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On arriving at the base of the mound, we found there the various articles on which the magnet had exerted its power; arms, utensils, the grapnel of the Paracuta, all adhering to the sides of the monster. There also were the iron relics of the Halbrane’s boat, all her utensils, arms, and fittings, even to the nails and the iron portions of the rudder.
Now the faithful half-breed rests under the clay of the Land of the Antarctic Mystery, by the side of his “poor Pym,” that hero whose strange adventures found a chronicler no less strange in the great American poet! 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.
To be sure, the sea was smooth, its long, rolling waves were hardly ruffled on their surface. On the loth of March, with the same longitude the observation gave 7° 13’ for latitude. The speed of the Paracuta had then been thirty miles in each twenty-four hours.
There was an electric snowstorm, with great flakes falling loosely, and the contact produced this strange luminosity. The sea rose so suddenly and tumbled about so wildly that the Paracuta was several times in danger of being swallowed up by the waves, but we got through the mystic-seeming tempest all safe and sound. Nevertheless, space was thenceforth but imperfectly lighted.
Frequent mists came up and bounded our outlook to a few cable-lengths. Extreme watchfulness and caution were necessary to avoid collision with the floating masses of ice, which were travelling more slowly than the Paracuta. It is also to be noted that, on the southern side, the sky was frequently lighted up by the broad and brilliant rays of the polar aurora.
This state of things lasted until morning, without our being able to account for what was happening, when at about ten o’clock the mist began to disperse in the low zones. The coast on the west reappeared a rocky coast, without a mountainous background; the Paracuta was following its line.
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.
This was the occult force that had irresistibly attracted everything made of iron on the Paracuta. And the boat itself would have shared the fate of the Halbrane’s boat had a single bit of that metal been employed in its construction. Was it, then, the proximity of the magnetic pole that produced such effects? At first we entertained this idea, but on reflection we rejected it.
Firstly, a few days after our departure from the Land the Sphinx, the sun set behind the western horizon reappear no more for the whole winter. It was then the midst of the semi-darkness of the austral night that the Paracuta pursued her monotonous course.
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!
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