Time slipped away in the middle of those worries. Nothing could be seen glimpsed at the horizon. No points which wouldn't be the sea or air. Not even at the waves' surface, nor wire from terrestrial herbs that made Christopher Columbus when he left to discover America.
Hatteras continuously observes.
At last, towards 6 PM, steam of an uncertain shape, but pretty high appeared above the water level; it would've been said that it was a bunch of smoke; the sky was clear; so, this smoke couldn't be considered a cloud; it disappeared and reappeared constantly.
Hatteras was the first to observe this phenomenon; he enclosed in his lunette's vision this doubtful point, this inexplicable steam and kept observing it for an hour.
Suddenly, a seemingly safe clue appeared in his face, since he stretched his hand to the horizon and yelled "Shore! Shore!".
At these words, everybody got up like they were electrocuted.
A kind of smoke easily rose above the sea.
Clawbonny: I see! I see!
Johnson: Yes, certainly... Yes!
Altamont: It's a cloud.
Hatteras: Shore! Shore!
The five navigators researched even more carefully.
However, like how it often happens with objects that departure makes uncertain, the observed point seemed to have disappeared. Finally, the eyes saw it again, and the doctor even believed he overtook a quick shine at twenty or twenty-five miles north.
Clawbonny: It's a volcano.
Altamont: A volcano?
Clawbonny: Without a doubt.
Altamont: At such a high latitude?
Clawbonny: And why not? Iceland isn't a somewhat volcanic land and, so to speak, made out of volcanoes?
Altamont: Yes, Iceland; but so close to the pole!
Clawbonny: Well, our illustrated compatriot, James Ross, didn't he find some existence on the austral continent of two volcanoes - Erebus and Terror - found astir, at one hundred and seventy degrees longitude and seventy-eight degrees latitude? So why wouldn't there be volcanoes at the North Pole as well?
Altamont: It's possible, indeed.
Clawbonny: Oh, I see it clearly: it's a volcano!
Hatteras: Well, let's run in there.
Johnson: The wind is causing us trouble.
Hatteras: Raise the maizena, and as high as possible.
But this maneuver only separated the boat from the indicated point, so that not even the most attentive glances could discover it. Still, they couldn't doubt the proximity to the coast. There was, thus, the journey's target, intertwined if not touched, and, undoubtedly, twenty-four won't even pass until that new land would be touched by the man's foot. Fate, after letting them get so close, wouldn't prevent these bold sailors from debarking there. However, in the current circumstances, nobody manifested the happiness that such discovery had to be produced; each asked themselves how they could show the pole's land. The animals seem to run away from it; at the night's arrival, the birds, instead of looking for refuge there, they flew towards the south. Was it so inhospitable that a seagull or a ptarmigan couldn't find shelter there?
Even the fish and the great cetaceans passed with rapidity near the coast through the transparent waters. From where this instrument of repulsion if not from a fear specific to the beings from this part of the globe.
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Jules Verne's Captain Hatteras - Part 2: Ice Desert
General FictionAbandoned in a field of ice, Hatteras and his remaining men must work together to survive long enough to see their dear country again!
