Walter, Frederick Paul_ Poe, Edgar Allan_ Verne, Jules - The sphinx of the ice realm_ the first complete English translation_ with the full text of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Po

The Sphinx Of the Ice Realm
Jules Verne
The Sphinx Of
the Ice Realm
The First Complete English Translation
With the Full Text of

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
by Edgar Allan Poe
Translated and Edited by

Frederick Paul Walter
ee
excelsior editions
an imprint of state university of new york press
Published by
Stat e U n i v e r s i t y o f N e w Y o r k P r e s s
Albany
Translations and critical materials © 2012 by Frederick Paul Walter
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No
part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including
electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior
permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact

State University of New York Press
www.sunypress.edu
Production and book design, Laurie Searl

Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Verne, Jules, 1828–1905.

[Sphinx des glaces. English]
The sphinx of the ice realm : the first complete English translation, with the full text of the narrative of
Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe / Jules Verne ; translated and edited by Frederick Paul Walter.
p. cm.
“Excelsior Editions.”
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4384-4212-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4384-4211-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
I. Walter, Frederick Paul. II. Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809–1849. Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. III. Title.
PQ2469.S64E5 2011
843’.8—dc23
2011030247
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my wife
BARBARA BRYANT
model of patience, tolerance,

common sense, and clear writing
Contents
Foreword: Jules Verne, Manhunter

1
Translating Verne
xvii
THE SPHINX OF THE ICE REALM

1
Appendix 1:
THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM
261
Appendix 2:
Verne on Pym
377
Textual Notes
385
Afterword: Jules Verne, Ghostbuster

401
Recommended Reading
409
Foreword
Jules Verne, Manhunter
I
n 1855 he was a nobody. He’d sold a short story, three novelettes, and the
scripts for a couple small-time comedies. Even so, that was the year Jules
Verne published Wintering in the Ice.
This sixteen-chapter novella appeared in the coffee-table monthly La
Musée des familles, moves at high speed, and establishes the template for much that followed
after Verne became somebody. The hook: a young sea captain goes missing off the coast
of Norway, and his father organizes an expedition to find him. Up north the rescuers
have to contend with snowbound living conditions, crew mutinies, marauding carnivores,
somersaulting icebergs, and other subarctic menaces. The tale’s climax is a holocaust of
cutlass duels and man-eating polar bears, but the son gets rescued and lives happily ever
after with his feisty fiancée—who, unusually for the time, goes along on the expedition
and has no trouble coping.
It isn’t surprising that the youthful Verne would lay a story in the polar regions. Back
then there was tremendous interest in the poles simply because nobody had visited either
place. In 1827 Britain’s William E. Perry had advanced as far north as latitude 82° 45’, a
record that stood for about half a century. But it wasn’t for lack of trying: as U.S. Rear
Admiral Thomas D. Davies wrote 160 years later (16), “by then the Americans had caught
the arctic fever,” and over the next decades Yankee explorers such as Elisha Kane, Isaac
Hayes, and Charles Hall vainly attempted to drive deeper into the arctic. As for the South
Pole, England’s Sir James Clark Ross got as close as latitude 78° 4’ in February of 1842,
another record that stood for half a century—and in this case there was a lack of trying.
In those days true-life polar adventures were mostly a seagoing activity, and young
Verne was automatically fascinated. After all, his birthplace was the French river town of
Nantes, just upstream of a major Atlantic seaport. During his boyhood, according to biog-
rapher Herbert R. Lottman (6–8), “he could see sailboats, clipper ships, and three-master
jules verne, manhunter / ix

schooners all around him.” He would row down the Loire River in “dreadful leaky boats,”
one time aboard a skiff that actually sank, marooning him on an islet in classic Crusoe
fashion. It didn’t keep the adult Verne from turning into an enthusiastic tourist who voy-
aged to America and repeatedly visited the UK and Scandinavia.
But when he wrote Wintering in the Ice, Verne was a bachelor in his mid twenties,
schooled for the law but secretly hoping to build a career as a writer. It would take a while.
On the way, luckily, young Jules was exposed to other influences—the novels of Scott,
Cooper, and Dickens, and especially the startling tales of Edgar Allan Poe, which, accord-
ing to his grandson (Jules-Verne, 30, 35), the youthful Frenchman began reading “in the
years following 1848.” He was struck by the American storyteller’s “abnormal situations,”
“moral deviation,” inclination to “the bizarre for its own sake,” and the pseudoscience of
his ballooning yarns. Reading Poe, his grandson concluded, “Verne saw what could be
done mixing fantasy and reason.” And the time was right: though he had little English and
needed to read Poe’s stories in translation, they were appearing in French magazines with
increasing frequency. In the late 1850s, moreover, a French translation of Poe’s only novel
appeared, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), a full-length sea story that toyed with
the mysteries of Antarctica. Already enraptured with sailing and polar exploration, the young
Frenchman gobbled it up . . . and couldn’t get it out of his head.
So there you have the youthful Jules Verne: interested in manhunts, ocean travel, polar
exploration, and the disturbing fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Those interests would never
significantly change. And he would obsess over Poe’s only novel into his old age, forty years
down the pike.
THE HUNT IS ON
In any case it seems that Poe’s specter soon gave a huge boost to Verne’s writing career.
In 1862, by no coincidence at all, the fledgling author finished an adventure novel about
ballooning. Pitching it to a major Paris publisher, P.-J. Hetzel, he wound up with both a
book contract and a lifelong business relationship. Poe’s role in this windfall? Earlier that
same year, according to French scholar Claude Aziza (vi-vii), “Hetzel had published sev-
eral of Poe’s short stories as translated by William Hughes. Wouldn’t this have given Jules
Verne—who already knew Baudelaire’s translations—the idea of approaching this editor
who had published an author close to his own heart?”*
Verne never forgot the mesmerizing American writer. In April 1864, not long after
linking up with Hetzel, he wrote a lengthy article entitled Edgar Allan Poe and his Works (1864)
for the above-mentioned magazine, La Musée des familles. The only piece of literary criticism
Verne ever published, it’s a bird’s-eye view of Poe for the general reader: a summary of his
tragic life plus plot rundowns and critiques of some of his short stories. Though he picks
occasional nits, his overall tone is admiring, full of both fascination and respect. What’s
My translation.
*
FPW
x / jules verne, manhunter

more, it’s meaningful that Verne devoted the last chapter of his essay almost entirely to
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Unusually for Poe, his sole novel ends with a mystify-
ing cliffhanger, and Verne was as baffled and provoked as the rest of the world. “Who
will ever take it up again?” he wrote for his French readers. “Somebody more daring than
I am, somebody bolder at pushing on into the realm of things impossible.” My English
translation of this chapter starts on page 377, though, as you’ll see, it’s hardly Verne’s last
word on the subject.
Meanwhile Verne was en route to his mature self, well off, increasingly famous, con-
tinually productive—he wrote over sixty books in his lifetime. A decade after Wintering in
the Ice, his life had changed drastically. He’d gotten married, was parenting two kids, had
published a best-selling first novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), and for the rest of his days
would remain under contract to the top-tier publishing house of J. Hetzel et Cie. Never-
theless he stayed faithful to the fascinations of his boyhood: the lessons he’d learned from
his polar novella were to pay off in another thriller about the arctic, a fictional conquest
of the North Pole named The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1866). And a few years after
that, he would get more mileage out of ice floes and polar bears in a nature-run-amuck
novel called The Fur Country (1873).
But that trailblazing novella Wintering in the Ice was first and foremost a manhunt, a
missing-person search. It was a plotline that proved to have permanent appeal for Verne,
quickly popping up again in a new tale, The Blockade Runners (1865), a father hunt this time.
And another father hunt, a global one, soon figured in one of Verne’s heftiest thrillers,
a triple-decker rescue mission entitled Captain Grant’s Children (1868). Books still to come
would feature searches for husbands, brothers, stepsons, mortal enemies, and even more
fathers—such yarns as The Steam House (1880), Mathias Sandorf (1885), Mrs. Branican (1891),
and The Mighty Orinoco (1898), among others. During his last years, in fact, Verne threw up
his hands and wrote to his publisher (Jules-Verne, 197): “I’m sick and tired of children
searching for their fathers, fathers searching for their children, wives searching for their
children, and wives searching for their husbands. Orinoco is the last of that lot.”
In fairness Verne’s novels sometimes tracked other things down as well: there are large-
scale treasure hunts in The Fabulous Adventures of Mr. Antifer (1894) and The Eccentric Inheritance
(1899), quests for cosmic phenomena in The Green Ray (1882) and The Meteor Hunt (2006),
not to mention searches for geographical landmarks—Hatteras and Orinoco again. Obviously it
was an attractive formula: for Verne the professional plot devisor, it supplied a well-defined
goal, a point in the distance that could guide his stories through entertaining side trips and
diversions; for his friendly neighborhood analyst, it may have symbolized ongoing attempts
to reach new understandings of the world, himself, his past, and his destiny.
Of course The Sphinx of the Ice Realm (1897) is a manhunt too, a double-barreled one,
as it happens. Verne penned it late in life, and it’s a novelty for two reasons: a) it doesn’t
go hunting for characters of his own concocting, but for somebody else’s characters; b) that
somebody else figured hugely in the launching of his career. However, as will be seen, Verne
had solid grounds for dillydallying before he tackled this project: its source of inspiration.
jules verne, manhunter / xi

THE PYM PUZZLE
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is one of the all-time literary puzzles, maybe rivaled only
by Dickens’s unfinished crime story The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870). Anyhow both works
have inspired carloads of analysis and conjecture, turning thousands of academics into
armchair detectives.
The circumstances of its writing weren’t typical for Poe, which may have contributed
to Pym’s quotient of mysteries. The impoverished Virginian had gotten married in his late
twenties, was casting around for a moneymaking literary niche, and had started writing
short stories. His luck didn’t change. According to a recent biographer (Hayes, 67), he got
a quick rejection from Harper & Brothers, a big-name publisher even in the early nineteenth
century: “A longer, book-length narrative was more marketable than a collection of short
stories. . . . Poe took Harpers’ suggestion as a challenge and began drafting The Narrative
of Arthur Gordon Pym.”
From fall 1836 to summer 1838, Pym proceeded by fits and starts. An earlier biogra-
pher (Silverman, 133) reports that Poe tried to market the yarn as a serial: “He published
two installments of Pym in the [Southern Literary] Messenger early in 1837.” Then the serial-
ization petered out, and according to Pym historian Ronald C. Harvey (106–7), the novel
went through three more stages of development: 1) additional adventures aboard the hapless
brig Grampus, to expand the story “into the long narrative Harpers had advised”; 2) the
novel’s second half, this time with adventures aboard the schooner Jane Guy and written late
in 1837, a period that saw a “resurgence of public interest” in U.S. antarctic exploration;
3) the final note and chapter 23 (featuring “hieroglyphic chasms,” in Verne’s catchphrase),
“a very late interpolation” in the summer of 1838.
Therefore, as Hayes sums it up (67), “Poe had done what the publishers told him
to do: he had written a sustained narrative long enough to fill an entire volume. Harp-
ers accepted the work.” Pym finally appeared in July of 1838, but its up-in-the-air finish
inspired plenty of head-scratching. Though it wasn’t a bestseller, it got extensive press, and
the novel’s inconclusive ending bothered critics from the get-go: one of its earliest U.S.
reviewers (Harvey, 36) instantly complained about the book’s breaking off mysteriously,
calling it “purely perplexing and vexatious.” Since then academics have advanced countless
solutions and interpretations, but even today they rarely agree.
It took two more decades for the novel to come to Verne’s attention: in 1858 poet
and Poe fan Charles Baudelaire published its first French translation under the title Aven-
tures d’Arthur Gordon Pym. It’s noteworthy that Wintering in the Ice had appeared three years
earlier—clearly Verne had gotten interested in polar exploration, manhunts, and quest plot-
lines before making Pym’s acquaintance. When the pupil is ready, the saying goes, the teacher
appears. Verne’s 1864 article on Poe suggests that he was immediately taken with Pym’s
baffling narrative: he spends a quarter of his essay on it, wondering if anybody will have
the chutzpah to complete the thing. At that juncture Verne took himself out of conten-
tion . . . but couldn’t take his nose out of the book. He quotes its close at the climax of
xii / jules verne, manhunter

20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (1970): the Nautilus careens through the arctic, and the yarn’s
narrator wonders if the North Pole, like the South, is guarded by the same eerie apparition
rearing up in Poe’s novel.
POLAR DEVELOPMENTS
For decades the Pym puzzle marinated in Verne’s mind. Meanwhile his career mushroomed,
likewise his interest in sailing. Over the years 1868–1886, he owned three different yachts,
traveling up and down the Atlantic coastline, tacking around the English Channel, even
going sightseeing in the Mediterranean. Describing one southbound junket in 1878, Verne
biographer William Butcher (246) records that the novelist took in “Lisbon, Cadiz, Seville,
and Tangiers, Morocco, including a boar hunt . . . the Strait of Gibralter, the Columns of
Hercules, Gibralter itself, Malaga, Tétouan (Morocco), and Oran.” This was aboard Verne’s
third and biggest yacht (Jules-Verne, 120–1), which was steam driven, measured ninety-two
feet from stem to stern, and required him to bankroll a ten-man crew.
Needless to say, sea stories poured from his pen: in addition to 20,000 Leagues, he
generated other should-be classics such as The Adventures of Captain Hatteras, A Captain at Fifteen
(1878), Mrs. Branican, and The Kip Brothers (1902). Finally, by the time the elderly Verne
faced up to Pym and wrote the sea story now in your hands, both poles were back in the
news. In 1895 famed Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen made huge strides in the arctic, setting
a new Farthest North of latitude 86° 14'. Down south the same year, another Norwegian,
Carsten Borchgrevink, finally beat Ross’s record: he and select crewmates became, according
to polar historian Roland Huntford (60), “the first men to set foot on South Victoria Land.”
In fact, while the 68-year-old Verne was grappling with Poe’s riddle, polar explora-
tion was coming down its home stretch. Over the period 1898–1900, the ubiquitous
Borchgrevink was among the first to winter in Antarctica; likewise the man often regarded
as the greatest polar explorer of them all, Norway’s Roald Amundsen, conqueror of both
the South Pole and the Northwest Passage. And further developments came thick and fast:
a Farthest South of latitude 82°17’ claimed by the UK’s Robert F. Scott in 1902, then
a Farthest North of 87° 06’ claimed by America’s Robert E. Peary in 1906. In another
three years Peary would claim the North Pole on April 6, 1909, and in two more years
Amundsen would claim the South Pole on December 15, 1911.
Warning to greenhorn discoverers: neither of these latter heroes got much joy from
his achievement. For years the UK shortchanged Amundsen (Huntford, 538): “English
schoolchildren were taught that Scott discovered the South Pole.” But at least the Brits stick
up for their own, whereas the American’s claim is still badmouthed by some U.S. historians.
Eighty years after the event, the Navigation Foundation (Davies, 5) analyzed Peary’s hard
evidence using computer-age technology—they verified that “his celestial sights, his diary,
his ocean soundings, and his photographs” consistently supported his claim. How did the
anti-Peary faction deal with this blow to their case? They simply ignored it.
jules verne, manhunter / xiii

UNRIDDLING THE SPHINX
Getting back to Verne, it was during this final chapter in geographic discovery that he
created his crowning combination of manhunt and polar quest. On Sept. 1, 1996, as his
grandson tells it (Jules-Verne, 193), Verne wrote his publisher about a Poe-inspired thriller
entitled The Sphinx of the Ice Realm:
It will be a kind of counterpart to Captain Hatteras, although there is nothing in the

two books—plot or characters—to make them alike. It will come at the right time,
since people are talking about voyages and discoveries at the South Pole. My point of
departure is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s strangest stories, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym, but it will not be necessary to have read Poe’s novel to understand mine. I have
used everything that Poe left in suspense and developed the mystery surrounding
certain of the characters. I have one particularly bright idea: one of my heroes who,
like everyone else, thought that Poe’s novel was entirely fictitious, comes face to face
with a matching reality. Needless to say, I go much farther than Poe did. Let me
know what you think; I hope that my readers will be very interested.
I am so taken with the extraordinary side of a work like this that I wish to
dedicate it to Poe’s memory and to our friends in America. I’m very excited about
this novel; we shall see whether it gets the public excited too . . . in my opinion it’s
another Pym, but more true to life and I think more interesting.
In short, Jules Verne had come full circle. His youthful page-turner Wintering in the Ice
was his earliest sea story . . . then, forty years later, he gave us Sphinx, a sea story in wide-
screen technicolor. Wintering had been a tale of polar adventuring . . . Sphinx exploited all
the antarctic research it could, then vividly imagined the rest. Wintering was a tense search
for a lost mariner . . . Sphinx is Verne’s ultimate manhunt, literally two for the price of one.
And beyond this, Sphinx is the old Frenchman’s homage to a boyhood influence, a literary
role model, a long-distance mentor, a lifelong inspiration. His books rarely have dedications,
but he dedicated this one to Poe’s memory.
And maybe there’s a little humility in that—the reverence a wise man sometimes feels
for a forerunner. Even so, Verne is still cocky enough to think that he has gone Poe one
better, that he has written a novel (see above) “more true to life and I think more interest-
ing.” Unlike Poe he was a bestseller in his day and only humble up to a point.
This volume contains two gripping novels by two literary colossi. Both entailed research into
the geographic knowledge of their eras . . . both tried to be realistic and credible . . . and
both were published before the polar truth was out. But I won’t spoil their surprises and will
save further comment till the Afterword on page 401.
As for readers wondering about the smartest way to tackle this double-decker tome,
here’s what I recommend. If you’ve never read Pym, or it’s been a good while, I suggest
starting with Appendix 1 on page 261. My edition of Poe’s novel is reader-friendly, updating
punctuation and spelling for today’s purchasers, and his tale is compact enough for many
xiv / jules verne, manhunter

to polish off in a day. But reading it isn’t an absolute requirement: Verne himself supplies
a detailed, largely accurate summary in chapter 5 of Sphinx. Your call.
In preparing this volume, I’m grateful to many generous individuals: fellow Vernian
and staunch friend Andrew Rogulich, General Engineer at the Air Force Nuclear Weapons
Center at Kirtland AFB, for more kinds of help than I could ever list; Dr. Barry S. Kues,
professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New Mexico, for his pro-
fessional insights into Verne’s notions of natural magnetism; Dr. John Geissman, professor
of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, for his corroborating insights on the
same topic; leading sf novelist Jane Lindskold for her continuing support and inspiration;
Laurie Searl, Senior Production Editor, and Fran Keneston, Director of Marketing and
Publicity, for nurturing and promoting SUNY’s Vernian volumes with such enthusiasm,
skill, and creativity; members of the Jules Verne forum, at http://jv.gilead.org.il/forum,
for their worldwide assistance whenever I sent up an appeal; and Jules Verne’s hometown
library, the Bibliothèque municipale de Nantes, for providing, free of charge, online scans of
Verne manuscripts and other priceless treasures to scholars of every nation.
FREDERICK PAUL WALTER

Albuquerque, New Mexico
jules verne, manhunter / xv

Translating Verne
T
raduttore, traditore runs the old Italian adage: translators are traitors. And it’s
possible that no big-name author has suffered more betrayals than Frenchman
Jules Verne in his nineteenth-century English translations.
Fans and academics have been pointing out this problem for decades. It
was in the turbulent 1960s that NYU scholar Walter James Miller made a startling discov-
ery: Captain Nemo’s famed submarine, the Nautilus, was manufactured from a revolutionary
type of sheet iron that was lighter than water and could float.
Well, not really. Checking Verne’s French, Miller verified that the translator had sim-
ply made an idiotic mistake. And then other readers started finding other kinks: the first
English version of Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) recomposed every third paragraph
and gave the characters silly new monikers—Verne’s Professor Lidenbrock became Profes-
sor Hardwigg. As for more literal translations, often they were preposterously abridged: in
Circling the Moon (1869) Verne includes an amusing chapter on using algebra to calculate
flight times—the original translator kept the chapter but left out the formulas. And then
there were issues of political correctness: in The Mysterious Island (1875) Verne condemns
the British Raj—his UK translator simply revamped him so that he voices support instead.
In short, the Victorian translations of many Verne novels not only abound in asinine
errors, they condense him, censor him, rewrite him, drop whole passages, fabricate new ones,
concoct different titles, rearrange chapters, redo characterizations, chop his descriptions,
dump his science, axe his jokes, and generally delete things that are politically iffy or call for
homework. As Verne specialist Arthur B. Evans has noted (80), “Scholars now unanimously
agree that the early English versions of Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires were extremely shoddy
and often bore little resemblance to their original French counterparts.”
How, then, has The Sphinx of the Ice Realm fared in our language? After all, it’s a toler-
ably well-known item, it regularly turns up in discussions of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur
translating verne / xvii

Gordon Pym, and it’s a world-class sea story from an author who knew his tall ships. Again,
how has it fared?
Badly, I’m afraid. The only prior English translation of Le Sphinx des glaces came out in
1898 under the title An Antarctic Mystery. Attributed to “Mrs. Cashel Hoey” and published
by the British firm of Sampson Low, it’s heavily abridged, deleting over a third of the French
original. Out went much of the stuff that makes a novel a novel—humor, atmosphere,
characterization, scene painting, historical touches, seagoing detail. What’s more, there are
plenty of figure errors and translating bloopers.
And, amazingly, later reprints and revisions are even worse. In fact the publishing
history of Hoey’s translation is a literal demonstration of the law of diminishing returns:
a reissue published in 1911 by Vincent Parke further abridges Hoey’s already-abridged
text, now cutting over half of the French original . . . not to be outdone, a 1960 Arco
revision mixes Pym excerpts with a radical rewrite of Hoey that omits over 60% of Verne’s
novel . . . finally a 1975 Penguin paperback of Pym includes extracts from Sphinx as an
appendix, leaving out 90% of Verne’s original. True, its editor makes no claims to com-
pleteness, but for anybody who honestly enjoys Jules Verne, that’s mighty cold comfort.
What in blazes is going on?
Well, it may be that Verne himself is partly to blame. His novels aren’t routine
romances or standard-issue thrillers. Big chunks of them are challenging to translate, and for
two particular reasons: a) they often have specialized content, meaning that the translator
has to do research; b) they’re full of comedy and satire, meaning that nothing’s trickier to
transfer to another language. So how did many of those nineteenth-century translators deal
with the challenging passages? Simple. They left them out.
Take the off beat content of Verne’s yarns. They jockey from one unusual place to
another—Patagonia to Turkistan, Aukland to Beijing, the Greek Isles to the Carpathian
Mountains, the Kalahari Desert to the Bering Strait. Plus they get into science—chemistry,
astronomy, paleontology, ichthyology. They tinker with technology—optics, weaponry, aero-
nautics, marine engineering. They dabble in industry—whaling, metalworking, railroading,
coal mining. And, of course, they dream about the future—moon shots, giant robots, super
submarines, mobile landmasses.
Which means that an honorable translator has to play detective. To cope, for instance,
with the many realms of The Sphinx, I needed to learn that paracuta is an obsolete spell-
ing of barracuda . . . that ridges on the isle of Tristan da Cunha are officially called
gulches . . . that a perroquet isn’t a parrot in this context but the topgallant sail . . . that
British mariner John Balleny discovered the Sabrina Coast—not the “Fabricia” Coast, as
some typesetter fumbled it over a century ago.
So it isn’t enough to be good at Gallic chitchat. Here well-meaning translators have
to do spadework, look things up, track stuff down . . . in libraries . . . in museums . . . in
the field.
After all, Verne did.
As for the jokes and tomfoolery, we need to remember that Verne started out as a
scriptwriter, penning dozens of stage pieces—slapstick and vaudeville turns, bedroom farces,
xviii / translating verne

the books for musical comedies. Not surprisingly, his novels can be just as mischievous:
they’re packed with running gags, gallows humor, bawdy wordplay, shameless plot twists.
Even darker novels like 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas or The Begum’s Millions (1879) have a
satiric edge.
Ditto The Sphinx of the Ice Realm. The bosun Hurliguerly is its resident standup comic,
piling on the salty similes. To him, the earth turns on its axis comme un poulet à la broche,
“like a chicken on a spit.” Or an unsociable sailor pal is muet là-dessus comme une carpe dans la
friture, “as mute as a carp in a frying pan.” Yes, comedy is common in Verne’s novels—and
it can be a headache for translators. Even so, we have to do our best or we’re skimping on
a major Vernian ingredient. Luckily, as per above, a straightforward rendering will sometimes
do the trick.
But just as often it won’t. And at that juncture a translator needs to loosen up and
get more creative—as with, say, another leading character in Sphinx, the geologist Jeorling.
One of a long line of ironic Vernian narrators, he looks on with amused eyes: the self-
important innkeeper Atkins is le personnage le plus considérable et le plus considéré de l’archipel, – en
conséquence le plus écouté, “the most respected and respectable individual in those islands, hence
the one who did the most talking.” Or, hearing the donkeylike racket of nearby penguins,
he snaps that “l’air était rempli de braiements à vous rendre sourd, “the air was full of enough
braying to cause hearing loss.”
And that’s just a sampling of the challenges. But in the case of a protean tale spin-
ner like Verne, I think they’re worth toiling over—and thank heaven others agree, because
we’re in the midst of a marvelous Verne renaissance. Since Miller’s crusade back in the
’60s, some forty new translations of Verne’s novels have appeared in English, readable and
accurate versions of top favorites, plus first-time editions of titles never before available in
our language. I list and describe many of them in the Recommended Reading section at
the end of the book—trust me, they’re worth dipping into.
As for this English text of The Sphinx of the Ice Realm, it’s a new, accurate, communica-
tive translation of the 1897 French first edition. Keeping American purchasers particularly
in mind, it converts metric figures to U.S. equivalents, adheres to the original paragraph-
ing, is complete down to the smallest substantive detail, and has enjoyed the advantages
of electronic access to the full manuscript in Verne’s hometown library. Which means I’ve
not only had an extra resource for untying textual knots, I’ve also been able to sneak peeks
into Verne’s creative processes—a jaw-dropping experience.
My renderings aim especially to convey the humor and excitement of Verne’s unique
novel, the zest, irreverence, and storytelling virtuosity that somehow stayed with him into
old age. The entire book has benefited from current Verne scholarship and today’s instant
access to academic, institutional, and educational resources around the globe—access not
only to Verne’s original texts but to those of his countryman Baudelaire and our country-
man Poe, equally essential to The Sphinx of the Ice Realm.
Specialists, educators, and students are encouraged to consult the Textual Notes start-
ing on page 385: they specify the policies, priorities, and point-to-point decisions underlying
the contents of this volume. FPW
translating verne / xix

Jules Verne
(1828–1905)
The Sphinx Of
the Ice Realm
Jules Verne
To the memory of Edgar Allan Poe
To my friends in America
first published in 1897

