Hatteras clasped the hands of his companions. He walked to and fro, no longer master of himself.
“We have only done our duty as Englishmen,” said Bell.
“Our duty as friends,” continued the doctor.
“Yes,” said Hatteras, “but all have not performed this duty. Some have given way! Still, they must be pardoned, both who were treacherous, and those who were led away to it! Poor men! I forgive them. You understand me, Doctor?”
“Yes,” answered the doctor, who was very uneasy at Hatteras’s excitement.
“So,” went on the captain, “I don’t want them to lose the money they came so far to seek. No, I shall not alter my plan; they shall be rich—if they ever see England again!”
Few could have withstood the tenderness with which Hatteras spoke these last words.
“But, Captain,” said Johnson, with an effort at pleasantry, “one would say you were making your will.”
“Perhaps I am,” answered Hatteras, seriously.
“Still you have before you a long and glorious life,” continued the old sailor.
“Who can say?” said Hatteras.
A long silence followed these words. The doctor did not dare to try to interpret the last remark. But Hatteras soon expressed his meaning, for in a hasty, hardly restrained voice, he went on:—
“My friends, listen to me. We have done a good deal so far, and yet there is a good deal to do.”
His companions gazed at him in astonishment.
“Yes, we are on the land of the Pole, but we are not on the Pole itself!”
“How so?” asked Altamont.
“You don’t mean it!” cried the doctor, anxiously.
“Yes!” resumed Hatteras, earnestly, “I said that an Englishman should set foot on the Pole; I said it, and an Englishman shall do it.”
“What!” ejaculated the doctor.
“We are now forty-five seconds from the unknown point,” Hatteras went on, with increasing animation; “where it is, I am going!”
“But that is the top of the volcano!” said the doctor.
“I’m going!”
“It’s an inaccessible spot!”
“I’m going!”
“It’s a fiery crater!”
“I’m going!”
The firmness with which Hatteras uttered these words cannot be given. His friends were stupefied; they gazed with horror at the volcano tipped with flame. Then the doctor began; he urged and besought Hatteras to give up his design; he said everything he could imagine, from entreaty to well-meant threats; but he obtained no concession from the nervous captain, who was possessed with a sort of madness which may be called polar madness. Only violent means could stop him, rushing to his ruin. But seeing that thereby they would produce serious results, the doctor wished to keep them for a last resource. He hoped, too, that some physical impossibility, some unsurmountable difficulty, would compel him to give up his plan.
“Since it is so,” he said, “we shall follow you.”
“Yes,” answered the captain, “halfway up the mountain! No farther! Haven’t you got to carry back to England the copy of the document which proves our discovery, in case—”
“Still—”
“It is settled,” said Hatteras, in a tone of command; “and since my entreaties as a friend are not enough, I order it as captain.”
The doctor was unwilling to urge him any further, and a few moments later the little band, equipped for a hard climb, and preceded by Duke, set out. The sky was perfectly clear. The thermometer stood at 52°. The air had all the brilliancy which is so marked at this high latitude. It was eight o’clock in the morning. Hatteras went ahead with his dog, the others followed close behind.
“I’m anxious,” said Johnson.
“No, no, there’s nothing to fear,” answered the doctor; “we are here.”
It was a strange island, in appearance so new and singular! The volcano did not seem old, and geologists would have ascribed a recent date to its formation.
The rocks were heaped upon one another, and only kept in place by almost miraculous balancing. The mountain, in fact, was composed of nothing but stones that had fallen from above. There was no soil, no moss, no lichen, no trace of vegetation. The carbonic acid from the crater had not yet had time to unite with the hydrogen of the water; nor the ammonia of the clouds, to form under the action of the light, organized matter. This island had arisen from successive volcanic eruptions, like many other mountains; what they have hurled forth has built them up. For instance, Etna has poured forth a volume of lava larger than itself; and the Monte Nuovo, near Naples, was formed by ashes in the short space of forty-eight hours. The heap of rocks composing Queen’s Island had evidently come from the bowels of the earth. Formerly the sea covered it all; it had been formed long since by the condensation of the vapor on the cooling globe; but in proportion as the volcanoes of the Old and New World disappeared, they were replaced by new craters.
In fact, the earth can be compared to a vast spheroidal boiler. Under the influence of the central fire an immense quantity of vapor is generated, which is exposed to a pressure of thousands of atmospheres, and which would blow up the globe, were it not for the safety-valves opening on the outside.
These safety-valves are the volcanoes; when one closes, another opens; and at the poles, where, doubtless in consequence of the flattening of the earth’s surface, the crust is thinner, it is not strange that a volcano should be suddenly formed by the upheaval of the bottom of the waves. The doctor noticed all this as he followed Hatteras; his foot sank into a volcanic tufa, and the deposits of ashes, volcanic stones, etc., like the syenite and granite of Iceland. But he attributed a comparatively recent origin to the island, on account of the fact that no sedimentary soil had yet formed upon it. Water, too, was lacking. If Queen’s Island had existed for several years, there would have been springs upon it, as there are in the neighborhood of volcanoes. Now, not only was there no drop of water there, but the vapors which arose from the stream of
