near the ocean."
"If it is," continued Hatteras, "I should not be afraid to go across the ice-fields."
"O," said the doctor, "they must be broken by such a tempest! We shall see to-morrow. However that may be, if any men have to travel in such a night as this, I pity them."
The hurricane raged ten hours without cessation, and no one of those in the tent had a moment's sleep; the night passed in profound uneasiness. In fact, under such circumstances, every new incident, a tempest, an avalanche, might bring serious consequences. The doctor would gladly have gone out to reconnoitre, but how could he with such a wind raging?
Fortunately the hurricane grew less violent early the next day; they could leave the tent which had resisted so sturdily. The doctor, Hatteras, and Johnson went to a hill about three hundred feet high, which they ascended without difficulty. Their eyes beheld an entirely altered country, composed of bare rocks, sharp ridges entirely clear of ice. It was summer succeeding winter, which had been driven away by the tempest; the snow had been blown away by the wind before it could melt, and the barren soil reappeared.
But Hatteras's glances were all turned towards the north, where the horizon appeared to be hidden by dark mist.
"That may be the effect of the ocean," said the doctor.
"You are right," said Hatteras; "the sea must be there."
"That's what we call the blink of the water," said Johnson.
"Exactly," said the doctor.
"Well, let us start," said Hatteras, "and push on to this new ocean."
"That rejoices my heart," said Clawbonny to the captain.
"Certainly," was the enthusiastic answer. "Soon we shall have reached the Pole! and doesn't the prospect delight you, too, Doctor?"
"It does. I am always happy, and especially about the happiness of others!"
The three Englishmen returned to the ravine; the sledge was made ready, and they left the camp and resumed their march. Each one dreaded finding new tracks, but all the rest of the way they saw no trace of any human being. Three hours later they reached the coast.
"The sea! the sea!" they all shouted.
"And the open sea!" cried the captain.
It was ten o'clock in the morning.
In fact, the hurricane had cleared up the polar basin; the shattered ice was floating away in every direction; the largest pieces, forming icebergs, had just weighed anchor and were sailing on the open sea. The wind had made a harsh attack upon the field. Fragments of ice covered the surrounding rocks. The little which was left of the ice-field seemed very soft; on the rocks were large pieces of sea-weed. The ocean stretched beyond the line of vision, with no island or new land peering above the horizon.
In the east and west were two capes gently sloping to the water; at their end the sea was breaking, and the wind was carrying a slight foam. The land of New America thus died away in the Polar Ocean, quietly and gently. It rounded into an open bay, with roadstead enclosed by the two promontories. In the middle a rock made a little natural harbor, sheltered against three points of the compass; it ran back into the land in the broad bed of a stream, through which ran down the melted snows of winter, now forming a perfect torrent.
Hatteras, after noticing the outline of the coast, resolved to make the preparations for departure that very day, to launch the boat, to put the unloaded sledge on board for future excursions. That took all day; then the tent was raised, and after a comfortable meal work began. Meanwhile the doctor took out his instruments to take an observation and determine the position of a part of the bay. Hatteras hurried on the work; he was anxious to start; he wanted to leave the land, and to be in advance in case any others should reach the sea.
At five o'clock in the evening Johnson and Bell had nothing to do but to fold their arms. The launch was rocking gently in her little harbor, with her mast set, her jib lowered, and her foresail in the brails; the provisions and most of the things on the sledge had been put on board; only the tent and a little of the camping material remained to be put on board the next day. The doctor found all these preparations complete on his return. When he saw the launch quietly sheltered from the wind, it occurred to him to give a name to the little harbor, and he proposed that of Altamont. This proposition was unanimously agreed to. So it was named Altamont Harbor.
According to the doctor's calculations, it lay in latitude 87° 5', and longitude 118° 35' E. of Greenwich;*that is to say, less than three degrees from the Pole. The band had gone more than two hundred miles from Victoria Bay to Altamont Harbor.
