An Antarctic Mystery (7 page)

Naturally, in proportion as the schooner sailed southwards the
variation of the compass became less, while the temperature became
milder, with a sky always clear and a uniform northerly breeze.
Needless to add that in that latitude and in the month of January
there was no darkness.

The
Jane
pursued her adventurous course, until, on the 18th of
January, land was sighted in latitude 83° 20' and longitude 43°
5'.

This proved to be an island belonging to a numerous group scattered
about in a westerly direction.

The schooner approached and anchored off the shore. Arms were placed
in the boats, and Arthur Pym got into one of the latter with Dirk
Peters. The men rowed shorewards, but were stopped by four canoes
carrying armed men, "new men" the narrative calls them. These
men showed no hostile intentions, but cried out continuously
"anamoo" and "lamalama." When the canoes were alongside the
schooner, the chief, Too-Wit, was permitted to go on board with
twenty of his companions. There was profound astonishment on their
part then, for they took theship for a living creature, and lavished
caresses on the rigging, the masts, and the bulwarks. Steered
between the reefs by these natives, she crossed a bay with a bottom
of black sand, and cast anchor within a mile of the beach. Then
William Guy, leaving the hostages on board, stepped ashore amid the
rocks.

If Arthur Pym is to be believed, this was Tsalal Island! Its trees
resembled none of the species in any other zone of our planet. The
composition of the rocks revealed a stratification unknown to modern
mineralogists. Over the bed of the streams ran a liquid substance
without any appearance of limpidity, streaked with distinct veins,
which did not reunite by immediate cohesion when they were parted by
the blade of a knife!

Klock-Klock, which we are obliged to describe as the chief
"town" of the island, consisted of wretched huts entirely formed
of black skins; it possessed domestic animals resembling the common
pig, a sort of sheep with a black fleece, twenty kinds of fowls,
tame albatross, ducks, and large turtles in great numbers.

On arriving at Klock-Klock, Captain William Guy and his companions
found a population—which Arthur Pym estimated at ten thousand
souls, men, women, and children—if not to be feared, at least to
be kept at a distance, so noisy and demonstrative were they.
Finally, after a long halt at the hut of Too-Wit, the strangers
returned to the shore, where the "bêche-de-mer"—the favourite
food of the Chinese—would provide enormous cargoes; for the
succulent mollusk is more abundant there than in any other part of
the austral regions.

Captain William Guy immediately endeavoured to come to an
understanding with Too-Wit on this matter, requesting him to
authorize the construction of sheds in which some of the men of the
Jane
might prepare the bêche-de-mer, while the schooner should hold
on her course towards the Pole. Too-Wit accepted this proposal
willingly, and made a bargain by which the natives were to give
their labour in the gathering-in of the precious mollusk.

At the end of a month, the sheds being finished, three men were told
off to remain at Tsalal. The natives had not given the strangers
cause to entertain the slightest suspicion of them. Before leaving
the place, Captain William Guy wished to return once more to the
village of Klock-Klock, having, from prudent motives, left six men
on board, the guns charged, the bulwark nettings in their place, the
anchor hanging at the forepeak—in a word, all in readiness to
oppose an approach of the natives. Too-Wit, escorted by a hundred
warriors, came out to meet the visitors. Captain William Guy and his
men, although the place was propitious to an ambuscade, walked in
close order, each pressing upon the other. On the right, a little in
advance, were Arthur Pym, Dirk Peters, and a sailor named Allen.
Having reached a spot where a fissure traversed the hillside, Arthur
Pym turned into it in order to gather some hazel nuts which hung in
clusters upon stunted bushes. Having done this, he was returning to
the path, when he perceived that Allen and the half-breed had
accompanied him. They were all three approaching the mouth of the
fissure, when they were thrown down by a sudden and violent shock.
At the same moment the crumbling masses of the hill slid down upon
them and they instantly concluded that they were doomed to be buried
alive.

