"But," asked the boatswain, "how is the state the boat is in to be explained?"
"And especially," added West, "the disappearance of all the iron?"
"Indeed," said I, "it looks as though every bit had been violently torn off."
Leaving the Paracuta in the charge of two men, we again took our way to the interior, in order to extend our search over a wider expanse.
As we were approaching the huge mound the mist cleared away, and the form stood out with greater distinctness. It was, as I have said, almost that of a sphinx, a dusky-hued sphinx, as though the matter which composed it had been oxidized by the inclemency of the polar climate.
And then a possibility flashed into my mind, an hypothesis which explained these astonishing phenomena.
"Ah!" I exclaimed, "a loadstone! that is it! A magnet with prodigious power of attraction!"
I was understood, and in an instant the final catastrophe, to which Hearne and his companions were victims, was explained with terrible clearness.
The Antarctic Sphinx was simply a colossal magnet. Under the influence of that magnet the iron bands of the Halbrane's boat had been torn out and projected as though by the action of a catapult. 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?
