The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras Part 39

Still, in spite of their fatigue, they had to build a snow-house in which to pa.s.s the night; the tent would not have been enough. This took them an hour and a half. Bell was very skilful; the blocks of ice, which were cut with a knife, were placed on top of one another with astonishing rapidity, and they took the shape of a dome, and a last piece, the keystone of the arch, established the solidity of the building; the soft snow served as mortar in the interstices; it soon hardened and made the whole building of a single piece.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Access was had into this improvised grotto by means of a narrow opening, through which it was necessary to crawl on one's hands and knees; the doctor found some difficulty in entering, and the others followed. Supper was soon prepared on the alcohol cooking-stove. The temperature inside was very comfortable; the wind, which was raging without, could not get in.

"Sit down!" soon shouted the doctor in his most genial manner.

And this meal, though the same as the dinner, was shared by all. When it was finished their only thought was sleep; the mackintoshes, spread out upon the snow, protected them from the dampness. At the flame of the portable stove they dried their clothes; then three of them, wrapped up in their woollen coverings, fell asleep, while one was left on watch; he had to keep a lookout on the safety of all, and to prevent the opening from being closed, otherwise they ran a risk of being buried alive.

Duke shared their quarters; the other dogs remained without, and after they had eaten their supper they lay down and were soon hidden by the snow.

Their fatigue soon brought sound sleep. The doctor took the watch until three of the morning. In the night the hurricane raged furiously. Strange was the situation of these lonely men lost in the snow, enclosed in this vault with its walls rapidly thickening under the snow-fall.

The next morning at six o'clock their monotonous march was resumed; there were ever before them the same valleys and icebergs, a uniformity which made the choice of a path difficult. Still, a fall of several degrees in the temperature made their way easier by hardening the snow. Often they came across little elevations, which looked like cairns or storing-places of the Esquimaux; the doctor had one destroyed to satisfy his curiosity, but he found nothing except a cake of ice.

"What do you expect to find, Clawbonny?" asked Hatteras; "are we not the first men to penetrate into this part of the globe?"

"Probably," answered the doctor, "but who knows?"

"Don't let us waste our time in useless searching," resumed the captain; "I am in a hurry to rejoin the ship, even if this long-wanted fuel should not be found."

"I have great hopes of finding it," said the doctor.

"Doctor," Hatteras used to say frequently, "I did wrong to leave the _Forward_; it was a mistake! The captain's place is on board, and nowhere else."

"Johnson is there."

"Yes! but--let us hurry on!"

They advanced rapidly; Simpson's voice could be heard urging on the dogs; they ran along on a brilliant surface, all aglow with a phosph.o.r.escent light, and the runners of the sledge seemed to toss up a shower of sparks. The doctor ran on ahead to examine this snow, when suddenly, as he was trying to jump upon a hummock, he disappeared from sight. Bell, who was near him, ran at once towards the place.

"Well, Doctor," he cried anxiously, while Hatteras and Simpson joined him, "where are you?"

"Doctor!" shouted the captain.

"Down here, at the bottom of a hole," was the quiet answer. "Throw me a piece of rope, and I'll come up to the surface of the globe."

They threw a rope down to the doctor, who was at the bottom of a pit about ten feet deep; he fastened it about his waist, and his three companions drew him up with some difficulty.

"Are you hurt?" asked Hatteras.

"No, there's no harm done," answered the doctor, wiping the snow from his smiling face.

"But how did it happen?"

"O, it was in consequence of the refraction," he answered, laughing; "I thought I had about a foot to step over, and I fell into this deep hole! These optical illusions are the only ones left me, my friends, and it's hard to escape from them! Let that be a lesson to us all never to take a step forward without first testing the ice with a staff, for our senses cannot be depended on. Here our ears hear wrong, and our eyes deceive us! It's a curious country!"

"Can you go on?" asked the captain.

"Go on, Hatteras, go on! This little fall has done me more good than harm."

They resumed their march to the southeast, and at evening they halted, after walking about twenty-five miles; they were all tired, but still the doctor had energy enough to ascend an ice-mountain while the snow-hut was building.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "The doctor had energy enough to ascend an ice-mountain while the snow-hut was building."]

The moon, which was nearly at its full, shone with extraordinary brilliancy in a clear sky; the stars were wonderfully brilliant; from the top of the iceberg a boundless plain could be seen, which was covered with strangely formed hillocks of ice; in the moonlight they looked like fallen columns or overthrown tombstones; the scene reminded the doctor of a huge, silent graveyard barren of trees, in which twenty generations of human beings might be lying in their long sleep.

In spite of the cold and fatigue, Clawbonny remained for a long time in a revery, from which it was no easy task for his companions to arouse him; but they had to think of resting; the snow-hut was completed; the four travellers crawled in like moles, and soon were all asleep.

The following days went on without any particular incident; at times they went on slowly, at times quickly, with varying ease, according to the changes in the weather; they wore moccasins or snow-shoes, as the nature of the ice demanded.

In this way they went on till January 15th; the moon, now in its last quarter, was hardly visible; the sun, although always beneath the horizon, gave a sort of twilight for six hours every day, but not enough to light up the route, which had to be directed by the compa.s.s.

Then Bell went on ahead; Hatteras followed next; Simpson and the doctor sought also to keep in a straight line behind, with their eyes on Hatteras alone; and yet, in spite of all their efforts, they often got thirty or forty degrees from the right way, much to their annoyance.

Sunday, January 15th, Hatteras judged that they had come about one hundred miles to the south; this morning was set aside to mending their clothes and materials; the reading of divine service was not forgotten.

At noon they started again; the temperature was very low; the thermometer marked only -22; the air was very clear.

Suddenly, without warning, a frozen vapor arose into the air from the ice, to a height of about ninety feet, and hung motionless; no one could see a foot before him; this vapor formed in long, sharp crystals upon their clothing.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The travellers, surprised by this phenomenon, which is called frost-rime, only thought of getting together; so immediately various shouts were heard:--

"O Simpson!"

"Bell, this way!"

"Dr. Clawbonny!"

"Doctor!"

"Captain, where are you?"

They began to look for one another with outstretched arms, wandering through the fog which their eyes could not pierce. But to their disappointment they could hear no answer; the vapor seemed incapable of carrying sound.

Each one then thought of firing his gun as a signal to the others. But if their voices were too feeble, the reports of the fire-arms were too loud; for the echoes, repeated in every direction, made but a confused roar, in which no particular direction could be perceived.

Then they began to act, each one as he thought best. Hatteras stood still and folded his arms. Simpson contented himself with stopping the sledge. Bell retraced his steps, feeling them with his hand. The doctor, stumbling over the blocks of ice, wandered here and there, getting more and more bewildered.

At the end of five minutes he said to himself,--

"This can't last long! Singular climate! This is too much! There is nothing to help us, without speaking of these sharp crystals which cut my face. Halloo, Captain!" he shouted again.

But he heard no answer; he fired his gun, but in spite of his thick gloves the iron burned his hands. Meanwhile he thought he saw a confused ma.s.s moving near him.

"There's some one," he said. "Hatteras! Bell! Simpson! Is that you?

Come, answer!"