Contents
Part One
1. Kerguelen’s Land 5
2. The Schooner Halbrane 12
3. Captain Len Guy 20
4. From Kerguelen’s Land to Prince Edward’s Island 29
5. Edgar Allan Poe’s Novel 39
6. “Like a Shroud Falling Open” 51
7. Tristan da Cunha 59
8. Heading for the Falklands 68
9. Getting the Halbrane in Shape 75
10. The Cruise Early On 84
11. From the South Sandwich Islands to the Antarctic Circle 92
12. Between the Antarctic Circle and the Ice Barrier 101
13. Alongside the Ice Barrier 110
14. A Voice in a Dream 118
15. Bennet’s Islet 124
16. Tsalal Island 131
Part Two
17. What About Pym? 139
18. Reaching a Decision 148
19. The Lost Islands 155
20. From December 29 to January 9 163
21. Tipping Point 170
22. Land? 178
23. Iceberg Somersault 186
24. The Finishing Stroke 194
25. Now What? 202
26. Hallucinations 208
27. Fogbound 215
28. Making Camp 222
29. Dirk Peters Goes to Sea 231
30. Eleven Years in a Few Pages 238
31. The Sphinx of the Ice Realm 245
32. Twelve out of Seventy! 256
PART ONE
1. Kerguelen’s Land
P
robably nobody’s going to put much stock in this yarn entitled The Sphinx of the
Ice Realm. Never mind, I still feel it’s worth airing in public. Readers are free to
take it or leave it.
It would be hard to imagine a more appropriate locale for the start of
these wonderful yet dreadful adventures than Desolation Isles—a name given them in 1779 by
Captain Cook. Believe me, after what I’d seen during the few weeks of my stay in these parts, I
can state that they deserve the dismal moniker coined by that famous English mariner. Desola-
tion Isles says it all.
This island group is located in latitude 49° 54' south and longitude 69° 6' east, and I’m
aware that in geography books these days it’s officially known as Kerguelen’s Land. Which is
only fair because in the year 1772, France’s Baron Kerguelen was the first to sight these islands
in the southern sector of the Indian Ocean. At the time of this voyage, in fact, the squadron’s
commander thought he’d discovered a new continent on the edge of the antarctic seas; but in
the course of a second expedition, he had to own up to his mistake. It was only an island group.
You can trust me when I claim that Desolation Isles is the only name that suits this collection
of 300 islands or islets plopped down in this lonely ocean vastness, which is troubled almost
continually by major storms from the south.
Even so, these islands are inhabited, and by the date of August 2, 1839, the number of
Europeans and Americans making up the central core of Kerguelen’s populace had increased
over the past two months—thanks to my presence in Christmas Harbor—by a total of one.
But to tell the truth, all I was waiting for was a chance to leave the place, since I’d finished the
geological and mineralogical research that had led me to make this trip.
This port of Christmas Harbor belongs to the most important island in the group,
whose surface area measures over 1,700 square miles—hence it’s half the size of Corsica.
It’s reasonably secure, open, and easy of access. Vessels can drop anchor in twenty-four feet
of water. After you’ve sailed around Cape François to the north—the hill of Table Mount
the sphinx of the ice realm / 5

t owering some 1,200 feet above it—you’ll see a wide arch carved out of a basalt promontory.
Look past it and you’ll spot a narrow bay that islets screen from the raging east and west winds.
At the far end looms Christmas Harbor. Let your ship stand right into it while keeping it to
starboard. Once you’re safely in your berth, you can make do with just a single anchor and later
can cast off easily, since the bay will stay ice free.
What’s more, Kerguelen’s Land boasts hundreds of other fjords. Its coastlines are as
ragged and frayed as the hemline of a beggar woman’s skirt, especially in the sector stretching
from the north to the southeast. There are scads of islands and islets. The soil is volcanic in ori-
gin, featuring a mixture of quartz and bluish stone. When summer comes, various seed-bearing
plants spring up—rough, tough saxifrage, plus green mosses and grayish lichens. Only one
shrub grows hereabouts, a species of bitter-tasting cabbage you won’t find in any other country.
The surfaces here furnish good nesting grounds, suitable habitats for royal penguins
and their kin; countless flocks of them populate these waterways. Garbed in yellow and white,
heads thrown back, wings shaped like the sleeves of a gown, these dim-witted birds look from
afar like a procession of monks walking single file down the seashore.
In addition Kerguelen’s Land offers plenty of shelter for hairy harbor seals, sea lions,
and elephant seals.1 Hunting or fishing for these aquatic animals is profitable enough to fuel a
genuine trade, attracting many ships to these parts.
That day I was strolling around the harbor when the local innkeeper pulled alongside
me and said:
“If I’m not mistaken, Mr. Jeorling, time’s starting to hang heavy on your hands?”
Fenimore Atkins was a big burly American who’d taken up residence in Christmas Har-
bor some twenty years back and who ran the port’s only inn.
“Heavy’s the word all right, Mr. Atkins, no offense intended.”
“And none taken,” the gallant fellow remarked. “As you can guess, I’m as used to come-
backs like yours as the rocks of Cape François are to the incoming waves.”
“And you stand up to them just as sturdily.”
“I try! The day you came ashore in Christmas Harbor, when you dropped into my place
at the sign of the Green Cormorant, I said to myself: in two weeks, maybe even one, this guest
of mine will have his fill and he’ll be sorry he ever came to Kerguelen’s—”
“No, Mr. Atkins, I never feel sorry about something I’ve done.”
“Good philosophy, sir.”
“What’s more, I’ve benefited from tramping around these islands because I’ve seen some
interesting things. Those wide, rolling plains, those bogs that cut into them, those carpets of
tough moss—I’ve hiked over them all and I’ll take home some interesting mineralogical and
geological samples. I’ve tagged along with your fishermen when they went hunting for seals and
sea lions. I’ve had a look at those breeding grounds where your penguins and albatrosses live
side by side like bosom comrades—a sight worth seeing, I’d say. Plus, from time to time you’ve
personally spiced up and served me a platter of Petrel Balthazard, pretty classy fare for anybody
with a hearty appetite. In short, you’ve given me a first-rate welcome at the Green Cormorant
and I can’t thank you enough. But it was the dead of winter two months ago, if my arithmetic’s
correct, when the Chilean three-master Peñas dropped me off in Christmas Harbor—”
6 / the sphinx of the ice realm

“And you’re hankering, Mr. Jeorling,” the innkeeper exclaimed, “to get back to your coun-
try and mine, to go home to Connecticut, to see our old capital of Hartford again.”2
“Positively, Mr. Atkins, because I’ve been running around the world for nearly three years
now, and one day or another a man’s got to come to a stop and put down some roots . . .”
“Oho!” my countryman countered with a wink. “And when you put down roots, you
wind up growing a few branches.”
The local innkeeper pulled alongside me.

“Very true, Mr. Atkins! However I don’t have any family left, so most likely my line will
end with me! Now that I’m in my forties, I’m not as keen on sprouting branches as you’ve
been—in fact, you’ve cultivated quite a family tree, my worthy host . . .”
“An oak among family trees, Mr. Jeorling—a live oak even, you might say.”
“And you’ve been properly heeding the call of nature! Now then, since nature has given
us body parts to walk on—”
“—she has also given us some to sit on!” Fenimore Atkins fired back with a grin and a
guffaw. “Which is why I’m comfortable on my duff in Christmas Harbor. My old lady Betsy
has favored me with ten kids, who in turn will favor me with grandkids, who’ll scramble up
my shins like kittens.”
“You don’t ever plan to go back to the land of your birth?”
“What would I do there, Mr. Jeorling, what on earth could I do?3 It would be nothing but
trouble! On the other hand, these Desolation Isles have never felt the slightest bit desolate to
me—my family and I enjoy a life of ease.”
“No doubt about it, Mr. Atkins, and I congratulate you for being a happy man. However
it’s still possible that someday you may get a yen to—”
“Come off it, Mr. Jeorling, don’t go transplanting me! Like I say, I’m an oak—and you
just try to transplant an oak when it’s sunk to midtrunk in the silica of Kerguelen’s Land.”
It was fun listening to him, this fine American so thoroughly at home on these islands,
so strenuously toughened up by the harsh weather of these climes. He lived here with his
family like penguins in their breeding grounds—the mama a sturdy matron, the sons full
of robust, ruddy good health and untouched by sore throats or bellyaches. His business was
booming. Amply stocked, the Green Cormorant was patronized by all the ships, whalers,
and sundry vessels that lay over in Kerguelen’s Land. The inn supplied them with tallow,
lard, tapers, pitch, spices, sugar, tea, canned goods, whiskey, gin, and brandy. You would have
looked in vain for a competing establishment in Christmas Harbor. As for Fenimore Atkins’s
sons, they were carpenters, sailmakers, and fishermen, and during warm weather they hunted
aquatic animals in the depths of every channel. Gallant fellows all—and in plain language,
content with their lot.4
“In a nutshell, Mr. Atkins,” I stated, “I’m ultimately glad I came to Kerguelen’s Land, and
I’ll take some good memories back with me . . . but I won’t be sorry to set sail again.”
“Come on, Mr. Jeorling, have a little patience!” he told me philosophically. “Don’t be
in such a hurry to skedaddle. Remember now, we’ll soon have good weather again—in just
another five or six weeks . . .”
“Meanwhile,” I exclaimed, “the mountains, plains, rocks, and beaches are buried under a
heavy layer of snow, and the sun’s too feeble to bust up the fog on the horizon.”
“By thunder, Mr. Jeorling! You can already see the prairie grasses poking through their
white covering! Take a good look.”
“What with, a magnifying glass?5 Just between ourselves, Atkins, are you daring to claim
your bays won’t be packed with ice this whole month of August? After all, it’s the equivalent of
February up in our northern hemisphere.”

“Granted, Mr. Jeorling. But once again, be patient! We’ve had a mild winter this
year . . . you’ll see vessels popping up on both the eastern and western horizons, because it’ll
soon be fishing season.”
“May the Lord hear your prayers, Mr. Atkins . . . and may He keep one particular ship
on schedule and steer her safely into harbor—the schooner Halbrane!”
“Captain Len Guy may be a Brit,” the innkeeper contended, “but there are gallant fellows
everywhere and he’s a seaman you can count on . . . plus, he stocks up at the Green Cormorant.”
“When do you figure the Halbrane will—?”
“Before the week’s out, Mr. Jeorling, we’ll sight her abeam of Cape François—and if
we don’t, it’s because Captain Len Guy is no more, and if Captain Len Guy is no more, it’s
because the Halbrane has foundered under full canvas somewhere between Kerguelen’s Land and
the Cape of Good Hope!”
With that Mr. Fenimore Atkins gave an airy wave of his hand, dismissed such a develop-
ment as flatly outside the realm of possibility, and left me.
All the same I hoped his forecasts came true before much longer because the hours were
dragging for me. To believe our innkeeper, signs of the warm season were already at hand—a
season warm for these waterways, I mean. True, the underpinnings of the chief island lie in
pretty much the same latitude as Paris in Europe and Quebec in Canada. But this is the south-
ern hemisphere we’re dealing with, and don’t forget that the earth sweeps in an elliptical orbit
where the sun is at one of the foci, so this hemisphere gets colder in the winter than the north-
ern hemisphere and also hotter in the summer. What’s indisputable is that wintertimes are
dreadful in Kerguelen’s Land, thanks to the storms and the sea’s congealing for several months,
though temperatures aren’t exceptionally harsh, averaging 35.6° Fahrenheit in the winter and
44.6° in the summer, same as with the Falklands or Cape Horn.6
Needless to say, during this period not a single vessel had a berth anymore in Christmas
Harbor or the other ports. At the time I’m writing about, steamers were still scarce. As for
sailboats, they took care to not get boxed in by the ice and went looking for South American
ports on the west coast of Chile or African harbors around the Cape of Good Hope, most
commonly Cape Town. A few longboats were the only things offered to my eyes on the surfaces
of Christmas Harbor—some were trapped in the frozen waters, others were heeled over on the
beaches and covered with frost up to their mastheads.
However, though the range of temperatures isn’t extreme in Kerguelen’s Land, its climate
is cold and damp. Quite often, especially in its westernmost sector, this island group comes
under attack from squalls that blow out of the north or west and are mixed with rain and hail.
To the east, the skies are clearer—though half sunlight, half haze—and in that quadrant the
snowlines on the rumps of the mountains lie 300 feet above sea level.
So, after the two months I’d just spent on these Kerguelen isles, all I was waiting for was a
chance to head back to sea on the schooner Halbrane, whose virtues our eager-beaver innkeeper
never stopped extolling from the two viewpoints of fellowship and seamanship.
“You couldn’t ask for a better boat!” he told me over and over from morning till night.
“Out of all the captains in the long history of English oceangoing, none of ’em can compare

with my pal Len Guy, neither for nerve nor for knowing his business! If he was a little chattier
and chummier, he’d be perfect!”
Accordingly I decided to heed Mr. Atkins’s recommendations. I would book a cabin on
this schooner the second she dropped anchor in Christmas Harbor. After a layover of six to
seven days, she would put back to sea, heading for Tristan da Cunha, the destination for her
cargo of tin and copper ore.
I intended to spend a few weeks of the warm season on this latter island. From there I
figured to set out again for Connecticut. However, I didn’t forget to make allowances for the
role that chance plays in human planning, because it’s smart, as Edgar Allan Poe has said, to
always “calculate upon the unforeseen . . . the unlooked for and unimagined.” Which means
that it’s worth taking “collateral, or incidental, or accidental events” into serious account in
your decision making, and chance should always be “a matter of absolute calculation.”
And if I’m quoting from our great American author, it’s because, even though I’ve got a
thoroughly practical mind, down-to-earth personality, and unimaginative nature, I still marvel
at this brilliant chronicler of human abnormality.7
In any case, to get back to the Halbrane (or rather to future opportunities for scramming
out of Christmas Harbor), I honestly had nothing to worry about. In those days hordes of
vessels—at least 500 a year—visited Kerguelen’s Land. Whale fishing was a profitable industry,
borne out by the reality that one elephant seal could supply over a ton of oil, in other words,
a yield equal to what you’d get from a thousand penguins. It’s true, though, that in recent years
the wholesale destruction of these cetaceans has so drastically reduced the bottom-line figures,
today no more than a dozen or so vessels go past these islands per year.
But back then, when it came to available means for leaving Christmas Harbor, I had no
grounds for concern—not even if the Halbrane missed her appointment and Captain Len Guy
didn’t show up to shake hands with his old crony Atkins.
Each day I took a stroll in the vicinity of the harbor. The sunlight was starting to gather
strength. Whether they were horizontal terraces or vertical pillars, the volcanic rocks were
gradually shedding their white winter get-up. Along the shores a sort of wine-colored moss
was springing up over the basalt cliffs, and out on the waves ribbons of seaweed were twisting
around, fifty to sixty yards long. On the plains by the far end of the bay, a few prairie grasses
were lifting their timid tips—among them a seed-bearing plant of the genus Lyallia that hails
from the Andes, plus others that make up the flora of Tierra del Fuego, and also a shrub I’ve
already mentioned: that gigantic cabbage unique to this soil and so prized for its ability to ward
off scurvy.
Though these waterways are teeming with marine mammals, when it came to the ter-
restrial kind, I didn’t run into a single specimen, or any reptiles or amphibians either. Nothing
but a few insects—butterflies and such—that might just as well have had no wings: before they
could put these appendages to work, the air currents would sweep them over the rolling waves
and out to sea.
Once or twice I took a cruise aboard one of those sturdy longboats in which the fish-
ermen face squalls that smash like catapults against Kerguelen’s rocks. With these particular
boats, you could attempt the crossing to Cape Town—and actually reach that port if you

took the time. But rest assured, I had no intention of leaving Christmas Harbor on such
terms . . . no way! I’d “staked my hopes” on the schooner Halbrane, and the schooner Halbrane
couldn’t be much longer now.
As I strolled from one bay to another, the various features of this craggy coastline, its
phenomenally peculiar anatomy, held a strange fascination for me—it was entirely igneous in
formation, poking holes in its white winter shroud to let the bluish limbs of its carcass peek
through . . .
Sometimes I burned with impatience, despite the sage advice of our innkeeper, so con-
tent with his lot in his Christmas Harbor home! They’re a rarity in this world, people who live
their lives and are philosophical about it. What’s more, in Fenimore Atkins’s organism muscles
win out over nerves. Maybe, too, he was blessed with more instinct than intelligence. Folks like
him are better equipped to handle life’s little jolts, and it’s possible they have a more realistic
chance of finding worldly bliss, all in all.
“What’s the word on the Halbrane?” I asked him again every morning.
“The Halbrane, Mr. Jeorling?” he would answer me in an upbeat tone. “I’m positive she’ll
arrive today, and if not today, then tomorrow! It’ll definitely be one of these days, right? And
that’ll be the night before Captain Len Guy unfurls his flag at the entrance to Christmas
Harbor!”
If I wanted to get a better view of the horizon, I had no choice—I would have to climb
up the hill of Table Mount. With its elevation of 1,200 feet, the available radius would be
thirty-four to thirty-five miles, and maybe the schooner would be visible twenty-four hours
sooner, even through the fog? But only a lunatic would even dream of scaling that mountain,
whose sides were still swollen with snow right up to its crest.
While combing the beaches, I managed to scare off a number of aquatic animals, which
plunged into the newly open seas. Only the ponderous, poker-faced penguins didn’t scamper
away when I came near. They had a dim-witted look about them, otherwise a fellow might be
tempted to chat them up, assuming he’d mastered their screeching, earsplitting lingo. As for the
ebony petrels, black and white puffins, grebes, terns, and sea ducks, they took off in a flurry of
flapping wings.
One day I had the luck to be on hand for the leave-taking of an albatross—surely an old
buddy who was going out of the penguins’ lives forever, because they said good-bye with their
finest squawks. These powerful winged creatures can handle 500-mile runs without taking a
single rest break, and so quickly that they cover long distances in a few hours.
At the end of the bay of Christmas Harbor, that albatross stood stock-still on a tall rock,
watching the sea’s backwash break furiously against the reefs.
In a flash the bird rose into the air, wings spread wide, feet curled up, head stretched to
full length like a ship’s cutwater, letting out its shrill call; and a few seconds later, shrinking to
a black dot up in the stratosphere, it vanished behind the curtain of fog to the south.8

2. The Schooner Halbrane
S
he was a vessel of 330 tons burden, masts leaning rearward and letting her run
close into the wind, quite agile under those conditions, her spread of canvas
including a fore trysail, spinnaker, topsail, and topgallant sail on the foremast, a
spanker sail and gaff topsail on the mainmast, a fore staysail, standing jib, and
fore-topmast staysail up front—there you have the boat Christmas Harbor was waiting for,
there you have the schooner Halbrane.
On board she had a captain, a mate or first officer, a bosun or crew foreman, a cook or
hash slinger, plus eight sailors, adding up to twelve men and ample for running her. Sturdily
built, timbers and planking secured by brass bolts, carrying plenty of canvas, her lines astern
adequately tapered, she was an easily handled and thoroughly seaworthy craft, well suited to
navigating between the 40th and 60th southern parallels, and a credit to the shipyards of
Birkenhead.1
I got these details from Mr. Atkins, who packaged them in the highest praise!
Captain Len Guy of Liverpool was three-fifths owner of the Halbrane, which he’d com-
manded for the past six years or so. He did business in the southern seas of Africa and Amer-
ica, going from island to island and from one continent to the other. If his schooner boasted
merely a twelve-man crew, it’s because she was strictly a trader. In order to hunt harbor seals,
sea lions, or other aquatic animals, she would have needed a more sizable crew, plus the har-
poons, tridents, lines, and related equipment called for by this rugged activity. I’ll add that in
the midst of these unsafe waterways (which were frequented back then by pirates) or near their
not-to-be-trusted islands, an act of aggression wouldn’t have caught the Halbrane off guard:
guaranteeing her safety were four swivel guns, an ample supply of shells and canister shot, a
hold appropriately full of gunpowder, shotguns, pistols, racks of rifles, and nets over the rails.
Beyond this, the men on watch never slept without one eye open. To navigate these seas without
taking such precautions would have been the height of recklessness.

That morning, August 7, I was still stretched out and half asleep, when my door shook
from the innkeeper’s knocking, and his heavy voice yanked me out of bed.2
“Mr. Jeorling, you up?”
“Certainly, Mr. Atkins—how could I not be with all this racket! What’s going on?”
“A ship’s six miles out to the northeast, heading for Christmas Harbor!”
“Could she be the Halbrane?” I exclaimed, instantly flinging back my covers.
“We’ll know in an hour or two, Mr. Jeorling. In any event she’s the first boat of the year,
and it’s only right that we give her a hearty welcome.”
I got dressed in a flash and joined Fenimore Atkins on the pier, at the location where
there’s an unrestricted view of the horizon between the two promontories framing the bay of
Christmas Harbor.
It was a fairly clear day, the last mists lifting from the waves, the sea serene under a mild
breeze. But thanks to the steadiness of the winds, the sky is brighter over Kerguelen’s Land
than the side opposite.
About twenty townsfolk—mostly fishermen—had gathered around Mr. Atkins, unques-
tionably the most respected and respectable individual in those islands, hence the one who did
the most talking.
At that juncture there was a promising wind for entering the bay. But since it was low
tide, the ship they’d sighted—a schooner—was tacking about lazily under her courses,* wait-
ing for a full sea.
The crowd was busy arguing, and I listened to their arguments with great impatience but
didn’t join in. Both sides were advancing and backing up their views with equal pig-headedness.
The majority, I’m sorry to admit, were opposed to the idea that this vessel was the
schooner Halbrane. Only two or three insisted that she was, among them the Green Cormorant’s
proprietor.
“That’s the Halbrane! ” he repeated. “Isn’t Captain Len Guy always the first to arrive in
Kerguelen’s Land? Come on! That’s him, and I’m as sure of it as if his hand were shaking mine
right now, after he’d closed a deal to stock up on 6½ tons of apples!”
“You’ve got fog under your eyelids, Mr. Atkins!” one of the fishermen remarked.
“And you’ve got even more inside your brain!” the innkeeper replied tartly.
“That ship doesn’t have an English look to her,” somebody else asserted. “Her bow’s too
slim, her deck sheer’s too steep—I think she’s American built.”
“No . . . she’s English,” Mr. Atkins fired back, “and I’ll soon be able to tell what shipyard
she hails from . . . aye . . . the Birkenhead yards near Liverpool, right where the Halbrane was
launched!”
“No way!” an old seaman insisted. “The metalwork on that schooner comes from Balti-
more, from the workshops of Nipper and Stronge, and her keel got christened in Chesapeake
Bay.”
*Largest and lowest sails on a ship’s masts. FPW

“You mean the River Mersey, you dumb mug!” Mr. Atkins countered. “Here, take a peek
with your spyglass at the colors she’s flying from the gaff of her fore-and-aft sail!”
“She’s English!” the whole crowd exclaimed.
And sure enough, the red-streaked muslin of the Union Jack had just unfurled and
started flapping at one end of the British sailboat.
Without a doubt it was an English ship that was making for the channel into Christmas
Harbor. However, though they’d settled this aspect of the matter, it didn’t necessarily follow
that the boat was Captain Len Guy’s schooner.
Two hours later there would be no further grounds for argument. Before midday the
Halbrane lay in the center of Christmas Harbor, riding at anchor in twenty-four feet of water.
Time for Mr. Atkins to give a hearty welcome—both verbal and physical—to the Hal-
brane’s captain, who seemed rather less outgoing.
A man of forty-five, ruddy complexion, limbs as sturdy as his schooner’s timbers, power-
ful head, hair already turning gray, dark eyes whose pupils gleamed like burning embers under
heavy brows, bronze coloring, tight lips revealing a set of teeth firmly embedded in forceful
jaws, chin lengthened by a russet goatee that was thick and bristly, muscular arms and legs—
that’s how Captain Len Guy struck me. Facial features not so much stern as unemotional,
the features of a highly reserved individual who doesn’t easily spill his secrets—which was
confirmed for me that same day by somebody better informed than Mr. Atkins, though our
innkeeper claimed he was the captain’s bosom friend. In actuality the captain had a pretty off-
putting personality, and nobody could brag that he’d gotten close to the man.
I’d best mention right away that the individual I’m referring to was the Halbrane’s bosun,
Hurliguerly by name, a native of the Isle of Wight, forty-four years old, medium height, stocky,
muscular, arms akimbo, bowlegs, round head on a bull neck, chest wide enough to hold two
pairs of lungs—and I actually wondered if he owned that number, because he spent so much
air in the business of breathing, always wheezing, always gabbing, his glance mocking, his
expression playful, the network of wrinkles under his eyes caused by the continual contracting
of his cheekbones. Note, too, that an earring—just one—was dangling from his left earlobe.
Quite a contrast to the schooner’s commander, and how could two such different individuals
get along? Yet they managed to, because they’d been navigating together for the past fifteen
years—first aboard the brig Power, which they’d swapped for the schooner Halbrane six years
before the start of this story.
The instant he arrived, Hurliguerly learned from Fenimore Atkins that if Captain Guy
was agreeable, I wanted to book a cabin on his vessel. Accordingly, without any announcements
or introductions, the bosun came up to me that afternoon. He already knew my name and
pulled alongside me as follows:
“Good day, Mr. Jeorling.”
“Same to you, my friend,” I replied. “What’s up?”
“I’m here to offer my help.”
“Your help? Regarding what?”
“Regarding your plan to sail on the Halbrane.”

“Who are you?”
“Hurliguerly her bosun, addressed as such, so listed on her crew roster, and in addition
the loyal pal of Captain Len Guy, who’ll give me a listen though he’s famous for not listening
to anybody.”
At this point it dawned on me that I’d better make use of this obliging fellow, who
seemed so positive about his influence on Captain Guy.
So I answered:
“Then let’s talk, my friend, if duty isn’t calling just now.”
“I’ve got two hours to myself, Mr. Jeorling. Anyhow not much is going on at the moment.
Tomorrow there’s a bit of cargo to load, fresh supplies to pick up. Which all means that the
crew gets a break today. If you’re as free as I am—”
And with that he motioned toward the far end of the harbor, a direction he knew well.
“What’s wrong with talking right here?” I commented, hanging back.
“Why talk on our feet, Mr. Jeorling, why talk with our throats dry, when it’s so easy to
sit in a corner of the Green Cormorant in front of two mugs of whiskey.”
“I don’t drink, bosun.”
“So be it, I’ll drink for the two of us. Oh, don’t worry, you aren’t dealing with a booze-
hound! Not me! Never too much, always just enough!”
I followed this seaman, who obviously was used to swimming in alehouse waters. And
while Mr. Atkins was on the schooner’s deck and busy buying, selling, and arguing prices, we
took our seats in the pub room of his inn. Right off I told the bosun:
“I’ve been especially relying on Atkins to put me in touch with Captain Len Guy, because
they’re pretty chummy, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Bunk!” Hurliguerly put in. “Fenimore Atkins is a decent fellow, and the captain values
him. But he doesn’t measure up to me in the long run. Lemme go to bat for you, Mr. Jeorling.”
“Is this such a tricky business to negotiate, bosun, and isn’t there one free cabin aboard
the Halbrane? Even the smallest will be fine for me, and I’ll pay whatever—”
“All right, all right, Mr. Jeorling! There is a cabin in the deckhouse that nobody ever
uses, and since you don’t blink at emptying your pockets if need be. . . . Anyhow, just between
ourselves, this calls for somebody craftier than you think (and not my old buddy Atkins) to
persuade Captain Guy to take on a passenger! Aye, it’ll need every bit of cunning inside the
good lad who’s busy drinking to your health and sorry that you won’t return the favor!”
And while Hurliguerly delivered this statement, his left eye winked and his right eye
gleamed! Every bit of sparkle in his two pupils was packed into one! Needless to add, the tail
end of this fine sentence got swallowed up in his glass of whiskey, whose quality the bosun
didn’t comment on because the Green Cormorant supplied the Halbrane’s storeroom with the
same stuff.
This devil of a fellow then took a short black pipe out of his jacket, tamped it, topped it
off with more tobacco, firmly inserted it into the chink between two molars in a corner of his
mouth, lit it, and was encircled by so much smoke, like a liner clapping on full steam, that his
whole head vanished behind a swirl of gray smog.

