Sunday, January 15th, Hatteras judged that they had come about one hundred miles to the south; this morning was set aside to mending their clothes and materials; the reading of divine service was not forgotten.
At noon they started again; the temperature was very low; the thermometer marked only −32°; the air was very clear.
Suddenly, without warning, a frozen vapor arose into the air from the ice, to a height of about ninety feet, and hung motionless; no one could see a foot before him; this vapor formed in long, sharp crystals upon their clothing.
The travellers, surprised by this phenomenon, which is called frost-rime, only thought of getting together; so immediately various shouts were heard:—
“Oh Simpson!”
“Bell, this way!”
“Dr. Clawbonny!”
“Doctor!”
“Captain, where are you?”
They began to look for one another with outstretched arms, wandering through the fog which their eyes could not pierce. But to their disappointment they could hear no answer; the vapor seemed incapable of carrying sound.
Each one then thought of firing his gun as a signal to the others. But if their voices were too feeble, the reports of the firearms were too loud; for the echoes, repeated in every direction, made but a confused roar, in which no particular direction could be perceived.
Then they began to act, each one as he thought best. Hatteras stood still and folded his arms. Simpson contented himself with stopping the sledge. Bell retraced his steps, feeling them with his hand. The doctor, stumbling over the blocks of ice, wandered here and there, getting more and more bewildered.
At the end of five minutes he said to himself—
“This can’t last long! Singular climate! This is too much! There is nothing to help us, without speaking of these sharp crystals which cut my face. Halloo, Captain!” he shouted again.
But he heard no answer; he fired his gun, but in spite of his thick gloves the iron burned his hands. Meanwhile he thought he saw a confused mass moving near him.
“There’s someone,” he said. “Hatteras! Bell! Simpson! Is that you? Come, answer!”
A dull roar was alone heard.
“Ah!” thought the doctor, “what is that?”
The object approached; it lost its first size and appeared in more definite shape. A terrible thought flashed into the doctor’s mind.
“A bear!” he said to himself.
In fact, it was a huge bear; lost in the fog, it came and went with great danger to the men, whose presence it certainly did not suspect.
“Matters are growing complicated!” thought the doctor, standing still.
Sometimes he felt the animal’s breath, which was soon lost in the frost-rime; again he would see the monster’s huge paws beating the air so near him that his clothes were occasionally torn by its sharp claws; he jumped back, and the animal disappeared like a phantasmagoric spectre.
But as he sprang back he found an elevation beneath his feet; he climbed up first one block of ice, then another, feeling his way with his staff.
“An iceberg!” he said to himself; “if I can get to the top I am safe.”
With these words he climbed up an elevation of about ninety feet with surprising agility; he arose above the frozen mist, the top of which was sharply defined.
“Good!” he said to himself; and looking about him he saw his three companions emerging from the vapor.
“Hatteras!”
“Dr. Clawbonny!”
“Bell!”
“Simpson!”
These names were shouted out almost at the same time; the sky, lit up by a magnificent halo, sent forth pale rays which colored the frost-rime as if it were a cloud, and the top of the icebergs seemed to rise from a mass of molten silver. The travellers found themselves within a circle of less than a hundred feet in diameter. Thanks to the purity of the air in this upper layer in this low temperature, their words could be easily heard, and they were able to talk on the top of this iceberg. After the first shots, each one, hearing no answer, had only thought of climbing above the mist.
“The sledge!” shouted the captain.
“It’s eighty feet beneath us,” answered Simpson.
“Is it all right?”
“All right.”
“And the bear?” asked the doctor.
“What bear?” said Bell.
“A bear!” said Hatteras; “let’s go down.”
“No!” said the doctor; “we shall lose our way, and have to begin it all over again.”
“And if he eats our dogs—” said Hatteras.
At that moment Duke was heard barking, the sound rising through the mist.
“That’s Duke!” shouted Hatteras; “there’s something wrong. I’m going down.”
All sorts of howling arose to their ears; Duke and the dogs were barking furiously. The noise sounded like a dull murmur, like the roar of a crowded, noisy room. They knew that some invisible struggle was going on below, and the mist was occasionally agitated like the sea when marine monsters are fighting.
“Duke, Duke!” shouted the captain, as he made ready to enter again into the frost-rime.
“Wait a moment, Hatteras—wait a moment! It seems to me that the fog is lifting.”
It was not lifting, but sinking, like water in a pool; it appeared to be descending into the ground from which it had risen; the summits of the icebergs grew larger; others, which had been hidden, arose like new islands; by an optical illusion, which may be easily imagined, the travellers, clinging to these ice-cones, seemed to be rising in the air, while the top of the mist sank beneath them.
Soon the top of the sledge appeared, then the harnessed dogs, and then about thirty other animals, then great objects moving confusedly, and Duke leaping about with his head alternately
