An Antarctic Mystery (33 page)

I communicated my idea to my companions, and they regarded this
explanation as conclusive, in presence of the physical facts of
which we were the actual witnesses.

"We shall incur no risk by going to the foot of the mound, I
suppose," said Captain Len Guy.

"None," I replied.

"There—yes—here?"

I could not describe the impression those three words made upon us.
Edgar Poe would have said that they were three cries from the depths
of the under world.

It was Dirk Peters who had spoken, and his body was stretched out in
the direction of the sphinx, as though it had been turned to iron
and was attracted by the magnet.

Then he sped swiftly towards the sphinx-like mound, and his
companions followed him over rough ground strewn with volcanic
remains of all sorts.

The monster grew larger as we neared it, but lost none of its
mythological shape. Alone on that vast plain it produced a sense of
awe. And—but this could only have been a delusionr—we seemed to
be drawn towards it by the force of its magnetic attraction.

On arriving at the base of the mound, we found there the various
articles on which the magnet had exerted its power; arms, utensils,
the grapnel of the
Paracuta
, all adhering to the sides of the
monster. There also were the iron relics of the
Halbrane's
boat,
all her utensils, arms, and fittings, even to the nails and the iron
portions of the rudder.

There was no possibility of regaining possession of any of these
things. Even had they not adhered to the loadstone rock at too great
a height to be reached, they adhered to it too closely to be
detached. Hurliguerly was infuriated by the impossibility of
recovering his knife, which he recognized at fifty feet above his
head, and cried as he shook his clenched fist at the imperturbable
monster,—

"Thief of a sphinx!"

Of course the things which had belonged to the
Halbrane's
boat
and the
Paracuta's
were the only articles that adorned the mighty
sides of the lonely mystic form. Never had any ship reached such a
latitude of the Antarctic Sea. Hearne and his accomplices, Captain
Len Guy and his companions, were the first who had trodden this
point of the southern continent. And any vessel that might have
approached this colossal magnet must have incurred certain
destruction. Our schooner must have perished, even as its boat had
been dashed into a shapeless wreck.

West now reminded us that it was imprudent to prolong our stay upon
this Land of the Sphinx—a name to be retained. Time pressed, and a
few days' delay would have entailed our wintering at the foot of
the ice-barrier.

The order to return to the beach had just been given, when the voice
of the half-breed was again heard, as he cried out:

"There! There! There!"

We followed the sounds to the back of the monster's right paw, and
we found Dirk Peters on his knees, with his hands stretched out
before an almost naked corpse, which had been preserved intact by
the cold of these regions, and was as rigid as iron. The head was
bent, a white beard hung down to the waist, the nails of the feet
and hands were like claws.

How had this corpse been fixed to the side of the mound at six feet
above the ground?

Across the body, held in place by its cross-belt, we saw the twisted
barrel of' a musket, half-eaten by rust.

"Pym-my poor Pym!" groaned Dirk Peters.

He tried to rise, that he might approach and kiss the ossified
corpse. But his knees bent under him, a strangled sob seemed to rend
his throat, with a terrible spasm his faithful heart broke, and the
half-breed fell back—dead!

The story was easy to read. After their separation, the boat had
carried Arthur Pym through these Antarctic regions! Like us, once he
had passed beyond the south pole, he came into the zone of the
monster! And there, while his boat was swept along on the northern
current, he was seized by the magnetic fluid before he could get rid
of the gun which was slung over his shoulder, and hurled against the
fatal loadstone Sphinx of the Ice-realm.

Now the faithful half-breed rests under the clay of the Land of the
Antarctic Mystery, by the side of his "poor Pym," that hero
whose strange adventures found a chronicler no less strange in the
great American poet!

That same day, in the afternoon, the
Paracuta
departed from the
coast of the Land of the Sphinx, which had lain to the west of us
since the 21st of February.