“Mr. Hurliguerly . . . ?” I said.
“Mr. Jeorling . . .”
“Why would your captain be opposed to having me?”
“Because his plans don’t involve taking on passengers, and till now he has always turned
down this kind of proposition.”
“What are his reasons, may I ask?”
“Oh, because he likes to be footloose and fancy-free, to go where he pleases, to backtrack
whenever it suits him, to head north or south, to lie down or get up without giving reasons
to anybody! He never leaves these South Seas, Mr. Jeorling, and for many a year we’ve roved
together between Australia to the east and America to the west, going from Hobart to Ker-
guelen’s Land, to Tristan da Cunha, to the Falklands, laying over just long enough to sell our
cargo, sometimes heading as far as the antarctic seas. You can appreciate that a passenger might
be a nuisance under these circumstances—and who would want to sail on the Halbrane anyway,
since she hates tinkering with the breezes and goes wherever the wind takes her!”
I wondered if the bosun wasn’t trying to inflate his schooner into some sort of ghost
ship, navigating aimlessly, not resting even during layovers, wandering the high latitudes under
the command of a phantasmagorical captain. Be that as it may, I said to him:
“In a nutshell, the Halbrane will be leaving Kerguelen’s Land in four or five days?”
“Right.”
“And this time she’ll head west and make for Tristan da Cunha?”
“Most likely.”
“All right, bosun, that likelihood is good enough for me, and since you’re offering me
your friendly assistance, talk Captain Guy into taking me on as a passenger . . .”
“Consider it done.”
“Wonderful, Hurliguerly, and you won’t be sorry you did.”
“Oh, Mr. Jeorling,” countered this odd crew foreman, shaking his head as if he’d just
emerged from the sea, “I’ve never been sorry about anything, and I’m positive I won’t be a bit
sorry I helped you out. Now with your permission, and without waiting for our pal Atkins, I’ll
take my leave and get back on board.”
After emptying his final glass of whiskey in a single gulp (I thought the glass would
vanish down his gullet along with the liquor), Hurliguerly gave me a reassuring grin. Then, his
heavy torso swaying on the arch formed by his two legs, swaddled by the acrid smoke escaping
from the fireplace of his pipe, he went out and set his course to the northeast of the Green
Cormorant.
Behind at the table, I was in the grip of some pretty conflicting thoughts. Honestly now,
who was this Captain Len Guy? Mr. Atkins had characterized him in our conversations as both
a fine sailor and a decent man. I had no reason to doubt that he was either—though he had
his eccentricities, based on what the bosun just told me. Never, I swear to you, did it occur to
me that proposing to sail on the Halbrane could raise any difficulties, so long as I was fine with
the price tag and happy with shipboard conditions. Why would Captain Guy turn me down?
Could it be that he didn’t want to be bound by any commitments, didn’t want to be tied to
reaching any specific location, if, in the course of his navigating, he took it into his head to go

somewhere else . . . ? Or, rather, did he have his private reasons for distrusting outsiders, given
the particular sort of navigating he was up to . . . ? Did this mean he was involved in smug-
gling or the slave trade, still very brisk businesses in the South Seas back then . . . ? A plausible
explanation, all things considered, even though our fine innkeeper swore by both the Halbrane
and her captain. Trustworthy seaman, trustworthy commander—Fenimore Atkins vouched for
the one and the other! That counted for something, assuming he wasn’t deluding himself in
either case! Even so, he knew Len Guy only through seeing him once a year, while the captain
lay over in Kerguelen’s Land and was involved in strictly routine activities that had no potential
to arouse suspicion.
On the other hand I wondered if the bosun wasn’t puffing himself up, trying to make
his offers of assistance sound more crucial than they really were. . . . Wasn’t it just possible that
Captain Guy might be perfectly happy, perfectly at peace, with having a passenger on board
who was as cooperative as I’d claimed to be, somebody who didn’t worry about travel expenses?
An hour later I ran into the innkeeper down at the harbor and brought him up to speed.
“Oh, that damn Hurliguerly!” he exclaimed. “He never changes! To believe him, he tells
Captain Guy when to blow his nose. Look here, Mr. Jeorling—he’s an odd duck, that bosun,
not a bad fellow, not a fool, but he has a devilishly good aim when it comes to bagging dollars
or guineas! If he gets his hands on you, watch your coin purse, button up your pockets, check
your watch fob, and don’t let him pull anything!”
“Thanks for the advice, Atkins. Tell me, have you already had a word with Captain Guy?
Have you talked to him . . . ?”
“Not yet, Mr. Jeorling. We’ve got time. The Halbrane has only just arrived and she hasn’t
even swung on her anchor in the ebb tide—”
“Of course, but . . . you know what I’m after . . . I want it settled as soon as possible.”
“Have a little patience!”
“I need to know where I stand right away.”
“Look, there’s nothing to worry about, Mr. Jeorling! Everything will be fine. Besides, if
the Halbrane doesn’t work out, you still won’t have any trouble. It’s almost fishing season, and
soon there’ll be more boats in Christmas Harbor than houses around the Green Cormorant.
Trust me, I’ll take care of shipping you out of here!”
Words and more words, that’s all it came down to—the bosun’s on the one hand, Mr.
Atkins’s on the other. Accordingly, despite their lofty promises, I decided I would immediately
contact Len Guy myself, no matter how hard-to-get he might play, then discuss my plans with
him the instant I could take him aside.
I didn’t have a chance till the following day. Beforehand I’d sauntered down the pier
and inspected the schooner, which looked exceptionally well built and tremendously sturdy.
Indispensable virtues for a ship in these seas where pack ice sometimes drifts beyond the 50th
parallel.
It happened in the afternoon. When I went up to Captain Guy, I could tell he wished
he’d gone the other way.
It’s part and parcel of Christmas Harbor that nothing new goes on in this little fishing
community. Vessels, I repeat, were pretty plentiful in those days, and maybe some of them

would hire a few Kerguelen folks to replace sailors who were on leave or had gone missing.
Otherwise the community stays the same, and Captain Guy must have known every individual
in the place.
In a few weeks he would be more fallible, once the arriving fleet had emptied all its crews
onto the piers, filling them with an abnormal hustle and bustle that would culminate in the
fishing season. But at that point in the month of August, the Halbrane was making the most of
a winter whose mildness had been truly exceptional—she had the harbor to herself.
So it was impossible for Captain Guy to not have spotted me as an outsider, even if the
bosun and the innkeeper hadn’t yet approached him on my behalf.
Now then, his attitude could mean just one of two things: either my proposition had
been presented to him and he didn’t intend to pursue it, or neither Hurliguerly nor Atkins
had spoken to him since the day before. In this latter case, if he snubbed me, it was due to his
antisocial nature, it came from the fact that he disliked fraternizing with strangers.
But I was seething with impatience. If this hedgehog refused me, fair enough! I could live
with such a refusal. There wouldn’t be any pretense of my compelling him against his will to
take me aboard his vessel. I wasn’t even a countryman of his. Besides, there was no American
consul or representative residing in Kerguelen’s Land, nobody I could lodge an appeal with.
What mattered most was that I settled the issue, and if I ran into a “no” from Captain Guy,
I would simply shrug him off and wait for the arrival of another and friendlier ship—which
would delay me only two or three weeks.
Just as I was about to pull alongside the captain, the ship’s first officer joined him. The
latter made the most of this chance to get away, signaled the mate to follow him, ducked
around the far end of the harbor, vanished behind a corner of rock, and headed back up the
north side of the bay.
“Hell’s bells!” I said to myself. “Obviously I’m going to have trouble pulling this off! But
it’s only a temporary setback. Tomorrow morning I’ll go aboard the Halbrane. Like it or not, this
Len Guy character will have to hear me out—and answer me yes or no!”
Besides, it was just possible that around dinnertime, Captain Guy might go to the Green
Cormorant, where visiting seamen usually ate their lunches and dinners while laying over. After
a few months at sea, they like a change of pace from their standard fare of hardtack and salt
pork.
Actually their good health requires it, so crewmen enjoy fresh rations while officers dine
in style at the inn. I didn’t doubt that friend Atkins had prepared a hearty welcome for the
schooner’s captain, first officer, and bosun.
So I waited and didn’t sit down at table till very late. I was in for a disappointment.
No, neither Captain Len Guy nor any of his shipmates graced the Green Cormorant
with their presence. I had to eat dinner on my own, just as I’d done every day for the past two
months—because, as you can easily appreciate, there weren’t any new diners to rebuild Mr.
Atkins’s customer base during the wintertime.
After nightfall at around 7:30, I finished my meal and went for a stroll around the harbor
on the residential side.

The pier was deserted. The inn’s windows gave off a little light. Not one man on the
Halbrane’s crew had come ashore. Her dinghies were tied alongside her, rocking at the ends of
their mooring lines, awash in the rising sea.
Honestly, that schooner was like a set of barracks where her sailors were confined at
sundown. This policy must have been thoroughly annoying to that old gossip and guzzler
Hurliguerly, too inclined, I expect, to run from alehouse to alehouse during his layovers. I didn’t
see him nearby, any more than I saw the captain near the Green Cormorant.
I stayed out till nine o’clock, a hundred steps off to the side of the schooner. Little by
little the vessel’s shape grew murkier. The bay water reflected only the tiniest spiral of light,
shed by a lantern that hung from the forestay in the ship’s bow.
I went back to the inn, where I found Fenimore Atkins puffing on his pipe beside the
doorway.
“Atkins,” I said to him, “it looks like Captain Guy isn’t real fond of visiting your inn.”
“Sometimes he comes on Sunday, and today’s Saturday, Mr. Jeorling . . .”
“You haven’t spoken to him?”
“I have . . . ,” our innkeeper answered me, in a tone that clearly indicated he felt
uncomfortable.
“You let him know that somebody of your acquaintance wants to sail on the Halbrane?”
“Yes.”
“And how did he answer?”
“Not the way I would’ve liked or you would’ve wanted, Mr. Jeorling.”
“He refused?”
“Pretty much, if this quotation sounds like a refusal to you: ‘Atkins, my schooner isn’t set
up to carry passengers. I’ve never taken any and I don’t ever plan to.’ ”

3. Captain Len Guy
I
didn’t sleep well. Several times I “dreamed that I was dreaming.”1 Now then—as
Edgar Allan Poe implies—whenever you suspect you’re dreaming, you wake up
almost immediately.
So I woke up, still very irked with Captain Len Guy. The idea of going off
on the Halbrane, when she left Kerguelen’s Land, had put down roots in my brain. Mr. Atkins
never stopped bragging to me about this ship, invariably the first to stand into Christmas Har-
bor every year. Counting off the days, counting off the hours, how often I’d envisioned myself
aboard that schooner, sailing away from these islands, heading west, making for the shores
of America! Our innkeeper never questioned that Captain Guy would cooperate and do the
businesslike thing. It was inconceivable that a merchantman would turn away a passenger not
requiring her to change course, a passenger willing to pay top dollar to come along. Who would
have believed such a thing?
Accordingly I felt a lot of anger smoldering inside me against that uncooperative charac-
ter. My bile was steaming, my nerves strung out. I was rearing up in front of an obstacle that
suddenly blocked my way.
I had an awful night, spent it in a fever of exasperation, and didn’t calm down till the
sun came up.
What’s more, I’d decided to have it out with Len Guy on the topic of his dismal behav-
ior. Maybe I wouldn’t accomplish anything, but at least I would get my feelings off my chest.
Mr. Atkins had talked to him, only to receive the answer you’ve heard. As for the oh-
so-helpful Hurliguerly, in such a hurry to offer his influence and assistance—what were the
chances he would keep his promise? I didn’t know and hadn’t run into him since. In any case he
couldn’t have had much better luck than the Green Cormorant’s proprietor.
I went out around eight o’clock in the morning. It was weather for dogs, as the French
say—or in our vernacular, a bitch of a day. Off to the west a downpour of rain and snow
doused the mountains at the far end, piling up clouds in the lower zones and creating an ava-

lanche of wind and water. Captain Guy’s agenda probably didn’t include coming ashore during
a squall and getting soaked to the skin.
In essence nobody was on the pier. A couple of small fishing boats had left port ahead of
the turmoil—and no doubt had taken refuge at the far ends of any coves the wind and waves
couldn’t buffet. As for my going aboard the Halbrane, that wasn’t feasible without hailing one of
her longboats, and the bosun wouldn’t have taken it on himself to send me one.
“Besides,” I said to myself, “the captain’s on his home ground aboard his schooner, and
given how I figure I’ll respond if he sticks to his blankety-blank refusal, I’m better off in neutral
territory. I’ll watch for him from my window, and if his dinghy puts in at the pier, he won’t get
away from me this time.”
Going back to the Green Cormorant, I stood behind the dripping panes of my window,
wiped off the condensation, and mostly ignored the tempest rushing down the chimney and
scattering ashes in the fireplace.
I waited, nervous, impatient, champing at the bit, my annoyance growing.
Two hours went by. And as often happens with the erratic winds in Kerguelen’s Land, the
weather calmed down before I did.
At around eleven o’clock, the clouds towering in the east got the upper hand, and the
storm blew itself out on the other side of the mountains.
I opened my window.
Just then one of the Halbrane’s longboats was getting ready to cast off. A sailor got down
into it, equipped with a pair of oars, while another man sat in the stern without picking up the
yoke lines to the rudder. In any case the schooner lay no more than a hundred yards from the
pier. The dinghy pulled alongside it. The man leaped ashore.
It was Captain Len Guy.
In a couple seconds I was out the inn’s front door and standing in front of the captain,
who looked all set to repel any boarding party, come hell or high water.
“Sir,” I said to him in a curt, cool tone—a tone as cool as the temperature when winds
blow from the east.
Captain Guy looked intently at me, and I was struck by the sadness in his eyes, which
were as black as ink. Then, in a low voice, the words barely above a whisper:
“You’re a stranger in these parts?” he asked me.
“In Kerguelen’s Land, yes,” I answered.
“English born?”
“No . . . American.”
He greeted me with a quick nod, and I gave him the same greeting back.
“Sir,” I continued, “I have reason to believe that Mr. Atkins of the Green Cormorant
spoke briefly with you about a proposition of mine. That proposition, it seems to me, deserved
a favorable reception at your hands . . .”
“Your proposition to travel aboard my schooner?” Captain Guy responded.
“Exactly.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t agree to your request.”
“Will you tell me why?”

“In the first place because it isn’t my policy to take passengers.”
“And in the second place, captain?”
“Because the Halbrane never follows a course that has been plotted in advance. She sets out
for one port and docks at another as it suits my purpose. Understand, sir, that I don’t answer
to any shipowners. Mine is the controlling interest in that schooner, and nobody tells me where
to sail her.”
“Then it’s entirely up to you, sir, to take me on as a passenger?”
“It is, but I can answer you only with a refusal—I’m very sorry to say.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind, captain, when you hear that I don’t much care where
your schooner goes. It’s reasonable to assume she’ll end up someplace . . .”
“Someplace . . . indeed.”
And at this juncture I thought Captain Guy shot a long look at the southern horizon.
“Well, sir,” I went on, “I really don’t care where we go. My top priority is to leave Ker-
guelen’s Land at the first available opportunity.”
Len Guy didn’t answer and stood lost in thought, making no attempt to give me the slip.
“Are you doing me the courtesy, sir, of hearing me out?” I asked with an edge on my
voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’ll add—correct me if I’m wrong—that if you haven’t changed your schooner’s
course, you plan to leave Christmas Harbor for Tristan da Cunha . . .”
“Maybe Tristan da Cunha . . . maybe the Cape . . . maybe the Falklands . . . maybe some-
where else . . .”
“Well, Captain Guy,” I remarked tartly, trying to rein in my annoyance, “somewhere else
is exactly the place I’d like to be!”
Then Len Guy’s manner underwent a striking shift. His voice changed, turning harder
and more clipped. In plain blunt terms he let me know that my persistence was useless, that
he had no more time to talk, that he was in a hurry, that he had business at the port office to
take care of . . . in short, that we were through, had done more than enough, and had nothing
further to say to each other.
I reached out to delay him (“grab him” would be more accurate), and this poorly begun
conversation threatened to have an even poorer ending, when that peculiar individual turned
back to me and in a gentler tone, spoke his mind as follows:
“Please believe me, sir, it distresses me to turn you down, to be so discourteous to an
American. But I can’t proceed in any other way. In the course of the Halbrane’s navigating, we
could meet with various unforeseen developments where it would be awkward to have a pas-
senger present . . . even one as cooperative as yourself. I would be in danger of not acting on
the very opportunities I’ve been searching for.”
“I said to you, captain, and I’ll say again, that though I mean to get back to America, to
Connecticut, I don’t care whether it takes three months or six, whether it’s down this sea lane or
that one . . . and if your schooner has to plunge into the heart of the antarctic seas—”
“The antarctic seas!” Captain Guy exclaimed in a questioning voice, his eyes probing me
to the depths as if they had sharp points. “Why do you say the antarctic seas?” he went on,
clutching me.

“My top priority is to leave Kerguelen’s Land.”
“But I could just as easily have said the arctic seas, or the North Pole instead of the South
Pole . . .”2
Captain Guy didn’t answer, and I thought I saw a tear glistening in his eyes. Then, switch-
ing to a different line of thought, anxious to cut short some smoldering memory my reply had
stirred up for him:
“Who,” he said, “would dare venture to the South Pole . . .”
“It’s a difficult place to get to . . . and there wouldn’t be much point in it,” I remarked.
“Still, you can find fellows adventurous enough to jump into that sort of undertaking.”
“Adventurous . . . yes!” Len Guy muttered.

“And come to think of it,” I went on, “the United States is currently giving it another
try with a squadron under Charles Wilkes, the Vincennes, the Peacock, the Porpoise, the Flying Fish,
and several consorts.”3
“The United States, Mr. Jeorling? Are you saying your federal government has sent an
expedition into the polar seas?”
“It’s a matter of record, and last year before I left America, I heard that this squadron had
just put to sea. That was a year ago, and it’s quite likely that daredevil Wilkes has scouted out
more of those regions than any discoverer before him.”*
Captain Guy fell silent again, and he came out of this unexplained reverie only to say:
“In any case, if Wilkes manages to clear the Antarctic Circle and then the ice barrier, I
doubt that he has exceeded the highest latitudes that . . .”
“. . . that,” I replied, “his predecessors Bellinghausen, Foster, Kendall, Biscoe, Morrell,
Kemp, and Balleny have reached—”
“—and that . . .” Len Guy added.
“What are you getting at?” I asked.
“Sir,” Captain Guy said suddenly, “are you originally from Connecticut?”
“That’s right, Connecticut.”
“And more specifically?”
“Hartford.”
“Are you familiar with the island of Nantucket?”
“I’ve been there on several occasions.”
“You’re aware, I imagine,” Captain Guy said, looking me right in the eye, “that your
writer Edgar Allan Poe gave it as the birthplace of his hero Arthur Gordon Pym . . .”
“That’s right,” I replied, “and now it comes back to me—the opening of that novel is
laid on the island of Nantucket.”
“You say ‘that novel’—those are the exact words you would use?”
“Of course, captain.”
“Yes, and so would the rest of the world. But excuse me, sir, I can’t dawdle any longer.
I’m truly sorry I can’t help you in this matter. Believe me, even if I gave more thought to your
proposition, it wouldn’t change my mind. Anyhow, you’ll be delayed only a few days. The fish-
ing season is about to open. Merchantmen and whalers will be laying over in Christmas Har-
bor, you’ll have the freedom to choose this one or that, and you can be sure of going anywhere
you wish. I’m sorry, sir, sincerely sorry . . . and I bid you good day.”
Captain Len Guy backed away on these last words, and our interview ended very differ-
ently than I’d assumed it would . . . i.e., in a courteous (though formal) manner.
Since there was no point in banging my head against the impossible, I abandoned all
hope of sailing aboard the Halbrane, yet I still nursed a grudge against that damned commander
of hers. And why not admit it? My curiosity was aroused. I sensed a secret in that seaman’s soul
and I would have been happy to get to the bottom of it. The unexpected turn our conversation
had taken, the name Arthur Gordon Pym brought up in such a surprising way, those questions
about the island of Nantucket, the impact of my news that a push into the polar seas was
*Wilkes’s expedition confirmed the existence of an antarctic continent. FPW

currently taking place under Wilkes’s direction, the statement that this American naval officer
hadn’t gone farther south than . . . whose name had Captain Guy meant to say at that point?
For a matter-of-fact brain like mine, our meeting offered plenty of food for thought.
That day Mr. Atkins wanted to know if Captain Guy had come off in a better light . . . did
I get permission to occupy one of the schooner’s cabins? I duly admitted to the innkeeper that
my negotiations hadn’t been any more productive than his. This continued to surprise him.
He had no idea why the captain kept refusing, was so bullheaded. He couldn’t make sense of
it. What was behind this change? And—a fact that hit closer to home—neither the Halbrane’s
men nor their skipper had been paying visits to the Green Cormorant, in contrast to their usual
behavior during layovers. Apparently the crew were following orders. The bosun had taken his
seat in the inn’s pub room on just two or three occasions, no more than that. Ergo Mr. Atkins’s
acute disappointment.
As regards Hurliguerly, I could understand that after he’d approached me so recklessly, he
didn’t want to keep up a relationship that was worse than pointless. He’d tried to get his superior
to budge—Lord knows how—and in a nutshell, the latter’s obstinacy had undoubtedly won out.
During the following three days of August 10–12, work aboard the schooner involved
replenishing her supplies and carrying out repairs. You could see the crew coming and going
on deck—sailors inspecting the masts, replacing the rigging, tightening stays and backstays
that had gone slack during her latest crossing, repainting her topside and bulwarks where they’d
been damaged by waves breaking over her, flexing the new sails back and forth, repairing the
old ones that would still work in smooth seas, caulking this or that seam in the side planks and
deck with noisy smacks of the mallet.
They finished this work on schedule, without the yelling, cussing, and squabbling typical
of seamen riding at anchor. The Halbrane must have been expertly commanded, her crew well
treated, well disciplined, barely letting out a peep. Maybe they suffered by comparison with the
bosun, who, it seemed to me, was constantly laughing, joking, and jabbering away—his tongue
as busy on deck as ashore.
Finally the word went out that the schooner was scheduled to leave on August 15.4 The
day before, I still hadn’t any reason to think Len Guy would back down from his unequivocal
refusal.
What’s more, I’d stopped brooding about it and was facing up to my difficulties. I no
longer had any urge to rail against him. I wouldn’t let Mr. Atkins make any more attempts.
When I ran into Captain Guy on the pier, we were like men who didn’t know each other, had
never even met. He went by on one side, I on the other. But once or twice I couldn’t help notic-
ing a certain hesitation in his manner. . . . It was as if he wanted to have a word with me . . . as
if some inner impulse was spurring him on. He didn’t do a thing, and I wasn’t the sort to ask
for further explanations. Moreover—as I found out the same day—Fenimore Atkins had gone
against my strict prohibition, made a new appeal to Captain Guy on my behalf, and gotten
nowhere. The “case was closed” as they say, and yet the bosun thought otherwise . . .
In essence, when questioned by the Green Cormorant’s proprietor, Hurliguerly insisted
the game wasn’t hopelessly lost.
“It’s perfectly possible,” he said over and over, “that we haven’t heard the captain’s last
word on the subject!”

But that braggart’s statements were about as reliable as a wrong number in an equation,
and I swear I couldn’t have cared less about the schooner’s forthcoming departure. All I thought
about was watching for another ship to show up on the horizon.
“In a week or two, Mr. Jeorling, you’ll have better luck than you had with Captain
Guy,” our innkeeper told me again. “There’ll be more than one who’ll see you as a golden
opportunity.”
“Maybe so, Atkins, but don’t forget that most of the vessels coming to Kerguelen’s Land
will be here to fish—they’ll hang around for five or six months, and if I have to wait that long
before heading back to sea . . .”
“Not always, Mr. Jeorling, not always! Fishing boats aren’t the only vessels that put into
Christmas Harbor. You’ll get your chance, and you won’t be a bit sorry the Halbrane went off
without you.”
Whether I would be sorry or not remained to be seen . . . but it was positively written
in the stars that I would leave Kerguelen’s Land as a passenger on Len Guy’s schooner, that
she was going to take me on the most amazing adventures to reverberate through the maritime
history of that era.
Around 7:30 in the evening on August 14, as night was already falling over the island, I’d
gone for an after-dinner saunter down the pier on the north side of the bay. The weather was
dry, the sky dotted with stars, the air brisk, the cold had a nip to it. Under these conditions my
stroll wasn’t going to be a long one.
Half an hour later, then, I was heading for the Green Cormorant when an individual
crossed my path, hesitated, returned in his tracks, and came to a stop.
The night was dark enough that I had trouble recognizing him. But thanks to his voice,
to that distinctive whispering of his, he was unmistakable. Captain Len Guy stood in front
of me.
“Mr. Jeorling,” he said, “tomorrow the Halbrane is due to set sail . . . tomorrow morn-
ing . . . as the tide goes out . . .”
“Why bother telling me,” I countered, “since you refuse—”
“Sir, I’ve been thinking it over, and if you’re still of the same mind, be on board by seven
o’clock.”
“Ye gods, captain,” I replied, “I didn’t expect such a change of heart from you.”
“As I said, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’ll add that the Halbrane will sail straight to
Tristan da Cunha. I assume that meets with your approval?”
“I couldn’t ask for more, captain. By seven tomorrow morning I’ll be on board.”
“Where you’ll find your cabin ready.”
“And as for the ticket price . . .” I said.
“We’ll sort it out to your satisfaction later,” the captain remarked. “Till tomorrow, then.”
“Till tomorrow.”
I offered this peculiar man my hand to seal the bargain. No doubt the darkness kept him
from seeing the gesture, because he didn’t reciprocate, walked away with a quick stride, rejoined
his dinghy, and got taken back on board with a few strokes of the oar.

I was quite surprised by all this, and Mr. Atkins shared my feelings when I returned to
the Green Cormorant’s pub room and gave him an update.
“Good grief,” he answered me, “that old fox Hurliguerly was absolutely right! No getting
around it, this devil of a captain is as fickle as a pampered lass! Let’s hope he doesn’t change his
mind just before he casts off!”
A conjecture that didn’t add up . . . and after mulling it over, I thought this way of behav-
ing didn’t jibe with being fickle or whimsical. If Captain Guy backed down from his refusal, it’s
because he had some motive or other for taking me as a passenger. To my mind his change of
heart had to tie in with what I’d told him concerning Connecticut and the island of Nantucket.
As for what that motive might be, time would tell.
I finished packing in nothing flat. Anyhow I’m one of those commonsense travelers who
never saddle themselves with much luggage and go around the world carrying just a side bag
and a suitcase. The better part of my gear consisted of fur clothing, a necessity for anybody
navigating the high latitudes. When you sail the south Atlantic, these are the minimum precau-
tions you can reasonably take.
Before sunrise the next day, August 15, I said farewell to good old Atkins. I had noth-
ing but praise for the courtesies and kindnesses of my countryman, exiled on Desolation Isles
where he and his family lived happily all in all. Our helpful innkeeper seemed very appreciative
of the thanks I gave him. Concerned for my welfare, he was in a hurry to see me on board—in
constant dread, as he expressed it, that Captain Guy had “gone off on a different tack” since
the evening before. He kept telling me this over and over, and he admitted to me that he went
to his window several times during the night, making sure the Halbrane was still anchored in the
middle of Christmas Harbor. He got over his worries—which I didn’t at all share—only after
the sun started to come up.
Meaning to say good-bye to Captain Guy and the bosun, Mr. Atkins wanted to go with
me to the ship. A dinghy was waiting by the pier and it ferried the two of us to the schooner’s
boarding ladder, already clear of the ebbing waters.
Hurliguerly was the first person I met on deck. He shot me a triumphant glance. Its
meaning was as plain as if he’d spoken out loud:
“Uh huh! You see? Our ticklish captain wound up taking you . . . and who do you have
to thank? Just that gallant lad of a bosun, who did his best to help you and didn’t go on and
on about his influence!”
Was this the truth? I had solid reasons for not accepting it without serious reservations.
Anyhow it didn’t make much difference. The Halbrane would be weighing anchor with me on
board.
Captain Len Guy came out on deck almost immediately. But what surprised me was that
he didn’t seem to notice my presence.
Preparations for casting off were under way, sails removed from their covers, halyards set,
sheets and tackle ready. In the bow the capstan went round and round under the first officer’s
direction, and it wasn’t long before the anchor cable was taut beneath the vessel.
Then Mr. Atkins went up to Captain Guy and said in an affable voice:

“Till next year!”
“God willing, Mr. Atkins!”
They shook on it. In his turn the bosun clasped hands energetically with the Green Cor-
morant’s proprietor, then the dinghy took the innkeeper back to the pier.
At eight o’clock, once the tide was well on its way out, the Halbrane spread her biggest and
lowest sails, tacked to port, caught a mild breeze from the north, maneuvered to exit the bay of
Christmas Harbor, reached the open sea, and pointed her prow to the northwest.
As the afternoon’s last hours faded away, so did the white crests and sharp peaks of Table
Mount and Mt. Havergal, the first rising 2,000 feet above sea level, the second 3,000 feet.

