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

Chapter 26 - The Journey Home

Three hours after this sad ending of Captain Hatteras's adventures, Clawbonny, Altamont and the two sailors were found reunited at the foothill of the mountain.

There, Clawbonny was asked to speak his opinion about what had to be done.

Clawbonny: Friends, we can't prolong our stay on the Queen's Island anymore; the sea is open in front of us; we have a sufficient quantity of supplies; we have to immediately leave and quickly return to Fort Providence, where we'll overwinter till next summer.

Altamont: That's my opinion too; the wind is good and tomorrow we'll once again go offshore.

The day passed in a profound depression. The captain's madness was a painful burden, and when Johnson, Bell, Altamont were thinking of returning, they felt abandoned and were scared of their departure. They missed Hatteras's bold soul. Still, as energetic men, they prepared to fight again with nature's elements and even their own volition if they ever felt weak. Next day, 13 July, the objects for camping were embarked and soon everything was ready for departure.

But before leaving this rock that they'll never see again, the doctor, according to Hatteras's intentions, rose a cairn right in the point where the captain docked on the island; that cairn was made of big blocks overlaid, so that they formed a perfectly visible construction if however the changes caused by the volcano would spare it. On one of the lateral stones, Bell engraved with the gouge this simple inscription:

JOHN HATTERAS

1861

The document's copy was placed inside the cairn in an aluminum cylinder perfectly closed and the proof of the great discovery was thus abandoned on these lonely rocks.

Then, the four people, the captain - a poor body without soul - and his loyal Duk, sad and whiny, embarked for the return journey. It was 10 AM. A new sail was built out of the tent's cloth. The boat, advancing with the wind on its back, left the Queen's Island, and tonight, the doctor, standing up on his bench, transmitted a last goodbye to Mount Hatteras, which burned in the horizon. The traversing was quick; the sea permanently open permitted a quiet navigation and seemed easier to run towards the pole than get close to it.

But Hatteras wasn't able to understand what was happening around him; he remained laid in the boat, mute, with a faint look, arms crossed in his chest, with Duk laying down on his feet. The doctor talked to him in vain. Hatteras didn't hear him. For forty-eight hours, the breeze was favorable and the sea had little waves. Clawbonny and his comrades went with the flow of the northern wind.

On 15 July, they met Altamont Harbor in the south; but, since the polar sea was expanded on the entire coast, instead of traversing New America's land with the sleigh, they decided to detour it to reach Victoria Gulf in the sea. The route was faster and easier. Indeed, this space, which took the travelers fifteen days to traverse with the sleigh, it only took them eight to navigate it and, following the sinuosities of a lacy coast of numerous fjords, of which they determined the configuration, they arrived Monday night, on 23 July, in Victoria Gulf.

The boat was anchored on the shore and everybody headed towards Fort Providence. But what a disaster! The Doctor's House, the warehouses, the gunpowder deposit, the fortifications, everything transformed into water under the action of solar rays, and the supplies were stolen by carnivorous animals. A sad and disappointing spectacle!

The navigators finished their supplies and counted on resupplying at Fort Providence. The impossibility of spending the winter became evident. As people used to quickly make a decision, they thus decided to reach Baffin Sea on the shortest path.

Clawbonny: We got no better solution; the Baffin Sea is at less than six hundred miles; we can navigate as long as water isn't missing, to reach Jones Strait and from there to the Danish settlements.