By the death of Dirk Peters the number of the passengers was reduced
to twelve. These were all who remained of the double crew of the two
schooners, the first comprising thirty-eight men, the second,
thirty-two; in all seventy souls. But let it not be forgotten that
the voyage of the
Halbrane
had been undertaken in fulfilment of a
duty to humanity, and four of the survivors of the
Jane
owed their
rescue to it.

And now there remains but little to tell, and that must be related
as succinctly as possible. It is unnecessary to dwell upon our
return voyage, which was favoured by the constancy of the currents
and the wind to the northern course. The last part of the voyage was
accomplished amid great fatigue, suffering, and but it ended in our
safe deliverance from all these.

Firstly, a few days after our departure from the Land the Sphinx,
the sun set behind the western horizon reappear no more for the
whole winter. It was then the midst of the semi-darkness of the
austral night that the
Paracuta
pursued her monotonous course. True,
the southern polar lights were frequently visible; but they were not
the sun, that single orb of day which had illumined our horizons
during the months of the Antarctic summer, and their capricious
splendour could not replace his unchanging light. That long darkness
of the poles sheds a moral and physical influence on mortals which no
one can elude, a gloomy and overwhelming impression almost impossible
to resist.

Of all the
Paracuta's
passengers, the boatswain and Endicott only
preserved their habitual good-humour; those two were equally
insensible to the weariness and the peril of our voyage. I also
except West, who was ever ready to face every eventuality, like a
man who is always on the defensive. As for the two brothers Guy,
their happiness in being restored to each other made them frequently
oblivious of the anxieties and risks of the future.

Of Hurliguerly I cannot speak too highly. He proved himself a
thoroughly good fellow, and it raised our drooping spirits to hear
him repeat in his jolly voice,—

"We shall get to port all right, my friends, be sure of that. And,
if you only reckon things up, you will see that we have had more
good luck than bad. Oh, yes, I know, there was the loss of our
schooner! Poor
Halbrane
, carried up into the air like a balloon,
then flung into the deep llke an avalanche! But, on the other hand,
there was the iceberg which brought us to the coast, and the Tsalal
boat which brought us and Captain William Guy and his three
companions together. And don't forget the current and the breeze
that have pushed us on up to now, and will keep pushing us on, I'm
sure of that. With so many trumps in our hand we cannot possibly
lose the game. The only thing to be regretted is that we shall have
to get ashore again in Australia or New Zealand, instead of casting
anchor at the Kerguelens, near the quay of Christmas Harbour, in
front of the Greea Cormorant."

For a week we pursued our course without deviation to east or west,
and it was not until the 21st of March that the Paracutis lost
sight of Halbrane Land, being carried towards the north by the
current, while the coast-line of the continent, for such we are
convinced it is, trended in a round curve to the north-east.

Although the waters of this portion of sea were still open, they
carried a flotilla of icebergs or ice-fields. Hence arose serious
difficulties and also dangers to navigation in the midst of the
gloomy mists, when we had to manoeuvre between these moving masses,
either to find passage or to prevent our little craft from being
crushed like grain between the millstones.

Besides, Captain Len Guy could no longer ascertain his position
either in latitude or longitude. The sun being absent, calculations
by the position of the stars was too complicated, it was impossible
to take altitudcs, and the
Paracuta
abandoned herself to the action
of the current, which invariably bore us northward, as the compass
indicated. By keeping the reckoning of its medium speed, however, we
concluded that on the 27th of March our boat was between the
sixty-ninth and the sixty-eighth parallels, that is to say, some
seventy miles only from the Antarctic Circle.

Ah! if no obstacle to the course of our perilous navigation had
existed, if passage between this inner sea of the southern zone and
the waters of the Pacific Ocean had been certain, the
Paracuta
might
have reached the extreme limit of the austral seas in a few days.
But a few hundred miles more to sail, and the iceberg-barrier would
confront us with its immovable rampart, and unless a passage could
be found, we should be obliged to go round it either by the east or
by the west.

