The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras Part 18

The sailors hastened to their places. The _Forward_ went about rapidly; coal was heaped on the fires; it was necessary to beat the iceberg. There was a race between them; the brig stood towards the south, the berg was drifting northward, threatening to bar the way.

"Put on all the steam, Brunton, do you hear?" said Shandon.

The _Forward_ glided like a bird through the broken ice, which her prow cut through easily; the ship shook with the motion of the screw, and the gauge indicated a full pressure of steam, the deafening roar of which resounded above everything.

"Load the safety-valve!" cried Shandon.

The engineer obeyed at the risk of bursting the boilers.

But these desperate efforts were vain; the iceberg, driven by a submarine current, moved rapidly towards the exit; the brig was still three cable-lengths distant, when the mountain, entering the vacant s.p.a.ce like a wedge, joined itself to its companions, and closed the means of escape.

"We are lost!" cried Shandon, who was unable to restrain that unwise speech.

"Lost!" repeated the crew.

"Lower the boats!" cried many.

"To the steward's pantry!" cried Pen and some of his set; "if we must drown, let us drown in gin!"

The wildest confusion raged among these half-wild men. Shandon felt unable to a.s.sert his authority; he wanted to give some orders; he hesitated, he stammered; his thoughts could find no words. The doctor walked up and down nervously. Johnson folded his arms stoically, and said not a word.

Suddenly a strong, energetic, commanding voice was heard above the din, uttering these words:--

"Every man to his place! Prepare to go about!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Johnson shuddered, and, without knowing what he did, turned the wheel rapidly.

It was time; the brig, going under full steam, was about crashing against the walls of its prison.

But while Johnson instinctively obeyed, Shandon, Clawbonny, the crew, all, even down to Warren the fireman, who had abandoned his fires, and Strong the cook, who had fled from his galley, were collected on the deck, and all saw issuing from the cabin, the key of which he alone possessed, a man.

This man was the sailor Garry.

"Sir!" cried Shandon, turning pale, "Garry--by what right do you give orders here?"

"Duke!" said Garry, repeating the whistle which had so surprised the crew.

The dog, on hearing his real name, sprang on the quarter-deck, and lay down quietly at his master's feet.

The crew did not utter a word. The key which the captain alone should possess, the dog which he had sent and which had identified him, so to speak, the tone of command which it was impossible to mistake,--all this had a strong influence on the minds of the sailors, and was enough to establish firmly Garry's authority.

Besides, Garry was hardly to be recognized; he had removed the thick whiskers which had surrounded his face, thereby giving it a more impa.s.sible, energetic, and commanding expression; he stood before them clothed in a captain's uniform, which he had had placed in his cabin.

So the crew of the _Forward_, animated in spite of themselves, shouted,--

"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah for the captain!"

"Shandon," he said to his first officer, "have the crew put in line; I want to inspect them."

Shandon obeyed, and gave the requisite orders with an agitated voice.

The captain walked in front of the officers and men, saying a word to each, and treating him according to his past conduct.

When he had finished his inspection, he went back to the quarter-deck, and calmly uttered these words:--

"Officers and sailors, I am an Englishman like you all, and my motto is that of Lord Nelson,--'England expects every man to do his duty.'

"As Englishmen, I am unwilling, we are unwilling, that others should go where we have not been. As Englishmen, I shall not endure, we shall not endure, that others should have the glory of going farther north than we. If human foot is ever to reach the Pole, it must be the foot of an Englishman! Here is the flag of our country. I have equipped this ship, I have devoted my fortune to this undertaking, I shall devote to it my life and yours, but this flag shall float over the North Pole. Fear not. You shall receive a thousand pounds sterling for every degree that we get farther north after this day. Now we are at the seventy-second, and there are ninety in all. Figure it out. My name will be proof enough. It means energy and patriotism. I am Captain Hatteras."

"Captain Hatteras!" cried Shandon. And this name, familiar to them all, soon spread among all the crew.

"Now," resumed Hatteras, "let us anchor the brig to the ice; let the fires be put out, and every one return to his usual occupation.

Shandon, I want to speak with you about the ship. You will join me in my cabin with the doctor, Wall, and the boatswain. Johnson, dismiss the men."

Hatteras, calm and cold, quietly left the p.o.o.p-deck, while Shandon had the brig made fast to the ice.

Who was this Hatteras, and why did his name make so deep an impression upon the crew?

John Hatteras, the only son of a London brewer, who died in 1852, worth six million pounds, took to the sea at an early age, unmindful of the large fortune which was to come to him. Not that he had any commercial designs, but a longing for geographical discovery possessed him; he was continually dreaming of setting foot on some spot untrodden of man.

When twenty years old, he had the vigorous const.i.tution of thin, sanguine men; an energetic face, with well-marked lines, a high forehead, rising straight from the eyes, which were handsome but cold, thin lips, indicating a mouth chary of words, medium height, well-knit muscular limbs, indicated a man ready for any experience. Any one who saw him would have called him bold, and any one who heard him would have called him coldly pa.s.sionate; he was a man who would never retreat, and who would risk the lives of others as coldly as his own.

One would hence think twice before following him in his expeditions.

John Hatteras had a great deal of English pride, and it was he who once made this haughty reply to a Frenchman.

The Frenchman said with what he considered politeness, and even kindness,--

"If I were not a Frenchman, I should like to be an Englishman."

"If I were not an Englishman, I should like to be an Englishman!"

That retort points the nature of the man.

He would have liked to reserve for his fellow-countrymen the monopoly of geographical discovery; but much to his chagrin, during previous centuries, they had done but little in the way of discovery.

America was discovered by the Genoese, Christopher Columbus; the East Indies by the Portuguese, Vasco de Gama; China by the Portuguese, Fernao d'Andrada; Terra del Fuego by the Portuguese, Magellan; Canada by the Frenchman, Jacques Cartier; the islands of Sumatra, Java, etc., Labrador, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, the Azores, Madeira, Newfoundland, Guinea, Congo, Mexico, White Cape, Greenland, Iceland, the South Pacific Ocean, California, j.a.pan, Cambodia, Peru, Kamschatka, the Philippine Islands, Spitzbergen, Cape Horn, Behring Strait, New Zealand, Van Diemen's Land, New Britain, New Holland, the Louisiana, Island of Jan-Mayen, by Icelanders, Scandinavians, Frenchmen, Russians, Portuguese, Danes, Spaniards, Genoese, and Dutchmen; but no Englishmen figured among them, and it was a constant source of grief to Hatteras to see his fellow-countrymen excluded from the glorious band of sailors who made the great discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Hatteras consoled himself somewhat when he considered modern times: the English took their revenge with Stuart, McDougall Stuart, Burke, Wells, King, Gray, in Australia; with Palliser in America; with Havnoan in Syria; with Cyril Graham, Waddington, Cunningham, in India; and with Barth, Burton, Speke, Grant, and Livingstone in Africa.

But this was not enough; for Hatteras these men were rather finishers than discoverers; something better was to be done, so he invented a country in order to have the honor of discovering it.

Now he had noticed that if the English were in a minority with regard to the early discoveries, that if it was necessary to go back to Cook to make sure of New Caledonia in 1774, and of the Sandwich Islands where he was killed in 1778, there was nevertheless one corner of the globe on which they had centred all their efforts.

This was the northern seas and lands of North America.

In fact, the list of polar discoveries runs as follows:--