Part 2 (2/2)

On waking our first thoughts were about the fire, and we looked eagerly around. It was day, but the sky was as gloomy as ever, and the fire was there before our eyes, bright and terrible. We could now see it plainly, and discern the cause also. The fire came from two points, at some distance apart--two peaks rising above the horizon, from which there burst forth flames and smoke with incessant explosions. All was now manifest. It was no burning s.h.i.+p, no blazing forest, no land inhabited by man: those blazing peaks were two volcanoes in a state of active eruption, and at that sight I knew the worst.

”I know where we are now,” I said, despairingly.

”Where?” asked Agnew.

”That,” said I, ”is the antarctic continent.”

”The antarctic fiddlestick,” said he, contemptuously. ”It is far more likely to be some volcanic island in the South Sea. There's a tremendous volcano in the Sandwich Islands, and these are something like it.”

”I believe,” said I, ”that these are the very volcanoes that Sir James Ross discovered last year.”

”Do you happen to know where he found them?” Agnew asked.

”I do not,” I answered.

”Well, I do,” said he, ”and they're thousands of miles away from this.

They are south lat.i.tude 77 degrees, east longitude 167 degrees; while we, as I guess, are about south lat.i.tude 40 degrees, east longitude 60 degrees.”

”At any rate,” said I, ”we're drifting straight toward them.”

”So I see,” said Agnew, dryly. ”At any rate, the current will take us somewhere. We shall find ourselves carried past these volcanic islands, or through them, and then west to the Cape of Good Hope.

Besides, even here we may find land with animals and vegetation; who knows?”

”What! amid all this ice?” I cried. ”Are you mad?”

”Mad?” said he; ”I should certainly go mad if I hadn't hope.”

”Hope!” I repeated; ”I have long since given up hope.”

”Oh, well,” said he, ”enjoy your despair, and don't try to deprive me of my consolation. My hope sustains me, and helps me to cheer you up.

It would never do, old fellow, for both of us to knock under.”

I said nothing more, nor did Agnew. We drifted on, and all our thoughts were taken up with the two volcanoes, toward which we were every moment drawing nearer. As we approached they grew larger and larger, towering up to a tremendous height. I had seen Vesuvius and Stromboli and AEtna and Cotopaxi; but these appeared far larger than any of them, not excepting the last. They rose, like the Peak of Teneriffe, abruptly from the sea, with no intervening hills to dwarf or diminish their proportions. They were ten or twelve miles apart, and the channel of water in which we were drifting flowed between them.

Here the ice and snow ended. We thus came at last to land; but it was a land that seemed more terrible than even the bleak expanse of ice and snow that lay behind, for nothing could be seen except a vast and drear acc.u.mulation of lava-blocks of every imaginable shape, without a trace of vegetation--uninhabited, uninhabitable, and unpa.s.sable to man. But just where the ice ended and the rocks began there was a long, low reef, which projected for more than a quarter of a mile into the water, affording the only possible landing-place within sight.

Here we decided to land, so as to rest and consider what was best to be done.

Here we landed, and walked up to where rugged lava-blocks prevented any further progress. But at this spot our attention was suddenly arrested by a sight of horror. It was a human figure lying prostrate, face downward.

At this sight there came over us a terrible sensation. Even Agnew's buoyant soul shrank back, and we stared at each other with quivering lips. It was some time before we could recover ourselves; then we went to the figure, and stooped down to examine it.

The clothes were those of a European and a sailor; the frame was emaciated and dried up, till it looked like a skeleton; the face was blackened and all withered, and the bony hands were clinched tight. It was evidently some sailor who had suffered s.h.i.+pwreck in these frightful solitudes, and had drifted here to starve to death in this appalling wilderness. It was a sight which seemed ominous of our own fate, and Agnew's boasted hope, which had so long upheld him, now sank down into a despair as deep as my own. What room was there now for hope, or how could we expect any other fate than this?

At length I began to search the pockets of the deceased.

”What are you doing?” asked Agnew, in a hoa.r.s.e voice.

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