This man was the sailor Garry.
“Sir!” cried Shandon, turning pale, “Garry—by what right do you give orders here?”
“Duke!” said Garry, repeating the whistle which had so surprised the crew.
The dog, on hearing his real name, sprang on the quarterdeck, and lay down quietly at his master’s feet.
The crew did not utter a word. The key which the captain alone should possess, the dog which he had sent and which had identified him, so to speak, the tone of command which it was impossible to mistake—all this had a strong influence on the minds of the sailors, and was enough to establish firmly Garry’s authority.
Besides, Garry was hardly to be recognized; he had removed the thick whiskers which had surrounded his face, thereby giving it a more impassible, energetic, and commanding expression; he stood before them clothed in a captain’s uniform, which he had had placed in his cabin.
So the crew of the Forward, animated in spite of themselves, shouted—
“Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah for the captain!”
“Shandon,” he said to his first officer, “have the crew put in line; I want to inspect them.”
Shandon obeyed, and gave the requisite orders with an agitated voice.
The captain walked in front of the officers and men, saying a word to each, and treating him according to his past conduct.
When he had finished his inspection, he went back to the quarterdeck, and calmly uttered these words:—
“Officers and sailors, I am an Englishman like you all, and my motto is that of Lord Nelson—‘England expects every man to do his duty.’
“As Englishmen, I am unwilling, we are unwilling, that others should go where we have not been. As Englishmen, I shall not endure, we shall not endure, that others should have the glory of going farther north than we. If human foot is ever to reach the Pole, it must be the foot of an Englishman! Here is the flag of our country. I have equipped this ship, I have devoted my fortune to this undertaking, I shall devote to it my life and yours, but this flag shall float over the North Pole. Fear not. You shall receive a thousand pounds sterling for every degree that we get farther north after this day. Now we are at the seventy-second, and there are ninety in all. Figure it out. My name will be proof enough. It means energy and patriotism. I am Captain Hatteras.”
“Captain Hatteras!” cried Shandon. And this name, familiar to them all, soon spread among all the crew.
“Now,” resumed Hatteras, “let us anchor the brig to the ice; let the fires be put out, and everyone return to his usual occupation. Shandon, I want to speak with you about the ship. You will join me in my cabin with the doctor, Wall, and the boatswain. Johnson, dismiss the men.”
Hatteras, calm and cold, quietly left the poop-deck, while Shandon had the brig made fast to the ice.
Who was this Hatteras, and why did his name make so deep an impression upon the crew?
John Hatteras, the only son of a London brewer, who died in 1852, worth six million pounds, took to the sea at an early age, unmindful of the large fortune which was to come to him. Not that he had any commercial designs, but a longing for geographical discovery possessed him; he was continually dreaming of setting foot on some spot untrodden of man.
When twenty years old, he had the vigorous constitution of thin, sanguine men; an energetic face, with well-marked lines, a high forehead, rising straight from the eyes, which were handsome but cold, thin lips, indicating a mouth chary of words, medium height, well-knit muscular limbs, indicated a man ready for any experience. Anyone who saw him would have called him bold, and anyone who heard him would have called him coldly passionate; he was a man who would never retreat, and who would risk the lives of others as coldly as his own. One would hence think twice before following him in his expeditions.
John Hatteras had a great deal of English pride, and it was he who once made this haughty reply to a Frenchman.
The Frenchman said with what he considered politeness, and even kindness—
“If I were not a Frenchman, I should like to be an Englishman.”
“If I were not an Englishman, I should like to be an Englishman!”
That retort points the nature of the man.
He would have liked to reserve for his fellow-countrymen the monopoly of geographical discovery; but much to his chagrin, during previous centuries, they had done but little in the way of discovery.
America was discovered by the Genoese, Christopher Columbus; the East Indies by the Portuguese, Vasco de Gama; China by the Portuguese, Fernao d’Andrada; Terra del Fuego by the Portuguese, Magellan; Canada by the Frenchman, Jacques Cartier; the islands of Sumatra, Java, etc., Labrador, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, the Azores, Madeira, Newfoundland, Guinea, Congo, Mexico, White Cape, Greenland, Iceland, the South Pacific Ocean, California, Japan, Cambodia, Peru, Kamschatka, the Philippine Islands, Spitzbergen, Cape Horn, Bering Strait, New Zealand, Van Diemen’s Land, New Britain, New Holland, the Louisiana, Island of Jan-Mayen, by Icelanders, Scandinavians, Frenchmen, Russians, Portuguese, Danes, Spaniards, Genoese, and Dutchmen; but no Englishmen figured among them, and it was a constant source of grief to Hatteras to see his fellow-countrymen excluded from the glorious band of sailors who made the great discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Hatteras consoled himself somewhat when he considered modern times: the English took their revenge with Sturt, McDouall Stuart, Burke, Wills, King, Gray, in Australia; with Palliser in America; with Haouran in Syria; with Cyril Graham, Waddington, Cunningham, in India; and with Barth, Burton, Speke, Grant, and Livingstone in Africa.
But this was not enough; for Hatteras these men were
