“The fact is,” answered Johnson, “that if we are going to find all the rooms taken in the hotel of the end of the world, it would be annoying.”
“Very annoying,” said Altamont.
“Well, we shall see,” said the doctor.
And they pushed on. The day ended without any new fact to indicate the presence of strangers in this part of New America, and they at last encamped for the evening.
A rather strong wind from the south had sprung up, and obliged them to seek a secure shelter for their tent in the bottom of a ravine. The sky was threatening; long clouds passed rapidly through the air; they passed near the ground, and so quickly that the eye could hardly follow them. At times some of the mist touched the ground, and the tent resisted with difficulty the violence of the hurricane.
“It’s going to be a nasty night,” said Johnson, after supper.
“It won’t be cold, but stormy,” answered the doctor; “let us take precautions, and make the tent firm with large stones.”
“You are right, Doctor; if the wind should carry away the canvas, Heaven alone knows where we should find it again.”
Hence they took every precaution against such a danger, and the wearied travellers lay down to sleep. But they found it impossible. The tempest was loose, and hastened northward with incomparable violence; the clouds were whirling about like steam which has just escaped from a boiler; the last avalanches, under the force of the hurricane, fell into the ravines, and their dull echoes were distinctly heard; the air seemed to be struggling with the water, and fire alone was absent from this contest of the elements.
Amid the general tumult their ears distinguished separate sounds, not the crash of heavy falling bodies, but the distinct cracking of bodies breaking; a clear snap was frequently heard, like breaking steel, amid the roar of the tempest. These last sounds were evidently avalanches torn off by the gusts, but the doctor could not explain the others. In the few moments of anxious silence, when the hurricane seemed to be taking breath in order to blow with greater violence, the travellers exchanged their suppositions.
“There is a sound of crashing,” said the doctor, “as if icebergs and ice-fields were being blown against one another.”
“Yes,” answered Altamont; “one would say the whole crust of the globe was falling in. Say, did you hear that?”
“If we were near the sea,” the doctor went on, “I should think it was ice breaking.”
“In fact,” said Johnson, “there is no other explanation possible.”
“Can we have reached the coast?” asked Hatteras.
“It’s not impossible,” answered the doctor. “Hold on,” he said, after a very distinct sound; “shouldn’t you say that was the crashing of ice? We may be very near the ocean.”
“If it is,” continued Hatteras, “I should not be afraid to go across the ice-fields.”
“Oh,” said the doctor, “they must be broken by such a tempest! We shall see tomorrow. However that may be, if any men have to travel in such a night as this, I pity them.”
The hurricane raged ten hours without cessation, and no one of those in the tent had a moment’s sleep; the night passed in profound uneasiness. In fact, under such circumstances, every new incident, a tempest, an avalanche, might bring serious consequences. The doctor would gladly have gone out to reconnoitre, but how could he with such a wind raging?
Fortunately the hurricane grew less violent early the next day; they could leave the tent which had resisted so sturdily. The doctor, Hatteras, and Johnson went to a hill about three hundred feet high, which they ascended without difficulty. Their eyes beheld an entirely altered country, composed of bare rocks, sharp ridges entirely clear of ice. It was summer succeeding winter, which had been driven away by the tempest; the snow had been blown away by the wind before it could melt, and the barren soil reappeared.
But Hatteras’s glances were all turned towards the north, where the horizon appeared to be hidden by dark mist.
“That may be the effect of the ocean,” said the doctor.
“You are right,” said Hatteras; “the sea must be there.”
“That’s what we call the blink of the water,” said Johnson.
“Exactly,” said the doctor.
“Well, let us start,” said Hatteras, “and push on to this new ocean.”
“That rejoices my heart,” said Clawbonny to the captain.
“Certainly,” was the enthusiastic answer. “Soon we shall have reached the Pole! and doesn’t the prospect delight you, too, Doctor?”
“It does. I am always happy, and especially about the happiness of others!”
The three Englishmen returned to the ravine; the sledge was made ready, and they left the camp and resumed their march. Each one dreaded finding new tracks, but all the rest of the way they saw no trace of any human being. Three hours later they reached the coast.
“The sea! the sea!” they all shouted.
“And the open sea!” cried the captain.
It was ten o’clock in the morning.
In fact, the hurricane had cleared up the polar basin; the shattered ice was floating away in every direction; the largest pieces, forming icebergs, had just weighed anchor and were sailing on the open sea. The wind had made a harsh attack upon the field. Fragments of ice covered the surrounding rocks. The little which was left of the ice-field seemed very soft; on the rocks were large pieces of seaweed. The ocean stretched beyond the line of vision, with no island or new land peering above the horizon.
In the east and west were two capes gently sloping to the water; at their end the sea was breaking, and the wind was carrying a slight foam. The land of New America thus died away in the Polar Ocean, quietly and gently. It rounded into an open bay, with roadstead enclosed by the two promontories. In the middle a rock made a little natural harbor, sheltered against three points of the compass; it ran back into
