Works of Jules Verne/Adventures of Captain Hatteras/The English at the North Pole/Chapter 21
CHAPTER XXI
BEGINNINGS OF MUTINY
This unexpected command occasioned great surprise on board the Forward, and loud exclamations were heard on all sides. Shandon looked fixedly at Wall, and the engineers stood perfectly stupefied.
"Did you hear me?" shouted the captain in an angry tone.
Brunton moved towards the hatchway, but stopped short again as a voice called out: "Don't go, Brunton!"
"Who spoke?" exclaimed Hatteras.
"It was I that spoke," said Pen, boldly, going up to the captain.
"And you said———"
"I said and I say," interrupted Pen with an oath, "that we have had enough of this work? that we are not going farther; that we neither intend to be killed with hard work, nor frozen to death in the winter; and that the furnaces shall not be lighted!"
"Mr. Shandon," replied Hatteras, coolly, "lay that man in irons."
"But, captain," objected Shandon, what the man has said is———"
"Repeat what this man has said, and I'll have you locked in your cabin and guarded. Seize that man! Does no one hear me?"
Johnson, Bell, and Simpson went forward; but the infuriated Pen was beside himself. He caught up a hand-spike, and brandishing it above his head, cried out:
"Touch me who dare!"
Hatteras went right up to him with a loaded revolver, which he aimed at his head, and said quietly: "Lift your finger, and I blow your brains out."
A murmur of disapprobation was heard; but it died away immediately when Hatteras said: "Silence among you, or that is a dead man."
Pen made no further attempt at resistance, but allowed Johnson and Bell to disarm him and lead him away to the hold.
"Go, Brunton!" said Hatteras.
The engineer obeyed without further parley, and the captain went up to the poop, followed by the Doctor.
As soon as the steam had acquired sufficient pressure, the anchors were lifted, and the Forward stood off for Point Beecher, and went towards the east, cutting through the newly-formed ice with her sharp prow.
She had to wend her way through narrow channels between numerous small islands. The ice-streams were constantly threatening to unite, hummocks had formed here and there already, and it was easy to see that the first frost that set in would consolidate the whole into one impenetrable mass.
Yet every now and then the sun would reappear and chase away the whirling snow, the thermometer would rise several degrees, difficulties would vanish as if by enchantment, and a stretch of clear, open water would greet the eye.
On Thursday, the 26th of July, the brig sailed close past Isle Dundas, still keeping her prow steadily towards the north; but almost directly afterwards she came to an enormous bank of ice, eight to nine feet high, composed of small icebergs that had been detached from the coast. There was no getting past it except by making a deep bend out of the course. At last a lead was discovered; but still the Forward made slow progress, for the fog came on, and this is a serious obstacle to a sailing vessel among ice. So long as the pilot can see a mile ahead, he can easily steer his way through the packs; but often it is so thick that he can- not see a cable's length before him, and the difficulty was increased by the blinding snow.
The birds were still very numerous, and their cries were deafening; the seals lolling indolently on the drifting floes, betrayed little fear, though they stretched out their long necks and gazed with wondering eyes as the vessel passed by.
At length, after six days' wearisome navigation, Point Beecher appeared to the north. Hatteras betook himself to the mast-head, and remained there for hours; for the open sea discovered by Stewart in May, 1851, could not be far off, and yet no sign of it as yet could be discovered. He came down again after his long watch without saying a word.
"Do you believe in this open sea?" asked Shandon, speaking to James Wall.
"I begin to have my doubts," was the reply.
"Was I not right, after all, in treating this pretended discovery as a mere chimera? And yet no one would listen to me, and even you, Wall, took the other side of the question."
"They will listen to you now, Shandon."
"Yes, when it is too late," he replied, and retired to his cabin, to which he had confined himself almost entirely since his discussion with the captain.
According to Penny, the sea ought to be quite clear now, for they had reached Point Barrow after taking ten days to go thirty miles. What was Hatteras to think? Was Penny's statement altogether apocryphal, or had winter already set in?
On the 15th of August the snow-covered head of Mount Percy appeared through the fog, and next day the sun set for the first time after incessant day for so long. However, the darkness which followed was by no means complete; though the sun had set, the refraction of his rays still gave sufficient light.
On the 19th of August, Cape Franklin was sighted to the east, and Cape Lady Franklin to the west; the one doubtless was the extreme point reached by the bold navigator; and the other was so called by his grateful countrymen, in honor of his devoted wife, as a touching symbol of the loving bond that united them so closely.
The Doctor, following Johnson's advice, was trying to inure himself to the cold as much as possible, by remaining nearly always on deck, in spite of wind and snow. His health was unimpaired, though he had grown a little thinner. He was quite prepared for fresh dangers, and gayly welcomed each precursor of winter.
"Look at that flock of birds migrating south!" he called out one day to Johnson. "How swift they fly, shrieking their last adieu as they go!"
"Yes, Mr. Clawbonny, something tells them it is time to go, and off they start."
"More than one among us, Johnson, I wager, would like to follow their example."
"Chicken-hearted fellows!" said Johnson. "Those poor flying things have not their food all ready to hand like us, and of course they must seek it elsewhere. But sailors, with a good ship under their feet, ought to go to the world's end."
"You hope then that Hatteras will succeed in his projects?"
"He will succeed, I'm sure of it, Mr. Clawbonny," answered Johnson.
"I agree with you, Johnson, and even if only one faithful friend remained to him———"
"We should make two."
"You are right, Johnson," said the Doctor, grasping the brave fellow's hand.
Prince Albert's Land, which the Forward was now alongside, is also called Grinnel's Land, and though Hatteras so hated the Yankees that he would never have given it that name, most people know it by the American designation. Both names were bestowed on it at the same time, though by different people—Penny in honor of Prince Albert, and Lieutenant de Haven, the commander of the Rescue, in honor of Grinnel, the American merchant, at whose expense the expedition had been sent out.
After a succession of unheard-of difficulties, the Forward sighted Mount Britannia, though it was scarcely visible through the fog, and next day dropped anchor in Northumberland Bay, and found herself completely closed in on all sides.