The next morning Johnson and Bell set about carrying on board the camping material. At eight o'clock all the preparations for departure were complete. At the moment of starting the doctor's thoughts returned to the footprints they had seen. Were these men trying to gain the North? Had they any means of crossing the Polar Sea! Should they meet them again? For three days they had come across no trace of the travellers, and certainly, whoever they were, they could not have reached Altamont Harbor. That was a place which they were the first to set foot in. But the doctor, who was harassed by his thoughts, wanted to take a last view of the country, and he ascended a little hill about a hundred feet high, whence he had a distant view to the south.
When he had reached the top, he put his glass to his eyes. Great was his surprise when he found he could not see anything, either at a distance on the plains, or within a few feet of him. This seemed very odd; he made another examination, and at last he looked at the glass,—the object-glass was missing.
"The object-glass!" he cried.
The sudden revelation may be imagined; he uttered a cry so loud as to be heard by his companions, and they were much astonished at seeing him running down the hill.
"Well, what's the matter now?" asked Johnson.
The doctor was out of breath, and unable to speak. At length he managed to bring out,—
"The footprints!—the expedition!—"
"Well, what?" said Hatteras; "are they here?"
"No, no!" resumed the doctor,—"the object-glass, mine!"
And he showed his own glass.
"O, ho!" cried the American, "so you lost—"
"Yes!"
"But then the footprints—"
"Our own!" cried the doctor. "We lost our way in the fog! We went around in a circle, and came across our own footprints!"
"But the print of the shoes?" asked Hatteras.
"Bell's, you know, who walked all day in the snow after breaking his snow-shoes."
"That's true," said Bell.
Their mistake was so clear, that they all, except Hatteras, burst out laughing, and he was none the less pleased at the discovery.
"We were stupid enough," said the doctor, when they had stopped laughing. What good guesses we made! Strangers up here! Really, we ought to think before speaking. Well, since we are easy on this point, we can't do better than start."
"Forward!" said Hatteras.
A quarter of an hour later each one had taken his place on board of the launch, which sailed out of Altamont Harbor under mainsail and jib. This voyage began Wednesday, July 10th; they were then very near the Pole, exactly one hundred and seventy-five miles from it. However small the land might be at that point of the globe, the voyage would certainly be a short one. The wind was light, but fair. The thermometer stood at 50°; it was really warm.
The launch had not been injured by the journey on the sledge; it was in perfect order, and sailed easily. Johnson was at the helm; the doctor, Bell, and Altamont were lying as best they might among the load, partly on deck, partly below.
Hatteras stood forward, with his eyes turned to the mysterious point, which attracted him with an irresistible power, as the magnetic pole attracts the needle. If there should be any land, he wanted to be the first to see it. This honor really belonged to him. He noticed, besides, that the surface of the Polar Sea was covered with short waves, like those of land locked seas. This he considered a proof of the nearness of the opposite shore, and the doctor shared his opinion.
Hatteras's desire to find land at the North Pole is perfectly comprehensible. His disappointment would have been great if the uncertain sea covered the place where he wanted to find a piece of land, no matter how small! In fact, how could he give a special name to an uncertain portion of the sea? How plant the flag of his country among the waves? How take possession, in the name of her Gracious Majesty, of the liquid element?
So Hatteras, compass in hand, gazed steadily at the north. There was nothing that he could see between him and the horizon, where the line of the blue water met the blue sky. A few floating icebergs seemed to be leaving the way free for these bold sailors. The appearance of this region was singularly strange. Was this impression simply the result of the nervous excitement of the travellers? It is hard to say. Still, the doctor in his journal has described the singular appearance of the ocean; he spoke of it as Penny did, according to whom these countries present an appearance "offering the most striking contrast of a sea filled with millions of living creatures."
The sea, with its various colors, appeared strangely transparent, and endowed with a wonderful dispersive quality, as if it had been made with carburet of sulphur. This clearness let them see down into immeasurable depths; it seemed as if the sea were lit up like a large aquarium; probably some electric phenomenon at the bottom of the sea lit it up. So the launch seemed hung in a bottomless abyss.
