The Goddess of Atvatabar<br />Being the history of the discovery of the interior world and conquest of Atvatabar by William Richard Bradshaw (best books to read fiction .txt) 📗
- Author: William Richard Bradshaw
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"The people of the United States," said Captain Adams, "are almost unanimous in the belief that the interior world is a veritable reality, and it only requires a return of my ship to convince every one that Dunbar's story falls very short of the glorious reality."
"There is no man more famous to-day than Lexington White, Admiral of Atvatabar!" said Sir John Forbes.
"I thank you, gentlemen, for your kind words," said I; "and now for Dunbar's story."
"I think, admiral," said Captain Adams, "that if I were to read you the article containing Dunbar's story written by a special commissioner of the New York Western Hemisphere, who was the first to interview Dunbar at Sitka, on learning of his arrival there, it would be perhaps the best narration of his perilous[238] adventures." As the captain spoke he drew a copy of the Western Hemisphere from his pocket.
"By all means," I replied, "let us hear what the press said about Dunbar and his adventures."
Thereupon Captain Adams read the New York Western Hemisphere's account of Dunbar's adventures, as follows:
"AN ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY!
"The North Pole Found to Be an Enormous Cavern,
Leading to a Subterranean World!
"The Earth Proves to Be a Hollow Shell One Thousand
Miles in Thickness, Lit by an Interior Sun!
"Oceans and Continents, Islands and Cities Spread Upon
the Roof of the Interior Sphere!
"Boatswain Dunbar and Seaman Henderson, of the 'Polar
King,' Having Deserted the Ship as She was Entering
Plutusia, Have Arrived at Sitka, Alaska,
in a Desperate Condition, and Have
Been Interviewed by a 'Western
Hemisphere' Commissioner.
"They Say Lexington White, Commander of the 'Polar
King,' is at Present Sailing Underneath Canada
on an Interior Sea!
"Tremendous Possibilities for Science and Commerce!
"The Fabled Realms of Pluto no Longer a Myth!
"Gold! Gold! Beyond the Dreams of Madness!
"The story of the discovery of Plutusia and the Polar Gulf, as told by the two shipwrecked survivors of the mutineers of the Polar King now at Sitka, Alaska, to the Western Hemisphere, will form an epoch in the history of the world. The renown of Columbus and Magellan is overshadowed by the glory of Lexington White, a citizen of the United States, who fitted out a ship for polar discovery, and, taking the command himself, has unravelled the mystery of the North Pole, discovered the Polar Gulf and the interior world.
"Having penetrated the Polar Gulf about three hundred miles, and having discovered the interior sun, a fear seized on a number of the sailors, among whom were Boatswain Dunbar and his companion, Henderson, who are the only survivors of twelve men who left the Polar King in an open boat to return home[239] again, and to whose safe arrival in Sitka the world is indebted for news of the important discoveries that had been made.
"Dunbar and Henderson arrived in Sitka in a very forlorn condition, almost starved to death and utterly exhausted with their terrible journey homeward. They seem to forget largely the incidents of the journey outward in the Polar King, but have a very clear recollection of their own individual experiences in returning to civilization again. Dunbar, with his eleven associates and the Esquimaux dogs, were no sooner cut adrift from the Polar King than they began to realize their terrible position. Borne on the breast of the immense tidal wave that vibrated up and down the polar cavern, they were tossed helplessly to and fro, now flung almost out of its mouth and again sucked back into its midnight recesses. They floated for days in the gigantic tunnel of water that threatened to collapse any moment and overwhelm them. They would fain have returned to the ship, but the breeze blowing out of the cavern wafted them far from their comrades, and they therefore bent all their energies to the task of getting home again. The light of the polar summer that lit the mouth of the gulf was their guide that led them back to the old familiar world.
"Happily for the adventurers, the direction of the wind continued favorable to their voyage. They made about a hundred miles a day, and in five days reached the edge of the outer ocean. Here again the grandeur of the scene appalled them. Let the reader imagine a little boat carrying twelve souls out of that monstrous cavern five hundred miles in diameter. Think of fifteen hundred miles of ocean forming the mouth of the world that shone in the Arctic sunlight like molten silver surrounding an abyss of darkness.
"Dunbar and his companions had no sooner emerged from the gulf and seen once more the light of the sun—our own sun—than they wept for joy. But again, when they thought of the terrible barrier of ice they had to cross again they began to wish they had remained with the Polar King. Thus man fluctuates between this or that impulse, as he is moved.
"'I say, captain,' said Walker, one of the men, 'don't you think it about as safe to go back and find the ship as to run the chance of being frozen to death on the ice?'
"'Well,' said Dunbar, 'when we left the ship everybody knew it was for good. Our shipmates have chosen their course,[240] as we chose ours, and it's too late to go back now. As likely as not she may have struck a rock and has gone to the bottom by this time.'
"As the boat cleared the cavern the sea fell down before them, until at noonday the sun itself was visible, a joyful proof that they had at last gained the normal surface of the earth again.
