An Antarctic Mystery (32 page)

I desire to lay special stress on the fact that not a single scrap
of iron entered into the construction of this boat, not so much as a
nail or a bolt, for that metal was entirely unknown to the Tsalal
islanders. The planks were bound together by a sort of liana, or
creeping-plant, and caulked with moss steeped in pitch, which was
turned by contact with the sea-water to a substance as hard as metal.

I have nothing special to record during the week that succeeded our
departure. The breeze blew steadily from the south, and we did not
meet with any unfavourable current between the banks of the
Jane
Sound.

During those first eight days, the Paracuts, by paddling when the
wind fell, had kept up the speed that was indispensable for our
reaching the Pacific Ocean within a short time.

The desolate aspect of the land remained the same, while the strait
was already visited by floating drifts, packs of one to two hundred
feet in length, some oblong, others circular, and also by icebergs
which our boat passed easily. We were made anxious, however, by the
fact that these masses were proceeding towards the iceberg barrier,
for would they not close the passages, which ought to be still open
at this time?

I shall mention here that in proportion as Dirk Peters was carried
farther and farther from the places wherein no trace ofhis poor Pym
had been found, he was more silent than ever, and no longer even
answered me when I addressed him.

It must not be forgotten that since our iceberg had passed beyond
the south pole, we were in the zone of eastern longitudes counted
from the zero of Greenwich to the hundred and eightieth degree. All
hope must therefore be abandoned of our either touching at the
Falklands, or finding whaling-ships in the waters of the Sandwich
Islands, the South Orkneys, or South Georgia.

Our voyage proceeded under unaltered conditions for ten days. Our
little craft was perfectly sea-worthy. The two captains and West
fully appreciated its soundness, although, as I have previously
said, not a scrap of iron had a place in its construction. It had
not once been necessary to repair its seams, so staunch were they.
To be sure, the sea was smooth, its long, rolling waves were hardly
ruffled on their surface.

On the loth of March, with the same longitude the observation gave
7° 13' for latitude. The speed of the
Paracuta
had then been
thirty miles in each twenty-four hours. If this rate of progress
could be maintained for three weeks, there was every chance of our
finding the passes open, and being able to get round the iceberg
barrier; also that the whaling-ships would not yet have left the
fishing-grounds.

The sun was on the verge of the horizon, and the time was
approaching when the Antarctic region would be shrouded in polar
night. Fortunately, in re-ascending towards the north we were
getting into waters from whence light was not yet banished. Then did
we witness a phenomenon as extraordinary as any of those described
by Arthur Pym. For three or four hours, sparks, accompanied by a
sharp noise, shot out of our fingers' ends, our hair, and our
beards. There was an electric snowstorm, with great flakes falling
loosely, and the contact produced this strange luminosity. The sea
rose so suddenly and tumbled about so wildly that the
Paracuta
was
several times in danger of being swallowed up by the waves, but we
got through the mystic-seeming tempest all safe and sound.

Nevertheless, space was thenceforth but imperfectly lighted.
Frequent mists came up and bounded our outlook to a few
cable-lengths. Extreme watchfulness and caution were necessary to
avoid collision with the floating masses of ice, which were
travelling more slowly than the
Paracuta
.

It is also to be noted that, on the southern side, the sky was
frequently lighted up by the broad and brilliant rays of the polar
aurora.

The temperature fell very perceptibly, and no longer rose above
twenty-three degrees.

Forty-eight hours later Captain Len Guy and his brother succeeded
with great difficulty in taking an approximate observation, with the
following results of their calculations:

Latitude: 75° 17' south.
Latitude: 118° 3' east.

At this date, therefore (12th March), the
Paracuta
was distant from
the waters of the Antarctic Circle only four hundred miles.

During the night a thick fog came on, with a subsidence of the
breeze. This was to be regretted, for it increased the risk of
collision with the floating ice. Of course fog could not be a
surprise to us, being where we were, but what did surprise us was
the gradually increasing speed of our boat, although the falling of
the wind ought to have lessened it.

This increase of speed could not be due to the current for we were
going more quickly than it.

This state of things lasted until morning, without our being able to
account for what was happening, when at about ten o'clock the mist
began to disperse in the low zones. The coast on the west
reappeared—a rocky coast, without a mountainous background; the
Paracuta
was following its line.

And then, no more than a quarter of a mile away, we beheld a huge
mound, reared above the plain to a height of three hundred feet,
with a circumference of from two to three hundred feet. In its
strange form this great mound resembled an enormous sphinx; the body
uptight, the paws stretched out, crouching in the attitude of the
winged monster which Grecian Mythology has placed upon the way to
Thebes.

Was this a living animal, a gigantic monster, a mastodon a thousand
times the size of those enormous elephants of the polar seas whose
remains are still found in the ice? In our frame of mind we might
have believed that it was such a creature, and believed also that
the mastodon was about to hurl itself on our little craft and crush
it to atoms.

After a few moments of unreasoning and unreasonable fright, we
recognized that the strange object was only a great mound,
singularly shaped, and that the mist had just rolled off its head,
leaving it to stand out and confront us.

Ah! that sphinx! I remembered, at sight of it, that on the night
when the iceberg was overturned and the
Halbrane
was carried away, I
had dreamed of a fabulous animal of this kind, seated at the pole of
the world, and from whom Edgar Poe could only wrest its secrets.

But our attention was to be attracted, our surprise, even our alarm,
was evoked soon by phenomena still more strange than the mysterious
earth form upon which the mist-curtain had been raised so suddenly.

I have said that the speed of the
Paracuta
was gradually increasing;
now it was excessive, that of the current remaining inferior to it.
Now, of a sudden, the grapnel that had belonged to the
Halbrane
, and
was in the bow of the boat, flew out of its socket as though drawn
by an irresistible power, and the rope that held it was strained to
breaking point. It seemed to tow us, as it grazed the surface of the
water towards the shore.