On the surface of the water the birds were flying in large flocks, like thick clouds big with a storm. Aquatic birds of all sorts were there, from the albatross which is common to the south, to the penguin of the arctic seas, but of enormous size. Their cries were deafening. In considering them the doctor found his knowledge of natural history too scanty; many of the names escaped him, and he found himself bowing his head when their wings beat the air.
Some of these large birds measured twenty feet from tip to tip; they covered the whole launch with their expanded wings; and there were legions of these birds, of which the names had never appeared in the London "Index Ornithologus." The doctor was dejected and stupefied at finding his science so faulty. Then, when his glance fell from the wonders of the air to the calm surface of the ocean, he saw no less astonishing productions of the animal kingdom, among others, medusæ thirty feet broad; they served as food for the other fish, and they floated like islands amid the sea-weed. What a difference from the microscopic medusæ observed in the seas of Greenland by Scoresby, and of which that explorer estimated the number at twenty-three trillions eight hundred and ninety-eight billions of millions in a space of two square miles!
Then the eye glancing down into the transparent water, the sight was equally strange, so full was it of fishes; sometimes the animals were swimming about below, and the eye saw them gradually disappearing, and fading away like spectres; then they would leave the lower layers and rise to the surface. The monsters seemed in no way alarmed at the presence of the launch; they even passed near it, rubbing their fins against it; this, which would have alarmed whalers, did not disturb these men, and yet the sea-monsters were very large.
Young sea-calves played about them; the sword-fish, with its long, narrow, conical sword, with which it cleaves the ice, was chasing the more timid cetacea; numberless spouting whales were clearly to be heard. The sword-caper, with its delicate tail and large caudal fins, swam with incomprehensible quickness, feeding on smaller animals, such as the cod, as swift as itself; while the white whale, which is more inactive, swallowed peacefully the tranquil, lazy mollusks.
Farther down were Greenland anamaks, long and dark; huge sperm-whales, swimming in the midst of ambergris, in which took place thomeric battles that reddened the ocean for many miles around; the great Labrador tegusik. Sharp-backed dolphins, the whole family of seals and walruses, sea-dogs, horses and bears, lions and elephants, seemed to be feeding on the rich pastures; and the doctor admired the numberless animals, as he would have done the crustacea in the crystal basins of the zoölogical garden.
What beauty, variety, and power in nature! How strange and wonderful everything seemed in the polar regions!
The air acquired an unnatural purity; one would have said it was full of oxygen; the explorers breathed with delight this air, which filled them with fresher life; without taking account of the result, they were, so to speak, exposed to a real consuming fire, of which one can give no idea, not even a feeble one. Their emotions, their breathing and digestion, were endowed with superhuman energy; their ideas became more excited; they lived a whole day in an hour.
Through all these wonders the launch pushed on before a moderate breeze, occasionally feeling the air moved by the albatrosses' wings.
Towards evening, the coast of New America disappeared beneath the horizon. In the temperate zones, as well as at the equator, night falls; but here the sun simply described a circle parallel to the line of the horizon. The launch, bathed in its oblique rays, could not lose sight of it.
The animate beings of these regions seemed to know the approach of evening as truly as if the sun had set; birds, fish, cetacea, all disappeared. Whither? To the depths of the ocean? Who could say? But soon total silence succeeded to their cries, and the sound of their passage through the water; the sea grew calmer and calmer, and night retained its gentle peace even beneath the glowing sun.
Since leaving Altamont Harbor the launch had made one degree to the north; the next day nothing appeared on the horizon, neither projecting peaks nor those vague signs by which sailors detect their nearness to land.
The wind was good, but not strong, the sea not high; the birds and fish came as thick as the day before; the doctor, leaning over the gunwale, could see the cetacea rising slowly to the surface; a few icebergs and scattered pieces of ice alone broke the monotony of the ocean.
