“No, he is not,” said the doctor; “he is a man! a man like you, Hatteras!”
“And like me he shall share the glory which is awaiting us!”
“The glory of going to the North Pole?” said Altamont.
“Yes,” said the captain, haughtily.
“I had guessed it!” exclaimed the American. “So you dared conceive of this bold design! You dared try to reach that inaccessible point! Ah, that is great! It is sublime!”
“But you,” asked Hatteras, hurriedly, “were you not on your way to the Pole?”
Altamont seemed to hesitate about replying.
“Well?” said the doctor.
“Well, no,” answered the American—“no; tell the truth, and shame the Devil! No, I did not have this great idea, which has brought you here. I was trying simply to sail through the Northwest Passage, that is all.”
“Altamont,” said Hatteras, holding out his hand to the American, “share our glory, and go with us to the North Pole!”
The two men then shook hands warmly.
When they turned towards the doctor, they saw his eyes full of tears.
“Ah, my friends,” he murmured, as he dried his eyes, “how can my heart hold the joy with which you fill it? My dear companions, you have sacrificed a miserable question of nationality in order to unite in your common success! You know that England and America have nothing to do with all this; that mutual sympathy ought to bind you together against the dangers of the journey! If the North Pole is discovered, what difference does it make who does it? Why stand bickering about English or American, when we can be proud of being men?”
The doctor embraced the reconciled foes; he could not restrain his joy. The two new friends felt themselves drawn closer together by the friendship this worthy man had for them both. Clawbonny spoke freely of the vanity of competition, of the madness of rivalry, and of the need of agreement between men so far from home. His words, his tears and caresses, came from the bottom of his heart.
Still, he grew calm after embracing Hatteras and Altamont for the twentieth time.
“And now,” he said, “to work, to work! Since I was no use as a hunter, let me try in another capacity!”
Thereupon he started to cut up the ox, which he called the “ox of reconciliation,” but he did it as skilfully as if he were a surgeon conducting a delicate autopsy. His two companions gazed at him in amusement. In a few minutes he had cut from the body a hundred pounds of flesh; he gave each one a third of it, and they again took up their march to Fort Providence. At ten o’clock in the evening, after walking in the oblique rays of the sun, they reached Doctor’s House, where Johnson and Bell had a good supper awaiting them.
But before they sat down to table, the doctor said in a voice of triumph, as he pointed to his two companions—
“Johnson, I carried away with me an Englishman and an American, did I not?”
“Yes, Dr. Clawbonny,” answered the boatswain.
“Well, I’ve brought back two brothers.”
The two sailors gladly shook Altamont’s hand; the doctor told them what the American captain had done for the English captain, and that night the snow-house held five perfectly happy men.
XVIII
The Last Preparations
The next day the weather changed; there was a return of cold; the snow and rain gust raged for many days.
Bell had finished the launch; it was perfectly satisfactory for the purpose it was intended for; partly decked, and partly open, it could sail in heavy weather under mainsail and jib, while it was so light as not to be too heavy a load on the sledge for the dogs.
Then, too, a change of great importance was taking place in the state of the polar basin. The ice in the middle of the bay was beginning to give way; the tallest pieces, forever weakened by the collision of the rest, only needed a sufficiently heavy tempest to be torn away and to become icebergs. Still, Hatteras was unwilling to wait so long before starting. Since it was to be a land journey, he cared very little whether the sea was open or not. He determined to start June 25th; meanwhile all the preparations could be completed. Johnson and Bell put the sledge into perfect repair; the frame was strengthened and the runners renewed. The travellers intended to devote to their journey the few weeks of good weather which nature allows to these northern regions. Their sufferings would be less severe, the obstacles easier to overcome.
A few days before their departure, June 20th, the ice had so many free passages, that they were able to make a trial trip on board of the new launch as far as Cape Washington. The sea was not perfectly free, far from it; but its surface was not solid, and it would have been impossible to make a trip on foot over the ice-fields. This half-day’s sail showed the good sailing qualities of the launch. During the return they beheld a curious incident. It was a monstrous bear chasing a seal. Fortunately the former was so busily occupied, that he did not see the launch, otherwise he would certainly have pursued it; he kept on watch near a crevasse in the ice-field, into which the seal had evidently plunged. He was awaiting his reappearance with all the patience of a hunter, or rather of a fisherman, for he was really fishing. He was silent, motionless, without any sign of life. Suddenly the surface of the water was agitated; the seal had come up to breathe. The bear crouched low upon the ice, and rounded his two paws about the crevasse. The next moment the seal appeared, with his head above water; but he had not time to withdraw it. The bear’s paws, as if driven by a spring, were clashed together, strangling the animal with irresistible force and dragging it out
