Jules Verne's Captain Hatteras - Part 2: Ice Desert

Chapter 21 - The Open Sea

Next morning, Johnson and Bell began to load the camp items into the boat. At 8 AM, the departure's preparations were finished. At the moment of leaving the coast, the doctor began to think about the travelers whose footprints he found, an incident that gave him no break.

Did those people also want to head north? Did they have a way to traverse the polar sea? Would he meet them on this new path?

For three days, no track betrayed those travelers' presence and certainly, whoever they were, they couldn't make it to Altamont Harbor. It was a place still untouched by man's boot.

Still, the doctor, harassed by his own thoughts, wanted to have another look at that land and climbed on a hundred-foot tall elevation; from there, his vision could cover the entire southern horizon.

Reaching the peak, he took the lunette to his eyes. What surprise he had when he didn't manage to see anything, neither the horizon, on plains, or a few steps behind him! It seemed strange to him; he searched again and, lastly, looked at the lunette... The object glass was missing.

Clawbonny: The object glass!

We can imagine what sudden revelation took place in his mind; he let out a strong scream, so that his comrades could hear it; they were extremely uneasy seeing him descending down from the hill in a hurry.

Johnson: Well, what's happening?

Clawbonny: (after a minute) The tracks... the prints... the group!...

Hatteras: Well, what? Strangers are here?

Clawbonny: No!... No!... The object glass... mine... my object glass...

And showed them his incomplete instrument.

Altamont: Ah! You lost it?

Clawbonny: Yes!

Altamont: But then, the footprints...

Clawbonny: They're ours, friends, ours! We got lost in the fog! We went in a circle and returned to our own footprints!

Altamont: And the boot print?

Clawbonny: Bell's boots, which, after breaking his snow wear, he walked an entire day through the snow with boots.

Bell: It's really true.

The mistake was so evident that everyone burst in laughter, except Hatteras, who wasn't really happy about this discovery.

Clawbonny: We are so ridiculous! What assumptions we made! Strangers on this coast! Really! Resolutely, from now on we have to think twice before talking! Finally, since we calmed down about that, there's nothing better to do but leave.

Hatteras: Onward!

One quarter of an hour later, each of them occupied their place on the boat, which launched full speed ahead into the sea. Traversing on the sea began on 10 July; the navigators were at a close distance from the pole, at exactly one hundred and sixty-five miles; with the condition that on this point of the globe to exist a piece of ground, navigation on the sea had to be short.

The wind blew weakly, but was favorable. The thermometer marked 50 degrees Fahrenheit above zero (+10 degrees Celsius); it really was warm.

The boat resisted the journey with the sleigh well; it was in a perfect state and maneuvered easily. Johnson was at the helm; the doctor, Bell and the American had settled as best they could among the objects necessary to the expedition, arranged half on deck, half below. Hatteras, standing on the front part, fixated this mysterious point towards which he felt attracted to with an unbeatable power, with the magnetic needle towards the pole. If a shore was spotted, he wanted to be the first to see it. That honor belonged to him.