The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras. Жюль Верн

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СКАЧАТЬ sprang from the forecastle right through the mass of visitors, barking sullenly.

      All made way for him. He sprang on the poop-deck, and, incredible as it may seem, yet, as a thousand witnesses can testify, this dog-captain carried a letter in his mouth.

      "A letter!" cried Shandon; "but is he on board?"

      "He was, without doubt, but he's not now," answered Johnson, showing the deck cleared of the crowd.

      "Here, Captain! Captain!" shouted the doctor, trying to take the letter from the dog, who kept springing away from him. He seemed to want to give the letter to Shandon himself.

      "Here, Captain!" he said.

      The dog went up to him; Shandon took the letter without difficulty, and then Captain barked sharply three times, amid the profound silence which prevailed on board the ship and along the quay.

      Shandon held the letter in his hand, without opening it.

      "Read it, read it!" cried the doctor. Shandon looked at it. The address, without date or place, ran simply, – "Commander Richard Shandon, on board the brig Forward."

      Shandon opened the letter and read: —

      You will sail towards Cape Farewell. You will reach it April 20. If the captain does not appear on board, you will pass through Davis Strait and go up Baffin's Bay as far as Melville Sound.

K. Z.,Captain of the Forward.

      Shandon folded carefully this brief letter, put it in his pocket, and gave the order to cast off. His voice, which arose alone above the roaring of the wind, sounded very solemn.

      Soon the Forward had left the docks, and under the care of a pilot, whose boat followed at a distance, put out into the stream. The crowd hastened to the outer quay by the Victoria Docks to get a last look at the strange vessel. The two topsails, the foresail, and staysail were soon set, and under this canvas the Forward, which well deserved its name, after rounding Birkenhead Point, sailed away into the Irish Sea.

      CHAPTER V

      AT SEA

      The wind, which was uncertain, although in general favorable, was blowing in genuine April squalls. The Forward sailed rapidly, and its screw, as yet unused, did not delay its progress. Towards three o'clock they met the steamer which plies between Liverpool and the Isle of Man, and which carries the three legs of Sicily on its paddle-boxes. Her captain hailed them, and this was the last good-by to the crew of the Forward.

      At five o'clock the pilot resigned the charge of the ship to Richard Shandon, and sailed away in his boat, which soon disappeared from sight in the southwest.

      Towards evening the brig doubled the Calf of Man, at the southern extremity of the island of that name. During the night the sea was very high; the Forward rode the waves very well, however, and leaving the Point of Ayr on the northwest, she ran towards the North Channel.

      Johnson was right; once at sea the sailors readily adapted themselves instinctively to the situation. They saw the excellence of their vessel and forgot the strangeness of their situation. The ship's routine was soon regularly established.

      The doctor inhaled with pleasure the sea-air; he paced up and down the deck in spite of the fresh wind, and showed that for a student he had very good sea-legs.

      "The sea is a fine thing," he said to Johnson, as he went upon the bridge after breakfast; "I am a little late in making its acquaintance, but I shall make up for my delay."

      "You are right, Dr. Clawbonny; I would give all the land in the world for a bit of ocean. People say that sailors soon get tired of their business; but I've been sailing for forty years, and I like it as well as I did the first day."

      "What a pleasure it is to feel a stanch ship under one's feet! and, if I'm not mistaken, the Forward is a capital sea-boat."

      "You are right, Doctor," answered Shandon, who had joined the two speakers; "she's a good ship, and I must say that there was never a ship so well equipped for a voyage in the polar regions. That reminds me that, thirty years ago, Captain James Ross, going to seek the Northwest Passage – "

      "Commanded the Victory," said the doctor, quickly, "a brig of about the tonnage of this one, and also carrying machinery."

      "What! did you know that?"

      "Say for yourself," retorted the doctor. "Steamers were then new inventions, and the machinery of the Victory was continually delaying him. Captain Ross, after in vain trying to patch up every piece, at last took it all out and left it at the first place he wintered at."

      "The deuce!" said Shandon. "You know all about it, I see."

      "More or less," answered the doctor. "In my reading I have come across the works of Parry, Ross, Franklin; the reports of MacClure, Kennedy, Kane, MacClintock; and some of it has stuck in my memory. I might add that MacClintock, on board of the Fox, a propeller like ours, succeeded in making his way more easily and more directly than all his successors."3

      "That's perfectly true," answered Shandon; "that MacClintock is a good sailor; I have seen him at sea. You might also say that we shall be, like him, in Davis Strait in the month of April; and if we can get through the ice our voyage will be very much advanced."

      "Unless," said the doctor, "we should be as unlucky as the Fox in 1857, and should be caught the first year by the ice in the north of Baffin's Bay, and we should have to winter among the icebergs."

      "We must hope to be luckier, Mr. Shandon," said Johnson; "and if, with a ship like the Forward, we can't go where we please, the attempt must be given up forever."

      "Besides," continued the doctor, "if the captain is on board he will know better than we what is to be done, and so much the better because we are perfectly ignorant; for his singularly brief letter gives us no clew to the probable aim of the voyage."

      "It's a great deal," answered Shandon, with some warmth, "to know what route we have to take; and now for a good month, I fancy, we shall be able to get along without his supernatural intervention and orders. Besides, you know what I think about him."

      "Ha, ha!" laughed the doctor; "I used to think as you did, that he was going to leave the command of the ship in your hands, and that he would never come on board; but – "

      "But what?" asked Shandon, with some ill-humor.

      "But since the arrival of the second letter, I have altered my views somewhat."

      "And why so, doctor?"

      "Because, although this letter does tell you in which direction to go, it still does not inform you of the final aim of the voyage; and we have yet to know whither we are to go. I ask you how can a third letter reach us now that we are on the open sea. The postal service on the shore of Greenland is very defective. You see, Shandon, I fancy that he is waiting for us at some Danish settlement up there, – at Holsteinborg or Upernavik. We shall find that he has been completing the supply of seal-skins, buying sledges and dogs, – in a word, providing all the equipment for a journey in the arctic seas. So I shall not be in the least surprised to see him coming out of his cabin some fine morning and taking command in the least supernatural way in the world."

      "Possibly," answered Shandon, dryly; "but meanwhile the wind's freshening, СКАЧАТЬ