An Antarctic Mystery - Jules Verne (good summer reads TXT) 📗

And yet the prize is tempting! From Tsalal Island to the pole, admitting that we might get there, is six degrees. Now six degrees at two thousand dollars each makes twelve thousand dollars for thirty men, that is four hundred dollars a head. A nice little sum to slip into one’s pocket on the return of the Halbrane; but, notwithstanding, that fellow Hearne works so wickedly upon his comrades that I believe they are ready to ’bout ship in spite of anybody.”

“I can believe that of the recruits, boatswain, but the old crew⁠—”

“H⁠—m! there are three or four of those who are beginning to reflect, and they are not easy in their minds about the prolongation of the voyage.”

“I fancy Captain Len Guy and his lieutenant will know to get themselves obeyed.”

“We shall see, Mr. Jeorling. But may it not be that our captain himself will get disheartened; that the sense of his responsibility will prevail, and that he will renounce his enterprise?”

Yes! this was what I feared, and there was no remedy on that side.

“As for my friend Endicott, Mr. Jeorling, I answer for him as for myself. We would go to the end of the world⁠—if the world has an end⁠—did the captain want to go there. True, we two, Dirk Peters and yourself, are but a few to be a law to the others.”

“And what do you think of the half-breed?” I asked.

“Well, our men appear to accuse him chiefly of the prolongation of the voyage. You see, Mr. Jeorling, though you have a good deal to do with it, you pay, and pay well, while this crazy fellow, Dirk Peters, persists in asserting that his poor Pym is still living⁠—his poor Pym who was drowned, or frozen, or crushed⁠—killed, anyhow, one way or another, eleven years ago!”

So completely was this my own belief that I never discussed the subject with the half-breed.

“You see, Mr. Jeorling,” resumed the boatswain, “at the first some curiosity was felt about Dirk Peters. Then, after he saved Martin Holt, it was interest. Certainly, he was no more talkative than before, and the bear came no oftener out of his den! But now we know what he is, and no one likes him the better for that. At all events it was he who induced our captain, by talking of land to the south of Tsalal Island, to make this voyage, and it is owing to him that he has reached the eighty-sixth degree of latitude.”

“That is quite true, boatswain.”

“And so, Mr. Jeorling, I am always afraid that one of these days somebody will do Peters an ill turn.”

“Dirk Peters would defend himself, and I should pity the man who laid a finger on him.”

“Quite so. It would not be good for anybody to be in his hands, for they could bend iron! But then, all being against him, he would be forced into the hold.”

“Well, well, we have not yet come to that, I hope, and I count on you, Hurliguerly, to prevent any against Dirk Peters. Reason with your men. Make them understand that we have time to return to the Falklands before the end of the fine season. Their reproaches must not be allowed to provide the captain with an excuse for turning back before the object is attained.”

“Count on me, Mr. Jeorling, to well serve you to the best of my ability.”

“You will not repent of doing so, Hurliguerly. Nothing is easier than to add a round 0 to the four hundred dollars which each man is to have, if that man be something more than a sailor⁠—even were his functions simply those of boatswain on board the Halbrane.”

Nothing important occurred on the 13th and 14th, but a fresh fall in the temperature took place. Captain Len Guy called my attention to this, pointing out the flocks of birds continuously flying north.

While he was speaking to me I felt that his last hopes were fading. And who could wonder? Of the land indicated by the half-breed nothing was seen, and we were already more than one hundred and eighty miles from Tsalal Island. At every point of the compass was the sea, nothing but the vast sea with its desert horizon which the sun’s disk had been nearing since the 21st and would touch on the 21st March, prior to disappearing during the six months of the austral night. Honestly, was it possible to admit that William Guy and his five companions could have accomplished such a distance on a craft, and was there one chance in a hundred that they could ever be recovered?

On the 15th of January an observation most carefully taken gave 43° 13′ longitude and 88° 17′ latitude. The Halbrane was less than two degrees from the pole.

Captain Len Guy did not seek to conceal the result of this observation, and the sailors knew enough of nautical calculation to understand it. Besides, if the consequences had to be explained to them, were not Holt and Hardy there to do this, and Hearne, to exaggerate them to the utmost?

During the afternoon I had indubitable proof that the sealing-master had been working on the minds of the crew. The men, emerging at the foot of the mainmast, talked in whispers and cast evil glances at us. Two or three sailors made threatening gestures undisguisedly; then arose such angry mutterings that West could not to be deaf to them.

He strode forward and called out. “Silence, there! The first man who speaks will have to reckon with me!”

Captain Len Guy was shut up in his cabin, but every moment I expected to see him come out, give one last look around the waste of waters, and then order the ship’s course to be reversed. Nevertheless, on the next day the schooner was sailing in the same direction. Unfortunately⁠—for the circumstance had some gravity⁠—a mist was beginning to come down on us. I could not keep still, I confess. My apprehensions were redoubled. It was that West was only awaiting the order