Alive—all three? No! Allen had been so deeply covered by the
sliding soil that he was already smothered, but Arthur Pym and Dirk
Peters contrived to drag themselves on their knees, and opening a
way with their bowie knives, to a projecting mass of harder clay,
which had resisted the movement from above, and from thence they
climbed to a natural platform at the extremity of a wooded ravine.
Above them they could see the blue sky-roof, and from their position
were enabled to survey the surrounding country.

An artificial landslip, cunningly contrived by the natives, had
taken place. Captain William Guy and his twenty-eight companions had
disappeared; they were crushed beneath more than a million tons of
earth and stones.

The plain was swarming with natives who had come, no doubt, from the
neighbouring islets, attracted by the prospect of pillaging the
Jane
. Seventy boats were being paddled towards the ship. The six men
on board fired on them, but their aim was uncertain in the first
volley; a second, in which mitraille and grooved bullets were used,
produced terrible effect. Nevertheless, the
Jane
being boarded by
the swarming islanders, her defenders were massacred, and she was
set on fire.

Finally a terrific explosion took place—the fire had reached the
powder store—killing a thousand natives and mutilating as many
more, while the others fled, uttering the cry of
tékéli-li!
tékéli-li!

During the following week, Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters, living on
nuts and bitterns' flesh, escaped discovery by the natives, who
did not suspect their presence. They found themselves at the bottom
of a sort of dark abyss including several planes, but without issue,
hollowed out from the hillside, and of great extent. The two men
could not live in the midst of these successive abysses, and after
several attempts they let themselves slide on one of the slopes of
the hill. Instantly, six savages rushed upon them; but, thanks to
their pistols, and the extraordinary strength of the half-breed,
four of the assailants were killed. The fifth was dragged away by
the fugitives, who reached a boat which had been pulled up on the
beach and was laden with three huge turtles. A score of natives
pursued and vainly tried to stop them; the former were driven off,
and the boat was launched successfully and steered for the south.

Arthur Pym was then navigating beyond the eighty-fourth degree of
south latitude. It was the beginning of March, that is to say, the
antarctic winter was approaching. Five or six islands, which it was
prudent to avoid, were visible towards the west. Arthur Pym's
opinion was that the temperature would become more mild by degrees
as they approached the pole. They tied together two white shirts
which they had been wearing, and hoisted them to do duty as a sail.
At sight of these shirts the native, who answered to the name of
Nu-Nu, was terrified. For eight days this strange voyage continued,
favoured by a mild wind from the north, in permanent daylight, on a
sea without a fragment of ice, indeed, owing to the high and even
temperature of the water, no ice had been seen since the parallel of
Bennet Island.

Then it was that Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters entered upon a region of
novelty and wonder. Above the horizon line rose a broad bar of light
grey vapour, striped with long luminous rays, such as are projected
by the polar aurora. A very strong current came to the aid of the
breeze. The boat sailed rapidly upon a liquid surface of milky
aspect, exceedingly hot, and apparently agitated from beneath. A
fine white ash-dust began to fall, and this increased the terror of
Nu-Nu, whose lips trembled over his two rows of black ivory.

On the 9th of March this rain of ashes fell in redoubled volume, and
the temperature of the water rose so high that the hand could no
longer bear it. The immense curtain of vapour, spread over the
distant perimeter of the southern horizon resembled a boundless
cataract falling noiselessly from the height of some huge rampart
lost in the height of the heavens.

Twelve days later, it was darkness that hung over these waters,
darkness furrowed by luminous streaks darting from the milky depths
of the Antarctic Ocean, while the incessant shower of ash-dust fell
and melted in its waters.

The boat approached the cataract with an impetuous velocity whose
cause is not explained in the narrative of Arthur Pym. In the midst
of this frightful darkness a flock of gigantic birds, of livid white
plumage, swept by, uttering their eternal
tékéli-li
, and then the
savage, in the supreme throes of terror, gave up the ghost.

