CAPTAIN HATTERAS.
The _Forward_ was advancing rapidly under steam between the ice-fields
and the mountains of ice. Johnson was at the helm. Shandon was
examining the horizon with his snow-spectacles; but his joy was brief,
for he soon saw that the passage was blocked up by a circle of
mountains.
Nevertheless, he preferred to take his chances with pushing on, to
returning.
The dog followed the brig on the ice, but he kept at a respectful
distance. Only, if he lagged too far, there was to be heard a singular
whistle which at once brought him on.
The first time that this whistle was heard, the sailors looked around;
they were alone on the deck, talking together; there was no unknown
person there; and yet this whistle was often repeated.
Clifton was the first to take alarm.
"Do you hear that?" he said; "and do you see how the dog starts as
soon as he hears it?"
"It's past belief," said Gripper.
"Very well!" cried Pen; "I'm not going any farther."
"Pen is right," said Brunton; "it's tempting Providence."
"Tempting the Devil," answered Clifton. "I should rather give up all
my share of the pay than go on."
"We shall never get back," said Bolton, dejectedly.
The crew was exceedingly demoralized.
"Not a foot farther!" cried Wolston; "is that your opinion?"
"Yes, yes!" answered the sailors.
"Well," said Bolton, "let's go find the commander; I'll undertake to
tell him."
The sailors in a dense group made their way to the quarter-deck.
[Illustration]
The _Forward_ was then advancing into a large arena, which had a
diameter of about eight hundred feet; it was completely closed, with
the exception of one place through which the ship entered.
Shandon saw that he was locking himself in. But what was to be done?
How could he retreat? He felt all the responsibility, and his hand
nervously grasped his glass.
The doctor looked on in silence, with folded arms; he gazed at the
walls of ice, the average height of which was about three hundred
feet. A cloud of fog lay like a dome above the gulf.
Then it was that Bolton spoke to the commander.
"Commander," said he in a broken voice, "we can't go any farther."
"What's that you are saying?" said Shandon, who felt enraged at the
slight given to his authority.
"We have come to say, Commander," resumed Bolton, "that we have done
enough for this invisible captain, and that we have made up our minds
not to go on any farther."
"Made up your minds?" cried Shandon. "Is that the way you talk to me,
Bolton? Take care."
"You need not threaten," retorted Pen, brutally, "we are not going any
farther."
Shandon stepped towards the mutinous sailors, when the boatswain said
to him in a low voice,--
"Commander, if we want to get out of this place, we have not a moment
to lose. There's an iceberg crowding towards the entrance; it may
prevent our getting out and imprison us here."
Shandon returned to look at the state of affairs.
"You will account for this afterwards," he said to the mutineers.
"Now, go about!"
The sailors hastened to their places. The _Forward_ went about
rapidly; coal was heaped on the fires; it was necessary to beat the
iceberg. There was a race between them; the brig stood towards the
south, the berg was drifting northward, threatening to bar the way.
"Put on all the steam, Brunton, do you hear?" said Shandon.
The _Forward_ glided like a bird through the broken ice, which her
prow cut through easily; the ship shook with the motion of the screw,
and the gauge indicated a full pressure of steam, the deafening roar
of which resounded above everything.
"Load the safety-valve!" cried Shandon.
The engineer obeyed at the risk of bursting the boilers.
But these desperate efforts were vain; the iceberg, driven by a
submarine current, moved rapidly towards the exit; the brig was still
three cable-lengths distant, when the mountain, entering the vacant
space like a wedge, joined itself to its companions, and closed the
means of escape.
"We are lost!" cried Shandon, who was unable to restrain that unwise
speech.
"Lost!" repeated the crew.
"Lower the boats!" cried many.
"To the steward's pantry!" cried Pen and some of his set; "if we must
drown, let us drown in gin!"
The wildest confusion raged among these half-wild men. Shandon felt
unable to assert his authority; he wanted to give some orders; he
hesitated, he stammered; his thoughts could find no words. The doctor
walked up and down nervously. Johnson folded his arms stoically, and
said not a word.
Suddenly a strong, energetic, commanding voice was heard above the
din, uttering these words:--
"Every man to his place! Prepare to go about!"
[Illustration]
Johnson shuddered, and, without knowing what he did, turned the wheel
rapidly.
It was time; the brig, going under full steam, was about crashing
against the walls of its prison.
But while Johnson instinctively obeyed, Shandon, Clawbonny, the crew,
all, even down to Warren the fireman, who had abandoned his fires, and
Strong the cook, who had fled from his galley, were collected on the
deck, and all saw issuing from the cabin, the key of which he alone
possessed, a man.
This man was the sailor Garry.
"Sir!" cried Shandon, turning pale, "Garry--by what right do you give
orders here?"