4. From Kerguelen’s Land to
Prince Edward’s Island
I
t’s possible that no crossing ever got off to a more promising start. I’d had a
heaven-sent piece of luck: instead of Len Guy’s mystifying refusal stranding me
a few more weeks in Christmas Harbor, here was a lovely breeze taking me far
away from those islands—the wind was on our quarter, the waves were barely
rippling, and our speed was nine miles per hour.1
The Halbrane’s insides went hand in glove with her outsides. From her deckhouse to her
crew quarters, she was as perfectly organized and meticulously tidy as a Dutch merchantman.
On her port side in the front of the deckhouse stood Captain Guy’s cabin, inset with
a glass window that let him scan the deck and issue orders as needed to the men on watch
between the mainmast and foremast. The first officer’s cabin was identically situated on the
starboard side. Both featured a narrow cot, a cupboard of middling capacity, a straw-bottomed
chair, a table attached to the floor, a swinging lamp hung overhead, and various seafaring
instruments such as a barometer, a mercury thermometer, a sextant, and a nautical chronom-
eter ensconced in the sawdust packing of its oaken case, from which it emerged only when the
captain was ready to take his sights.
There were two other cabins located in the rear of the deckhouse, whose midsection func-
tioned as a wardroom that had a mess table between wooden benches with movable backrests.
One of these cabins had been fixed up for my use. It was lit by two windows, one facing
the corridor that cut through the deckhouse, the other facing the stern. At that location the
pilot stood in front of the steering wheel and beneath the spanker boom, which reached several
feet past the sternrail and helped the schooner sail close to the wind.
My cabin measured eight feet by five. I was at home with the realities of ocean travel and
didn’t need much more in the way of space—nor in the way of furnishings: I had a table, a
cupboard, a cane-backed chair, a washbasin on an iron stand, and a cot whose skimpy mattress
probably would have provoked some complaints from any passenger less cooperative than yours
truly. But I was looking at a comparatively brief crossing, since the Halbrane was taking me just

to Tristan da Cunha. I wouldn’t be occupying this cabin for longer than four or five weeks, so
I moved in and took over.
Secured by sturdy cables, the galley loomed in front of the foremast and nearly dead
center—the location of the planking that supports the fore staysail. Still farther on gaped the
cowl over the hatchway, lined with heavy oilcloth. It had a ladder that gave access to the crew’s
quarters and between decks. This cowl was hermetically sealed during stormy weather, protect-
ing the quarters below from heavy seas breaking over the ship’s bows.
By name our eight crewmen were: Martin Holt, master sailmaker; Hardie, master caulk-
er; Rogers, Drap, Francis, Gratian, Burry, and Stern, able seamen—all twenty-five to thirty-five
years of age, all Englishmen hailing from St. George’s side of the Channel, all highly skilled
professionals, all under the praiseworthy control of an iron disciplinarian.
Let me describe him right off: the fellow I mean—an exceptionally forceful individual,
whose tiniest word or gesture they obeyed—wasn’t the Halbrane’s captain, it was his next in com-
mand, First Officer Jem West, a man of thirty-two at the time.
In all my ocean voyages, I’ve never come across a man of more sterling character. West
was born at sea and had spent his childhood—along with his whole family—aboard a barge
skippered by his father. At no time in his existence did he breathe any air other than the salt
air of the English Channel, the Atlantic, or the Pacific. During layovers he went ashore only to
deal with job requirements, whether they were legal or commercial. If he had to swap one ship
for another, he hefted his canvas bag on board and stayed put. A seaman to his fingertips, his
profession was his whole life. When he wasn’t at sea in reality, he was at sea in his imagination.
After working as cabin boy, apprentice, and able seaman, he got promoted to third mate, second
mate, chief mate, and finally first officer on the Halbrane under Captain Len Guy’s command.
However Jem West had no ambition to go any higher; he wasn’t looking to get rich; he
didn’t get caught up in buying or selling cargo. Properly stowing it, yes, because proper stowage
is supremely important for a craft carrying so much canvas. As for the details of running her,
the navigational sciences, managing her rigging, maximizing her sail power, putting her through
her paces under every circumstance, casting off, making fast, battling the elements, taking lon-
gitude and latitude sights, in short, everything related to that marvelous mechanism known as
a sailing ship—West grasped them like nobody else on earth.
Finally here’s what our first officer looked like: medium height, on the wiry side, all
nerve and muscle, sinewy limbs with a gymnast’s agility, seaman’s eyesight of amazing range
and startling acuteness, face bronzed, hair short and thick, no beard on his cheeks or chin,
regular features, his whole facial appearance indicating resources of energy, daring, and physical
strength at their peak intensity.
West didn’t say much—only when asked a question. He issued his orders in a clear voice,
in crisp language, not repeating them, and in a way that could be instantly understood—and
they were.
He deserves your attention, this model officer of the merchant marine, as dedicated body
and soul to Captain Len Guy as he was to the schooner Halbrane. It was as if he were one of
the ship’s vital organs, as if this assemblage of wood, iron, canvas, copper, and hemp had its life

force in him, as if what had been built by man and created by God were one and the same. If
the Halbrane had a heart, it was pounding in Jem West’s chest.
I’ll wrap up these details on the staff by mentioning the vessel’s chef—a Negro from the
shores of Africa who was some thirty years old, went by the name Endicott, and had been a
cook or hash slinger on Captain Guy’s payroll for the past eight years. He and the bosun saw
eye to eye on everything and spent much of their time jawing like boyhood chums. I should
mention that Hurliguerly claimed to own some recipes that were masterpieces of culinary
artistry, and Endicott sometimes gave them a try, but without ever arousing the interest of the
unadventurous diners in the officers mess.
The Halbrane had put to sea under first-rate auspices. It was intensely cold—because,
below the 48th southern parallel during August, winter still grips this part of the Pacific. But
we had a smooth sea, the wind holding firmly in the east-southeast. If weather conditions kept
up (in line with both our hopes and forecasts), we could stay on the same tack for the entire
crossing, needing only to slowly slacken sail to bring us level with Tristan da Cunha.
Life on board was very orderly, very uncomplicated, and (something’s that’s bearable at
sea) not without a certain appealing monotony. Navigating is movement in repose, a dreamy lull-
ing, and I had no complaints about my solitary state. Maybe my curiosity could have used a little
satisfying on one point: why had Captain Guy backed down after initially refusing me? It would
have been a waste of time to ask the first officer. Besides, was he privy to his superior’s secrets?
They had no direct bearing on his job, and I noticed that he paid no attention to anything other
than his duties. And besides, could I extract anything more than one-syllable answers from West?
In the course of both morning meals plus our evening meal, we didn’t exchange ten words. I
must admit, though, that I often caught the captain looking intently in my direction, as if he
wanted to ask me a question. Apparently he had something to learn from me, just as I myself
had something to learn from him. The truth is, neither one of us said a word.
Anyhow, when I was raring to talk, it was easy enough to look up the bosun. Always
ready to chew the fat, that lad! But could he tell me the sorts of things I was after? I’ll add
that he never failed to wish me a good morning or a good evening that always went on and on.
So . . . was I comfortable on board . . . did I like the food? Did I want him to suggest some of
his recipes to dusky old Endicott?
“Thanks, Hurliguerly,” I answered him one day. “The standard menu suits me fine. It
goes down easy, and I didn’t get better service from your pal back at the Green Cormorant.”
“Oh, that old devil Atkins! A gallant fellow all in all . . .”
“My sentiments exactly.”
“Think of it, Mr. Jeorling—he’s an American, yet he deliberately deported his family to
Kerguelen’s Land.”
“And why not?”
“And he’s happy there!”
“That’s nothing to sneer at, bosun.”
“Whatever. If Atkins asked me to swap places with him, it would be an ill wind, because
I flatter myself I lead a pleasant life!”

“Congratulations, Hurliguerly!”
“Hoho! As you very well know, Mr. Jeorling, when a fellow can take his bag aboard a ship
like the Halbrane, there’s a stroke of luck that doesn’t come along twice in a lifetime! Our captain
doesn’t say much, it’s true, and our first officer wags his tongue even less . . .”
“I’ve noticed,” I commented.
“Makes no difference, Mr. Jeorling! They’re staunch seamen, I give you my word! You’ll
miss ’em both when you get to Tristan da Cunha.”
“Good to hear you say so, bosun.”
“And look at the time we’re making with that southeasterly breeze on our quarter . . . and
the sea only swells when sperm whales or right whales try to stir things up down below! You’ll
see, Mr. Jeorling—in less than ten days we’ll gobble up those 1,300 miles between Kerguelen’s
Land and Prince Edward’s Island, and in less than two weeks we’ll do the same with the 2,300
miles between there and Tristan da Cunha!”
“Don’t go out on any limbs, bosun. These weather conditions need to keep up, and
there’s an old sailor’s saying that’s worth remembering: ‘If you want to get caught in a lie, pre-
dict the weather.’ ”
Be that as it may, conditions did keep up. Accordingly, during the afternoon of August
18, in latitude 42° 59' south and longitude 48° east, our lookout raised the mountains of the
Crozet Islands off our starboard bow, their elevations 3,600 to 4,200 feet above sea level.
Off our port side the next day, we passed the Possession and Schweine islands, which
nobody visits outside of fishing season. At this point in time birds were the only things
that moved—tribes of penguins and flocks of those sheathbills that flap around like
pigeons and are, for this reason, called “white pigeons” by whalers. The runoff from the gla-
ciers poured down Mt. Crozet’s erratic crannies, and for a few hours I could still make out
the contours of those wide, jagged, slow-moving sheets of ice. Then everything shrank to
one last streak of white along the horizon line, the snowy cupolas of the islands curving above
it.
Nearing land is a seagoing event that’s always of interest. It occurred to me that this
offered Captain Guy an opportunity to break the silence between him and his passenger. He
passed it up.
If the bosun’s predictions came true, in less than three days the peaks of Marion Island
and Prince Edward’s Island would emerge to the northwest. But we weren’t scheduled to lay
over in those parts. The Halbrane would replenish her water supply from the stores on Tristan
da Cunha.
So I figured no maritime incidents of any sort would be breaking the monotony of our
crossing. Now then, during the morning of the 20th, West was on watch and had just taken
his first readings of hour angles, when, much to my surprise, Len Guy climbed on deck, went
astern down one of the corridors cutting through the deckhouse, stood in front of the bin-
nacle,* and gave the compass dial a glance, more out of habit than necessity.
*Pedestal with a cowl on top housing the ship’s compass. FPW

I was sitting next to the sternrail—had the captain so much as noticed me? I couldn’t see
any telltale signs, and I’m positive my presence hadn’t caught his eye.
For my part, I was bound and determined to pay him no more attention than he paid me,
and I continued to lean against the rail.
Captain Guy took a couple steps, bent over the rail, and studied the long wake trailing
behind us; it looked like a thin, flat ribbon made of white lace—a stylish effect caused by our
schooner’s stealing swiftly through the countercurrents.
At this location only one person was within earshot—our pilot, seaman Stern, who
clutched the pegs of the Halbrane’s wheel and breasted the unpredictable rollers from the open
sea that threatened to affect her trim.
Nevertheless this didn’t seem to trouble the captain, because he came up and said to me
in his permanent whisper:
“Sir, I’d like a word with you.”
“I’m all ears, captain.”
“I’ve delayed till now . . . I’m closemouthed by nature, I admit . . . and besides, would my
conversation have held any interest for you?”
“You were wrong to even wonder,” I commented. “Conversing with you would have been
in my very highest interests.”
I assume that he missed the sarcasm in my reply—or at least that he didn’t want to dig-
nify it.
“Go on,” I added.
The captain seemed to hesitate, suggesting the attitude of a man who’s on the verge of
speaking but wonders if he would be better off keeping his mouth shut.
“Mr. Jeorling,” he inquired, “have you been asking yourself why I changed my mind
about your coming along?”
“Certainly I have, captain, and I’ve gotten nowhere. Maybe, given that you’re Eng-
lish . . . and didn’t have to deal with a countryman . . . you didn’t feel any obligation—”
“Mr. Jeorling, it’s precisely because you’re American that I finally decided to offer you a
cabin on the Halbrane.”
“Because I’m American?” I responded in some surprise at this admission.
“And also . . . because you’re from Connecticut.”
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand.”
“You will, when I add that since you’re from Connecticut and have been on the island of
Nantucket, I thought it was possible you were acquainted with the family of Arthur Gordon
Pym.”
“That fictional character who had such astounding adventures in the novel by Edgar
Allan Poe?”
“The same, sir—and its narrative is based on an actual manuscript recording the amaz-
ing details of that disastrous voyage through the Antarctic Ocean!”
I had to pinch myself when I heard Captain Guy come out with this! Excuse me? He
believed there was actually a manuscript written by Pym? But Poe’s novel was sheer fiction, a

work of the imagination penned by America’s most prodigious writer. And here was a perfectly
reasonable man regarding this work of fiction as literal fact . . .
I stood speechless, wondering in petto* what I was getting into.
“Did you hear my question?” Len Guy continued, forging ahead.
“Yes, of course, captain . . . of course . . . but I’m not sure if I’ve exactly grasped—”
“Then I’ll say it again in plainer words, Mr. Jeorling, because I want your honest answer.”
“I’m happy to cooperate.”
“Then I’ll ask you if, while you were in Connecticut, you were personally acquainted
with the Pym family—they lived in Nantucket and were related to one of the most respected
attorneys in the state. Pym’s father was a trader in sea stores and regarded as one of the island’s
leading merchants. After his son got caught up in those strange adventures, Poe learned the
entire chain of events from the son’s own lips.”
“And his adventures could have been even stranger, captain, since the whole tale came
from our great writer’s potent imagination . . . it’s a complete fabrication.”
“A complete fabrication . . . !”
And as he spoke these three words, Captain Guy gave three simultaneous shrugs, turning
each syllable into a note on an ascending scale.
“Therefore,” he went on, “you don’t think it’s true, Mr. Jeorling . . .”
“Neither I nor anybody else thinks it’s true, Captain Guy, and you’re the first person I’ve
heard of who claims it’s anything other than just a novel.”
“Then listen to me, Mr. Jeorling—though this ‘novel,’ as you term it, came out only last
year, it’s factual nevertheless. Though eleven years have gone by since the events it describes,
they’re real all the same, and we’re still waiting for the answer to a riddle that possibly will never
come to light!”
Obviously Captain Guy was insane and in the grip of some sort of brain fever that had
unbalanced his mental faculties! But though his mind was gone, it wouldn’t be hard, luckily, for
West to assume command of the schooner. All that remained was to hear the captain out—I’d
read and reread Poe’s novel, knew it well, and was interested in hearing what the captain had
to say about it.
“And now, Mr. Jeorling,” he went on in a more emphatic tone, the quiver in his voice
indicating a certain nervous excitement, “it’s possible that you weren’t acquainted with the Pym
family, that you didn’t meet up with them in either Hartford or Nantucket—”
“Or anywhere else,” I replied.
“So be it. But you insist on saying that this family doesn’t exist, that Arthur Gordon Pym
is just a fictitious character, that his journey was just an imaginary one! Yes, you insist on this
as if you were disputing our sacred religious dogmas! Could any man, even your Edgar Allan
Poe, have made up, have fabricated . . . ?”
As Captain Guy grew more heated, I saw that I’d better go along with his fixation and
accept what he said without any arguing.
*Italian: “in my heart of hearts.” FPW

“For the moment, sir,” he stated, “please bear in mind the facts I’m going to lay
out . . . they’re established, they’re not open to discussion. You’ll draw the conclusions from them
that suit you . . . I hope you won’t make me regret that I’ve given you a cabin aboard the Halbrane! ”
I’d been warned, clearly warned, and nodded in agreement. Facts . . . facts that would be
emerging from a half-cracked brain? They promised to be intriguing.
“When Poe’s narrative appeared in 1838, I was in New York,” Len Guy went on. “I left
immediately for Baltimore, the family home of this writer whose grandfather, ‘General’ Poe,
had been a petty officer during the Revolutionary War. I assume you agree that Poe’s family
really exists, even if you insist that Pym’s family doesn’t?”
I kept still, preferring to not interrupt my conversation partner as he rambled on.
“I rooted around,” he continued, “for some information on Edgar Allan Poe . . . they
pointed out his address to me . . . I showed up on his doorstep. Right off I had bad luck: he
was out of the country at the time, and I couldn’t see him.”
It struck me that this was a shame, because, given Poe’s marvelous aptitude for studying
different forms of insanity, he would have had a first-rate specimen in our captain!
“Unfortunately,” Captain Guy went on, “since I couldn’t meet with Poe, it wasn’t possible
to consult him about Pym. That bold trailblazer of the antarctic regions was dead. Indeed, as
the American author had announced at the end of the published account of Pym’s adventures,
his death was already common knowledge thanks to reports in the daily press.”
Captain Guy spoke the truth; but along with every other reader of this novel, I’d viewed
this announcement as simply a novelist’s stratagem. As I saw it, the writer wasn’t able—or
didn’t dare—to devise a conclusion to this amazing work of the imagination, so he gave out
that Arthur Gordon Pym didn’t send him the final three chapters because Pym had passed away
under sudden and distressing circumstances—circumstances, moreover, that Poe didn’t reveal.
“Therefore,” Len Guy continued, “since Poe was abroad and Pym dead, I had only one
option: to find the man who had been Pym’s traveling companion, that fellow Dirk Peters who
remained with him in the high latitudes to the final curtain—then the two came home again,
nobody knows how. Did Pym and Peters make the return trip together? The published account
doesn’t explain what happened, and there are obscurities in that part of the text as in many
other parts. Even so, Poe stated that Peters lived in Illinois, that he would be in a position
to supply information on the withheld chapters. I set out at once for Illinois . . . I arrived in
Springfield . . . I inquired after the fellow, who was a half-breed Indian . . . he lived in a small
town called Vandalia . . . I made my way there . . .”
“And didn’t find him?” I couldn’t help responding with a grin.
“More bad luck: he wasn’t there, Mr. Jeorling, or rather he wasn’t there any longer. Some
years earlier, this Peters fellow left Illinois—and the entire United States—for Lord knows where.
But I’ve chatted with people in Vandalia who were acquainted with him, who were his most recent
neighbors, and who heard him talk about his adventures without ever getting any explanation of
their conclusion—so he’s the only person left who holds the key to that mystery!”
Excuse me? This Peters fellow had actually existed . . . and still existed? I was nearly per-
suaded by this corroborating testimony from the Halbrane’s commander! Yes, one more second
and I would have gone off the deep end myself!

But this story taking up space in the captain’s brain was ridiculous . . . what a deranged
state his mind was in!
He imagined that he’d made a trip to Vandalia, Illinois, that he’d met with folks who
knew Dirk Peters . . . ! I had no problem believing that this individual couldn’t be found, since
he’d never existed in the first place . . . only in a novelist’s imagination!
However I definitely didn’t want to provoke Captain Guy or do anything to exacerbate
his brain fever.
So I pretended to put some stock in what he said, even when he added:
“You’re aware, Mr. Jeorling, that the narrative mentions a bottle with a letter hidden
inside it, a bottle placed at the foot of a peak in Kerguelen’s Land, a bottle left by the captain
of the schooner on which Pym was traveling?”2
“Yes, that’s in the book,” I replied.
“All right, on one of my recent voyages, I looked for that bottle in the place it was sup-
posedly left. I found both the bottle and the letter . . . and this letter said that the captain,
along with his passenger Arthur Gordon Pym, would make every effort to attain the farthest
reaches of the antarctic seas!”
“You found that bottle?” I asked instantly.
“Yes.”
“And the letter . . . inside it?”
“Yes.”
I looked at Len Guy. Like most fixated individuals, he completely believed his own
fabrications. I was about to make the comment “Let’s see that letter,” but I changed my mind.
Couldn’t he have written it himself ?
So I replied instead:
“I’m truly sorry, captain, that you couldn’t meet with Dirk Peters in Vandalia! At least he
might have told you the circumstances in which he and Pym got home from that far-off realm.
You remember . . . in the next-to-last chapter, both of them are there . . . the white curtain of
vapor is in front of their canoe . . . which rushes into the chasm under the cataract . . . just
as a veiled human figure rises up . . . then there’s nothing more . . . nothing but two lines of
ellipses.”3
“You’re right, sir, it’s a great shame I couldn’t lay hold of Peters! It would have been inter-
esting to find out the conclusion of those adventures. But to my mind it might be even more
interesting to determine the fates of the others . . .”
“The others?” I exclaimed, almost in spite of myself. “Who are you talking about?”
“The captain and crew of that English schooner—the vessel that picked up Pym and
Peters after the Grampus came to such horrible grief, the ship that took them across the polar
seas to Tsalal Island—”
“Commander Guy,” I pointed out, as if I no longer questioned that Poe’s novel was actual
fact, “weren’t all those men killed, some in an attack on the schooner, others in a manufactured
landslide that the Tsalal natives set in motion?”
“Who knows, Mr. Jeorling,” Captain Guy remarked in a voice tinged with emotion.
“Who knows if some of those unlucky men didn’t survive both the slaughter and the landslide,
if one or a number of them weren’t able to escape from the natives?”

“Anyhow,” I contended, “it’s hard to believe the survivors could still be alive.”
“And why?”
“Because the events we’re talking about happened eleven years ago.”
“Sir,” the captain replied, “Pym and Peters were able to leave Tsalal Island and advance
beyond the 83rd parallel. They found the wherewithal to stay alive in the midst of those ant-
arctic regions. So why couldn’t their companions—if they weren’t slain by the natives, if they
had the luck to reach those nearby islands they’d glimpsed during their voyage—why couldn’t
those poor fellows, my countrymen, have managed to stay alive too? Why couldn’t they still be
waiting for somebody to rescue them?”
“Your charitable feelings are running away with you, captain,” I replied, trying to soothe
him. “That would be impossible . . .”
“Impossible, sir? And suppose some development occurred, suppose an unimpeachable
witness appealed to the civilized world, suppose we found concrete proof that those unlucky
men were alive and left at the edge of the earth—who among us, if asked to rescue them, would
dare to exclaim ‘Impossible!’ ”
And just then, his chest heaving with sobs, Captain Guy turned away, moved out of
earshot, staved off my answering him, and peered into the south as if trying to look beyond
the distant horizon.
Which made me wonder what circumstance in Captain Len Guy’s life had left him vul-
nerable to this form of mental illness. Was it out of feelings of compassion—carried to the
point of insanity—that he obsessed over those castaways who’d never been cast away . . . for
the logical reason that they’d never existed?
Then Captain Guy came back over, put a hand on my shoulder, and whispered in my ear:
“No, Mr. Jeorling, we haven’t heard the last word on the topic of the Jane Guy’s crew.”
And he took his leave.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s novel, the Jane was a schooner that picked up Pym and Peters from
the wreckage of the Grampus—and at the end of our conversation, Captain Len Guy had just
spoken her name for the first time.
“Not only that,” I said to myself, “the Jane’s captain was named Guy as well . . . his ship
was also of English origin . . . ! All right, what does it prove, and what conclusions might we
presume to draw from it? The Jane’s captain existed only in Poe’s imagination, whereas the Hal-
brane’s captain is real . . . very real. . . . the only thing the two have in common is the name Guy,
which is in wide use throughout Great Britain. But,” I mused, “surely it’s this business of the
identical names that turned our poor captain’s wits . . . he thinks he belongs to the same fam-
ily as the Jane’s commander . . . ! Yes, that’s what landed him where he is today, that’s why he’s
bemoaning the fate of those fictitious castaways!”
It would have been interesting to see if West was up to date on this issue, if his superior
had ever acquainted him with those “insanities” that had just come out in our conversation.
Now then, since this matter concerned Captain Guy’s mental condition, it called for delicate
handling. What’s more, entering into any sort of conversation with our first officer was a tricky
business—and in this case, given the topic, it offered definite perils.
So I bided my time. After all, wasn’t I due to get off at Tristan da Cunha, and wouldn’t
my trip aboard this schooner be ending in a couple of days? But never, in all honesty, could I

have anticipated that I would one day run into a man who thought the fictitious happenings in
Poe’s novel were actual fact!
Two days later on August 22, under the whitish tints of a new-born dawn, Marion Island
receded to port along with the 4,000-foot-high volcano at its southern end—then the first
contours of Prince Edward’s Island came into view in latitude 46° 53' south and longitude
37° 46' east. We kept this island to starboard, till, twelve hours later, its upper reaches finally
faded into the evening mists.
Next day the Halbrane adopted a northwesterly heading, making for the lowest parallel of
the southern hemisphere that she would reach during this cruise.

5. Edgar Allan Poe’s Novel
H
ere’s a quick analytical look at our American storyteller’s renowned work, which
was published in Richmond under this title: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.1
It’s essential that I give a summary of it in this chapter. You’ll see if there
are any grounds for doubting that the adventures of the novel’s protagonist are
imaginary. And besides, has a single one of this work’s many readers ever thought it was fac-
tual—other than Captain Len Guy?
Poe has his main character narrate the story. Right away, in the book’s preface, Pym
relates that after coming back from his voyage to the antarctic seas, he bumped into Poe, who
was one of several gentlemen in Virginia with an interest in geographical discoveries and editor
back then of Richmond’s Southern Literary Messenger. To hear Pym tell it, he gave Poe’s journal
permission to publish, “under the garb of fiction,” the first part of his adventures. When this
installment met with a favorable reception from the public, a volume describing the whole voy-
age came out under Edgar Allan Poe’s byline.
As Captain Guy revealed during our conversation, Pym was born in Nantucket, where he
attended the school in New Bedford till the age of sixteen.
He left that school for Mr. E. Ronald’s academy, where he became friends with a boy
two years older than he was, Augustus Barnard, the son of a sea captain. This young man had
already gone whaling with his father in the South Seas, and his stories about that ocean cruise
never ceased to fire Pym’s imagination.
Thus the closeness between these two young fellows gave rise to Arthur’s powerful long-
ing for adventurous voyages and to those inclinations that drew him most particularly to the
high latitudes of Antarctica.
Augustus’s and Arthur’s first escapade was an excursion aboard a little sloop, the Ariel, a
longboat that had a half deck and belonged to the latter’s family. One rather chilly evening in
the month of October, the two of them got very drunk, snuck out, boarded her, hoisted jib
and mainsail, kept full, and put to sea with a fresh southwesterly breeze.