But the ice grew rarer, and was not enough to interfere with the boat. It is to be remembered that the launch was then ten degrees above the pole of cold; and as to the parallels of temperature, they might as well have been ten degrees to the other side. There was nothing surprising in the sea being open at this epoch, as it must have been at Disco Island in Baffin's Bay. So a sailing vessel would have plenty of sailing room in the summer months.
This observation had a great practical importance; in fact, if whalers can ever get to the polar basin, either by the seas of North America or those of the north of Asia, they are sure of getting full cargoes, for this part of the ocean seems to be the universal fishing-pond, the general reservoir of whales, seals, and all marine animals. At noon the line of the horizon was still unbroken; the doctor began to doubt of the existence of a continent in so high latitudes.
Still, as he reflected, he was compelled to believe in the existence of an arctic continent; in fact, at the creation of the world, after the cooling of the terrestrial crust, the waters formed by the condensation of the atmospheric vapor were compelled to obey the centrifugal force, to fly to the equator and leave the motionless extremities of the globe. Hence the necessary emersion of the countries near the Pole. The doctor considered this reasoning very just. And so it seemed to Hatteras.
Hence the captain still tried to pierce the mists of the horizon. His glass never left his eyes. In the color of the water, the shape of the waves, the direction of the wind, he tried to find traces of neighboring land. His head was bent forward, and even one who did not know his thoughts would have admired, so full was his attitude of energetic desire and anxious interrogation.
The time flew by in this uncertainty. Nothing appeared on the sharply defined circle of the sea; nothing was to be seen save sky and sea,—not one of those floating land-plants which rejoiced the heart of Christopher Columbus as he was about to discover America. Hatteras was still gazing. At length, at about six o'clock in the evening, a shapeless vapor appeared at a little height above the level of the sea; it looked like a puff of smoke; the sky was perfectly cold, so this vapor was no cloud; it would keep appearing and disappearing, as if it were in commotion. Hatteras was the first to detect this phenomenon; he examined it with his glass for a whole hour.
Suddenly, some sure sign apparently occurred to him, for he stretched out his arms to the horizon and cried in a loud voice,—
"Land, ho!"
At these words each one sprang to his feet as if moved by electricity. A sort of smoke was clearly rising above the sea.
"I see it," cried the doctor.
"Yes! certainly!—yes!" said Johnson.
"It's a cloud," said Altamont.
"It's land!" answered Hatteras, as if perfectly convinced.
But, as often happens with objects that are indistinct in the distance, the point they had been looking at seemed to have disappeared. At length they found it again, and the doctor even fancied that he could see a swift light twenty or twenty-five miles to the north.
"It's a volcano!" he cried.
"A volcano?" said Altamont.
"Without doubt."
"At this high latitude?"
"And why not?" continued the doctor; "isn't Iceland a volcanic land, so to speak, made of volcanoes?"
"Yes, Iceland," said the American, "but so near the Pole!"
"Well, didn't Commodore James Ross find in the Southern Continent two active volcanoes, Erebus and Terror by name, in longitude 170° and latitude 78°? Why then shouldn't there be volcanoes at the North Pole?"
"It may be so, after all," answered Altamont.
"Ah," cried the doctor, "I see it clearly! It is a volcano."
"Well," said Hatteras, "let us sail straight towards it."
"The wind is changing," said Johnson.
"Haul on the fore-sheet, and bring her nearer the wind."
But this manoeuvre only turned the launch away from the point they had been gazing at, and even with their closest examination they could not find it again. Still, they could not doubt that they were nearing land. They had seen, if they had not reached, the object of their voyage, and within twenty-four hours they would set foot on this unknown shore. Providence, after letting them get so near, would not drive them back at the last moment.
Still, no one manifested the joy which might have been expected under the circumstances; each one wondered in silence what this polar land might be. The animals seemed to shun it; at evening the birds, instead of seeking refuge there, flew with all speed to the south. Could not a single gull or ptarmigan find a resting-place there? Even the fish, the large cetacea, avoided that coast. Whence came this repugnance, which was shared by all the animals they saw, unless from terror?
