“See that smoke!” he shouted.
His heart beat as if it would burst.
“See that smoke!” he said to his companions. “My ship is on fire!”
“But we are more than three miles from it,” said Bell. “It can’t be the Forward!”
“Yes, but it is,” answered the doctor; “the mirage makes it seem nearer.”
“Let us run!” cried Hatteras.
They left the sledge in charge of Duke, and hastened after the captain. An hour later they came in sight of the ship. A terrible sight! The brig was burning in the midst of the ice, which was melting about her; the flames were lapping her hull, and the southerly breeze brought to Hatteras’s ears unaccustomed sounds.
Five hundred feet from the ship stood a man raising his hands in despair; he stood there, powerless, facing the fire which was destroying the Forward.
The man was alone; it was Johnson.
Hatteras ran towards him.
“My ship! my ship!” he cried.
“You! Captain!” answered Johnson; “you! stop! not a step farther!”
“Well?” asked Hatteras with a terrible air.
“The wretches!” answered Johnson, “they’ve been gone forty-eight hours, after firing the ship!”
“Curse them!” groaned Hatteras.
Then a terrible explosion was heard; the earth trembled; the icebergs fell; a column of smoke rose to the clouds, and the Forward disappeared in an abyss of fire.
At that moment the doctor and Bell came up to Hatteras. He roused himself suddenly from his despair.
“My friends,” he said energetically, “the cowards have taken flight! The brave will succeed! Johnson, Bell, you are bold; Doctor, you are wise; as for me, I have faith! There is the North Pole! Come, to work!”
Hatteras’s companions felt their hearts glow at these brave words.
And yet the situation was terrible for these four men and the dying man, abandoned without supplies, alone at the eightieth degree of latitude, in the very heart of the polar regions.
Part II
The Desert of Ice
I
The Doctor’s Inventory
The design which Captain Hatteras had formed of exploring the North, and of giving England the honor of discovering the Pole, was certainly a bold one. This hardy sailor had just done all that human skill could do. After struggling for nine months against contrary winds and seas, after destroying icebergs and ice-fields, after enduring the severity of an unprecedentedly cold winter, after going over all that his predecessors had done, after carrying the Forward beyond the seas which were already known, in short, after completing half his task, he saw his grand plans completely overthrown. The treachery, or rather the demoralization of his wearied crew, the criminal folly of some of the ringleaders, left him in a terrible situation; of the eighteen men who had sailed in the brig, four were left, abandoned without supplies, without a boat, more than twenty-five hundred miles from home!
The explosion of the Forward, which had just blown up before their eyes, took from them their last means of subsistence. Still, Hatteras’s courage did not abandon him at this terrible crisis. The men who were left were the best of the crew; they were genuine heroes. He made an appeal to the energy and wisdom of Dr. Clawbonny, to the devotion of Johnson and Bell, to his own faith in the enterprise; even in these desperate straits he ventured to speak of hope; his brave companions listened to him, and their courage in the past warranted confidence in their promises for the future.
The doctor, after listening to the captain’s words, wanted to get an exact idea of their situation; and, leaving the others about five hundred feet from the ship, he made his way to the scene of the catastrophe.
Of the Forward, which had been built with so much care, nothing was left; pieces of ice, shapeless fragments all blackened and charred, twisted pieces of iron, ends of ropes still burning like fuse, and scattered here and there on the ice-field, testified to the force of the explosion. The cannon had been hurled to some distance, and was lying on a piece of ice that looked like a gun-carriage. The surface of the ice, for a circle of six hundred feet in diameter, was covered with fragments of all sorts; the brig’s keel lay under a mass of ice; the icebergs, which had been partly melted by the fire, had already recovered their rocklike hardness.
The doctor then began to think of his ruined cabin, of his lost collections, of his precious instruments destroyed, his books torn, burned to ashes. So much that was valuable gone! He gazed with tearful eyes at this vast disaster, thinking not of the future, but of the irreparable misfortune which dealt him so severe a blow. He was immediately joined by Johnson; the old sailor’s face bore signs of his recent sufferings; he had been obliged to struggle against his revolted companions, defending the ship which had been entrusted to his care. The doctor sadly pressed the boatswain’s hand.
“Well, my friend, what is going to become of us?” asked the doctor.
“Who can say?” answered Johnson.
“At any rate,” continued the doctor, “don’t let us give way to despair; let us be men!”
“Yes, Doctor,” answered the old sailor, “you are right; it’s when matters look worst that we most need courage; we are in a bad way; we must see how we can best get out of it.”
“Poor ship!” said the doctor, sighing; “I had become attached to it; I had got to look on it as on my own home, and there’s not left a piece that can be recognized!”
“Who would think, Doctor, that this mass of dust and ashes could be so dear to our heart?”
“And the launch,” continued the doctor, gazing around, “was it destroyed too?”
“No, Doctor; Shandon and the others, who left, took it with them.”
“And the gig?”
“Was broken into a thousand pieces. See, those sheets of tin are all that’s left of her.”
“Then we have