"Duke!" said Garry, repeating the whistle which had so surprised the
crew.
The dog, on hearing his real name, sprang on the quarter-deck, and lay
down quietly at his master's feet.
The crew did not utter a word. The key which the captain alone should
possess, the dog which he had sent and which had identified him, so to
speak, the tone of command which it was impossible to mistake,--all
this had a strong influence on the minds of the sailors, and was
enough to establish firmly Garry's authority.
Besides, Garry was hardly to be recognized; he had removed the thick
whiskers which had surrounded his face, thereby giving it a more
impassible, energetic, and commanding expression; he stood before them
clothed in a captain's uniform, which he had had placed in his cabin.
So the crew of the _Forward_, animated in spite of themselves,
shouted,--
"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah for the captain!"
"Shandon," he said to his first officer, "have the crew put in line; I
want to inspect them."
Shandon obeyed, and gave the requisite orders with an agitated voice.
The captain walked in front of the officers and men, saying a word to
each, and treating him according to his past conduct.
When he had finished his inspection, he went back to the quarter-deck,
and calmly uttered these words:--
"Officers and sailors, I am an Englishman like you all, and my motto
is that of Lord Nelson,--'England expects every man to do his duty.'
"As Englishmen, I am unwilling, we are unwilling, that others should
go where we have not been. As Englishmen, I shall not endure, we shall
not endure, that others should have the glory of going farther north
than we. If human foot is ever to reach the Pole, it must be the foot
of an Englishman! Here is the flag of our country. I have equipped
this ship, I have devoted my fortune to this undertaking, I shall
devote to it my life and yours, but this flag shall float over the
North Pole. Fear not. You shall receive a thousand pounds sterling for
every degree that we get farther north after this day. Now we are at
the seventy-second, and there are ninety in all. Figure it out. My
name will be proof enough. It means energy and patriotism. I am
Captain Hatteras."
"Captain Hatteras!" cried Shandon. And this name, familiar to them
all, soon spread among all the crew.
"Now," resumed Hatteras, "let us anchor the brig to the ice; let the
fires be put out, and every one return to his usual occupation.
Shandon, I want to speak with you about the ship. You will join me in
my cabin with the doctor, Wall, and the boatswain. Johnson, dismiss
the men."
Hatteras, calm and cold, quietly left the poop-deck, while Shandon had
the brig made fast to the ice.
Who was this Hatteras, and why did his name make so deep an impression
upon the crew?
John Hatteras, the only son of a London brewer, who died in 1852,
worth six million pounds, took to the sea at an early age, unmindful
of the large fortune which was to come to him. Not that he had any
commercial designs, but a longing for geographical discovery possessed
him; he was continually dreaming of setting foot on some spot
untrodden of man.
When twenty years old, he had the vigorous constitution of thin,
sanguine men; an energetic face, with well-marked lines, a high
forehead, rising straight from the eyes, which were handsome but cold,
thin lips, indicating a mouth chary of words, medium height, well-knit
muscular limbs, indicated a man ready for any experience. Any one who
saw him would have called him bold, and any one who heard him would
have called him coldly passionate; he was a man who would never
retreat, and who would risk the lives of others as coldly as his own.
One would hence think twice before following him in his expeditions.
John Hatteras had a great deal of English pride, and it was he who
once made this haughty reply to a Frenchman.
The Frenchman said with what he considered politeness, and even
kindness,--
"If I were not a Frenchman, I should like to be an Englishman."
"If I were not an Englishman, I should like to be an Englishman!"
That retort points the nature of the man.
He would have liked to reserve for his fellow-countrymen the monopoly
of geographical discovery; but much to his chagrin, during previous
centuries, they had done but little in the way of discovery.
America was discovered by the Genoese, Christopher Columbus; the East
Indies by the Portuguese, Vasco de Gama; China by the Portuguese,
Fernao d'Andrada; Terra del Fuego by the Portuguese, Magellan; Canada
by the Frenchman, Jacques Cartier; the islands of Sumatra, Java, etc.,
Labrador, Brazil, the Cape of Good Hope, the Azores, Madeira,
Newfoundland, Guinea, Congo, Mexico, White Cape, Greenland, Iceland,
the South Pacific Ocean, California, Japan, Cambodia, Peru,
Kamschatka, the Philippine Islands, Spitzbergen, Cape Horn, Behring
Strait, New Zealand, Van Diemen's Land, New Britain, New Holland, the
Louisiana, Island of Jan-Mayen, by Icelanders, Scandinavians,
Frenchmen, Russians, Portuguese, Danes, Spaniards, Genoese, and
Dutchmen; but no Englishmen figured among them, and it was a constant
source of grief to Hatteras to see his fellow-countrymen excluded from
the glorious band of sailors who made the great discoveries of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Hatteras consoled himself somewhat when he considered modern times:
the English took their revenge with Stuart, McDougall Stuart, Burke,
Wells, King, Gray, in Australia; with Palliser in America; with
Havnoan in Syria; with Cyril Graham, Waddington, Cunningham, in India;
and with Barth, Burton, Speke, Grant, and Livingstone in Africa.
