When the others wondered at the doctor’s prescriptions: “This is the land of these complaints,” he answered; “the cure must be near the disease.”
“The cure, and especially the doctor,” added Johnson, in whose mind the doctor was assuming colossal proportions.
During this new leisure the latter resolved to have a serious talk with the captain; he wanted to induce Hatteras to give up his intention of going northward without carrying some sort of a boat; a piece of wood, something with which he could cross an arm of the sea, if they should meet one. The captain, who was fixed in his views, had formally vowed not to use a boat made of the fragments of the American ship. The doctor was uncertain how to broach the subject, and yet a speedy decision was important, for the month of June would be the time for distant excursions. At last, after long reflection, he took Hatteras aside one day, and with his usual air of kindness said to him—
“Hatteras, you know I am your friend?”
“Certainly,” answered the captain, warmly, “my best friend; indeed, my only one.”
“If I give you a piece of advice,” resumed the doctor, “advice which you don’t ask for, would you consider it disinterested?”
“Yes, for I know that selfish interest has never been your guide; but what do you want to say?”
“One moment, Hatteras; I have something else to ask of you: Do you consider me a true Englishman like yourself, and eager for the glory of my country?”
Hatteras looked at the doctor with surprise.
“Yes,” he answered, with his face expressing surprise at the question.
“You want to reach the North Pole,” resumed the doctor; “I understand your ambition, I share it, but to reach this end we need the means.”
“Well, haven’t I so far sacrificed everything in order to succeed?”
“No, Hatteras, you have not sacrificed your personal prejudices, and at this moment I see that you are ready to refuse the indispensable means of reaching the Pole.”
“Ah!” answered Hatteras, “you mean the launch; this man—”
“Come, Hatteras, let us argue coolly, without passion, and look at all sides of the question. The line of the coast on which we have wintered may be broken; there is no proof that it runs six degrees to the north; if the information which has brought you so far is right, we ought to find a vast extent of open sea during the summer months. Now, with the Arctic Ocean before us, free of ice and favorable for navigation, what shall we do if we lack the means of crossing it?”
Hatteras made no answer.
“Do you want to be within a few miles of the Pole without being able to reach it?”
Hatteras’s head sank into his hands.
“And now,” continued the doctor, “let us look at the question from a moral point of view. I can understand that an Englishman should give up his life and his fortune for the honor of his country. But because a boat made of a few planks torn from a wrecked American ship first touches the coast or crosses the unknown ocean, can that diminish the honor of the discovery? If you found on this shore the hull of an abandoned ship, should you hesitate to make use of it? Doesn’t the glory of success belong to the head of the expedition? And I ask you if this launch built by four Englishmen, manned by four Englishmen, would not be English from keel to gunwale?”
Hatteras was still silent.
“No,” said Clawbonny, “let us talk frankly; it’s not the boat you mind, it’s the man.”
“Yes, Doctor, yes,” answered the captain, “that American; I hate him with real English hate, that man thrown in my way by chance—”
“To save you!”
“To ruin me! He seems to defy me, to act as master, to imagine he holds my fate in his hands, and to have guessed my plans. Didn’t he show his character when we were giving names to the new lands? Has he ever said what he was doing here? You can’t free me of the idea which is killing me, that this man is the head of an expedition sent out by the government of the United States.”
“And if he is, Hatteras, what is there to show that he is in search of the Pole? Can’t America try to discover the Northwest Passage as well as England? At any rate, Altamont is perfectly ignorant of your plans; for neither Johnson nor Bell nor you nor I has said a single word about them in his presence.”
“Well, I hope he’ll never know them!”
“He will know them finally, of course, for we can’t leave him alone here.”
“Why not?” asked the captain, with some violence; “can’t he remain at Fort Providence?”
“He would never give his consent, Hatteras; and then to leave him here, uncertain of finding him again, would be more than imprudent, it would be inhuman. Altamont will come with us; he must come! But since there is no need of suggesting new ideas to him, let us say nothing, and build