The sailors experienced the same feeling; they gave way to the feelings inspired by the situation, and gradually each one felt his eyelids grow heavy. It was Hatteras's watch. He took the tiller; the doctor, Altamont, Johnson, and Bell fell asleep, stretched on the benches, and soon were dreaming soundly. Hatteras struggled against his sleepiness; he wished to lose not a moment; but the gentle motion of the launch rocked him, in spite of himself, into a gentle sleep.
The boat made hardly any headway; the wind did not keep her sails full. Far off in the west a few icebergs were reflecting the sun's rays, and glowing brightly in the midst of the ocean.
Hatteras began to dream. He recalled his whole life, with the incalculable speed of dreams; he went through the winter again, the scenes at Victoria Bay, Fort Providence, Doctor's House, the finding the American beneath the snow. Here remoter incidents came up before him; he dreamed of the burning of theForward, of his treacherous companions who had abandoned him. What had become of them? He thought of Shandon, Wall, and the brutal Pen.*Where were they now? Had they succeeded in reaching Baffin's Bay across the ice? Then he went further back, to his departure from England, to his previous voyages, his failures and misfortunes. Then he forgot his present situation, his success so near at hand, his hopes half realized. His dreams carried him from joy to agony. So it went on for two hours; then his thoughts changed; he began to think of the Pole, and he saw himself at last setting foot on this English continent, and unfolding the flag of the United Kingdom. While he was dozing in this way a huge, dark cloud was climbing across the sky, throwing a deep shadow over the sea.
It is difficult to imagine the great speed with which hurricanes arise in the arctic seas. The vapors which rise under the equator are condensed above the great glaciers of the North, and large masses of air are needed to take their place. This can explain the severity of arctic storms.
At the first shock of the wind the captain and his friends awoke from their sleep, ready to manage the launch. The waves were high and steep. The launch tossed helplessly about, now plunged into deep abysses, now oscillated on the pointed crest of a wave, inclining often at an angle of more than forty-five degrees. Hatteras took firm hold of the tiller, which was noisily sliding from one side to the other. Every now and then some strong wave would strike it and nearly throw him over. Johnson and Bell were busily occupied in bailing out the water which the launch would occasionally ship.
"This is a storm we hardly expected," said Altamont, holding fast to his bench.
"We ought to expect anything here," answered the doctor.
These remarks were made amid the roar of the tempest and the hissing of the waves, which the violence of the wind reduced to a fine spray. It was nearly impossible for one to hear his neighbor. It was hard to keep the boat's head to the north; the clouds hid everything a few fathoms from the boat, and they had no mark to sail by. This sudden tempest, just as they were about attaining their object, seemed full of warning; to their excited minds it came like an order to go no farther. Did Nature forbid approach to the Pole? Was this point of the globe surrounded by hurricanes and tempests which rendered access impossible? But any one who had caught sight of those men could have seen that they did not flinch before wind or wave, and that they would push on to the end. So they struggled on all day, braving death at every instant, and making no progress northward, but also losing no ground; they were wet through by the rain and waves; above the din of the storm they could hear the hoarse cries of the birds.
But at six o'clock in the evening, while the waves were rising, there came a sudden calm. The wind stopped as if by a miracle. The sea was smooth, as if it had not felt a puff of wind for twelve hours. The hurricane seemed to have respected this part of the Polar Ocean. What was the reason? It was an extraordinary phenomenon, which Captain Sabine had witnessed in his voyages in Greenland seas. The fog, without lifting, was very bright. The launch drifted along in a zone of electric light, an immense St. Elmo fire, brilliant but without heat. The mast, sail, and rigging stood out black against the phosphorescent air; the men seemed to have plunged into a bath of transparent rays, and their faces were all lit up. The sudden calm of this portion of the ocean came, without doubt, from the ascending motion of the columns of air, while the tempest, which was a cyclone, turned rapidly about this peaceful centre. But this atmosphere on fire suggested a thought to Hatteras.
