Part 15 (1/2)
”Just possible, Mr Jeoding, quite possible But it must appear before two days, or, on the word of a boatswain, nothing can prevent us fro the next twenty-four hours the Halbrane took a south-south-westerlycourse Nevertheless, her direction ed and her speed decreased in avoiding the ice The navigation became very dimcult so soon as the schooner headed towards the line of the bergs, which it had to cut obliquely However, there were none of the packs which blocked up all access to the iceberg on the 67th parallel The enor aith majestic slowness The ice-blocks appeared ”quite new” (to employ a perfectly accurate expression), and perhaps they had only been forht of one hundred and fifty feet, their bulk must have been calculated bycloscly in order to avoid collisions, and did not leave the deck even for an instant
Until now, Captain Len Guy had always been able to rely upon the indications of the conetic pole, still hundreds of miles off, had no influence on the co east The needle reht be trusted
So, in spite of u whether it would not be better to steerthe Halbrane frolobe cross each other
Thus, as the hours went by--and I was only allowed forty-eight--it was only too plain that lack of courage prevailed, and that everyone was inclined to be insubordinate
After another day and a half, I could no longer contend with the general discontent The schooner must ultimately retrace her course towards the north
The creorking in silence, whilst West was giving sharp short orders forin order to avoid a collision, now bearing away almost square before the wind Nevertheless, in spite of a close watch, in spite of the skill of the sailors, in spite of the proainst the hull, which left long traces of the ridge of the icebergs, occurred And, in truth, the bravest could not repress a feeling of terror when thinking that the planking iven way and the sea have invaded us
The base of these floating ice-mountains was very steep, so that it would have been impossible for us to land upon one Moreover,no seals--these were usually very numerous where the ice-fields abounded--nor even a flock of the screeching penguins which, on other occasions, the Halbrane sent diving by h them; the birds themselves seemed rarer and wilder Dread, from which none of us could escape, seeions How could we still entertain a hope that the survivors of the Jane had found shelter, and obtained means of existence in those awful solitudes?
And if the Halbrahe were also shi+pwrecked, would there remain any evidence of her fate?
Since the previous day, from the moment our southern course had been abandoned, to cut the line of the icebergs, a change had taken place in the demeanour of the half-breed Nearly always crouched down at the foot of the fore-ot up in order to lend a hand to soilance or zeal Not that he had ceased to believe that his coht never even came into his mind! But he felt by instinct that the traces of poor Py this course
”Sir,” he would have said to me, ”this is not the way! No, this is not the way!” And how could I have answered hi a rather thick ation of the schooner difficult and dangerous
The day, with its emotions of anxiety and alternatives, had worn me out So I returned to my cabin, where I threw myself on my bunk into ly adar Poe's works, and reading thehted, had exercised an influence on nize
To-ht hours would be up, the last concession which the crew hadas you wish?” the boatswain said tothe deck
No, certainly not, since land was not to be seen behind the fleet of icebergs If no sign of a coast appeared between thesemasses, Captain Len Guy would steer north to-morrow
Ah! were I only ht it even at the price of all my fortune, if these men had been my slaves to drive by the lash, the Halbrane should never have given up this voyage, even if it led her so far as the point above which flames the Southern Cross
My hts, a thousand regrets, a thousand desires! I wanted to get up, but a heavy hand held ed to leave this cabin where I was struggling against nightmare in my half-sleep, to launch one of the boats of the Halbrane, to jump into it with Dirk Peters, ould not hesitate about followingsouth
And lo! I was doing this in a dreaiven orders to reverse our course, after a last glance at the horizon One of the boats is in toarn the half-breed We creep along without being seen We cut the painter Whilst the schooner sails on ahead, we stay astern and the current carries us off
Thus we drift on the sea without hindrance! At length our boat stops Land is there I see a sort of sphinx suro to him I question hiions to me And then, the phenomena whose reality Arthur Pym asserted appear around thevapours, striped with luminous rays, is rent asunder And it is not a face of superhurandeur which arises before uardian of the south pole, flaunting the ensign of the United States in those high latitudes!
Was this dreaed by a freak of h I had been suddenly awakened It seee had taken place in theon the surface of the quiet sea, with a slight list to starboard And yet, there was neither rolling nor pitching Yes, I felt h my bunk were the car of an air-balloon I was not mistaken, and I had fallen from dreamland into reality
Crash succeeded crash overhead I could not account for them Inside my cabin the partitions deviated from the vertical in such a way as to make one believe that the Halbrane had fallen over on her beam ends Almost immediately, I was thrown out of ainst the corner of the table However, I got up again, and, clinging on to the edge of the door fraainst the door
At this instant the bulwarks began to crack and the port side of the shi+p was torn open
Could there have been a collision between the schooner and one of those gigantic floating masses which West was unable to avoid in the mist?
Suddenly loud shouts came from the after-deck, and then screams of terror, in which the th there came a final crash, and the Halbrane re the floor to reach the door and gain the deck Captain Len Guy having already left his cabin, dragged hiht on as best he could
In the fore part of the shi+p, between the forecastle and the fore-mast, many heads appeared
Dirk Peters, Hardy, Martin Holt and Endicott, the latter with his black face quite vacant, were clinging to the starboard shrouds
Aup tohi with his hands like a top-th, ainst the jamb of the door, I held out my hand to the boatswain, and helped him, not without difficulty, to hoist hi, Mr Jeorling”
”We are ashore!”
”A shore presupposes land,” replied the boatswain ironically, ”and so far as land goes there was never any except in that rascal Dirk Peters' iination”
”But tellin the , and were unable to keep clear of it”
”An iceberg, boatswain?”
”Yes, an iceberg, which has chosen just now to turn head over heels In turning, it struck the Halbrane and carried it off just as a battledore catches a shuttlecock, and now here we are, stranded at certainly one hundred feet above the level of the Antarctic Sea”
Could one have ie of the Halbrane?
In the ions our only means of transport had just been snatched from its natural eleht of more than one hundred feet! What a conclusion! To be sed up in a polar tees, to be crushed in the ice, such are the dangers to which any shi+p engaged in the polar seas is exposed! But to think that the Halbrane had been lifted by a floatingover, was stranded and al seemed quite impossible
I did not knohether we could succeed in letting down the schooner froht with the means we had at our disposal But I did know that Captain Len Guy, the mate and the older members of the crehen they had recovered froive up in despair, no ht be; of that I had no doubt whatsoever! They would all look to the general safety; as for the y veil, a sort of greyishcould be seen of its enory cleft in which the schooner edged, nor even what place it occupied in thetowards the south-east
Common prudence deht slide down at a sharp shake ot the iceberg Were we even certain that the latter had regained its position on the surface of the sea? Was her stability secure? Should we not be on the look-out for a fresh upheaval? And if the schooner were to fall into the abyss, which of us could extricate himself safe and sound froe into the depths of the ocean?
In a few ht for refuge on the ice-slopes, awaiting the ti should be freed from mist The oblique rays fro it, and the red disk could hardly be perceived through the opaque uish each other at about twelve feet apart As for the Halbrane, she looked like a confused blackish ainst the whiteness of the ice
We had now to ascertain whether any of those ere on the deck at the time of the catastrophe had been thrown over the bulwarks and precipitated, into the sea?
By Captain Len Guy's orders all the sailors then present joined the group in which I stood with the mate, the boatswain, Hardy and Martin Holt
So far, this catastrophe had cost us five uelen, but were they to be the last?
There was no doubt that these unfortunate fellows had perished, because we called the abated, along the sides of the iceberg, at every place where they ht have been able to catch on to a projection