Helped by the ebb tide, the Ariel was already out of sight of shore when a fierce storm
came up. The two foolhardy fellows were still tipsy. Nobody was at the helm, neither sail had
a single reef. Accordingly the furious gusts of wind carried off the boat’s mast. Then, a little
later, a big ship appeared and rode over the Ariel as the Ariel would have ridden over a floating
feather.
As for what followed this collision, Pym gives a highly detailed description of his and
his companion’s rescue—a rescue that took place under very trying circumstances. Ultimately,
thanks to her mate, the ship that arrived at the scene of the catastrophe—the Penguin out of
New London—picked up the two half-dead comrades and took them back to Nantucket.
I don’t deny that this adventure has the ring of truth, or even that it is true. It skillfully
sets up the chapters to follow. The narrative thereafter—till the day Pym crosses the Antarctic
Circle—could, in all fairness, be accepted as factual as well. It lays out a plausible series of
events that don’t exceed the bounds of credibility. But it’s another story beyond the Antarctic
Circle and past the southern ice barrier—and if the author hasn’t concocted a piece of pure
imagination, I’ll hand in my badge . . . but let’s forge on.
This first adventure didn’t cool the two lads off. Pym grew more and more enamored of
the sailor’s yarns that Augustus Barnard spun for him, though later on he suspected they were
“sheer fabrications.”
Eight months after the business with the Ariel—in June 1827—the house of Lloyd and
Vredenburgh fitted out the brig Grampus for a whale hunt in the South Seas. She was a poorly
repaired old carcass, this brig, and under the command of Mr. Barnard, Augustus’s father.
His son was to go with him on this voyage and heartily encouraged Arthur to come along.
The latter would have liked nothing better; but his family—and his mother especially—were
determined to not let him go.
This wasn’t about to stop an enterprising boy who didn’t worry much about filial obe-
dience. Augustus’s appeals were burned into his brain. Accordingly he decided to set sail on
the Grampus in secret, because Mr. Barnard would never have allowed him to go against his
family’s prohibition. Saying he’d been invited to spend a few days at a friend’s home in New
Bedford, young Pym took leave of his parents and headed off. Forty-eight hours before the
brig’s departure, he crept on board and stayed in a hiding place Augustus had fixed up for him,
unbeknownst to both his father and the whole crew.
A trapdoor put Augustus’s cabin in contact with the Grampus’s hold, which was crammed
with barrels, bales, and the thousand things that make up a cargo. It was via this trapdoor that
Pym had gotten to his hiding place—simply a box with sliding panels that opened sideways.
This box contained a mattress, blankets, a jug of water, and for provisions some hardtack,
sausages, a leg of roast mutton, some bottles of cordials and liqueurs—and also some writing
materials. Equipped with a lantern, a supply of candles, and phosphorous matches, Arthur
spent three days and three nights in his hiding place. Augustus couldn’t come see him till just
before the Grampus got under way.
An hour later Pym started to feel the brig roll and pitch. Uncomfortable in the depths of
that cramped box, he went out into the hold, in the dark followed a cord stretching to the trap-

door of his comrade’s cabin, and managed to find his way around in the midst of the jumble.
Then, getting back into his box, he ate and fell asleep.
Several days went by without Augustus reappearing. Either he hadn’t been able to climb
back down into the hold, or he hadn’t dared to, afraid of giving Arthur’s presence away and
thinking it wasn’t time yet to confess everything to Mr. Barnard.
Meanwhile Pym was starting to suffer from the hot, foul air in the hold. Intense night-
mares addled his wits. He felt delirious. He vainly searched through the clutter for some place
in the hold where he could breathe more easily. During one of his nightmares, he imagined he
was in the tropics and being clawed by a lion, and in a fit of terror, he nearly gave himself away
by shrieking, but he passed out instead.2
The truth is, he wasn’t dreaming. It wasn’t a lion Arthur felt on his chest, it was a young,
white-haired Newfoundland dog named Tiger, his own pet whom Augustus had stowed on
board without anybody noticing—a pretty unlikely circumstance, you have to admit. Just then
the faithful animal had managed to rejoin his master, whose face and hands he was licking with
every appearance of tremendous delight.
So the prisoner had a companion. Unfortunately the aforesaid companion had drunk the
jug of water while Pym was in his swoon, so when the latter tried to slake his thirst, there wasn’t
a single drop left. His lantern had gone out—because the swoon had lasted several days—and
since he couldn’t find any more candles or phosphorous matches, he decided to make contact
again with Augustus. Emerging from his hiding place, he followed the cord toward the trap-
door, though he was tremendously weak from lack of air and food. But in the course of his
trek, the ship rolled and one of the crates in the hold tipped off balance, fell, and completely
blocked his path. With a major exertion he got past this obstacle, but it was a total waste of
energy, because, when he reached the trapdoor located under Augustus’s cabin, he couldn’t raise
it. In essence, when he stuck his knife blade through one of the trapdoor’s seams, he felt a heavy
iron object lying over it, as if somebody had deliberately entombed him. Accordingly he had
to give up his plan, crawled laboriously back to his box, and collapsed exhausted while Tiger
lavished his attentions on him.
Both master and dog were dying of thirst, and when Pym reached his hand out, he found
Tiger lying on his back, paws in the air and hair slightly erect. Probing the dog’s fur with his
finger, he came across a string tied around the creature’s body. A slip of paper was fastened to
the string right under the animal’s left shoulder.
Pym felt at the end of his strength. His mind was nearly gone. However, after several
fruitless attempts at procuring light, he managed to rub the paper with a little phosphorus,
and then—you won’t believe the finicky detail Poe’s narrative goes into here—these horrifying
words appeared . . . the seven concluding words of a sentence, visible in the faint glow for a
quarter of a second: “blood—your life depends upon lying close.”
Imagine Arthur’s predicament—deep in a ship’s hold, walled up inside a box, without
light, without water, with nothing other than hard liquor for quenching his thirst! And how
about this advice he’d just received, this message to stay in hiding, preceded by the word blood—
the ultimate word, that king of words, so full of mystery, suffering, terror! Did this mean

some conflict had broken out aboard the Grampus? Had pirates attacked the brig? Had the crew
mutinied? How long had this state of affairs been going on?
So maybe you’re thinking that after the horrors of Pym’s predicament, our prodigious
poet has reached the limit of what his imagination can supply? Far from it. The events still
ahead are overflowing with inventive genius!
In essence we now have Arthur lying on his mattress, in the grip of a sort of leth-
argy, when he hears a singular hissing sound, a continual wheezing . . . it’s Tiger panting . . . it’s
Tiger’s eyes flashing in the gloom . . . it’s Tiger gnashing his teeth . . . it’s Tiger gone mad . . .
Filled with terror, Pym summoned the strength to dodge Tiger’s snapping jaws when the
animal pounced on him. After wrapping himself in a blanket ripped by the dog’s white fangs,
he leaped out of the box, shut the sliding panel on Tiger, and left the beast thrashing around
inside.
Arthur managed to creep through the items stowed in the hold. His head spinning by
this point, he fell against a bale and his knife slipped out of his hand.
He may have been close to breathing his last, but just then he heard his name spo-
ken . . . a water bottle pressed against his mouth and emptied out between his lips . . . he came
back to life after a long swig, downing that exquisite liquid in one gulp, that most perfect of
all luxuries . . .
Lit by a dark lantern in a corner of the hold, Augustus Barnard told his comrade a few
seconds later what had happened on board since the brig put to sea.
Up to this point, I say again, this story is believable; but we still haven’t gotten to those
developments whose “amazingness” flies in the face of all credibility.
The Grampus’s crew amounted to thirty-six men, including the Barnards, father and son.
After the brig had set sail on June 20, Augustus made several attempts to rejoin Pym in his hid-
ing place—vain attempts. Three or four days later, a mutiny broke out on board. The ringleader
was the ship’s cook, a Negro like our Endicott on the Halbrane—who, I hasten to say, would
never dream of being insubordinate.
Many incidents are described in the novel—the mutineers slaughtered most of the sail-
ors who stayed loyal to Captain Barnard, then, abreast of Bermuda, ditched the aforesaid cap-
tain and four men in a small whaleboat and left them to their unknown fates.
Augustus wouldn’t have been spared either if the Grampus’s line manager hadn’t stepped
in—a half-breed named Dirk Peters, the son of a fur trader and an Indian squaw from the
Upsarokas tribe in the Black Hills, the very same individual Captain Len Guy claimed he’d
gone looking for in Illinois . . .
The Grampus plied a course to the southwest, commanded by the mate, who planned to
take up piracy and prowl the South Seas.
In the wake of these developments, Augustus would have tried to rejoin Arthur. But
he’d been locked up in the crew’s quarters, feet and hands in irons, and the cook told him he
wouldn’t be let out till “the brig was no longer a brig.” However, a few days later, Augustus
managed to get free of his handcuffs and cut through the thin partition separating him from
the hold; then, followed by Tiger, he attempted to reach his comrade’s hiding place. Though
he had no success, the dog luckily “caught scent” of Arthur, which gave Augustus the idea of

fastening to Tiger’s neck a note containing these words: “I have scrawled this with blood—your life
depends upon lying close.”
As you know, Pym did receive this note. Then, dying of hunger and thirst, he was creep-
ing through the hold when the knife slipped out of his hand, clattered, and caught the atten-
tion of his comrade, who was finally able to reach him.
After telling Arthur these things, Augustus added that dissension reigned among the
mutineers. Some wanted to take the Grampus to the Cape Verde Islands; others—and Peters was
on their side—were determined to set sail for the islands of the Pacific.
As for the dog Tiger, who his master thought had gone mad, this wasn’t the case. Raven-
ous thirst had put him in that agitated condition, and he might ultimately have come down
with rabies if Augustus hadn’t brought him to the forecastle.3
Then the narrative features a major digression on stowing goods in the merchant
marine—a ship’s very safety depends in large part on proper stowage. Now then, the Grampus’s
had been handled so negligently that the stores shifted around with every shimmy, and Pym
couldn’t remain in the hold without risk. Fortunately, with Augustus’s help, he managed to hole
up in a corner between decks, near the crew’s quarters.
Meanwhile the half-breed kept up a great show of affection for Captain Barnard’s son.
So the latter wondered: could he count on the line manager if they made an attempt to take
back the ship?
Thirty days had gone by since they’d left Nantucket, when, on July 4, a nasty squabble
broke out among the mutineers over a small brig they’d sighted on the horizon, some wanting
to go after it, others giving it a pass. This resulted in the death of a sailor belonging to the
cook’s faction, which Dirk Peters supported in opposition to the mate’s faction.
No more than thirteen men were left on board, including Pym.
It was under these circumstances that a fearful storm came up and wreaked havoc with
these seas. Horribly jolted around, the Grampus took on water through her seams. They had to
work the pumps continually and even got a sail under the forward hull to keep her from filling.
By July 9 the storm had blown over, and on that day Peters revealed his intention of get-
ting rid of the mate; Augustus promised his help, but didn’t tell him about Arthur’s presence
on board.
The next day, one of the sailors loyal to the cook, Rogers by name, died in convulsions,
and there was little doubt that the mate had poisoned him. By that point the cook had only
four men on his side—including Peters. The mate had five and most likely would end up pre-
vailing over the other faction.
They hadn’t an hour to spare. When the half-breed let Augustus know that it was time
to take action, the latter told him all about Pym.
Now then, while the two of them were discussing various ways of regaining control of
the ship, a devastating gust smacked them broadside. The Grampus recovered but not without
shipping an enormous amount of water; then she succeeded in lying to under a close-reefed
foresail.
It seemed like a promising opportunity for commencing hostilities, though the mutineers
had ironed out their differences. And yet only three men were topside, Dirk Peters, Augustus

Barnard, and Arthur Gordon Pym, while nine were in the cabin. All that the line manager had
on him were two pistols and a seaman’s knife. Ergo the need to proceed with caution.
Then Pym—whom the mutineers never suspected was on board—came up with a dodge
that had a decent chance of succeeding. Since the corpse of that poisoned sailor still lay on
deck, Arthur felt that if he got into the fellow’s clothes and appeared in the midst of those
superstitious sailors, their terror might just leave them at Peters’s mercy.
The night was pitch-black when the half-breed headed astern. Blessed with prodigious
strength, he rushed at the pilot and tipped him over the rail with a single shove.
Augustus and Arthur rejoined him immediately, both armed with pump handles. Peters
took the pilot’s place, Pym donned his dead sailor’s disguise, then he and his comrade stationed
themselves by the cowl over the cabin ladder. The mate, the cook, and all the rest were in that
cabin, some sleeping, others drinking or chatting, pistols and rifles close at hand.
The storm raged furiously, and it was impossible to stand upright on deck.
Just then the mate gave orders to go find Augustus Barnard and Dirk Peters—orders that
were transmitted to the pilot, none other than the line manager himself. The latter went down
into the cabin with young Barnard, and Arthur soon made his appearance.
The effect produced by this apparition was prodigious. Terrified at the sight of the resur-
rected sailor, the mate sprang up, flailed the air, and fell stone dead. Then Peters rushed at the
others, seconded by Augustus, Arthur, and the dog Tiger. In a few moments every one of their
foes had been throttled or knocked senseless—except a sailor named Richard Parker, whose
life they spared.
And now, at the height of the turmoil, no more than four men were left to run the brig,
which was laboring horribly with seven feet of water in her hold. They had to chop down her
mainmast, then, the next morning, cut away her foremast. It was an awful day, followed by a
night even more awful! If Peters and his three companions hadn’t lashed themselves tightly to
what remained of the windlass, they would have been carried off by a massive wave that broke
over the Grampus and staved in her hatches.
After that, from July 14 to August 7, Poe’s novel details the series of incidents that this
state of affairs was bound to bring about: fishing for food in the flooded hold, the arrival of
a mysterious, corpse-laden brig, which stank up the air and went past like an enormous casket
borne on a death wind; the torments of hunger and thirst; the impossibility of getting at pro-
visions in the storage room; drawing straws and letting fate decide that Richard Parker would
be sacrificed to save the lives of the other three; the poor man’s death at Peters’s hands . . . their
consumption of him . . . finally the recovery of a few edible items from the hold, a ham and
a jar of olives, then a small tortoise. . . . As her cargo shifted around, the Grampus heeled over
more and more sharply. . . . Due to the fearful heat blazing in those waterways, the trio were
tormented by the most intense thirst human beings can endure . . . Augustus Barnard died on
August 1 . . . the brig overturned during the night of August 3–4 . . . taking refuge on her
upended bottom, Pym and the half-breed were reduced to eating the barnacles covering her
hull while schools of sharks lurked all around them. Finally a schooner appeared, the Jane out
of Liverpool, commanded by Captain William Guy—by which point the Grampus’s two survi-
vors had drifted at least twenty-five degrees southward.

To be sure, it isn’t offensively unreasonable to accept the reality of these events and situ-
ations, though they’re outlandish in the extreme—no surprise coming from the pen of our
prestigious American author. But from here on out, see if you can detect the tiniest bit of
verisimilitude in the series of events still to come.
Taken aboard the English schooner, Pym and Peters received a kindly welcome. In two
weeks they’d recovered from their ailments and didn’t remember a thing—“the degree of for-
getfulness being proportional to the degree of difference in the exchange.” With alternating
stretches of fair and foul weather, the Jane hove in sight of Prince Edward’s Island on October
13, then the Crozet Islands on a course exactly the reverse of the Halbrane’s, then Kerguelen’s
Land, which I’d just left eleven days ago.
The schooner spent three weeks hunting harbor seals and amassed a fine cargo. It was
during this layover that the Jane’s captain left that bottle in which his namesake on the Halbrane
claimed he found William Guy’s letter announcing his intention to explore the polar seas.
On November 12 the schooner left Kerguelen’s Land and climbed back to the west toward
Tristan da Cunha, as we ourselves were doing just then. Two weeks later she reached the island,
stayed over another week, and on the date of December 5 left to scout out the Auroras in lati-
tude 53° 15' south and longitude 47° 58' west—untraceable islands she wasn’t able to find.4
On December 12 the Jane headed in the direction of the antarctic pole. On the 26th she
raised the first icebergs beyond latitude 73° and scouted out the ice barrier.
During the period of January 1–14, 1828, she had difficulty maneuvering, crossing the
Antarctic Circle in the midst of pack ice, then rounding the ice barrier and navigating on the
surface of an open sea—the notorious open sea found in latitude 81° 21' south and longitude
42° west, its air temperature reading 47° Fahrenheit and that of the water 34°.5
Here, you’ll agree, Edgar Allan Poe is in full flight from reality. No mariner had ever
advanced to such latitudes—not even the Royal Navy’s Captain James Weddell, who barely got
beyond the 74th parallel in 1822.
But if the Jane’s latest coordinates are already hard to accept, the incidents still ahead are
harder still! And these amazing incidents are described by Pym—i.e., Poe—with an unthinking
naïveté that nobody could put stock in. He actually had no doubts whatever that they would
get to the pole!
And right away you don’t see any more icebergs on this fantastic sea. Countless flocks of
birds fly over its surface—among others a pelican that they shoot down . . . they come across
an ice floe (so some of these were still left?) and on it a specimen of arctic bear that boasts
ultra-gigantic dimensions . . . finally they sight land off the starboard bow. . . . It’s an islet 2½
miles around, and they name it Bennet’s Islet in honor of the captain’s partner and co-owner
of the Jane.
This islet is located in latitude 82° 50' south and longitude 42° 20' west, as Pym says in
his journal. I defy any marine mapmaker to work up a chart of these antarctic waterways based
on such nonsensical data!
As the schooner sailed farther south, there naturally were fewer and fewer compass varia-
tions, while the air and water temperatures grew milder, with a continually clear sky and a
steady breeze from points north.

Unfortunately the crew started showing symptoms of scurvy, and maybe, if Arthur
hadn’t insisted on their persevering, William Guy would have faced into the wind and headed
back.
Needless to mention, they enjoyed 24-hour daylight in that latitude during the month
of January, and in a nutshell the Jane did well to continue her venturesome cruise, because, on
January 18, they raised land in latitude 83° 20' and longitude 43° 5'.
It was an island belonging to a sizable group scattered to the west.
Approaching shore, the schooner dropped anchor in thirty-six feet of water. The long-
boats were ordered out. Pym and Peters got down into one of them, and it came to a stop only
in the face of four canoes filled with armed men—“new men,” as the narrative says.6
New indeed, these jet-black natives, wearing the skins of some black animal, feeling a
deep-seated horror of “whiteness.” I wonder what heights of horror they must have felt during
wintertime? If there were snowfalls, did that mean they had to be black . . . ditto any ice floes
if they still formed? It’s fantasy, unadulterated fantasy!
To get down to cases, these islanders gave no hints of any hostile intentions, though they
continually called out, “Anamoo-moo! ” and “Lama-Lama! ” When their canoes pulled alongside
the schooner, their chief, Too-wit, got to climb on board with some twenty of his companions.
For their part, they were prodigiously amazed, because they viewed the ship as a living creature
and started petting her gear, masts, and rails. Once they’d guided her between the reefs and
across a bay whose bottom was black sand, she dropped anchor a mile offshore, then Captain
William Guy headed in and stepped onto the rocky coastline, after taking care to keep some
hostages on board.
If Pym is to be believed, this was Tsalal Island, and what an island it was! Its trees didn’t
resemble any species found in the various zones of our globe. The composition of its rocks
offered a stratification unknown to modern mineralogists. Over the streambeds flowed a liquid
substance without the appearance of limpidity and streaked with distinct veins, which didn’t
immediately cohere again after you parted them with a knife blade!
They had to travel three miles to reach Klock-klock, the island’s chief village. It boasted
nothing but wretched dwellings made only from black skins; there were domestic animals
resembling the common hog, a sort of sheep with black fleece, twenty or so species of fowl,
some tame albatrosses, some canvasback ducks, and a large number of Galapagos tortoises.
When William Guy and his companions arrived in Klock-klock, they found a populace that
Arthur put at 10,000 souls—men, women, and children so noisy and exuberant, the sailors
were inclined, if not to fear them, at least to shy away from them. Finally, after a fairly long
stopover at Too-wit’s home, they headed back to the beach, where that mollusk so sought after
in China, the biche de mer,* is more abundant than in any other sector of these southern regions
and would have furnished cargos for a good many ships.
It was on this matter that they tried to reach an understanding with Too-wit. Captain
Guy asked for his permission to build suitable houses in which some of the Jane’s men could
cure the sea cucumbers while the schooner proceeded on her course to the pole. Too-wit will-
*Sea cucumber. FPW

ingly accepted this proposition and struck a bargain in which the natives would lend a hand
with harvesting the valuable mollusk.
At the end of one month, arrangements were completed, and three men were assigned
to stay behind on Tsalal Island. At no time had the natives given the slightest grounds for
suspicion. Before taking his leave, Captain William Guy wanted to return one last time to the
village of Klock-klock, after sensibly leaving six men on board, cannons loaded, nets over the rails,
anchor taut. They were to keep any natives from coming near.
With a retinue of about a hundred warriors, Too-wit escorted the visitors. They went up
the narrow defile of a ravine between hills composed of soapstone, a sort of steatite that Pym
hadn’t seen anywhere else. They had to go along an embankment that made a thousand abrupt
turns and stood sixteen to twenty-four feet high by forty wide.
Though it was a promising place for an ambush, William Guy and his men weren’t ter-
ribly worried and walked close together.7
A little ahead and to the right were Pym, Peters, and a sailor named Allen.
Arriving in front of a fissure that cut into the hillside, Arthur had the idea of entering it
and gathering a few of the filberts* that hung in bunches from some stunted hazel bushes. This
done, he was about to return in his tracks when he saw that the half-breed and Allen had come
along with him. All three were turning to go back to the mouth of the fissure when suddenly
a violent earth tremor knocked them off their feet. At the same moment masses of soapstone
caved in from the hill, and it dawned on them that they were about to be entombed alive . . .
Alive . . . all three . . . ? Not so! Allen had been buried too deep in the rubble and had
drawn his last breath.
Dragging themselves on their knees and cutting steps with their bowie knives, Pym and
Peters managed to get onto some ledges of a slightly harder species of slatelike rock, then onto
a natural platform at the end of a wooded ravine that was canopied by a patch of blue sky.
From that spot their eyes could take in the whole countryside around them.
A landslide had just occurred—but a manufactured landslide . . . yes, it had been manu-
factured and set in motion by those natives! Crushed under more than a million tons of earth
and stone, Captain William Guy and his twenty-eight companions were nowhere to be seen.
The countryside was swarming with natives, no doubt coming from islands nearby and
drawn by a desire to plunder the Jane. Seventy boats with outriggers were making for the schoo-
ner. The six men left on board greeted them with a bungled first volley, then a second volley
of canister shot and chain shot that had a terrifying effect. Even so, the islanders boarded the
Jane, set her on fire, and slaughtered her defenders. Finally a fearsome explosion occurred when
the powder stores were ignited—an explosion that destroyed a thousand natives and mangled
as many more, while the rest ran off shrieking, “Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!”
During the week that followed, Pym and Peters lived on filberts, bittern meat, and spoon-
wort, while keeping away from the locals, who never suspected they were present. The two men
wound up at the bottom of a sort of black pit, which had no way out and was hollowed into
the soapstone and a sort of shale with a metallic texture. While visiting it, they went down
*Hazelnuts. FPW

through a series of chasms. Poe has provided surveyor’s sketches of their outlines, which, taken
together, duplicate an Arabic verbal root that means “to be white,” plus the Egyptian word
, which means “region of the south.”8
As you can see, these latest bits from our American author are the height of implausibil-
ity. In any case I’d not only read and reread his novel about Pym, I was also familiar with Poe’s
other works. I knew the conventional wisdom regarding his genius, that it was more sensual
than intellectual. Hadn’t one of his critics said, and rightly: “With him the imagination is the
queen of faculties . . . an almost godlike faculty that sees the intimate, hidden relationships
between things, their connections and similarities . . .”9
What’s certain is that nobody has ever viewed these books as anything other than works
of the imagination! Then how, unless he’d gone insane, could a man like Captain Len Guy
believe these utterly unreal events were actual fact?
To get back to our story:
Pym and Peters couldn’t remain in the midst of those chasms, and after a number of
attempts, they managed to let themselves down one of the sloping hillsides. Instantly five sav-
ages sprang at them.10 But thanks to their pistols and the half-breed’s amazing strength, they
killed four of the islanders. They dragged the fifth away to a boat made fast at the water’s edge
and holding a cargo of three big tortoises. Some twenty islanders followed in hot pursuit but
failed to stop them. The canoe came equipped with paddles, and the escapees repelled the
natives, put to sea, and headed southward.
By this point Pym was navigating beyond latitude 84° south.11 It was the beginning of
March, in other words, the antarctic winter was coming on. They wisely steered clear of five or
six islands looming to the west. In Pym’s view, temperatures would gradually get milder as they
drew nearer to the pole. Peters and his companion stood two paddles on end in the front of
the boat, then hoisted to their tips a sail made of two white shirts tied together—white shirts
whose color appeared to terrify their prisoner, a native answering to the name of Nu-Nu. For
a good week they kept to their strange navigating, helped by a gentle northerly breeze, constant
daylight, and an ocean without a shred of ice—and what’s more, thanks to an air temperature
that stayed warmer than the water, they hadn’t seen a single piece after leaving the parallel of
Bennet’s Islet.
It was at this juncture that Pym and Peters entered a region of novelty and wonder.
Towering above the horizon, a wide barricade of pale gray vapor was mixed with long shafts of
light like those given off by polar auroras. An ultra-strong current came to the assistance of the
breeze. The boat sped over a liquid surface that was exceptionally hot, had a milky appearance,
and seemed to be agitated from underneath. A whitish ash started to fall, intensifying the ter-
rors felt by Nu-Nu, whose grimacing lips revealed that his teeth were black . . .
On March 9, this downpour increased, and the water temperature became hotter than
human hands can bear. Stretching over the distant perimeter of the southern horizon, the
immense curtain of vapor looked like a limitless cataract, rolling down silently from some
immense out-of-sight rampart high up in the heavens . . .
Twelve days later, darkness hovered over these waterways, darkness streaked with out-
pourings of light that broke from the milky depths of the Antarctic Ocean, where the con-
tinual shower of ash melted away as it fell . . .

Flocks of gigantic birds flew by.
The boat approached the cataract with a headlong velocity for which Pym’s narrative
gives no reason. In places the fabric was torn, revealing a chaos within of flitting, indistinct
images that quivered in the powerful air currents . . .
In the midst of this fearful darkness, flocks of gigantic birds flew by, pallidly white,
shrieking their eternal Tekeli-li! And that was when the savage, in the extremity of his terror,
breathed his last.
And suddenly, caught up in an insane burst of speed, the canoe rushed into the embraces
of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to suck them in. But there arose before them

a veiled human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any resident of the earth . . . and
the hue of the man’s skin was of the perfect whiteness of the snow . . .12
And there you have the peculiar novel created by the superhuman genius of the New
World’s greatest poet. This is how it ends . . . or rather doesn’t end. As I see it, Edgar Allan
Poe wasn’t able to devise a conclusion to these amazing adventures, so it’s understandable that
he would break off his narrative with the “sudden and distressing death” of his protagonist,
simply leaving us to hope that if the two or three missing chapters ever turn up, they’ll be given
to the public.

6. “Like a Shroud Falling Open”
H
elped by the winds and currents, the Halbrane made uninterrupted progress. If
she kept this up, it would take two weeks to cover the distance—some 2,300
miles—between Prince Edward’s Island and Tristan da Cunha, and as the bosun
had predicted, we could stay on the same tack for the entire crossing. Sometimes
rising to a strong gale, the southeasterly breeze held steady, and all we had to do was take in
our upper sails.
In any case, Captain Guy left West in charge of working her, and that daredevil canvas
backer—sorry, I couldn’t resist—would only decide to take in a sail the instant a mast threat-
ened to come down. But I had no worries, and there were never any mishaps to fear with a
seaman like that. He had eyes in the back of his head.
“There isn’t another like him,” Hurliguerly told me one day. “Our first officer should be
commanding a flagship.”
“Definitely,” I replied. “West seems to be your ultimate seafaring man.”
“And don’t forget the Halbrane—what a schooner! Thank your lucky stars, Mr. Jeorling—
and thank me as well, since I talked Captain Len Guy into changing his mind about you.”
“If you were the one who made that happen, bosun, I appreciate it.”
“And you should, because he dithered hellaciously, our captain, despite all the appeals
from our cohort Atkins! But I made him listen to reason.”
“I won’t forget it, bosun—I still could be pining away in Kerguelen’s Land, but instead,
thanks to your interceding, I’ll soon be in sight of Tristan da Cunha.”
“In a few days, Mr. Jeorling. Look here, the word’s gotten out that they’re at work right
now in England and America on boats that have engines in their bellies and wheels that go like
a duck’s feet! Fine with me, and we’ll know what they’re worth once they’re on the job. To my
mind, though, those boats will never be able to compete with a fine 60-gun frigate sailing close
into a fresh breeze! Even if you have to lie at five points from the wind, Mr. Jeorling, it’ll do
the trick, and a seaman has no need for casters on his hull!”1

I didn’t upset the bosun’s theories on the use of steam in ocean travel. Things were still at
the trial-and-error stage, and propellers hadn’t replaced paddles. When it comes to the future,
who can say what it will bring?
And just then I remembered a feat accomplished by the Jane, that Jane Len Guy talked
about as if she were real and he’d seen her with his own eyes—I remembered how she’d gone
from Prince Edward’s Island to Tristan da Cunha in exactly two weeks. True, Poe fixed things
so that the ocean winds did just what he needed.
Speaking of which, Captain Guy said nothing more to me about Pym during the next
two weeks. He acted like we’d never once chatted about that character’s adventures in the polar
seas. Besides, if he’d hoped to convince me they were the real thing, it would simply prove he
was losing his grip. I’ll say again, how could any sensible man entertain a serious discussion on
this topic? Nobody—unless he’d come unhinged and was as obsessed with this particular issue
as Len Guy—nobody, I repeat for the tenth time, could view Poe’s narrative as anything other
than a work of the imagination.
Think about it! According to the aforesaid narrative, an English schooner had advanced
as far as latitude 84° south, so wouldn’t her voyage have had the stature of a major geographi-
cal event? After coming back from the depths of Antarctica, wouldn’t Pym be ranked with
the likes of Cook, Weddell, and Biscoe? Since he and Peters had even gone past the aforesaid
parallel, wouldn’t the Jane’s two passengers be showered with public honors? And what are we
to make of that open sea they discovered . . . the extraordinary speed of those currents that
dragged them toward the pole . . . the abnormal temperature of those waters, coming from
underneath and too hot for human hands to bear . . . that curtain of vapor stretching to the
horizon . . . that gaseous cataract gaping before them, and those figures appearing behind it
that were of superhuman size?
And then, setting aside these far-fetched things, I would be interested to know how Pym
and the half-breed got back from so far away, how their Tsalal boat took them across the Ant-
arctic Circle again, how they were ultimately picked up and brought home. They cleared some
twenty degrees, went past the ice barrier, reached the nearest land, and all by paddling a puny
canoe—how did Pym’s journal fail to mention the incidents of this return trip? But some will
say that Pym died before he could hand over the final chapters of his narrative . . . so be it! Yet
is it believable that he hadn’t said a word about them to the Southern Literary Messenger’s editor?
And why would Peters have lived several years in Illinois and kept mum about the conclusion
of these adventures? Could he have had some personal reason for not speaking up?
True, Len Guy stated he’d gone to Vandalia, where the novel said this Peters fellow was
staying, and didn’t find him . . . I can easily believe it! As for Pym, I’ll say again that he exists
only in our American author’s troubled imagination . . . and don’t you agree that this testifies
to the amazing power of his genius, since he was able to convince certain minds that something
was real when it was only fictitious?
All the same I knew where I stood: I was in no position to keep on debating with Len
Guy when he was in the throes of such an obsession, to keep on bringing up a line of argument
that hadn’t any potential to persuade him. Gloomier, even more close-mouthed, he never came

out on the schooner’s deck unless it was essential. And then his eyes stubbornly scanned that
southern horizon he kept trying to see beyond . . .
And maybe he thought he spotted that sheet of vapor lined with wide streaks where it
was torn, and the heavenly heights filling with impregnable darkness, and bursts of light shoot-
ing from the sea’s milky depths, and the white giant showing him the way across the cataract’s
chasms . . .2
What a weird fixation our captain had! Luckily his mind was still clear on every topic
other than this. As for his nautical skills, they’d stayed intact, and no fears I could dream up
were threatening to come true.
My most intriguing priority, I must say, was to discover the reason why Captain Guy
took such an interest in the Jane’s so-called castaways. Even accepting that Pym’s narrative was
genuine, even conceding that the English schooner crossed those insuperable waterways, what
was the point of needlessly mourning for her crew? Even assuming that the Jane’s commander,
officers, or some of her sailors had survived being blown up and entombed by the Tsalal island-
ers, could anybody reasonably hope that they were still alive? According to the dates given by
Pym, those events took place eleven years ago, and since then, conceding that the poor fellows
escaped from the natives, how could they have provided for their needs under such conditions,
and wouldn’t they have perished down to the last man . . . ?
Oh please! Am I seriously going to start discussing these kinds of theories, even ones
without any basis in fact? Next will I start believing that Arthur Gordon Pym, Dirk Peters, and
their companions really existed, that the Jane really went to the bottom behind some ice barrier
in the polar sea? Is Captain Guy’s lunacy contagious and I’m catching it? And does this mean,
any minute now, that I wouldn’t be surprised to find similarities between the Jane’s course while
heading west into the high latitudes and the Halbrane’s while standing into the waterways of
Tristan da Cunha?
It was September 3. If there weren’t any delays—and they could come only from some
navigational hitch—our schooner would be in sight of port within three days. Besides, under
clear skies you can see the main island in that group from quite far off, thanks to its elevation.3
That day, between ten and eleven in the morning, I was strolling from stem to stern on
the weather side. We were gliding lightly over the surface of an undulating, mildly choppy sea.
Like an enormous bird—one of those gigantic albatrosses Pym saw—the Halbrane spread out
her canvas and carried her whole crew off into space. Yes, for a fanciful imagination this was
more than navigating, this was flying, and our flapping sails were flapping wings!
On the port side by the windlass, Jem West was standing in the shadow of our fore stay-
sail, had his spyglass up to his eye, and was looking at a floating object two or three miles away
to leeward; several sailors were leaning over the rails and pointing at it.
The thing was some ten to twelve yards square, jagged in shape, a shiny swelling in the
middle. It rose and fell at the mercy of the billows, which were moving it in a northeasterly
direction.
I made my way to the forward rail and studied the object carefully.
I could hear the sailors chitchatting, always interested in whatever the sea had to offer.

