A LITTLE REMNANT.
That same day, in the afternoon, the _Paracuta_ departed from the
coast of the Land of the Sphinx, which had lain to the west of us
since the 21st of February.
By the death of Dirk Peters the number of the passengers was reduced
to twelve. These were all who remained of the double crew of the two
schooners, the first comprising thirty-eight men, the second,
thirty-two; in all seventy souls. But let it not be forgotten that
the voyage of the _Halbrane_ had been undertaken in fulfillment of a
duty to humanity, and four of the survivors of the _Jane_ owed their
rescue to it.
And now there remains but little to tell, and that little must be
related as succinctly as possible. It is unnecessary to dwell upon our
return voyage, which was favoured by the constancy of the currents
and the wind to their northern course. The last part of the voyage was
indeed accomplished amid great fatigue, suffering, and danger, but it
ended in our safe deliverance from all these.
[Illustration: The _Paracuta_.]
Firstly, a few days after our departure from the Land of the Sphinx,
the sun set behind the western horizon to reappear no more for the
whole winter. It was then in 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 like 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 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 Green 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 _Paracuta_ 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 altitudes, 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 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 2nd of April, the _Paracuta_ 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 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 95° 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° 30' latitude and
38° 21' east longitude, and Clarie Coast in 64° 30' and 129°
54'. 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 had failed us.
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 those who preceded us, although we actually did
pass 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.
THE END.
End of the Voyage Extraordinaire