VERNANIA: The Celebrated Works of Jules Verne in One Edition. Жюль Верн

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СКАЧАТЬ Day he went down to the common room. The doctor, taking advantage of what energy he had left, went straight to him, and said—

      “Hatteras, we shall all die if we get no fuel.”

      “Never!” said Hatteras, knowing what was coming.

      “We must,” said the doctor gently.

      “Never!” repeated Hatteras with more emphasis still. “I will never consent! They can disobey me if they like!”

      Johnson and Bell took advantage of the half-permission, and rushed on deck. Hatteras heard the wood crack under the axe. He wept. What a Christmas Day for Englishmen was that on board the Forward! The thought of the great difference between their position and that of the happy English families who rejoiced in their roast beef, plum pudding, and mince pies added another pang to the miseries of the unfortunate crew. However, the fire put a little hope and confidence into the men; the boiling of coffee and tea did them good, and the next week passed less miserably, ending the dreadful year 1860; its early winter had defeated all Hatteras’s plans.

      On the 1st of January, 1861, the doctor made a discovery. It was not quite so cold, and he had resumed his interrupted studies; he was reading Sir Edward Belcher’s account of his expedition to the Polar Seas; all at once a passage struck him; he read it again and again. It was where Sir Edward Belcher relates that after reaching the extremity of Queen’s Channel he had discovered important traces of the passage and residence of men. “They were,” said he, “very superior habitations to those which might be attributed to the wandering Esquimaux. The walls had foundations, the floors of the interior had been covered with a thick layer of fine gravel, and were paved. Reindeer, seal, and walrus bones were seen in great quantities. We found some coal.” At the last words the doctor was struck with an idea; he carried the book to Hatteras and showed him the passage.

      “They could not have found coal on this deserted coast,” said Hatteras; “it is not possible!”

      “Why should we doubt what Belcher says? He would not have recorded such a fact unless he had been certain and had seen it with his own eyes.”

      “And what then, doctor?”

      “We aren’t a hundred miles from the coast where Belcher saw the coal, and what is a hundred miles’ excursion? Nothing. Longer ones than that have often been made across the ice.”

      “We will go,” said Hatteras.

      Johnson was immediately told of their resolution, of which he strongly approved; he told his companions about it: some were glad, others indifferent.

      “Coal on these coasts!” said Wall, stretched on his bed of pain.

      “Let them go,” answered Shandon mysteriously.

      But before Hatteras began his preparations for the journey, he wished to be exactly certain of the Forward’s position. He was obliged to be mathematically accurate as to her whereabouts, because of finding her again. His task was very difficult; he went upon deck and took at different moments several lunar distances and the meridian heights of the principal stars. These observations were hard to make, for the glass and mirrors of the instrument were covered with ice from Hatteras’s breath; he burnt his eyelashes more than once by touching the brass of the glasses. However, he obtained exact bases for his calculations, and came down to make them in the room. When his work was over, he raised his head in astonishment, took his map, pricked it, and looked at the doctor.

      “What is it?” asked the latter.

      “In what latitude were we at the beginning of our wintering?”

      “We were in latitude 78 degrees 15 minutes, by longitude 95 degrees 35 minutes; exactly at the Frozen Pole.”

      “Well,” said Hatteras, in a low tone, “our icefield has been drifting! We are two degrees farther north and farther west, and three hundred miles at least from your store of coal!”

      “And those poor fellows don’t know,” said the doctor.

      “Hush!” said Hatteras, putting his finger on his lips.

CHAPTER XXVIII

      PREPARATIONS FOR DEPARTURE

      Table of Contents

      Hatteras would not inform his crew of their situation, for if they had known that they had been dragged farther north they would very likely have given themselves up to the madness of despair. The captain had hidden his own emotions at his discovery. It was his first happy moment during the long months passed in struggling with the elements. He was a hundred and fifty miles farther north, scarcely eight degrees from the Pole! But he hid his delight so profoundly that even the doctor did not suspect it; he wondered at seeing an unwonted brilliancy in the captain’s eyes; but that was all, and he never once thought of the reason.

      The Forward, by getting nearer the Pole, had got farther away from the coal repository observed by Sir Edward Belcher; instead of one hundred, it lay at two hundred and fifty miles farther south. However, after a short discussion about it between Hatteras and Clawbonny, the journey was persisted in. If Belcher had written the truth—and there was no reason for doubting his veracity—they should find things exactly in the same state as he had left them, for no new expedition had gone to these extreme continents since 1853. There were few or no Esquimaux to be met with in that latitude. They could not be disappointed on the coast of New Cornwall as they had been on Beechey Island. The low temperature preserves the objects abandoned to its influence for any length of time. All probabilities were therefore in favour of this excursion across the ice. It was calculated that the expedition would take, at the most, forty days, and Johnson’s preparations were made in consequence.

      The sledge was his first care; it was in the Greenland style, thirty-five inches wide and twenty-four feet long. The Esquimaux often make them more than fifty feet long. This one was made of long planks, bent up front and back, and kept bent like a bow by two thick cords; the form thus given to it gave it increased resistance to shocks; it ran easily on the ice, but when the snow was soft on the ground it was put upon a frame; to make it glide more easily it was rubbed, Esquimaux fashion, with sulphur and snow. Six dogs drew it; notwithstanding their leanness these animals did not appear to suffer from the cold; their buckskin harness was in good condition, and they could draw a weight of two thousand pounds without fatigue. The materials for encampment consisted of a tent, should the construction of a snow-house be impossible, a large piece of mackintosh to spread over the snow, to prevent it melting in contact with the human body, and lastly, several blankets and buffalo-skins. They took the halkett boat too.

      The provisions consisted of five cases of pemmican, weighing about four hundred and fifty pounds; they counted one pound of pemmican for each man and each dog; there were seven dogs including Dick, and four men. They also took twelve gallons of spirits of wine—that is to say, about one hundred fifty pounds weight—a sufficient quantity of tea and biscuit, a portable kitchen with plenty of wicks, oakum, powder, ammunition, and two double-barrelled guns. They also used Captain Parry’s invention of indiarubber belts, in which the warmth of the body and the movement of walking keeps coffee, tea, and water in a liquid state. Johnson was very careful about the snowshoes; they are a sort of wooden patten, fastened on with leather straps; when the ground was quite hard and frozen they could be replaced by buckskin moccasins; each traveller had two pairs of both.

      These preparations СКАЧАТЬ