But this was not enough; for Hatteras these men were rather finishers
than discoverers; something better was to be done, so he invented a
country in order to have the honor of discovering it.
Now he had noticed that if the English were in a minority with regard
to the early discoveries, that if it was necessary to go back to Cook
to make sure of New Caledonia in 1774, and of the Sandwich Islands
where he was killed in 1778, there was nevertheless one corner of the
globe on which they had centred all their efforts.
This was the northern seas and lands of North America.
In fact, the list of polar discoveries runs as follows:--
Nova Zembla, discovered by Willoughby in 1553.
Island of Wiegehts, discovered by Barrow in 1556.
West Coast of Greenland, discovered by Davis in 1585.
Davis Strait, discovered by Davis in 1587.
Spitzbergen, discovered by Willoughby in 1596.
Hudson's Bay, discovered by Hudson in 1610.
Baffin's Bay, discovered by Baffin in 1616.
During recent years Hearne, Mackenzie, John Ross, Parry, Franklin,
Richardson, Beechey, James Ross, Back, Dease, Simpson, Rae,
Inglefield, Belcher, Austin, Kellet, Moore, MacClure, Kennedy,
MacClintock, were incessantly exploring these unknown regions.
The northern coast of America had been accurately made out, the
Northwest Passage nearly discovered, but that was not enough; there
was something greater to be done, and this John Hatteras had twice
tried, fitting out ships at his own expense; he wanted to reach the
Pole itself, and thus to crown the list of English discoveries by a
glorious success.
To reach the Pole itself was the aim of his life.
After many successful voyages in the southern seas, Hatteras tried for
the first time in 1846 to reach the North through Baffin's Bay, but he
could get no farther than latitude 74 degrees; he sailed in the sloop
_Halifax_; his crew suffered terribly, and John Hatteras carried his
temerity so far that henceforth sailors were averse to undertaking a
similar expedition under such a leader.
Notwithstanding, in 1850, Hatteras succeeded in obtaining for the
schooner _Farewell_ about twenty determined men, but who were
persuaded especially by the high pay offered their boldness. It was
then that Dr. Clawbonny began to correspond with John Hatteras, whom
he did not know, about accompanying him; but the post of surgeon was
filled, fortunately for the doctor.
The _Farewell_, following the route taken by the _Neptune_ of Aberdeen
in 1817, went to the north of Spitzbergen, as far as latitude 76
degrees. There they were obliged to winter; but their sufferings were
such, and the cold so intense, that of all on board, Hatteras alone
returned to England. He was picked up by a Danish whaler after he had
walked more than two hundred miles across the ice.
The excitement produced by the return of this man alone was intense;
who, after this, would accompany Hatteras in his bold attempts? Still
he did not abandon the hope of trying again. His father, the brewer,
died, and he came into possession of an enormous fortune.
Meanwhile something had happened which cut John Hatteras to the heart.
A brig, the _Advance_, carrying seventeen men, equipped by Mr.
Grinnell, a merchant, commanded by Dr. Kane, and sent out in search of
Franklin, went as far north, through Baffin's Bay and Smith's Sound,
as latitude 82 degrees, nearer to the Pole than any of his
predecessors had gone.
Now this was an American ship. Grinnell was an American, Kane was an
American!
It is easy to understand how the customary disdain of the Englishman
for the Yankee turned to hatred in the heart of Hatteras; he made up
his mind, at any price, to beat his bold rival, and to reach the Pole
itself.
For two years he lived at Liverpool incognito. He was taken for a
sailor. He saw in Richard Shandon the man he wanted; he presented his
plans by an anonymous letter to him and to Dr. Clawbonny. The
_Forward_ was built and equipped. Hatteras kept his name a secret;
otherwise no one would have gone with him. He resolved only to take
command of the brig at some critical juncture, and when his crew had
gone too far to be able to retreat; he kept in reserve, as we have
seen, the power of making generous offers to the men, so that they
would follow him to the end of the world.
In fact, it was to the end of the world that he wanted to go.
Now matters looked very serious, and John Hatteras made himself known.
His dog, the faithful Duke, the companion of his expeditions, was the
first to recognize him, and fortunately for the bold, and
unfortunately for the timid, it was firmly established that the
captain of the _Forward_ was John Hatteras.
[Illustration: "John Hatteras."]