Suddenly, in a mad whirl of speed, the boat rushed into the grasp of
the cataract, where a vast gulf seemed ready to swallow it up. But
before the mouth of this gulf there stood a veiled human figure, of
greater size than any inhabitant of this earth, and the colour of
the man's skin was the perfect whiteness of snow.

Such is the strange romance conceived by the more than human genius
of the greatest poet of the New World.

The navigation of the
Halbrane
went on prosperously with the help of
the sea and the wind. In fifteen days, if this state of things
lasted, she might reach Tristan d'Acunha. Captain Len Guy left the
working of the ship to James West, and well might he do so; there
was nothing to fear with such a seaman as he.

"Our lieutenant has not his match afloat," said Hurliguerly to
me one day. "He ought to be in command of a flag-ship."

"Indeed," I replied, "he seems to be a true son of the sea."

"And then, our
Halbrane
, what a craft! Congratulate yourself, Mr.
Jeorling, and congratulate yourself also that I succeeded in
bringing the captain to change his mind about you."

"If it was you who obtained that result, boatswain, I thank you
heartily."

"And so you ought, for he was plaguily against it, was our
captain, in spite of all old man Atkins could say. But I managed to
make him hear reason."

"I shan't forget it, boatswain, I shan't forget it, since,
thanks to your intervention, instead of moping at Kerguelen. I hope
shortly to get within sight of Tristan d'Acunha."

"In a few days, Mr. Jeorling. Only think, sir, according to what I
hear tell, they are making ships in England and America with
machines in their insides, and wheels which they use as a duck uses
its paddles. All right, we shall know what's the good of them when
they come into use. My notion is, however, that those ships will
never be able to fight with a fine frigate sailing with a fresh
breeze."

It was the 3rd of September. If nothing occurred to delay us, our
schooner would be in sight of port in three days. The chief island
of the group is visible on clear days at a great distance.

That day, between ten and eleven o'clock in the morning, I was
walking backwards and forwards on the deck, on the windward side. We
were sliding smoothly over the surface of an undulating sea. The
Halbrane
resembled an enormous bird, one of the gigantic albatross
kind described by Arthur Pym—which had spread its sail-like wings,
and was carrying a whole ship's crew towards space.

James West was looking out through his glasses to starboard at an
object floating two or three miles away, and several sailors,
hanging over the side, were also curiously observing it.

I went forward and looked attentively at the object. It was an
irregularly formed mass about twelve yards in length, and in the
middle of it there appeared a shining lump.

"That is no whale," said Martin Holt, the sailing-master. "It
would have blown once or twice since we have been looking at it."

"Certainly!" assented Hardy. "Perhaps it is the carcase of
some deserted ship."

"May the devil send it to the bottom!" cried Roger. "It would
be a bad job to come up against it in the dark; it might send us
down before we could know what had happened."

"I believe you," added Drap, "and these derelicts are more
dangerous than a rock, for they are now here and again there, and
there's no avoiding them."

Hurliguerly came up at this moment and planted his elbows on the
bulwark, alongside of mine.

"What do you think of it, boatswain?" I asked.

"It is my opinion, Mr. Jeorling," replied the boatswain, "that
what we see there is neither a blower nor a wreck, but merely a lump
of ice."

"Hurliguerly is right," said James West; "it is a lump of ice,
a piece of an iceberg which the currents have carried hither."

"What?" said I, "to the forty-fifth parallel?"

"Yes, sir," answered West, "that has occurred, and the ice
sometimes gets up as high as the Cape, if we are to take the word of
a French navigator, Captain Blosseville, who met one at this height
in 1828."

"Then this mass will melt before long," I observed, feeling not
a little surprised that West had honoured me by so lengthy a reply.

"It must indeed be dissolved in great part already," he
continued, "and what we see is the remains of a mountain of ice
which must have weighed millions of tons."

Captain Len Guy now appeared, and perceiving the group of sailors
around West, he came forward. A few words were exchanged in a low
tone between the captain and the lieutenant, and the latter passed
his glass to the former, who turned it upon the floating object, now
at least a mile nearer to us.