"The volcano!" he cried.
"Is it possible?" asked Bell.
"No, no!" answered the doctor; "we should be smothered if the flames were to reach us."
"Perhaps it is its reflection in the fog," said Altamont.
"No. We should have to admit that we were near land, and in that case we should hear the eruption."
"But then?" asked the captain.
"It is a phenomenon," said the doctor, "which has been seldom observed hitherto. If we go on we cannot help leaving this luminous sphere and re-entering storm and darkness."
"Whatever it is, push on!" said Hatteras.
"Forward!" cried his companions, who did not wish to delay even for breathing-time in this quiet spot. The bright sail hung down the glistening mast; the oars dipped into the glowing waves, and appeared to drip with sparks. Hatteras, compass in hand, turned the boat's head to the north; gradually the mist lost its brightness and transparency; the wind could be heard roaring a short distance off; and soon the launch, lying over before a strong gust, re-entered the zone of storms. Fortunately, the hurricane had shifted a point towards the south, and the launch was able to run before the wind, straight for the Pole, running the risk of foundering, but sailing very fast; a rock, reef, or piece of ice might at any moment rise before them, and crush them to atoms. Still, no one of these men raised a single objection, nor suggested prudence. They were seized with the madness of danger. Thirst for the unknown took possession of them. They were going along, not blinded, but blindly, finding their speed only too slow for their impatience. Hatteras held the tiller firm amid the waves lashed into foam by the tempest. Still the proximity of land became evident. Strange signs filled the air. Suddenly the mist parted like a curtain torn by the wind, and for a moment, brief as a flash of lightning, a great burst of flame could be seen rising towards the sky.
"The volcano! the volcano!" was the cry which escaped from the lips of all; but the strange vision disappeared at once; the wind shifted to the southeast, took the launch on her quarter, and drove her from this unapproachable land.
"Malediction!" said Hatteras, shifting her sail; "we were not three miles from land!"
Hatteras could not resist the force of the tempest; but without yielding to it, he brought the boat about in the wind, which was blowing with fearful violence. Every now and then the launch leaned to one side, so that almost her whole keel was exposed; still she obeyed her rudder, and rose like a stumbling horse which his rider brings up by spur and reins. Hatteras, with his hair flying and his hand on the tiller, seemed to be part of the boat, like horse and man at the time of the centaurs. Suddenly a terrible sight presented itself to their eyes. Within less than ten fathoms a floe was balancing on the waves; it fell and rose like the launch, threatening in its fall to crush it to atoms. But to this danger of being plunged into the abyss was added another no less terrible; for this drifting floe was covered with white bears, crowded together and wild with terror.
"Bears! bears!" cried Bell, in terror.
And each one gazed with terror. The floe pitched fearfully, sometimes at such an angle that the bears were all rolled together. Then their roars were almost as loud as the tempest; a formidable din arose from the floating menagerie.
If the floe had upset, the bears would have swum to the boat and clambered aboard.
For a quarter of an hour, which was as long as a century, the launch and floe drifted along in consort, twenty fathoms from one another at one moment and nearly running together the next, and at times they were so near to one another, the bears need only have dropped to have got on board. The Greenland dogs trembled from terror; Duke remained motionless. Hatteras and his companions were silent; it did not occur to them to put the helm down and sail away, and they went straight on. A vague feeling, of astonishment rather than terror, took possession of them; they admired this spectacle which completed the struggle of the elements. Finally the floe drifted away, borne by the wind, which the launch was able to withstand, as she lay with her head to the wind, and it disappeared in the mist, its presence being known merely by the distant roaring of the bears.
At that moment the fury of the tempest redoubled; there was an endless unchaining of atmospheric waves; the boat, borne by the waves, was tossed about giddily; her sail flew away like a huge white bird; a whirlpool, a new Maelstrom, formed among the waves; the boat was carried so fast that it seemed to the men as if the rapidly revolving water were motionless. They were gradually sinking down. There was an irresistible power dragging them down and ingulfing them alive. All five arose. They looked at one another with terror. They grew dizzy. They felt an undefinable dread of the abyss! But suddenly the launch arose perpendicularly. Her prow was higher than the whirling waves; the speed with which she was moving hurled her beyond the centre of attraction, and escaping by the tangent of this circumference which was making more than a thousand turns a second, she was hurled away with the rapidity of a cannon-ball.