“It’s definitely not a whale,” claimed Martin Holt, master sailmaker. “It would have
spouted once or twice already while we’ve been looking it over!”
“You’re right, we aren’t dealing with some whale,” stated our master caulker, Hardie by
name. “Maybe it’s the carcass of a derelict ship . . .”
“The devil send her to the bottom!” Rogers snapped. “Don’t ever run into something
like that at night! You’d smash your bows and go under before you knew what hit you!”
“I believe it,” Drap added, “and hulks like that are riskier than rocks, because one day
they’re here and the next day they’re somewhere else, and how can you guard against ’em?”
Hurliguerly came up just then.
“What do you think, bosun?” I asked him when he leaned on his elbows next to me.
Hurliguerly looked it over carefully, and when the wind picked up and the schooner
swiftly closed in on the thing, he felt more comfortable speaking his mind.
“To my thinking, Mr. Jeorling,” the bosun contended, “what we’ve got here isn’t some
cetacean or some piece of wreckage—it’s just a slab of ice.”
“A slab of ice?” I exclaimed.
“Hurliguerly’s right,” West stated. “It’s only an ice slab, part of some larger mass the cur-
rents carried this way.”
“Excuse me?” I went on. “They carried it as far as the 45th parallel?”
“See for yourself, sir,” our first officer replied. “And ice sometimes gets as far up as the
Cape of Good Hope, if we can believe the Baron de Blosseville, a French mariner who found
some at that latitude in 1828.”
“Then it won’t be long before this piece melts?” I chimed in, downright amazed that First
Officer West had honored me with such a wordy answer.
“A large part of it must have melted already,” the mate asserted, “so obviously we’re look-
ing at what’s left of an ice mountain that had to have weighed millions of tons.”
Just then Captain Guy came out of the deckhouse. When he saw the number of sailors
parked around West, he headed for the bow.
In a low voice he exchanged a few words with his first officer, who handed him his
spyglass.
Len Guy aimed it at the floating object, now about a mile away from the schooner, and
after studying it for nearly a minute:
“It’s a slab of ice,” he said, “and we’re lucky it’s melting. The Halbrane could suffer serious
damage running into it at night . . .”
I was struck by how carefully the captain studied it. It seemed as though he couldn’t tear
himself away from the lens of that spyglass, which had become, so to speak, the very pupil of
his eye. He stood motionless, as though he’d been nailed to the deck. Unaffected by the ship’s
rolling and pitching, both arms rock steady, a model of self-discipline, he effortlessly kept that
ice slab in the field of his objective lens. Flushed patches and spots of white mottled his tanned
face, and muttered words broke from his lips.
A few minutes went by. The Halbrane was speeding along and on the verge of overshoot-
ing that piece of drift ice.
“Keep her a point away,” Captain Guy said, not lowering his spyglass.

Jem West . . . had his spyglass up to his eye.
I guessed what was going on in the mind of this obsessed man. Torn from the southern
ice barrier, this slab of ice came from waterways where his thoughts were continually taking
him. He wanted to get a closer look . . . maybe pull alongside . . . maybe gather a few fragments
of it . . .
Meanwhile West ordered the bosun to slacken sail a little, and the schooner, now a point
off, headed for the ice slab. Soon we were less than a quarter of a mile from the thing, and I
could look it over.
As you’ve heard, the swelling in the middle was melting every which way. Trickles of water
were draining along its sides. The year was still young, and during the month of September
the sunlight was strong enough to make ice dissolve, to start the process and even speed it up.

No question, by evening nothing would be left of that ice slab, which currents had car-
ried all the way to the 45th parallel.
Len Guy kept studying it, not needing to resort to his spyglass. We even started to make
out a foreign body that was gradually emerging from the ice as it turned into liquid—a form
that was blackish in color, lying on a bed of white.
And how shocked we felt, how horrified also, when we saw an arm appear, then a leg,
then a torso, then a head, not in a nude state but dressed in dark clothing . . .
For a second I even thought that those limbs were moving . . . that those hands were
reaching toward us . . .
The crew couldn’t help crying out.
No! The body wasn’t stirring, it was sliding gently over the icy surface . . .
I looked at Captain Guy. His face was as deathly pale as this corpse that had drifted here
from the far-off latitudes of Antarctica!
The thing to do was to pick up the poor fellow right away—and who knows, maybe he
was breathing and still alive! In any case his pockets might contain some document that would
let us identify him! Then, along with one last prayer, we could consign these human remains to
the ocean depths, that cemetery for sailors who die at sea!
We let down the dinghy. The bosun took a seat inside it along with seamen Gratian and
Francis, each manning an oar. By upsetting her sail arrangements—running her jibs and fore
staysail, pulling her spanker sail taut—West had killed her momentum and the schooner was
almost at a standstill, rising and falling over the long billows.
I kept an eye on the dinghy, which edged alongside that ice slab the waves were gnawing.
Hurliguerly set foot on a spot that still seemed fairly solid. Gratian stepped down after
him, while Francis threw out a grapnel and made the boat fast.
The two men crept up to the corpse and lifted it, one by the legs and the other by the
arms, then carried it to the dinghy.
With a few strokes of the oar, the bosun rejoined the schooner.
The corpse was frozen from head to toe, and they set it down at the foot of the foremast.
Len Guy immediately went up to it and studied it a good while, as if trying to determine
who it was.
It was the body of a seaman dressed in some coarse fabric, woolen trousers, patched jer-
sey, heavy flannel shirt, belt around him that was twice too big. No doubt his death took place
several months back—probably soon after the drift carried the poor fellow away . . .
This man we’d brought on board couldn’t have been older than forty, though his hair
had turned gray. He was appallingly thin, a bag of bones, the skeleton standing out beneath
the skin. He’d traveled at least twenty degrees from the Antarctic Circle and must have suffered
horrible agonies of hunger.
Captain Guy went and pulled up the corpse’s hair, which the cold had preserved. He
straightened the head, looked under the sticking eyelids, first one and then the other, till finally
this name broke from him with a wrenching sob:
“It’s Patterson . . . Patterson!”

“Patterson?” I exclaimed.
It seemed to me that this name, as common as it was, rang a bell in my memory! When
had I heard it spoken . . . or then again, hadn’t I read it somewhere . . . ?
At this juncture the captain stood up and slowly scanned the horizon, as if planning to
issue orders to head south . . .
Just then, at a word from West, the bosun went through the corpse’s pockets. He pulled
out a knife, a piece of rope yarn, an empty tobacco tin, then a leather-bound diary equipped
with a metal pencil.
Len Guy looked back around, and just as Hurliguerly held the diary out to West:
“Give it to me,” he said.
Some of its pages were covered with handwriting that the damp had almost completely
obliterated. But we could still decipher some words on the last page, and you can imagine the
feelings that gripped me when I heard Captain Guy read in a quivering voice:
“The Jane . . . Tsalal Island . . . in eighty-three. . . . There . . . eleven years ago . . . Captain . . . five sail-
ors still alive . . . Hurry and rescue them . . .”
And under these lines, a name . . . a signature . . . the name Patterson . . .
Patterson . . . ! Then I remembered! He was the Jane’s mate . . . the mate on the schooner
that picked up Pym and Peters from the wreckage of the Grampus . . . the Jane that made it to
the latitude of Tsalal Island . . . the Jane that islanders attacked and wiped out in an explosion!
So it was all true! So Poe had produced a work of history, not fiction! So he had access
to Pym’s journal! So that meant the two of them had been in direct contact! Pym existed . . . or
rather he once existed . . . he . . . a real person! And he was dead—had died a sudden and dis-
tressing death under unspecified circumstances before he’d finished the narrative of his amaz-
ing voyage! And what parallel had he gotten to after leaving Tsalal Island with his companion
Peters, and how had the two of them managed to get back home to America?
I thought that my head would explode, that I’d lost my mind—I who had accused Cap-
tain Guy of the same thing! No! My hearing had gone bad! I’d gotten my signals crossed! My
imagination was working overtime . . . !
And yet how could I refute this testimony found on the body of the Jane’s mate, this
Patterson whose corroborating statements were backed by definite dates? And above all, how
could I harbor any doubts after West, the calmest among us, managed to decipher these other
sentence fragments:
“Holed up since June 3 in the north of Tsalal Island. . . . There . . . still . . . Captain William Guy and five
of the Jane’s men. . . . My ice slab’s drifting past the barrier . . . food’s going to run out. . . . Since June 13 . . . my
last supplies used up. . . . Today . . . June 16 . . . nothing more . . .”
Thus for nearly three months Patterson’s body lay on the surface of this ice slab we’d
found on the way from Kerguelen’s Land to Tristan da Cunha! Oh, if only we’d rescued the
Jane’s mate . . . ! He could have told us what we didn’t know, what we might never know—the
secret behind that whole horrific adventure!
In short, I had to bow to the evidence. Len Guy, who knew Patterson, had just recovered
his frozen corpse! It was the same man who had gone with the Jane’s captain when, during a

layover, he’d buried that bottle in Kerguelen’s Land, and in that bottle a letter I’d refused to
accept as genuine!4 Yes! For eleven years the survivors of that English schooner had been down
there without any hope of ever being picked up . . . !
Then my overwrought brain made a connection between two names—a connection that
would explain the interest our captain took in everything related to the doings of Arthur Gor-
don Pym.
Len Guy turned, looked at me, and spoke these words:
“Now do you believe me?”
“I believe you . . . I believe you!” I stammered. “But Captain William Guy of the Jane—”
“—is the brother of Captain Len Guy of the Halbrane! ” he thundered in a voice the
whole crew could hear.
Then, when our eyes shifted back to where the ice slab had been floating, we found that
the waves and sunlight in this latitude had taken their double-barreled toll, and there wasn’t a
single trace of it left on the surface of the sea.

7. Tristan da Cunha
F
our days later the Halbrane raised the unusual volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha,
the kettle of the African seas, you might say.1
No question, finding that ice slab over 1,200 miles from the Antarctic
Circle, followed by the appearance of Patterson’s corpse, was quite an amazing
event. And now here were the two brothers, captains of the Halbrane and the Jane, linked to each
other by the specter of Pym’s travels! Yes, it must sound incredible! But is it really, compared
to what I have yet to describe . . . ?
What’s more, the height of incredibleness, I feel, is that our American author’s novel
turned out to be actual fact. At first my mind rebelled . . . I wanted to shut my eyes to the
evidence!
Ultimately I had to give in and bury my last doubts in the ocean depths along with Pat-
terson’s body.
Plus, Captain Len Guy wasn’t the only one bound by ties of blood in this dramatic true
story, but—as I soon learned—our master sailmaker also had a blood relative in these events.2
That’s right, Martin Holt was the brother of one of the Grampus’s ablest seamen, one of those
men doomed to die before the Jane rescued Pym and Peters.
Hence, between the 83rd and 84th southern parallels, seven English seamen—now down
to six—had lived on Tsalal Island for eleven years: Captain William Guy, Patterson the mate,
and five of the Jane’s sailors, who had escaped—by Lord knows what miracle—from the natives
of Klock-klock!
And what would Captain Guy do at this point? Not hesitate for a second on the mat-
ter—he would do all he could to rescue the Jane’s survivors . . . he would take the Halbrane to
the meridian Pym specified . . . he would steer her to that Tsalal Island indicated in Patterson’s
diary. Jem West, his first officer, would sail anywhere he was ordered . . . his crew would obey
him without hesitation, and no fear of any travel hazards—even those beyond the limits of
human strength—could stop them. The captain’s soul would be with them, and the mate’s arms
would be guiding their arms . . .

So that’s why Len Guy refused to take passengers on his ship, why he told me he never
promised to stay on a given course, since he always hoped an opportunity would come up for
venturing into the polar seas!3
If the Halbrane had been ready to undertake such a cruise then and there, I even had
grounds for thinking Captain Guy would issue orders to head south . . . and according to the
conditions of my coming on board, could I have required him to continue on course and take
me to Tristan da Cunha?
In any case he urgently needed to replenish his drinking water on that island, which
couldn’t be much farther off. There it might be possible to get the schooner in shape to do
battle with icebergs, to reach the open sea (since it opened beyond the 82nd parallel), to push
farther than the likes of Cook, Weddell, Biscoe, and Kemp, and finally to attempt the same
thing currently being attempted by Lieutenant Wilkes of the U.S. Navy.
Fine, once I’d gotten to Tristan da Cunha, I would wait for another ship to come by. On
the other hand, even if the Halbrane had been ready for such an expedition, the season wouldn’t
be far enough along for her to cut the Antarctic Circle. In essence it was still the first week of
September, and at least two months needed to go by before the southern summer would trigger
an ice breakup and crack open the frozen barrier.
By this time our mariners already knew what to expect—it’s from mid-November to
the beginning of March that these daredevil attempts can be pursued with any success. At
that point temperatures are more bearable, storms are less frequent, icebergs break loose from
bigger masses, holes appear in the barricade, and that far-off realm basks in 24-hour daylight.
There was a code of caution in this vicinity that the Halbrane would have been wise to heed.
Meaning, she needed to take preventive measures: after our schooner stocked up on fresh food
and replenished her water supply from the stores on Tristan da Cunha, she would have time
to stand into another port—on the Falkland Islands, say, or the shores of America—that was
better equipped to handle repairs than the harbors of these lonely isles in the wilderness of
the south Atlantic.
The main island is visible eighty-five to ninety miles away under clear skies. I received
these assorted facts about Tristan da Cunha from the bosun. Since he’d visited it on various
occasions, he could hold forth knowledgeably on its behalf.
Tristan da Cunha lies south of the zone of regular southwesterly winds. Its mild, damp
climate features moderate temperatures that don’t go below 25° Fahrenheit or above 68°.4
Prevailing winds are westerly and northwesterly, then southerly during the winter (August and
September).
This island has been populated since 1811, when the American Lambert and several of
his countrymen came equipped to hunt marine mammals. Following them, English soldiers
arrived and took up residence, assigned to watch over the seas of Saint Helena and leaving only
after Napoleon’s death in 1821.
Then, after another thirty to forty years, Tristan da Cunha was able to tally up a fine
ethnic mix of about a hundred people, the results of Europeans, Americans, and Hollanders
getting together at the Cape of Good Hope . . . then they established an island republic with
a patriarch as leader, the father of the family with the most kids . . . then finally these islands

wound up recognizing Great Britain as their overlord—though that hadn’t yet come about in
this year of 1839 when the Halbrane was getting ready to lay over in these parts.
Anyhow, based on my own personal sightseeing, I soon had to conclude that owning
Tristan da Cunha wasn’t anything worth fighting for. Even so, its name in the 16th century had
been “Land of Life.” Though it enjoyed its own individual flora, that flora amounts to nothing
more than ferns, club mosses, and tussock grass of the species Spartina arundinacea, which car-
pets the foothills of the mountains. As for domestic fauna, oxen, sheep, and pigs are the only
things with market value and provide the basis for a little business with Saint Helena. On a
positive note, there weren’t any reptiles or insects, and the forests shelter only some mildly feral
felines—cats gone back to their wild state.
The only trees on the island are buckthorns eighteen to twenty feet high. Otherwise the
currents bring enough driftwood ashore to stuff every stove in the place. As for vegetables, I
could find only cabbages, beets, onions, turnips, and pumpkins, and as for fruits, only low-
quality pears, peaches, and grapes. I’ll add that a birdwatcher would be reduced to tracking
seagulls, petrels, penguins, and albatrosses. The ornithological population of Tristan da Cunha
doesn’t have any other specimens on offer.
During the morning of September 5, we sighted the main island’s towering, snow-cov-
ered volcano—a 7,200-foot mountain whose extinct crater forms the basin of a small lake. As
we drew nearer the next day, we could identify a huge rockslide of old hardened lava, laid out
like a field of glacial deposits.
That far from shore gigantic seaweeds streaked the surface of the sea, genuine vegetable
cables running from 600 to 1,200 feet long and as big around as a barrel.
Here I should mention that for three days after we’d met up with that ice slab, Captain
Guy came out on deck only to get his bearings. When he’d finished with this operation, he
reentered his cabin and I had no chance to catch him again except at mealtimes. Gifted with a
reticence that was identical to dead silence, he proved impossible to draw out. Even West had
no luck. Accordingly I kept my thoughts to myself. I believed the time would come when Len
Guy would speak to me again about his brother William and his future plans to rescue him
and his companions. Now then, again due to the season, that time still hadn’t arrived when, on
September 6, the schooner reached the settlement at the far end of Falmouth Bay; she dropped
anchor in 108 feet of water on the northwest coast of the main island—right where the Jane
took up her berth in Pym’s narrative.
I said “the main island” because the Tristan da Cunha group includes two others that are
significantly smaller. About twenty miles to the southwest lies Inaccessible Island, and some
twelve miles southeast of the latter is Nightingale Island. The entire group sits in latitude 37°
5' south and longitude 13° 4' west.
These islands are circular. In an overhead shot Tristan da Cunha looks like a wide-open
parasol that’s fifteen miles across, its ribs represented by the gulches that fan out symmetrically
from the volcano in the island’s center.
This group makes up a midocean domain that’s more or less independent. It was dis-
covered by the Portuguese, who provided its name. After the Dutch explored it in 1643 and
the French in 1767, a few Americans came and took up residence to hunt for harbor seals,

which are plentiful in these waterways. It wasn’t long before the English finally followed in their
footsteps.
At the time of the Jane’s layover, a man named Glass, formerly a corporal in the British
artillery, governed a little colony of twenty-six individuals who did business with the Cape of
Good Hope and whose only vessel was a schooner of middling tonnage. At the time of our
arrival, the aforesaid Glass kept track of more than fifty subjects and as Pym noted, was operat-
ing “independently” of the British government.
A sea from 7,200 to 9,000 feet deep washes these islands, which are skirted by the equa-
torial current as it veers to the west. They’re serviced by a wind system blowing steadily out of
the southwest. Rampaging storms are rare hereabouts. During the wintertime drift ice often
goes by within ten degrees or so of their parallel, but it never comes abreast of Saint Helena,
any more than those sperm whales that haven’t much interest in such warm waters.
The main island’s towering, snow-covered volcano.

Laid out in triangle formation, the three islands are separated from each other by a
variety of easily negotiated channels about ten miles wide. Their coasts are clear, and the sea’s
depth around Tristan da Cunha is 600 feet.
After the Halbrane’s arrival we got in contact with the former corporal. He turned out to
be the soul of kindness. Captain Guy left West in charge of filling the water tanks and stocking
up on fresh meat and assorted vegetables, and all the mate had to do was turn it over to the
obliging Glass—who did, however, expect to be generously paid and was.
The instant the Halbrane arrived, though, they realized she wouldn’t find the necessary
resources in Tristan da Cunha to get her in shape for undertaking the planned cruise to the
Antarctic Ocean. But from the viewpoint of nutritional resources, Tristan da Cunha could
certainly be of frequent use to mariners. Their forerunners had enhanced these islands with
every species of domestic animal, sheep, pigs, oxen, and poultry—ever since the turn of the
last century when America’s Captain Patton, in command of the Industry, had found only wild
goats here. After him came Captain Colquhoun, aboard the American brig Betsey, who planted
gardens of onions, potatoes, and other types of vegetables that were guaranteed to prosper
in this fertile soil. At least that’s what Pym tells us in his narrative, and there’s no reason to
disbelieve him.
You’ll note that I’m now talking about Poe’s hero as a man whose existence I no longer
questioned. Accordingly I was surprised that Len Guy hadn’t cross-examined me further on
this topic. Obviously the clear-cut information deciphered from Patterson’s diary hadn’t been
trumped up for the occasion, and it would have been bad manners to not admit my mistake.
What’s more, in case I still had any qualms, another piece of unimpeachable testimony
would be added to those words from the Jane’s mate.
The day after we dropped anchor, I went ashore to the settlement, which sat on a fine
beach of black sand. It even occurred to me that a beach like this wouldn’t have been out of
place on Tsalal Island, where you’ll find the color of mourning to the total exclusion of the
color white, which made the islanders go into such violent convulsions, followed by collapse
and stupor.5 But Pym was so positive about these amazing effects—could he have been the
victim of some illusion? Anyhow, Lord knows what we’ll face if the Halbrane ever comes in
sight of Tsalal Island . . .
I ran into former corporal Glass—an energetic, well-preserved man (with rather crafty
features, I must admit) whose sixty years hadn’t dampened his shrewd high spirits. Beyond
wheeling and dealing with the Cape of Good Hope and the Falklands, he also ran a going
concern in sealskins and oil of sea elephant, and business was booming.
He seemed quite eager to chitchat, this self-appointed governor whom the little colony
tolerated, so I easily got into a conversation with him the first time we met, a conversation that
must have been interesting to both sides.
“Do you often have ships lay over by Tristan da Cunha?” I asked him.
“As many as we can manage, sir,” he answered me, surreptitiously rubbing his hands
together—apparently a compulsive habit of his.
“During good weather?” I added.
“Yes, during good weather, as if we ever have any bad in these waterways!”

“Congratulations, Mr. Glass. But it’s a shame Tristan da Cunha doesn’t have a single
harbor, and when a ship has to anchor offshore—”
“Offshore, sir? What do you mean offshore?” our former corporal exclaimed heatedly,
revealing a sizable amount of pride in the matter.
“I mean, Mr. Glass, that if you had a loading dock—”
“And what for, sir, when nature has laid us out a bay like this, where we’re sheltered from
squalls and it’s easy to nose up alongside the rocks . . . ! No, Tristan hasn’t any harbors and
Tristan does just fine!”
Then why annoy the gallant fellow? He was as proud of his island as the Prince of
Monaco is of his miniature principality . . .
I let it go, and we chatted about this and that. He offered to put together a day trip
for me, a visit to the dense forests that climb halfway up the volcanic cone in the island’s
center.
I thanked him and begged off on his offer. I could make the best use of my time dur-
ing this layover by getting in a little mineralogical research. Besides, the Halbrane was to weigh
anchor as soon as the new stores were on board.
“He’s in an unusual hurry, your captain!” Governor Glass said to me.
“Think so?”
“And in such a hurry, his first officer hasn’t even mentioned buying furs or oil from me.”
“All we need is fresh food and drinking water, Mr. Glass.”
“Very good, sir,” the governor replied, sounding a shade irked. “Anything the Halbrane
won’t take other ships will!”
Then, continuing:
“And where’s your schooner off to after she leaves us?”
“To the Falklands, for repair work.”6
“And you, sir . . . you’re just a passenger, I assume?”
“That’s right, Mr. Glass, and I’d even intended to stay behind on Tristan da Cunha for a
few weeks. . . . but I needed to change my plans.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir, truly sorry!” the governor insisted. “We would have been
happy to offer you our hospitality while you waited for another ship to arrive.”
“I would have treasured your hospitality,” I replied. “Unfortunately I can’t take advantage
of it . . .”
In essence I’d finally reached a decision to not leave the schooner. As soon as she’d
finished her layover, she would make for the Falkland Islands, where she would be given the
necessary modifications for an expedition into the antarctic seas. So I could get as far as the
Falklands, from where—without too long a delay—I could set sail for America, and surely
Captain Guy wouldn’t refuse to take me there.
And then, showing some signs of annoyance, our former corporal said to me:
“Speaking of your captain, I haven’t seen the color of his hair or the skin on his face.”
“I don’t think he intends to come ashore, Mr. Glass.”
“Is he sick?”
“Not that I know of. But it doesn’t make much difference, since his first officer is here
in his place . . .”

“And what a chatterbox the fellow is! Once in a blue moon you can get two words out of
him . . . ! Luckily gold pieces leave his purse more easily than remarks leave his lips.”
“That’s the main thing, Mr. Glass.”
“Right you are, Mr.—uh . . .”
“Jeorling, from Connecticut.”
“Wonderful. I know your name and still don’t know who the Halbrane’s captain is.”
“His name’s Guy . . . Len Guy.”
“English?”
“Yes, English.”
“He certainly could have taken the trouble to pay his countryman a visit, Mr. Jeorling!
But . . . hold on . . . I was once acquainted with a captain by that name . . . Guy . . . Guy . . .”
“William Guy?” I asked.
“Exactly—William Guy.”
“Commander of the Jane?”
“The Jane, correct.”
“An English schooner that made a layover in Tristan da Cunha eleven years ago?”
“Eleven years, Mr. Jeorling. I’d already been in residence on the island for seven years
when Captain Jeffrey—aboard the Berwick out of London—found me here in the year 1824. I
remember William Guy as if I were looking straight at him . . . a gallant fellow, very outgoing
he was, and he took a shipment of sealskin off me. Acted like an aristocrat . . . a bit overbear-
ing . . . but goodhearted.”
“How about the Jane?” I inquired.
“I can still see her right there, same place the Halbrane’s moored . . . at the far end of the
bay . . . nice-looking craft of nearly 200 tons burden, slim in the bows . . . slim . . . her home
port was Liverpool . . .”
“Yes, that’s right . . . all of it’s right!” I repeated.
“And is the Jane still plying the seas, Mr. Jeorling?”
“No, Mr. Glass.”
“She came to grief ?”
“It’s only too true, and most of her crew vanished along with her.”
“Could you tell me how this misfortune came about, Mr. Jeorling?”
“Gladly, Mr. Glass. After leaving Tristan da Cunha, the Jane set sail for the coordinates of
the Auroras and other islands, which William Guy hoped to scout out based on information—”
“—which came from me, Mr. Jeorling!” our former corporal contended. “All right, those
other islands . . . can you tell me if the Jane discovered them?”
“No, nor did she find the Auroras, though William Guy stayed in those waterways for
several weeks, running from east to west, always with a lookout at the masthead.”
“So those coordinates must’ve gotten by him, Mr. Jeorling—because, if I’m to believe
several trustworthy whalers, those islands really exist, and there was even some talk of naming
them after me . . .”
“Which would only be fair,” I politely replied.
“And if they don’t get around to finding them one day, it’ll be truly distressing,” the
governor added in a tone that suggested a healthy dose of vanity.