Once cleared indeed—

Ah! once cleared, we should be in a frail craft upon the terrible
Pacific Ocean, at the period of the year when its tempests rage with
redoubled fury and strong ships dread the might of its waves.

We were determined not to think of this. Heaven would come to our
aid. We should be picked up by some ship. This the boatswain
asserted confidently, and we were bound to believe the boatswain.

For six entire days, until the and of April, the Paracura held her
course among the ice-barrier, whose crest was profiled at an
altitude of between seven and eight hundred feet above the level of
the sea. The extremities were not visible either on the east or the
west, and if our boat did not find an open passage, we could not
clear it. By a most fortunate chance a passage was found on the
above-mentioned date, and attempted, amid a thousand risks. Yes, we
required all the zeal, skill, and courage of our men and their
chiefs to accomplish such a task.

At last we were in the South Pacific waters, but our boat had
suffered severely in getting through, and it had sprung more than
one leak. We were kept busy in baling out the water, which also came
in from above.

The breeze was gentle, the sea more calm than we could have hoped,
and the real danger did not lie in the risks of navigation. No, it
arose from the fact that not a ship was visible in these waters, not
a whaler was to be seen on the fishing-grounds. At the beginning of
April these places are forsaken, and we arrived some weeks too late.

We learned afterwards that had we arrived a little sooner, we should
have met the vessels of the American expedition.

In fact, on the 1st of February, by 95° 50' longitude and 64°
17' latitude, Lieutenant Wilkes was still exploring these seas in
one of his ships, the Vincennes, after having discovered a long
extent of coast stretching from east to west. On the approach of the
bad season, he returned to Hobart Town, in Tasmania. The same year,
the expedition of the French captain Dumont d'Urville, which
started in 1838, discovered Adélie Land in 66° 30' latitude and
38° 21' east longitude, and Clarie Coast in 64° 30' and 129°
54'. Their campaign having ended with these important discoveries,
the
Astrolabe
and the
Zélée
left the Antarctic Ocean and returned
to Hobart Town.

None of these ships, then, were in those waters; so that, when our
nutshell
Paracuta
was "alone on a lone, lone sea" beyond the
ice-barrier, we were bound to believe that it was no longer possible
we could be saved.

We were fifteen hundred miles away from the nearest land, and winter
was a month old!

Hurliguerly himself was obliged to acknowledge the last fortunate
chance upon which he had counted failed us.

On the 6th of April we were at the end of our resources; the sea
began to threaten, the boat seemed likely to be swallowed up in the
angry waves.

"A ship!" cried the boatswain, and on the instant we made out a
vessel about four miles to the north-east, beneath the mist which
had suddenly risen.

Signals were made, signals were perceived; the ship lowered her
largest boat and sent it to our rescue.

This ship was the
Tasman
, an American three-master, from
Charlestown, where we were received with eager welcome and
cordiality. The captain treated my companions as though they had
been his own countrymen.

The
Tasman
had come from the Falkland Islands where the captain had
learned that seven months previously the American schooner
Halbrane
had gone to the southern seas in search of the shipwrecked people of
the
Jane
. But as the season advanced, the schooner not having
reappeared, she was given up for lost in the Antarctic regions.

Fifteen days after our rescue the
Tasman
disembarked the survivors
of the crew of the two schooners at Melbourne, and it was there that
our men were paid the sums they had so hardly earned, and so well
deserved.

We then learned from maps that the
Paracuta
had debouched into the
Pacific from the land called Clarie by Dumont d'Urville, and the
land called Fabricia, which was discovered in 1838 by Bellenny.

Thus terminated this adventurous and extraordinary expedition, which
cost, alas, too many victims. Our final word is that although the
chances and the necessities of our voyage carried us farther towards
the south pole than hose who preceded us, although we actually did
pass beyond the axial point of the terrestrial globe, discoveries of
great value still remain to be made in those waters!