[P. 331] the midst of the semi-darkness of the austral night that the
Paracuta pursued her monotonous course. True, the southern polar
lights were frequently visible; but they were not the sun, that single
orb of day which had illumined our horizons during the months of the Antarctic
summer, and their capricious splendour could not replace his unchanging
light. That long darkness of the poles sheds a moral and physical influence
on mortals which no one can elude, a gloomy and overwhelming impression
almost impossible to resist.
Of all the Paracuta's passengers, the boatswain and Endicott
only preserved their habitual good-humour; those two were equally insensible
to the weariness and the peril of our voyage. I also except West, who was
ever ready to face every eventuality, like a man who is always on the defensive.
As for the two brothers Guy, their happiness in being restored to each
other made them frequently oblivious of the anxieties and risks of the
future.
Of Hurliguerly I cannot speak too highly. He proved himself a thoroughly
good fellow, and it raised our drooping spirits to hear him repeat in his
jolly voice,--
"We shall get to port all right, my friends, be sure of that. And, if
you only reckon things up, you will see that we have had more good luck
than bad. Oh, yes, I know, there was the loss of our schooner! Poor Halbrane,
carried up into the air like a balloon, then flung into the deep llke an
avalanche! But, on the other hand, there was the iceberg which brought
us to the coast, and the Tsalal boat which brought us and Captain William
Guy and his three companions together. And don't forget the current and
the breeze that have pushed us on up to now, and will [p. 332] keep pushing
us on, I'm sure of that. With so many trumps in our hand we cannot possibly
lose the game. The only thing to be regretted is that we shall have to
get ashore again in Australia or New Zealand, instead of casting anchor
at the Kerguelens, near the quay of Christmas Harbour, in front of the
Greea Cormorant."
For a week we pursued our course without deviation to east or west,
and it was not until the 21st of March that the Paracutis
lost sight of Halbrane Land, being carried towards the north by the current,
while the coast-line of the continent, for such we are convinced it is,
trended in a round curve to the north-east.
Although the waters of this portion of sea were still open, they carried
a flotilla of icebergs or ice-fields. Hence arose serious difficulties
and also dangers to navigation in the midst of the gloomy mists, when we
had to manoeuvre between these moving masses, either to find passage or
to prevent our little craft from being crushed like grain between the millstones.
Besides, Captain Len Guy could no longer ascertain his position either
in latitude or longitude. The sun being absent, calculations by the position
of the stars was too complicated, it was impossible to take altitudcs,
and the Paracuta abandoned herself to the action of the current,
which invariably bore us northward, as the compass indicated. By keeping
the reckoning of its medium speed, however, we concluded that on the 27th
of March our boat was between the sixty-ninth and the sixty-eighth parallels,
that is to say, some seventy miles only from the Antarctic Circle.
Ah! if no obstacle to the course of our perilous navigation had existed, if passage between this inner sea of the [p. 333] southern zone and the waters of the Pacific Ocean had been certain, the Paracuta might have reached the extreme limit of the austral seas in a few days. But a few hundred miles more to sail, and the iceberg-barrier would confront us with its immovable rampart, and unless a passage could be found, we should be obliged to go round it either by the east or by the west.
Once cleared indeed--
Ah! once cleared, we should be in a frail craft upon the terrible Pacific
Ocean, at the period of the year when its tempests rage with redoubled
fury and strong ships dread the might of its waves.
We were determined not to think of this. Heaven would come to our aid.
We should be picked up by some ship. This the boatswain asserted confidently,
and we were bound to believe the boatswain.
For six entire days, until the and of April, the
Paracura held her course among the ice-barrier, whose crest was profiled
at an altitude of between seven and eight hundred feet above the level
of the sea. The extremities were not visible either on the east or the
west, and if our. boat did not find an open passage, we could not clear
it. By a most fortunate chance a passage was found on the above-mentioned
date, and attempted, amid a thousand risks. Yes, we required all the zeal,
skill, and courage of our men and their chiefs to accomplish such a task.
At last we were in the South Pacific waters, but our boat had suffered
severely in getting through, and it had sprung more than one leak. We were
kept busy [p. 334] in baling out the water, which also came in from above.
The breeze was gentle, the sea more calm than we could have hoped,
and the real danger did not lie in the risks of navigation. No, it arose
from the fact that not a ship was visible in these waters, not a whaler
was to be seen on the fishing-grounds. At the beginning of April these
places are forsaken, and we arrived some weeks too late.
We learned afterwards that had we arrived a little sooner, we should
have met the vessels of the American expedition.
In fact, on the 1st of February, by 95o 50' longitude and
64° 17' latitude, Lieutenant Wilkes was still exploring these seas
in one of his ships, the Vincennes, after having discovered a long
extent of coast stretching from east to west. On the approach of the bad
season, he returned to Hobart Town, in Tasmania. The same year, the expedition
of the French captain Dumont d'Urville, which started in 1838, discovered
Adélie Land in 66° 3o' latitude and 38o 21' east
longitude, and Clarie Coast in 64o 30' and 129o 541.
Their campaign having ended with these important discoveries, the Astrolabe
and the Zélée left the Antarctic Ocean and returned
to Hobart Town.
None of these ships, then, were in those waters; so that, when our
nutshell Paracuta was "alone on a lone, lone sea" beyond the ice-barrier,
we were bound to believe that it was no longer possible we could be saved.
We were fifteen hundred miles away from the nearest land, and winter
was a month old!
Hurliguerly himself was obliged to acknowledge the last fortunate chance upon which he had counted failed us.
[P. 335] On the 6th of April we were at the end of our resources; the
sea began to threaten, the boat seemed likely to be swallowed up in the
angry waves.
"A ship!" cried the boatswain, and on the instant we made out a vessel
about four miles to the north-east, beneath the mist which had suddenly
risen.
Signals were made, signals were perceived; the ship lowered her largest
boat and sent it to our rescue.
This ship was the Tasman, an American three-master, from Charlestown.
where we were received with eager welcome and cordiality. The captain treated
my companions as though they had been his own countrymen.
The Tasman had come from the Falkland Islands where the captain
had learned that seven months previously the American schooner Halbrane
had gone to the southern seas in search of the shipwrecked people of the
Jane. But as the season advanced, the schooner not having reappeared,
she was given up for lost in the Antarctic regions.
Fifteen days after our rescue the Tasman disembarked the survivors
of the crew of the two schooners at Melbourne, and it was there that our
men were paid the sums they had so hardly earned, and so well deserved.
We then learned from maps that the Paracuta had debouched into
the Pacific from the land called Clarie by Dumont d'Urville, and the land
called Fabricia, which was discovered in 1838 by Bellenny.
Thus terminated this adventurous and extraordinary expedition, which
cost, alas, too many victims. Our final word is that although the chances
and the necessities of our voyage carried us farther towards the south
pole than hose who preceded us, although we actually did pass [p. 336]
beyond the axial point of the terrestrial globe, discoveries of great value
still remain to be made in those waters!
Arthur Pym, the hero whom Edgar Poe has made so famous, has shown the
way. It is for others to follow him, and to wrest the last Antarctic Mystery
from the Sphinx of the Ice-realm.