“At that juncture,” I resumed, “Captain William Guy wanted to carry out a plan he’d
been working on for a long while, and he was encouraged by a passenger aboard the Jane . . .”
“Arthur Gordon Pym,” Glass snapped, “and his companion, one Dirk Peters . . . who’d
both been picked up by that schooner.”
“You knew them, Mr. Glass?” I asked instantly.
“Of course I knew them, Mr. Jeorling! Oh, he was an odd character, that Pym, always
eager to dash off on adventures . . . daredevil American . . . he’d leave for the moon if he
could . . . say, he hasn’t actually done that by any chance?”
“No, Mr. Glass, but during her voyage, it seems William Guy’s schooner did cut the
Antarctic Circle, go past the ice barrier, and get farther than any ship before her.”
“Now there’s a phenomenal cruise!” Glass exclaimed.
“Unfortunately,” I replied, “the Jane never returned . . .”
“Then, Mr. Jeorling, what happened to Pym and Dirk Peters—a sort of half-breed
Indian, dreadfully strong, able to hold off six men—did they perish?”
“No, Mr. Glass, Pym and Peters escaped the disaster that befell most of the Jane’s crew.
They even got back to America . . . I have no idea how. Following his return, Pym died under
Lord knows what circumstances. As for the half-breed, after living in Illinois, he left one day
without telling a soul and they can’t find a trace of him.”
“How about William Guy?” Mr. Glass asked.
I described how we’d just retrieved the corpse of Patterson, the Jane’s mate, from that ice
slab, and I added that everything indicated the Jane’s captain and five of his companions were
still alive on an island in the antarctic regions, less than seven degrees from the pole.7
“Ah, Mr. Jeorling,” Glass exclaimed, “if only somebody could rescue William Guy and
his sailors one day—they seemed such gallant fellows!”
“That’s what the Halbrane will definitely attempt as soon as they get her in shape, because
our Captain Len Guy is William Guy’s own brother.”
“Impossible, Mr. Jeorling!” Mr. Glass snapped. “All right, I don’t know your Captain Len
Guy, but I daresay those two brothers don’t resemble each other a bit—at least in the way they
act around the governor of Tristan da Cunha!”
I could see that our former corporal found it quite mortifying to be ignored by Len Guy,
who hadn’t even paid his respects. If that sea captain only knew that he, the sovereign of this
independent island, also ruled over its neighbors, Inaccessible Island and Nightingale Island!
But no doubt Glass took comfort from the thought that he was selling his goods at a 25%
markup.
The only certainty was that Captain Len Guy hadn’t for a second indicated any intention
of leaving the ship. This was all the weirder because he must have known that before the Jane
headed into the antarctic, she’d made a layover off the northwest coast of Tristan da Cunha.
And getting in touch with the last European who’d shaken his brother’s hand did seem called
for . . .
Even so, West and his men went ashore by themselves. There they worked at top speed,
unloading the tin and copper ore that made up the ship’s cargo, then getting the provisions on
board, filling the water tanks, etc.

Captain Guy stayed aboard the schooner the whole time, not even coming out on deck;
and through his cabin’s glass window, I saw him continually bending over his worktable.
Maps lay spread out, books lay open. Undoubtedly the maps were charts of regions
to the south, the books accounts of voyages by the Jane’s predecessors into those mysterious
regions of Antarctica.
Also on the table sat a volume that had been read and reread a hundred times over! Most
of its pages were dog-eared, plus their margins were covered with pencil-written notes . . . and
on its cover this title glittered, as if inscribed in letters of fire: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

8. Heading for the Falklands
T
he evening of September 8, I took my leave of His Excellency the Governor
General of the Tristan da Cunha Archipelago—the title that the gallant Glass,
formerly a corporal in the British artillery, officially gave himself. The Halbrane set
sail before daybreak the next day.
Needless to say, Len Guy let me stay on as his passenger all the way to the Falkland
Islands. It was a 2,000-mile crossing that would take only two weeks if we had the kind of
smooth navigating we’d just had between Kerguelen’s Land and Tristan da Cunha. Captain Guy
didn’t even seem surprised at my request: you would have sworn he was expecting it. But what
I’d been expecting myself was that he would get back to the matter of Pym and Poe’s book,
which he hadn’t been moved to bring up again ever since poor Patterson had proven him right
and not me.
However, though he’d left it alone so far, maybe he was saving himself to tackle it in due
course. Besides, the business couldn’t have any impact on his future plans, and he was deter-
mined to steer the Halbrane to those far-off waterways where the Jane had perished.
After we doubled Herald Point, the settlement’s few cottages vanished behind the
periphery of Falmouth Bay. With a fine easterly breeze just then, we headed southwest, every
sail bellying out.
That morning we consecutively left behind Sea Elephant Bay, those rocks named the
Hardies, West Point, Cotton Bay, and the promontory on Daly Beach. Even so, it took us
literally the whole day to lose sight of Tristan da Cunha’s volcano, whose snowy, 8,000-foot
summit finally faded into the shadows of evening.
During the course of that week, we navigated under optimum conditions, and if they
kept up, the month of September wouldn’t be over before we first raised the upper reaches of
the Falkland group. We needed to make a sharp turn to the south during this crossing, so the
schooner had to travel from the 38th parallel down to latitude 55°.
Now then, since Len Guy intended to plumb the antarctic depths, I think it’s useful,
even essential, to concisely review earlier attempts to reach the South Pole, or at least that huge

landmass whose center point it could well be. My job of summing up those voyages has been
made all the easier by Captain Guy himself, who put at my disposal some books that describe
them with a tremendous wealth of detail—along with the complete works of Edgar Allan Poe,
those Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, which, carried away by all these strange developments, I
reread with genuine enthusiasm.1
Pym likewise felt he should list the main discoveries of earlier mariners, but he had to
stop, needless to say, with the ones predating 1828. Now then, since I’m writing this twelve
years after him, it’s up to me to cover what his successors did, including the Halbrane’s current
voyage over the years 1839–1840.
The geographic area that falls under the general label of Antarctica seems to lie inside
the 60th southern parallel.
In 1772 at latitude 58°, the Resolution under Captain Cook and the Adventure under Cap-
tain Furneaux met pack ice stretching from the northwest to the southeast. After creeping
through a maze of enormous pieces and running very serious risks, the two ships reached the
64th parallel by mid-December, cut the Antarctic Circle in January, and halted before masses
eight to twenty feet wide at latitude 67° 15'—which is a few minutes shy of the polar circle’s
boundary.*
During the month of November the following year, Captain Cook resumed his attempt.
This time, making the most of a strong current, he braved the fogs, squalls, and even harsher
temperatures and got about half a degree past the 70th parallel; but in latitude 71° 10' and
longitude 106° 54' west, he found his way blocked for good by insurmountable ice floes 250
to 300 feet long, which were rubbing against each other beneath monstrous towering icebergs.
This bold English commander wouldn’t get any farther into the seas of Antarctica.
Thirty years later, in 1803, southerly winds drove back a Russian expedition under Cap-
tains Krusenstern and Lisiansky, who couldn’t proceed beyond latitude 59° 52' and longi-
tude 70° 15' west, though their voyage took place in March and ice hadn’t closed up their
passageway.
In 1818 William Smith and then Edward Bransfield discovered the South Shetland
Islands; in 1820 Powell scouted out the South Orkney Islands; Palmer and other seal fisher-
men sighted Trinity Island, but didn’t venture any farther.2
In 1819 the Russian Navy’s Vostok and Mirnyi, commanded by Captain Bellinghausen and
Lieutenant Lazarev, made the acquaintance of South Georgia Island, bypassed the South Sand-
wich Islands, and advanced 600 miles south to the 70th parallel. A second attempt, down lon-
gitude 160° east, didn’t get them any closer to the pole. Even so, they raised the islands of Peter
I and Alexander I, which may have been part of the region sighted by the American Palmer.
It was in 1822 that the Royal Navy’s Captain James Weddell reached latitude 74° 15' (if
his report doesn’t stretch the truth); there he found a sea free of ice—which led him to dispute
the existence of a polar continent. I’ll point out, in addition, that this mariner’s course is the
same that Pym and the Jane had to have taken six years later.
In 1823 America’s Benjamin Morrell, aboard the schooner Wasp,3 undertook his first
cruise during the month of March and got to latitude 69° 15', then to 70° 14', finding the
*Hence latitude 60° 32' 3". J.V.

surface of the sea open, the air temperature 47° Fahrenheit, and that of the water 44°, readings
that clearly jibed with those taken on the Jane in the waterways of Tsalal Island.4 If they hadn’t
run short of provisions, Captain Morrell insisted he would have reached, if not the South Pole,
at least the 85th parallel. In 1829 and 1830 a second expedition aboard the Antarctic took him
down longitude 116°, and he didn’t meet any obstacles till latitude 70° 30', where he discov-
ered the shores of New South Greenland.
At the very same time that Arthur Gordon Pym and William Guy were progressing far-
ther than their predecessors, the Admiralty assigned Englishmen Foster and Kendall to verify
the earth’s shape by observing a pendulum’s fluctuations at different locales, which they did
without ever going beyond latitude 64° 45' south.
In 1830 John Biscoe, in command of the Tula and the Lively belonging to the brothers
Enderby, was entrusted with exploring the southern regions while hunting whales and seals.5 In
January 1831 he crossed the 60th parallel, made it to latitude 68° 51' and longitude 10° east,
then halted in front of insurmountable pack ice, discovering in latitude 65° 57' and longitude
45° east a considerable region that he named Enderby Land but couldn’t approach. In 1832
a second cruise got him no farther than 66° 27'. Nevertheless he found and named Adelaide
Land, then a lofty stretch of shore he dubbed Graham Land. Based on this cruise, the Royal
Geographical Society in London concluded there was a landmass between longitude 47° and
69° east and between latitude 66° and 67°. Even so, Pym was right to maintain that this was
an irrational conclusion, because Weddell had sailed straight across those so-called lands, and
the Jane had gone the same way well beyond the 74th parallel.
In 1835 England’s Lieutenant Kemp set sail from Kerguelen’s Land. After raising a sem-
blance of shoreline at longitude 70° east, he dropped back to 66°, scouted out a coastline that
most likely was part of Enderby Land, and proceeded no farther south.
Finally, on February 7 early in this year of 1839, Captain Balleny, aboard the ship Elisa-
beth Scott, got beyond latitude 67° 7' and longitude 104° 25' west and discovered the string of
islands that bears his name; then during March, in latitude 65° 10' and longitude 116° 10'
east, he raised the territory that’s called the Sabrina Coast. Though a humble whaler (some-
thing I learned later), this seaman had thus uncovered fresh, clear evidence that hinted at the
existence of an antarctic landmass, at least in this part of the polar ocean.
Finally, as I’ve already pointed out earlier in this yarn, while the Halbrane contemplated an
attempt that would take her farther than any mariner during the period 1772–1839, Lieuten-
ant Charles Wilkes of the U.S. Navy, in command of a squadron of four vessels, the Vincennes,
the Peacock, the Porpoise, the Flying Fish, and several consorts, was trying to open himself up a pas-
sageway to the pole down longitude 102° east. In short, at that time there were still 5,000,000
square miles left to discover in Antarctica.
There you have the cruises that went into these southern seas ahead of the schooner Hal-
brane, Captain Len Guy commanding. To sum up, the most daring of these discoverers—or the
most fortunate, if you prefer—didn’t get any farther than the following: Kemp just the 66th
parallel, Balleny just the 67th, Biscoe just the 68th, Bellinghausen and Morrell just the 70th,
Cook just the 71st, Weddell just the 74th . . . and to rescue the Jane’s survivors, we had to go
past the 83rd, nearly 550 miles farther!

Even though I have a hardheaded, commonsense personality, I must admit that since
we found Patterson on that ice slab, I’d felt strangely excited. This odd restlessness gave me no
peace. I was haunted by the faces of Arthur Gordon Pym and his companions left behind in
the wilderness of Antarctica. A desire took shape in me to play a part in this cruise Captain
Guy was planning. I thought about it constantly.6 When you got down to it, nothing was call-
ing me back to America. What difference would it make if I was away another six or twelve
months? True, I would still need the consent of the Halbrane’s commander. Yet why would he
refuse to keep me on as his passenger? Wouldn’t he be able to provide “material proof ” that
he was right and not me, to take me to a disaster site I’d regarded as fictitious, to show me the
Jane’s wreckage off Tsalal Island, to set me down on shores I’d said didn’t exist, to usher me into
the presence of his brother William, to bring me face to face at last with the explosive truth—
wouldn’t this give him some all-too-human satisfaction?
However, I held off making any final decision till I had a chance to speak with Captain Guy.
There was no reason to rush things, though. After leaving Tristan da Cunha and enjoying
ten days of ideal weather, we hit a 24-hour lull. Then the breeze turned southerly. Sailing close
into the wind, the Halbrane had to take in canvas because it was blowing a strong gale. Thereafter
we couldn’t possibly count on the hundred-mile average we’d been managing from one sunrise
to the next. Thanks to this development, the crossing was going to take at least twice as long,
and we still hadn’t had to face one of those storms that force a ship to head in when it starts
blowing or to run before the wind.
Luckily—and I can vouch for this—the schooner proved marvelously seaworthy. Her
stout masts were equal to anything, even when she ran under full canvas. Besides, for all his
world-class daring and professionalism, our first officer reefed his sails the instant a gust’s
intensity threatened to put his ship at risk. We never had to worry about any carelessness or
clumsiness on Jem West’s part.
For twelve days, from September 22 to October 3, we clearly were making little headway.
A very noticeable drift tugged us toward the American coast, and if there hadn’t been a current
right underneath that kept the schooner heading into the wind, we probably would have paid
a visit to the shores of Patagonia.
During this period of foul weather, I looked in vain for a chance to have a man-to-man
talk with Len Guy. Outside of mealtimes he stayed cooped up in his cabin, as usual left the
working of the ship to his first officer, and came out on deck only for the purpose of taking
his sights when the sun showed through a rift in the clouds. I’ll add that West was marvelously
abetted by his crew, the bosun leading the way, and it would have been hard to find ten bolder,
abler, and more determined men.
On the morning of October 4, conditions of sea and sky changed in a pretty decisive
way. The wind lulled, the heavy swell abated little by little, and the next day the breeze revealed
a definite northwesterly inclination.
We couldn’t have asked for a nicer change. We let out every reef and hoisted the upper
sails—topsail, topgallant sail, and gaff topsail—even though the wind was starting to pick
up. If it stayed fair, in less than ten days the lookout would get his first glimpse of the upper
reaches of the Falkland Islands.

From October 5 to the 10th, the breeze blew as steadily and predictably as a trade wind.
No need to tighten or loosen a single sheet. Though it was gradually losing strength, it kept
blowing in the right direction.
The looked-for chance to alert Len Guy came up on the afternoon of the 11th. He gave
it to me himself by questioning me along the following lines.
I was sitting by the corridor on the lee side of the deckhouse when Captain Guy came
out of his cabin, shot a glance astern, and took a seat next to me.
Obviously he wanted to speak to me, and it could only be about the topic that totally
obsessed him. Accordingly, in a voice above his usual whisper, he started out by saying:
“I haven’t had the pleasure of chatting with you again, Mr. Jeorling, since we left Tristan
da Cunha . . .”
“Sorry about that, captain,” I replied, staying on guard, waiting to see what was up.
“Please forgive me,” he went on. “I have so many responsibilities to worry about . . . !
Cruise plans to draw up . . . leaving nothing to chance . . . please don’t be annoyed with me . . .”
“I’m not annoyed with you, believe me.”
“Very good, Mr. Jeorling—and now that I know you and can pay you a compliment, I
thank my stars that I have you as a passenger till we reach the Falklands.”
“I’m extremely grateful for all you’ve done, captain, and that gives me encouragement
to—”
This had struck me as a promising moment to bring up my proposition, but Captain
Guy headed me off.
“Well, Mr. Jeorling,” he asked me, “you’re now convinced that the Jane’s voyage is actual
fact, and yet you consider Edgar Allan Poe’s book to be a work of pure imagination?”
“No, captain.”
“You don’t question that Arthur Gordon Pym and Dirk Peters really existed, nor that my
brother William Guy and five of his companions are alive . . .”
“I would have to be the world’s most skeptical man, and I’ve got just one prayer: may
Heaven help you and guarantee that you rescue the Jane’s castaways!”
“I’ll do my part as zealously as I can, Mr. Jeorling, and by the Lord almighty, I’ll succeed!”
“I hope so, captain . . . I’m even positive of it . . . and if you agree—”
“Haven’t you had a chance,” the captain inquired without letting me finish, “to talk it all
over with that Glass fellow, the former English corporal who’s the self-proclaimed governor of
Tristan da Cunha?”
“That’s right,” I remarked, “and what the fellow told me did a good deal to change my
doubts into certainties.”
“Aha! He confirmed for you . . .”
“Yes, and he remembers perfectly seeing the Jane during her layover eleven years ago.”
“The Jane . . . what about my brother?”
“He told me he knew Captain William Guy personally.”
“And he did business with the Jane?”
“Yes, as he just did business with the Halbrane.”
“She was anchored in that bay?”

“The same place as your schooner, captain.”
“What about Pym . . . and Peters?”
“They often socialized with him.”
“Did he ask what happened to them?”
“Certainly, and I informed him of Pym’s death—he thought Pym was a daredevil, a
thrill-seeker, capable of the most reckless lunacy.”
“Say rather a lunatic and a dangerous one, Mr. Jeorling. Wasn’t he the man who dragged
my poor brother off on that disastrous cruise?”
“Based on his narrative, there definitely are grounds for thinking it.”
“And grounds for never forgetting it!” Len Guy added instantly.
“That Glass fellow,” I went on, “also knew Patterson, the Jane’s mate.”
“He was a first-rate sailor, Mr. Jeorling, a man with a warm heart and time-tested cour-
age! Patterson had only friends . . . he was devoted to my brother body and soul.”
“As West is to you, captain.”
“Oh, why did we have to find poor Patterson dead on that slab of ice . . . already dead
for several weeks . . . !”
“His presence gave you valuable help for your investigations in the future,” I commented.
“True, Mr. Jeorling,” Captain Guy said. “Does Glass know where the Jane’s castaways are
right now?”
“I informed him, captain, plus everything you’re determined to do to rescue them.”
I figured it was pointless to add that Glass was quite surprised to not receive a visit
from Captain Len Guy, that the former corporal had been snippily stewing in his vanity, had
expected such a visit, and hadn’t felt it was up to him, the governor of Tristan da Cunha, to
make the first move.
Meanwhile Captain Guy changed the course of the conversation and said to me at this
point:
“I’d like to ask you, Mr. Jeorling, if you feel that everything is accurate in Arthur Gordon
Pym’s journal, which Edgar Allan Poe published . . .”
“Given the strange hero of those adventures,” I replied, “I think we can have a number of
reservations—at least about some of the peculiar phenomena Pym noted in those waterways
beyond Tsalal Island. And more specifically, look how totally wrong he was when he stated
that William Guy and several of his companions perished in the landslide at the hill near
Klock-klock.”
“Oh, he doesn’t state that, Mr. Jeorling!” Len Guy countered. “He simply says that when
he and Peters reached the opening from which they could view the country around them, the
secret of that manufactured earthquake was clear to them. Now then, since the hillside had
hurtled into the depths of the ravine, there wasn’t any further doubt in Pym’s mind about the
fate of my brother and the twenty-eight men with him. That’s the reason Pym ended up think-
ing he and Peters were the only white men left on Tsalal Island. This is all he said—nothing
more! He just made some suppositions . . . quite reasonable ones, you’ll agree . . . but merely
suppositions.”
“Granted, captain.”

“But thanks to Patterson’s diary, it’s now a certainty that my brother and six of his com-
panions7 weren’t crushed to death as the natives planned it.”
“Obviously that’s the case, captain. As for what happened to the Jane’s survivors, whether
they got recaptured by the Tsalal islanders and are still prisoners, or whether they got free, Pat-
terson’s notes don’t say anything, or anything about the circumstances in which he himself was
carried so far away from them.”
“That’s . . . what we’ll find out, Mr. Jeorling. Yes, that’s what we’ll find out! The main
thing is, we’re certain that my brother and six of his sailors were alive somewhere on Tsalal
Island less than four months ago. So now we’re no longer dealing with a novel penned by Poe,
but with a true story penned by Patterson.”
“Captain,” I finally said, “I’m at your service till the Halbrane finishes this cruise through
the antarctic seas—do you accept?”
Captain Len Guy looked at me, eyes probing like a sharpened blade. Otherwise he didn’t
seem a bit surprised at the proposition I’d just made him—maybe he was expecting this one
too—and he spoke only a single word:
“Gladly!”

9. Getting the Halbrane in Shape
I
t forms a rectangle some 160 miles long east to west and 100 miles wide north
to south, and it takes in two big islands plus a hundred or so islets in longitude
60° 10' to 64° 36' west and latitude 51° to 52° 45' south—there you have the
group officially known as the Falkland Islands or the Malouines, which is 300
miles from the Strait of Magellan and serves as an outpost for the two huge oceans of the
Atlantic and the Pacific.
John Davis discovered this island group in 1592, the pirate Richard Hawkins visited it
in 1593, and John Strong christened it in 1689—all Englishmen.
Nearly a century later, the French were expelled from their settlements in Canada and
tried to colonize the aforesaid islands and operate a supply stop for ships in the Pacific. Now
then, since these folks were mostly privateers from Saint-Malo, they christened this island
group with the name Malouines, which it bore along with its title of the Falklands. Their coun-
tryman Bougainville set up the colony’s first court of justice in 1763, arraigning twenty-seven
individuals (five of them women), and ten months later the colonists numbered 150.
Their prosperity didn’t fail to draw criticism from Great Britain. The Admiralty dis-
patched the Tamar and the Dolphin under the command of John Byron. In 1766, after finishing
up a cruise in the Strait of Magellan, the English made for the Falklands, were content to cor-
ner an island to the west, founded Port Egmont, then continued their voyage in the direction
of the South Seas.
The French colony wasn’t destined for success—because, in addition, the Spanish had
staked a claim on the strength of an arrangement negotiated earlier by the pope. Accordingly,
after reaching agreement on matters of financial compensation, King Louis XV’s government
decided to recognize that claim, and Bougainville turned the Falkland Islands over to the King
of Spain’s representatives in 1767.
All this swapping, this “handing back and forth,” led to an inevitable result in the world
of colonial undertakings: the English drove out the Spanish. So, as of 1833, these amazing
confiscators are the lords of the Falklands.

Now then, when our schooner stood into Port Egmont on the date of October 16, this
island group had been one of Britain’s possessions in the south Atlantic for six years.1
In keeping with their positions relative to each other, the two big islands are named East
Falkland (or Isla Soledad) and West Falkland. In the northern part of the latter is the entrance
to Port Egmont.
When the Halbrane took up her berth at the far end of this harbor, Len Guy gave the
whole crew a twelve-hour leave. The next day they would get back to work with a painstaking
and much-needed inspection of her hull and rigging, given that they would be navigating across
the antarctic seas for an extended period.
Captain Guy immediately went ashore to confer with the governor of the islands—a
position appointed by the Queen—on the topic of promptly provisioning his schooner. Mon-
ey was no object, because he knew that foolish penny-pinching could jeopardize the success
of such a demanding cruise. Besides, I was ready to help out with my own money—I didn’t
keep him in the dark about this—and intended to chip in on expenses during this expedition.
And in fact I’d now gotten caught up in it . . . caught up in these prodigious surprises,
these peculiar combinations of events. I felt like the character in “The Domain of Arnheim”
who enthused about a possible voyage to the South Seas: “The thoroughness of its insulation
and seclusion, and the difficulty of ingress and egress, would in such a case be the charm of
charms.”2 Thanks to reading such fantastic works by Edgar Allan Poe, that’s what I’d come to!
And yet it all boiled down to saving those unfortunate men, and I was delighted to contribute
personally to their rescue.
Though Captain Guy went ashore that day, West remained on board as he normally
did. The crew had the day off, but the mate practiced self-denial and stayed busy till evening
inspecting the hold.
As for me, I didn’t plan to go ashore till the next day. I would have this whole layover to
explore the Port Egmont area and do a little research into the island’s geology and mineralogy.
So this was a first-class opportunity for that gasbag Hurliguerly to strike up another
conversation with me, and he didn’t fail to make the most of it.
“My heartiest and most sincere congratulations, Mr. Jeorling,” he said, pulling alongside
me.
“What brings this on, bosun?”
“Something I’ve just heard, namely that you’ll be going with us deep into the antarctic
seas.”
“Oh, not all that far, I expect—we aren’t dealing with anything beyond the 84th parallel.”
“Who knows?” the bosun replied. “In any event the Halbrane’s going to cover more
degrees of latitude than she has reef points in her spanker sail or ratlines in her rigging!”
“We’ll see.”
“And that doesn’t scare you off, Mr. Jeorling?”
“No way.”
“Nor us, trust me!” Hurliguerly stated. “Hoho, you’ll find there’s good in our captain
even though he doesn’t run off at the mouth! The key is knowing how to handle him! He took
you to Tristan da Cunha after he originally said no, and here he is taking you to the pole.”

