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At times we gasped for breath at an elevation beyond the albatross at times became dizzy with the velocity of our descent into some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken. We were at the bottom of one of these abysses, when a quick scream from my companion broke fearfully upon the night.
There are oars, but no one is using them. They have been dropped in despair; and the boat lies becalmed just as the two rafts. Like them, it appears to be adrift upon the ocean. Could the albatross exert a reasoning faculty it would know that these various objects indicated a wreck. Some vessel has either foundered and gone to the bottom, or has caught fire and perished in the flames.
"'He is a fine creature, said the Mother Albatross, peeping at the captain from her nest; 'that is, he would be if he had wings, and could speak properly, instead of making that unmusical jabbering like a monkey. "'I would give a good deal to one of them for a report of the first boat, the captain went on. 'Heaven knows I would be content to die here if I could know that it was safe.
The contents of the first cases will at once strike him: here are the Petrels, and the associations of shipwreck and disaster with which they have ever been connected. The group includes the stormy petrel, and the albatross. They have an altogether wild and singular appearance.
"Uncle Prudent," said Phil Evans, "it seems that this astonishing "Albatross" never has anything to fear." "That we shall see!" answered the president of the Weldon Institute. The fog lasted three days, the 19th, 20th, and 21st of June, with regrettable persistence. An ascent had to be made to clear the Japanese mountain of Fujiyama.
He determined to cast his fortune with the diamond hunters that were going from different parts of the world to the promised "Eldorado," Having secured a supply of implements and stores that he considered necessary, he took passage on the tall rigged ship Albatross, commanded by a friend of his. The Albatross was bound for China by way of Cape Town, and the captain promised to land him there.
At seven-bells I called Bob, who set about the preparations for breakfast, and great were our mutual congratulations over that meal at the now thoroughly-established fact that, fast as the Albatross undoubtedly was, she was no match for the little Water Lily in ordinary weather.
The fears of the two colleagues were realized; but it did not seem as though Robur had the least anxiety about venturing over this vast ocean. Both he and his men seemed quite unconcerned about it and had gone back to their stations. Whither was the "Albatross" bound? Was she going more than round the world as Robur had said? Even if she were, the voyage must end somewhere.
Then she rose again to cross the Sea of Okhotsk, running down by the Kurile Isles, which seemed to be a breakwater pierced by hundreds of channels. On the 19th, in the morning, the "Albatross" was over the strait of La Perouse between Saghalien and Northern Japan, and had reached the mouth of the great Siberian river, the Amoor.
At two o'clock in the morning Balleny Island was sighted on the coast of Discovery Land, though it could not be recognized owing to its being bound to the mainland by a cement of ice. And the "Albatross" emerged from the polar circle on the hundred and seventy-fifth meridian.
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