"What's the matter?" cried William Guy. "Cut away,
boatswain, cut away!" shouted West, "or we shall be dragged
against the rocks."

Hurliguerly hurried to the bow of the
Paracuta
to cut away the rope.
Of a sudden the knife he held was snatched out of his hand, the rope
broke, and the grapnel, like a projectile, shot off in the direction
of the sphinx.

At the same moment, all the articles on board the boat that were
made of iron or steel—cooking utensils, arms, Endicott's stove,
our knives, which were torn from out pockets—took flight after a
similar fashion in the same direction, while the boat, quickening
its course, brought up against the beach.

What was happening? In order to explain these inexplicable things,
were we not obliged to acknowledge that we had come into the region
of those wonders which I attributed to the hallucinations of Arthur
Pym?

No! These were physical facts which we had just witnessed, and not
imaginary phenomenal!

We had, however, no time for reflection, and immediately upon our
landing, our attention was turned in another direction by the sight
of a boat lying wrecked upon the sand.

"The
Halbrane's
boat!" cried Hurliguerly. It was indeed the
boat which Hearne had stolen, and it was simply smashed to pieces;
in a word, only the formless wreckage of a craft which has been
flung against rocks by the sea, remained.

We observed immediately that all the ironwork of the boat had
disappeared, down to the hinges of the rudder. Not one trace of the
metal existed.

What could be the meaning of this?

A loud call from West brought us to a little strip of beach on the
right of our stranded boat.

Three corpses lay upon the stony soil, that of Hearne, that of
Martin Holt, and that of one of the Falklands men.

Of the thirteen who had gone with the sealing-master, there remained
only these three, who had evidently been dead some days.

What had become of the ten missing men? Had their bodies been
carried out to sea?

We searched all along the coast, into the creeks, and between the
outlying rocks, but in vain. Nothing was to be found, no traces of a
camp, not even the vestiges of a landing.

"Their boat," said William Guy, "must have been struck by a
drifting iceberg. The rest of Hearne's companions have been
drowned, and only these three bodies have come ashore, lifeless."

"But," asked the boatswain, "how is the state the boat is in
to be explained?"

"And especially," added West, "the disappearance of all the
iron?"

"Indeed," said I, "it looks as though every bit had been
violently torn off."

Leaving the
Paracuta
in the charge of two men, we again took our way
to the interior, in order to extend our search over a wider expanse.

As we were approaching the huge mound the mist cleared away, and the
form stood out with greater distinctness. It was, as I have said,
almost that of a sphinx, a dusky-hued sphinx, as though the matter
which composed it had been oxidized by the inclemency of the polar
climate.

And then a possibility flashed into my mind, an hypothesis which
explained these astonishing phenomena.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "a loadstone! that is it! A magnet with
prodigious power of attraction!"

I was understood, and in an instant the final catastrophe, to which
Hearne and his companions were victims, was explained with terrible
clearness.

The Antarctic Sphinx was simply a colossal magnet. Under the
influence of that magnet the iron bands of the
Halbrane's
boat had
been torn out and projected as though by the action of a catapult.
This was the occult force that had irresistibly attracted everything
made of iron on the
Paracuta
. And the boat itself would have shared
the fate of the
Halbrane's
boat had a single bit of that metal
been employed in its construction. Was it, then, the proximity of
the magnetic pole that produced such effects?

At first we entertained this idea, but on reflection we rejected it.

At the place where the magnetic meridians cross, the only phenomenon
produced is the vertical position of the magnetic needle in two
similar points of the terrestrial globe. This phenomenon, already
proved by observations made on the spot, must be identical in the
Antarctic regions.

Thus, then, there did exist a magnet of prodigious intensity in the
zone of attraction which we had entered. Under our eyes one of those
surprising effects which had hitherto been classed among fables was
actually produced.

The following appeared to me to be the true explanation.

The Trade-winds bring a constant succession of clouds or mists in
which immense quantities of electricity not completely exhausted by
storms, are stored. Hence there exists a formidable accumulation of
electric fluid at the poles, and it flows towards the land in a
permanent stream.

From this cause come the northern and southern auroras, whose
luminous splendours shine above the horizon, especially during the
long polar night, and are visible even in the temperate zones when
they attain theix maximum of culmination.

These continuous currents at the poles, which bewilder our
compasses, must possess an extraordinary influence. And it would
suffice that a block of iron should be subjected to their action for
it to be changed into a magnet of power proportioned to the
intensity of the current, to the number of turns of the electric
helix, and to the square root of the diameter of the block of
magnetized iron. Thus, then, the bulk of the sphinx which upreared
its mystic form upon this outer edge of the southern lands might be
calculated by thousands of cubic yards.

Now, in order that the current should circulate around it and make a
magnet of it by induction, what was required? Nothing but a metallic
lode, whose innumerable windings through the bowels of the soil
should be connected subterraneously at the base of the block.

It seemed to me also that the place of this block ought to be in the
magnetic axis, as a sort of gigantic calamite, from whence the
imponderable fluid whose currents made an inexhaustible accumulator
set up at the confines of the world should issue. Our compass could
not have enabled us to determine whether the marvel before our eyes
really was at the magnetic pole of the southern regions. All I can
say is, that its needle staggered about, helpless and useless. And
in fact the exact location of the Antarctic Sphinx mattered little
in respect of the constitution of that artificial loadstone, and the
manner in which the clouds and metallic lode supplied its attractive
power.

In this very plausible fashion I was led to explain the phenomenon
by instinct. It could not be doubted that we were in the vicinity of
a magnet which produced these terrible but strictly natural effects
by its attraction.