"When three days out of the gulf, the weather grew suddenly colder, and the sky became obscured with clouds, completely hiding the sun from sight. A furious snow-storm overtook the voyagers, who, benumbed with cold, wished they were only back again under the hurricane-deck of the Polar King. Fortunately, the wind blew steadily toward the Arctic Circle, bringing them nearer home, but such was the anxiety and suffering caused by insufficient protection from the inclement climate that they cared not whither they drifted, so long as they could keep alive.
"By the help of a little oil-stove they boiled their coffee under a sail, which, spread horizontally above them, in some measure kept the snow from burying them alive.
"The storm spent its fury in twenty-four hours, and when the air grew clear again they were saluted with the sight of that enormous ridge of ice through which the Polar King found a passage a month before. The ice was heaped up with the purest snow in places twenty feet in depth. Thousands of icy peaks and pinnacles, as far as the eye could reach, pierced the sky. Under other conditions the sight would have been sublime, but to men frozen and famished with insufficient food it was a scene of terror.
"The icy range was flanked by an ice-foot varying from thirty to sixty miles in width, and from four to fifty feet above the sea-level.
"Here was the problem that confronted Dunbar—he had to travel over at least thirty miles of icy splinters over an ice-foot whose surface was broken into every possible contortion of crystallization. There were mounds, hummocks, caverns, crevasses, ridges and gulfs of the hardest and oldest ice. Then when this barrier was crossed there was the icy backbone of the whole system, five hundred to a thousand feet in height, to be crossed, as there was no lane or opening to be discovered through so formidable a range of ice mountains. Even if he succeeded in crossing the same, there would certainly be an ice-[241]foot of perhaps greater dimensions than the one before him to cross, and that might prove to be only a valley of ice leading to other and still more inaccessible cliffs to be surmounted.
[243]
"'This is no place to die in,' said Dunbar, 'and so, boys, we've got to hustle if we ever expect to get home.'
"'Ay, ay, sir,' said his companions, but when they reached the ice they found that having remained in a cramped position for a month in the boat had incapacitated them for walking.
"It was also found that Walker's feet and those of four other sailors had been frostbitten, and that they were totally unable to be of any service to themselves or the others.
"The outlook was mournful in the extreme. The only thing that cheered them was the constant sunlight, and even that consolation would depart in another month, and if in the mean time they did not get away from the ice, hunger and the awful desolation of a polar winter would terminate their existence.
"There was no chance of starting on their journey until they got accustomed to the use of their limbs, and so they built a hut of blocks of ice, which were solidly frozen together by a few buckets full of sea water thrown over them.
"The dogs were glad to get on the ice again, and scampered about totally oblivious of the fact that the supply of pork was getting very low, and unless they got some fresh meat very soon they would be obliged to feed on each other.
"They remained a fortnight in their Arctic abode exercising themselves by cutting a passage in the ice. During this time four of the sailors died. Finally the remainder, packing everything into the boat, yoked the dogs thereto, and started in anything but hopeful spirits on their arduous journey.
"It was found that Walker had to be carried along, but he did not long continue a burden to his associates, for on the fourth day of the march he died, and was buried in the snow. It was a toilsome journey. Almost every foot of the way required to be hewn out of ice as hard as adamant.
"The dogs suffered greatly from insufficient food and tireless exertion. Several died from complete exhaustion, and were greedily devoured by their fellows.
"After desperate exertions, Dunbar and his company, now reduced to seven souls, gained the crest of the ice range and had the satisfaction of seeing open water not twenty miles away. It took some time to discover the best route for a descent,[244] but at last they reached the level of the ice-foot beyond, and struck for open sea. A fortunate capture of several seals re-enforced their almost exhausted supply of provisions.
"Dunbar cared nothing about latitude or longitude or scientific information in such a desperate fight for life. It was a joyful moment when he and his companions launched their boat safe into the sea again after the incredible toil of dragging it forty miles across the splintered ice peaks and the terrible ice-foot north and south of the paleocrystic mountains.
"Dunbar hoisted his sail, abandoning the few dogs who yet remained alive, and with his unhappy companions steered for Behring Strait, first making for the coast of Alaska that faces the desolation of the Arctic seas.
"It would be impossible to describe the horrors of that lonely voyage. The terrible struggle with five hundred miles of ice-floes, with snow-storms that piled the snow high upon the voyagers, and the ferocious cold, proved too much for five of the seven sailors, and one by one the poor fellows died, and were thrown overboard.
"Only two men—Dunbar and a sailor named Henderson—emerged from the Arctic Sea, arriving in six months from the time they left the ship, in Sitka, Alaska."
CHAPTER XLV. THE VOYAGES OF THE "MERCURY" AND THE "AURORA BOREALIS.""It was a most fortunate thing that any of the men could live until they reached civilization," I said, when Captain Adams had finished his reading of Dunbar's story in the paper.
"It was solely due to that fact that we are here at present, admiral," replied Captain Adams. "No sooner was the story published than the greatest possible excitement arose both in America and Europe. The United States and Britain felt
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