Altamont, the doctor, Johnson, and Bell were thrown down among the seats. When they rose, Hatteras had disappeared. It was two o'clock in the morning.
One cry, bursting from the lips of the other four, succeeded their first stupefaction.
"Hatteras!" cried the doctor.
"Gone!" said Johnson and Bell.
"Lost!"
They looked about, but nothing was to be seen on the storm-tossed sea. Duke barked despairingly; he tried to spring into the water, but Bell managed to hold him.
"Take a place at the helm, Altamont," said the doctor; "let us try everything to save the captain."
Johnson and Bell took their seats. Altamont took the helm, and the launch came into wind again. Johnson and Bell began to row vigorously; for an hour they remained at the scene of the accident. They sought earnestly, but in vain. The unfortunate Hatteras was lost in the storm! Lost, so near the Pole, so near the end, of which he had had but a glimpse!
The doctor called aloud, and fired the guns; Duke added his howling, but there was no answer. Then profound grief seized Clawbonny; his head sank into his hands, and his companions saw that he was weeping. In fact, at this distance from land, with a scrap of wood to hold him up,*Hatteras could not reach the shore alive; and if anything did come ashore, it would be his disfigured corpse. After hunting for an hour, they decided to turn to the north, and struggle against the last furies of the tempest.
At five o'clock in the morning of July 11th the wind went down; the sea grew quieter; the sky regained its polar clearness, and within three miles of them appeared the land. This continent was but an island, or rather a volcano, peering up like a lighthouse at the North Pole. The mountain, in full eruption, was hurling forth a mass of burning stones and melting rocks. It seemed to be rising and falling beneath the successive blasts as if it were breathing; the things which were cast out reached a great height in the air; amid the jets of flame, torrents of lava were flowing down the side of the mountain; here creeping between steaming rocks, there falling in cascades amid the purple vapor: and lower down a thousand streams united in one large river, which ran boiling into the sea.
The volcano seemed to have but a single crater, whence arose a column of fire, lighted by transverse rays; one would have said that part of the magnificence of the phenomenon was due to electricity. Above the flames floated an immense cloud of smoke, red below, black above. It rose with great majesty, and unrolled into huge layers.
The sky at a considerable height had an ashy hue; the darkness, which was so marked during the tempest, and of which the doctor could give no satisfactory explanation, evidently came from the ashes, which completely hid the sun. He remembered a similar fact that took place in 1812, at the Barbadoes, which at noon was plunged into total darkness by the mass of cinders thrown from the crater of Isle St. Vincent.
This enormous volcano, jutting up in mid-ocean, was about six thousand feet high, very nearly the altitude of Hecla. A line from the summit to the base would form with the horizon an angle of about eleven degrees. It seemed to rise from the bosom of the waves as the launch approached it. There was no trace of vegetation. There was no shore; it ran down steep to the sea.
"Shall we be able to land?" said the doctor.
"The wind is carrying us there," answered Altamont.
"But I can't see any beach on which we could set foot."
"So it seems from here," answered Johnson; "but we shall find some place for our boat; that is all we need."
"Let us go on, then!" answered Clawbonny, sadly.
The doctor had no eyes for the strange continent which was rising before him. The land of the Pole was there, but not the man who had discovered it. Five hundred feet from the rocks the sea was boiling under the action of subterraneous fires. The island was from eight to ten miles in circumference, no more; and, according to their calculation, it was very near the Pole, if indeed the axis of the world did not pass exactly through it. As they drew near they noticed a little fiord large enough to shelter their boat; they sailed towards it, filled with the fear of finding the captain's body cast ashore by the tempest.