“This isn’t about the pole, bosun!”
“Whatever. But somebody’ll end up there one day!”
“That’s not why we’re here. Besides, the place doesn’t hold much interest for me and I
haven’t any ambition to conquer it. In the final analysis the only thing we’re concerned with is
Tsalal Island—”
“All right, Tsalal Island!” Hurliguerly countered. “Nevertheless you have to admit our
captain’s been mighty cooperative in your case.”
“So I’m deeply obliged to him—you too, I hasten to add, since I made this crossing due
to your influence.”
“Likewise the next crossing.”
“Oh, beyond the tiniest shadow of a doubt, bosun.”
As I found out later, Hurliguerly was a gallant fellow at heart, and maybe he detected a
smidgen of sarcasm in my response. Nevertheless he didn’t let anything show, determined to
keep playing his role as my mentor. Anyhow I couldn’t have benefited more from his conversa-
tion, because he knew the Falklands like he knew all those south Atlantic islands he’d been
visiting for so many years.
The next day, as a result, I was ready with the right paperwork when the dinghy ferried
me ashore, pulling up to a beach whose heavy blanket of grass seemed intended as a cushion
for longboats to bump against.
In those days the Falklands weren’t the busy stopover they’ve since become. It was only
later that somebody discovered an inlet on Isla Soledad and named it Port Stanley—a harbor
the French geographer Jacques Élisée Reclus rated as “ideal.” It’s sheltered in every direction
you look and could berth the Royal Navy. But it was on the north coast of West Falkland, or
Falkland proper, that the Halbrane went to find Port Egmont.
All right, say that for the past two months I’d been sailing blindfolded, hadn’t any idea
which direction the schooner had headed, and somebody asked me during the first few hours
of this layover: “Are you in the Falklands or Norway?” My answer would indicate a fair amount
of befuddlement.
Believe me, faced with these coastlines carved up into deep coves, these steep, craggy
mountainsides, and these cliffs sitting on grayish rocks, a little uncertainty is forgivable. There
isn’t anything these two countries don’t have in common, up to and including their ocean cli-
mates, which are free from any big swings of hot and cold. What’s more, the frequent rains of
Scandinavia’s skies pour just as wholeheartedly from these Magellan skies. Then there are those
relentless fogs during spring and fall, those ferocious winds that uproot vegetables from your
kitchen garden.
True, it would take me only a couple of strolls to realize that the equator still lay between
me and the waterways of northern Europe.
Actually, when I explored the Port Egmont area early on, what was there to look at?
Nothing but the feeblest hints of vegetation, no trees anywhere. Instead of those marvelous
evergreens covering Norway’s mountains, only an occasional shrub grew here and there—like
the genus Bolax, a sort of six-to-seven-foot gladiolus that’s skinny like a bulrush and oozes a
sweet-smelling gum, plus valerian, lily vines, treemoss, fescue, mushrooms, cushion plants,

prostrate brooms, rooster crests, tussock grass, lady’s purse, liverwort, violets, vinegar plants,
and those red and white celery stalks that are so helpful in warding off diseases like scurvy.
Then, stretching over the surface of the peaty soil (which yields and springs back underfoot),
there’s a multicolored carpet of moss, sphagnum, ferns, and lichens. . . . No, this wasn’t the
captivating country that rings with echoes of the Norse sagas, this wasn’t that poetic domain
of Odin the wanderer and the Valkyries!
Spreading over the deep waters of Falkland Sound, which separates the two main islands,
there were unusual aquatic plants, varieties of fucus that are buoyed by strings of little inflated
air bladders and are unique to the flora of the Falkland Islands.
We should likewise note that the bays of this island group, where whales have already
gotten scarce, were frequented by other marine mammals of enormous size—seals that had
external ears and goatish manes and measured twenty-five feet long by twenty around, plus
pods of sea elephants, sea wolves, or sea lions that had proportions just as gigantic. You can’t
imagine the ear-splitting howls let out by these aquatic creatures—especially the females and
youngsters. You would have sworn there were herds of cattle mooing on the beach. These ani-
mals aren’t difficult or dangerous to catch—or at least slay. While the creatures huddle on the
sandy shores, fishermen dispatch them with clubs.
These are the details that distinguish the Falklands from Scandinavia—not to mention
the infinite number of birds that flew off when I came near: bustards, cormorants, grebes,
black-headed swans, and especially those tribes of penguins or auks that are slaughtered annu-
ally by the hundreds of thousands.
And one day, when the air was full of enough braying to cause hearing loss, I asked an
old seaman in Port Egmont:
“Have you got donkeys around here?”
“Sir,” he answered me, “those aren’t donkeys you’re hearing, they’re penguins.”
So be it, but if any donkeys had been around, they would have been fooled too by the
braying of those dim-witted birds!
Over the days of October 17–19, West got going on an ultracareful inspection of the
hull. He verified that it hadn’t suffered in any way. The stempost seemed strong enough to
crack fresh ice in the neighborhood of the ice barrier. The crew carried out several repairs
on the sternpost, reinforcing it to insure that the rudder was responsive but in no danger of
being disabled during collisions. With the schooner heeled over to starboard, then to port,
they meticulously plugged several seams with oakum and pitch. As with most ships pressed
into navigating chilly seas, the Halbrane didn’t have a copper bottom—which is preferable when
you’re bound to have brushes with ice fields, whose sharp edges can easily harm a vessel’s under-
side. They replaced a number of the dowels that secured the planking to the timbers, and under
the “direction” of Hardie, our master caulker, the mallets sang out with a tone and rhythm that
promised a memorable performance by the schooner.3
On the afternoon of the 20th, I took a stroll farther to the west of the bay, along with
that old sea dog I keep writing about—gallant fellow, highly receptive to the lure of a gold
piece washed down with a glass of gin. This island of West Falkland is more spread out than its

neighbor Isla Soledad, and it has another harbor at the tip of Byron Sound’s southern cape—
too far for me to walk both ways.
I couldn’t estimate the population of these islands—not even roughly. It may have num-
bered only two or three hundred individuals. Most were English, the rest were Indians, Portu-
guese, Spaniards, gauchos from the pampas of Argentina, and settlers from Tierra del Fuego.
On the other hand it was by the thousands and thousands that you had to count the repre-
sentatives of the sheep family scattered over this landscape. More than half a million lambs
furnish over $400,000 worth of wool annually. On these islands they also raise oxen that seem
to reach bigger sizes than normal, while other quadrupeds, such as horses, pigs, and rabbits,
reach smaller—all of them, moreover, living out in the wild. As for the wolflike foxes, which
belong to a species peculiar to the fauna of the Falklands, just remember that they’re the only
carnivorous breed in this country.
With good reason this island group has been characterized as a “farmyard.” What end-
less pastures nature lavishes on the animals here, what an abundance of that tasty weed known
as tussock grass! Even Australia, so well off in this respect, doesn’t lay out a better spread for
sheep and cattle that drop by for a bite.
So ships that need replenishing should look into the Falklands. No question, this group
is truly important to mariners, both those heading for the Strait of Magellan and those going
fishing down around the polar regions.
After he’d finished working on the hull, our first officer got busy with the masts and rig-
ging, helped by Martin Holt, our master sailmaker, very savvy at this sort of work.4
“You’ll see, Mr. Jeorling,” Len Guy said to me that day, October 21. “We won’t neglect a
thing that can insure our cruise’s success. Everything foreseeable has been foreseen. And if the
Halbrane is doomed to perish in some catastrophe, that’s because it isn’t given to human beings
to run counter to God’s plans!”
“I have high hopes, captain, I’ll say it again,” I replied. “Your schooner and your crew are
absolutely trustworthy.”
You’re right, Mr. Jeorling, and we’ll have good weather for getting though the ice. I don’t
know what benefits steam power will provide one day; but with those cumbersome, breakable
wheels, I doubt that any steam vessels can equal a sailboat when it comes to polar navigat-
ing . . . plus they’ll always need to take on coal. . . . No! It’s wiser to be aboard a ship that steers
well, to make use of the breezes (which, after all, are usable over three-fifths of the compass),
and to rely on the sails of a schooner that can shift to nearly five points from the wind.”
“I’m with you, captain, and we’ll never find a better ship from a nautical standpoint! But
just in case this cruise drags on, maybe our provisions—”
“We’ll be taking a two-year supply, Mr. Jeorling, and it’ll be high quality. Port Egmont
has been able to furnish everything we need.”
“One more question, if I may.”
“Yes?”
“Won’t you need a bigger crew on the Halbrane? She has enough men to run her, but what
if an occasion comes up for taking offensive or defensive action in those antarctic waterways?

Let’s not forget that according to Pym’s narrative, the natives on Tsalal Island number in the
thousands . . . and if your brother William and his companions are prisoners—”
“I hope, Mr. Jeorling, that the Halbrane will be better protected by our artillery than the
Jane was by hers. In fact I’m quite aware that our current crew won’t be enough for an expedition
of this kind. Accordingly I’m working on recruiting additional sailors.”
“Will that be hard?”
“Yes and no, since the governor has promised to help with my recruiting.”
“I gather, captain, that you’ll need to offer recruits higher pay.”
“Double pay, Mr. Jeorling, and that will also be the case for the entire crew.”
“As you know, captain, I’m ready—I’m even happy—to contribute toward the costs of
this cruise. Will you regard me as your partner?”
“It will all work out, Mr. Jeorling, and I’m deeply grateful to you. Our priority is to finish
fitting out the ship as soon as possible. We must be ready to weigh anchor in a week.”
The news that our schooner would be making her way through the seas of Antarctica
created quite a sensation in the Falklands, at Port Egmont as well as the various ports on Isla
Soledad. At the time there were a number of out-of-work seamen waiting to offer their services
to passing whalers, services that are usually well compensated. If this had simply been a fishing
cruise to the brink of the polar circle, to the waterways between the South Sandwich Islands
and South Georgia Island, Captain Guy would have had a wealth of men to choose from. But
he planned to push beyond the ice barrier, go farther than any previous mariner, and do so
with the sole purpose of rescuing castaways—for most folks this was ample reason to stop and
think. To be comfortable with this kind of dangerous navigating, and to willingly follow your
captain as far as he felt like going, you had to be one of the old salts on the Halbrane.
In actuality it came down to nothing less than tripling the schooner’s crew. Including the
captain, mate, bosun, cook and myself, there were thirteen of us on board. Now then, thirty-
two to thirty-four men wouldn’t be at all excessive, and don’t forget that there were thirty-eight
on the Jane.
True, it was a worrisome business to take on twice the number of sailors as the crew
currently had. These Falkland seamen at the disposal of whalers laying over—would they give
all the necessary assurances? Even if it isn’t the end of the world to add four or five to a ship
whose staff is already top-notch, it could mean problems for our schooner.
However, from the moment the island authorities lent him a hand, Captain Guy hoped
he wouldn’t have any reason to regret his choices.
The governor took a wholehearted interest in the business and displayed genuine zeal.
Further, thanks to the high wages on offer, there was a flood of takers.
Accordingly, the day before our departure (which was set for October 27), we had a full
crew.
It’s pointless to introduce each of these newcomers by name and job description. You’ll
see them at work, you’ll judge their performance. Some did well, some didn’t.
In all honesty, it wouldn’t have been possible to find anybody better—or less bad, if you
prefer.

So I’ll limit myself to commenting that these recruits included six men hailing from
England, and they in turn included a certain fellow named Hearne from Glasgow.
Five hailed from America (the United States), and eight were of murkier extraction—
some came from Dutch communities, others were half Spanish and half Tierra del Fuego.
The youngest was nineteen, the oldest forty-four. Most were no strangers to the profession of
sailing and had already navigated on merchantmen or vessels fishing for whales, seals, and other
marine animals in the antarctic waterways. They’d been hired for the sole purpose of increasing
the number of fighting men on the schooner.
There were nineteen recruits in all, gents who’d signed up for a cruise whose duration
couldn’t be specified in advance but who weren’t to be taken beyond Tsalal Island.5 As for wages,
none of these sailors had earned even half as much during their earlier voyages.
Counting everybody but me, the Halbrane’s crew with her captain and mate consisted of
thirty-one men . . . plus a thirty-second whom it’s appropriate that I take special steps to call
to your attention.
The evening before our departure, an individual pulled alongside Len Guy in the corner
of the harbor—an individual who was clearly a seaman, which you could tell from the way he
dressed, walked, and talked.
In a harsh, hard-to-understand voice, the fellow said:
“Got a proposition for you, captain.”
“What is it?”
“There any openings left on board . . . if you take my meaning?”
“For a sailor?”
“For a sailor.”
“Yes and no,” Captain Guy remarked.
“That mean yes?” the fellow demanded.
“It’s yes if I like the man making the proposition.”
“Will I do?”
“You’re a seaman?”
“Been sailing twenty-five years.”
“Where?”
“In the South Seas.”
“Far?”
“Aye, far . . . if you take my meaning.”
“How old are you?”
“Forty-four.”
“And you’re in Port Egmont?”
“Been there three years come next Christmas.”
“Were you expecting to ship out on a passing whaler?”
“No.”
“Then what have you been up to?”
“Nothing . . . I didn’t plan to sail anymore.”

“Then why go to sea?”
“Just a thought. The news about your schooner’s expedition got around . . . I’d like
to . . . aye, I’d like to sign on . . . by your leave, sir!”
“People know you in Port Egmont?”
“They know me . . . and haven’t said a word against me since I came here.”
“So be it,” Captain Guy replied. “I’ll make some inquiries.”
“Inquire away, captain, and if you say aye, my bag’ll be on board this evening.”
“What’s your name?”
“Hunt.”
“And you’re from—?”
“America.”
He was short in stature, this Hunt fellow—complexion heavily tanned, brick coloring,
skin yellowish like an Indian’s, torso enormous, head immense, limbs bowlegged. His arms and
legs indicated exceptional strength—especially the former, which ended in hands with a huge
grasp! His grizzled hair looked like a sort of fur, practically a pelt.
What gave this individual’s facial features a distinctive character—which wasn’t terribly
flattering to him—were his tiny, marvelously sharp eyes, his almost lipless mouth that gaped
from ear to ear, and his long, perfectly enameled teeth that had never been stricken with scurvy,
so common in seamen at high latitudes.
Hunt had been living in the Falklands for three years, first in one of the ports on Isla
Soledad, at St. Nicholas Bay, then in Port Egmont, his latest address.6 Being an unsociable
type, he lived by himself on a retirement allowance, with Lord knows what equity. Not getting
support from either the one or the other, he worked as a fisherman, and this occupation could
guarantee him an adequate living, whether he ate what he caught or took it to market.
Inevitably, the information Len Guy turned up on Hunt’s behalf wasn’t very complete,
except where it concerned his behavior since he’d moved to Port Egmont. The man didn’t
brawl, he didn’t tipple, you didn’t see him overindulge, and many a time he gave proof of his
Herculean strength. As for his past life, nobody knew a thing, but he’d definitely lived it as a
seaman. He said more about it to Captain Guy than he’d ever said to anybody. Otherwise he
was as stubbornly silent about the family he came from as he was about his exact place of birth.
But if you could get good work out of this sailor, who cared?
In short, this quest for information didn’t produce any grounds for turning down Hunt’s
proposition. You wished, in all honesty, that the other recruits from Port Egmont had led such
blameless lives. Hunt received a positive answer and got situated on board as soon as it was
nightfall.
We were all set to go. The Halbrane had two years’ worth of provisions on board—pro-
cessed meats lightly salted, various types of vegetables, plenty of vinegar plants, celery, and
spoonwort that were good for preventing or fighting diseases like scurvy. Down in the hold
there were kegs of brandy, whiskey, beer, gin, and wine for the crew’s daily consumption, plus
a large supply of crackers and cookies bought from shops in port.
As for ammunition, we should also note that the governor issued orders to supply us with
gunpowder, cannonballs, and bullets for rifles and swivel guns. Captain Guy had even gotten
the boarding nets from a ship that recently came to grief on the rocks outside the bay.

On the morning of the 27th, in the presence of the island authorities, we got ready to
cast off with remarkable speed. We traded our last farewells and good wishes. Then we weighed
anchor and the schooner headed on out.
The wind blew from the northwest, a gentle breeze, and under her upper sails and
courses, the Halbrane made for the channel. Once at sea, she turned east to double the promon-
tory of Tamar-Hart at the top of the strait separating the two islands. During the afternoon we
worked our way around Isla Soledad and left it to port. That coming evening Capes Dolphin
and Pembroke finally vanished behind the foggy horizon.
The cruise was under way. God only knew if success awaited these courageous men,
whose humane feelings were urging them toward the most fearful regions of Antarctica!

10. The Cruise Early On
I
t was the Falkland group that Captain Biscoe’s ships, the Tula and the Lively, set
out from on September 27, 1830, standing into the shores of the South Sand-
wich Islands and doubling their northern tip on January 1. It’s true, unfortu-
nately, that the Lively went down six weeks later off the Falklands—and we could
only hope this wasn’t the fate in store for our schooner.
So Captain Len Guy set out from the same spot as Biscoe, who took five weeks getting to
the Sandwich group. But that English mariner was positively thwarted by the pack ice beyond the
Antarctic Circle, and after only a few days he had to back out in a southeasterly direction as far
as longitude 45° east. It was due to this very circumstance that Biscoe discovered Enderby Land.
Captain Guy traced his course on the chart for West and me, adding:
We won’t be following in Biscoe’s footsteps, however, but those of Weddell, who voyaged
to the polar zones in 1822 with his ships, the Beaufroy and the Jane—the Jane, Mr. Jeorling, a
name with a destiny! But Weddell’s Jane1 had better luck than my brother’s and didn’t go to the
bottom behind the ice barrier.”*
*In 1838 it was likewise at the Falklands—in Soledad Bay, to be specific—that the Astrolabe under Captain Dumont
d’Urville agreed to meet up with her consort, the Zealous, just in case those two sloops of war got separated due to
foul weather or pack ice. In the course of some highly dangerous navigating over the years 1837, 1838, 1839, and
1840, this expedition ended up charting 120 miles of unknown shore between the 63rd and 64th southern parallels
and between the 58th and 62nd meridians west of Paris—lands that were named the Louis-Philippe Peninsula and
the Joinville Islands. In January 1840 the expedition visited the opposite end of the polar continent—if a continent
it truly is—and ultimately discovered the Adélie Coast in latitude 63° 3' south and longitude 132° 21' east, then
the Clarie Coast in latitude 64° 30' south and longitude 129° 54' east. But back at the time Mr. Jeorling left the
Falklands, he couldn’t have known of these highly significant geographic events.2 In addition there have been a few
other attempts since then to reach the Antarctic Ocean’s highest latitudes. Over and beyond Sir James Clark Ross,
we need to mention the young Norwegian seaman Carsten Borchgrevink who got to an even higher position than the
English mariner, also the 1893 voyage of the Norwegian whaler Jason under Captain C. A. Larsen, who found open
sea south of the Joinville Islands and Louis-Philippe Peninsula, then made it all the way past the 68th parallel. J.V.

“Let’s forge ahead, captain,” I replied. “If we aren’t following Biscoe, let’s follow Weddell.
That daredevil sailor was simply a seal fisherman, but he managed to get closer to the pole than
anybody before him, and he’s showing us the way to take.”
“And we’ll take it, Mr. Jeorling. Moreover, if we don’t experience any delays, if the Hal-
brane encounters the ice barrier around mid-December, we’ll have our chance soon enough. In
fact it was more than a few days into February when Weddell reached the 72nd parallel, where,
as he said, ‘not a shred of ice was visible.’ Then, on February 20, he came to a halt at latitude
74° 36', his highest position, his Farthest South. No ship has gone beyond it—no ship except
the Jane, which hasn’t returned. So in those antarctic territories behind the barrier, there’s a
deep channel between the 30th and 40th meridians, since William Guy came after Weddell and
managed to get within seven degrees of the South Pole.”
West listened without saying anything, as he usually did. His eyes measured the spaces
lying between the tips of Len Guy’s compass. He was a man who got an order, carried it out,
never argued, and always went where he was commanded.
“Captain,” I continued, “no doubt you plan to stick to the Jane’s course . . . ?”
“As closely as possible.”
“All right, your brother William headed south from Tristan da Cunha toward the coor-
dinates of the Auroras, which he didn’t find—any more than those islands that our former
corporal, Governor Glass, would have been so proud to lend his name to. At that point your
brother tried to carry out a plan he’d often discussed with Pym, and it was between longitude
41° and 42° that he crossed the Antarctic Circle on the date of January 1.”
“I know,” Captain Guy remarked. “And that’s what the Halbrane will do in order to reach
Bennet’s Islet and Tsalal Island. And may Heaven grant that she finds open sea ahead, just like
Weddell’s ships and the Jane! ”
“If our schooner reaches the threshold of the barrier and it’s still piled with ice,” I said,
“we’ll simply have to back off and wait.”
“Exactly my plan, Mr. Jeorling, and it’s better to get there early. The ice barrier is a wall in
which a door suddenly opens and instantly shuts again. We’ll have to be on the spot . . . ready
to get in . . . and not worry about coming back out!”
Coming back out? Nobody gave it a thought! The only exclamations on everybody’s lips
were “Onward! Keep going!”3
Then West made this comment:
“Thanks to the information in Pym’s narrative, we won’t miss having his comrade Peters
with us!”
“And we’re very lucky,” Captain Guy replied, “since the half-breed left Illinois and I
couldn’t find him. Pym’s journal gives the bearings of Tsalal Island, and they’ll have to do.”
“At least we won’t need to carry our search beyond latitude 84°,” I pointed out.
“And why should we, Mr. Jeorling, since the Jane’s castaways haven’t left Tsalal Island. Isn’t
that clearly spelled out in Patterson’s notes?”
In short, even though Dirk Peters wasn’t on board—which nobody questioned—the
Halbrane would be able to reach her destination. But she didn’t forget to practice the sailor’s
three theological virtues of smarts, guts, and tenacity!

So here I was, embarked on a hazardous adventure that in all likelihood would spring
more surprises than any trip I’d ever taken. Who would have imagined me in such a position?
But I’d gotten caught up in a chain of events that was dragging me toward the unknown, that
unknown of the polar regions, that unknown whose mysteries so many fearless pioneers had
tried in vain to solve! And who knows, this time the sphinx of the antarctic realm might speak
its first words to human ears!
Meanwhile I didn’t forget that the work ahead of us was strictly humanitarian. The task
that the Halbrane had taken on was to pick up Captain William Guy and his five companions.
Rescuing them was the reason our schooner would be staying on the Jane’s heels. And when
that was done, the Halbrane would simply head back to the seas of the Old World, since there
wasn’t any need to search further for Pym or Peters, who’d gotten back, Lord knows how, from
their amazing journey!
During those first days the new crew needed to get up to speed on their duties, and the
oldtimers—truly gallant fellows—facilitated things. Captain Guy hadn’t had a wide range of
choices, yet it seemed he’d been dealt a fairly good hand. Though of different nationalities,
these sailors displayed zeal and good will. Besides, they learned that our first officer didn’t play
games. Hurliguerly tipped them off that West cracked heads when anybody got out of line. His
commander gave him plenty of latitude in this respect.
“And he finds his latitude,” Hurliguerly added, “by determining your eye’s elevation with
a closed fist.”
My bosun friend was just being himself in this warning to interested parties.
So the newcomers took him at his word and no punitive measures were called for with
anybody. As for that Hunt fellow, though he handled his responsibilities with the compliance
of a true seaman, he always kept to himself, didn’t speak to a soul, and even slept on deck in
some corner or other, unwilling to occupy his berth in the crew’s quarters.
It was still cold out. The men stayed in their pea jackets and flannel shirts, their under-
wear of the same fabric, their bulky woolen trousers, and their waterproof overcoats with
hoods made of heavy lacquered canvas, trustworthy protection against snow, rain, and waves
over the deck.
Captain Guy intended to make the South Sandwich Islands his jumping-off place for the
south, after putting into South Georgia Island, located 800 miles from the Falklands. So our
schooner would lie on the longitude of the Jane’s course, and all she had to do was follow it in
order to reach the 84th parallel.
On November 2 our travels led us to the coordinates that some mariners have assigned
to the Auroras, latitude 53° 15' and longitude 47° 58' west.4
Well, despite the descriptions and bearings (dubious in my opinion) given for the group’s
three islands by captains on the Aurora in 1762, the San Miguel in 1769, the Pearl in 1779, the
Princess and Dolores in 1790, plus the Atrevida in 1794, we didn’t see a sign of land in the whole
area under consideration.5 Nor had the search attempts by Weddell in 1820 and William Guy
in 1827.
Likewise, we must add, with the so-called islands of the vainglorious Glass. Though our
lookouts kept careful watch, we didn’t raise one tiny islet at the position he indicated. So it’s

doubtful that His Excellency the Governor of Tristan da Cunha will ever find his name in a
geography book.
By then it was November 6. The weather continued fair. This crossing promised to take
less time than the Jane’s. We didn’t have to hurry, though. As I’ve pointed out, our schooner
would arrive before the ice barrier opened its gates.
For two days the Halbrane put up with several squalls that persuaded West to haul down
her topsail, topgallant sail, gaff topsail, and standing jib. Her upper sails out of the way, she
performed remarkably, rising to the waves so readily that she barely got damp. During this work
up in the rigging, the new crew gave evidence of their skill—and earned the bosun’s congratula-
tions. Hurliguerly had to admit that Hunt by himself, despite his ungainly appearance, was a
match for three men.
“A prize recruit!” he told me.
“It’s a fact,” I replied, “and he showed up practically at the last minute.”
“Practically, Mr. Jeorling! But what a noggin he’s got on him, that Hunt!”
“I’ve often run into that breed of American in the territories out west,” I answered, “and
I wouldn’t be surprised if the fellow had Indian blood in his veins.”
“Fine,” the bosun put in. “Some countrymen of ours in Lancashire or the county of Kent
could match him.”
“I’m inclined to believe you, bosun . . . among others, you yourself, I imagine!”
“Oh, we all meet our match, Mr. Jeorling!”6
“Do you sometimes chat with Hunt?” I asked.
“Very little, Mr. Jeorling. And what can you get out of an old sea hog who keeps to
himself and doesn’t say a word to anybody? Yet it isn’t for lack of mouth! I’ve never seen such
a piehole—it goes from starboard to port like our main hatchway in the bow! Yet even with
equipment like that, Hunt can’t talk in complete sentences! And those hands of his! You’ve seen
his hands? Look out, Mr. Jeorling, if he ever wants to shake on it! I guarantee you’ll leave five
fingers out of ten behind!”
“Luckily, bosun, Hunt doesn’t seem quarrelsome. Everything indicates he’s a quiet man
who knows his own strength.”
“Right . . . except when he’s tugging on a halyard, Mr. Jeorling. I swear to God, I’m
always worried he’ll yank the pulley down and the yard along with it!”
The aforesaid Hunt, to give him his due, was a peculiar fellow who attracted people’s
attention and deservedly so. When he leaned against the supports of the windlass, or stood
in the stern with his hands resting on the pegs of the steering wheel, I gawked at him in real
curiosity.
On the other hand it struck me that he returned the compliment by persistently star-
ing back. He must have known about my status as a passenger aboard the schooner, plus the
circumstances in which I was sharing the risks of this cruise. As for wondering if he was after
something different than we were—beyond Tsalal Island, once we’d rescued the Jane’s cast-
aways—it was almost unthinkable. Besides, Len Guy kept saying over and over:
“Our mission is to rescue our countrymen! Tsalal Island is the only destination drawing
us, and we have no plans to take our ship beyond it!”

On November 10 at about 2:00 in the afternoon, we heard the lookout holler:
“Land off the starboard bow!”
We took some decent sights that gave latitude 55° 7' and longitude 41° 13' west.
This land could only be San Pedro Island—called South Georgia Island, New Georgia,
and King George’s Island by the British—and its coordinates put it in the circumpolar regions.
The Frenchman Barbe discovered it as early as 1675, well before Cook. But that famous
English mariner didn’t worry about coming in second and gave it the series of names it bears
to this day.
The schooner headed for this island, whose snow-covered heights—fearsome masses of
age-old rock, namely gneiss and clayish schist—rose above the yellowish fog in the air, reaching
a height of 7,200 feet.
Captain Guy planned to lay over for twenty-four hours in Royal Bay in order to replenish
his supply of drinking water, because the tanks easily overheated down in the hold. Later, when
the Halbrane was navigating in the midst of the ice, we would have all the fresh water we wanted.
During the afternoon our schooner headed north of the island, doubled Cape Buller, left
Possession Bay and Cumberland Bay to starboard, and went to tackle Royal Bay, maneuvering
through the rubble that had tumbled down from Ross Glacier. At six o’clock in the evening,
we dropped anchor in thirty-six feet of water, and since night was falling, we delayed going
ashore till the next day.
South Georgia Island is about a hundred miles long by fifty wide. Located some 1,200
miles from the Strait of Magellan, it belongs to the British overseas territory of the Falkland
Islands. No English administrators are physically present, since nobody lives on the island—
though it is livable, at least during the summer months.
The next day, when the men left to look for sources of water, I took a stroll by myself
in the neighborhood of Royal Bay. The whole place was deserted, because there wouldn’t be
any fishermen till seal-hunting season, which had to be a good month away. South Georgia
Island is right in the path of Antarctica’s polar current and it’s enthusiastically frequented by
marine mammals. I saw several pods frolicking on the beaches, along the rocks, and inside the
coastal caves. Standing motionless in endless rows, tribes of penguins brayed in protest when
any outsider intruded—e.g., me.
Swarms of skylarks flew over the sea and the sand, their birdsong stirring up memories in
my mind of countries more blessed by nature. It’s a good thing these birds don’t need branches
to build nests on, because there isn’t a single tree in all the soil of South Georgia Island. Here
and there lingered a few seed-bearing plants, some half-faded moss, and especially tussock
grass, a weed so plentiful that it carpets the slopes as high as 900 feet up—if somebody har-
vested it, he’d have enough to feed quite a few herds of cattle.
On November 12 the Halbrane cast off, running under her courses. After doubling Cape
Charlotte at the tip of Royal Bay, she headed south-southeast in the direction of the South
Sandwich Islands, four hundred miles away.
So far we hadn’t met up with any floating ice. That’s because the summer sun hadn’t
detached any pieces, either from the ice barrier or from lands to the south. Later the current

would take them as far as the 50th parallel, which is equivalent to Paris or Quebec in the
northern hemisphere.
The clear skies were starting to change, threatening to turn gloomy toward the east.
Mixed with rain and light squalls, a cold wind blew with distinct intensity. Since this wind was
in our favor, we had no grounds for complaint. We called it a fair exchange and took refuge
under the closely drawn hoods of our overcoats.
What aggravated us were the wide fogbanks that frequently hid the horizon. Even so,
these waterways weren’t hazardous and there was no danger of running into pack ice or drifting
icebergs, so the Halbrane didn’t have any great worries and could stay on her southeasterly course
toward the coordinates of the South Sandwich Islands.
In the midst of these fogs, flocks of screeching birds went by, gliding into the wind and
barely moving their wings—petrels, loons, kingfishers, terns, and albatrosses that were leaving
land behind and showing us the way.
No doubt it was these heavy mists that kept Captain Guy from spotting Traversey Island
to the southwest, discovered by Bellinghausen between South Georgia Island and the Sandwich
group—not to mention those four islets that, according to Fanning,* America’s James Brown
on the schooner Pacific surveyed and named Willey’s Island, Potter’s Island, Prince’s Island, and
Christmas Island. The main thing, though, was to not get cast up on their shores when visibility
was around one to two thousand feet.
Accordingly the crew kept the strictest watch on board, and our lookouts scanned the sea
the instant a sudden rift in the fog provided a wider field of vision.
During the night of November 14–15, a hazy, flickering glow lit up the skies to the west.
Len Guy thought this glow had to come from a volcano—maybe the one on Traversey Island,
whose crater is often crowned with flames.
Since our ears couldn’t catch any of those drawn-out explosions that go along with
volcanic eruptions, we concluded that our schooner was staying reassuringly far away from the
island’s reefs.
There wasn’t any reason to change course, so we kept heading for the Sandwich group.
On the morning of the 16th, it stopped raining and the wind shifted a point to the
northwest. Since it wasn’t long till the fog lifted, we could only thank our stars.
Just then seaman Stern, who was on watch in the crosstrees, thought he spotted a big
three-master whose vehicle lights were emerging to the west. Much to our regret, the craft
vanished before it was possible to make out her nationality. Maybe she was one of the ships
in Wilkes’s expedition, or some whaling vessel making her way to the fishing grounds, where
cetaceans were showing up in pretty large numbers.
At ten o’clock in the morning on November 17, our schooner raised the island group
that Cook originally named Southern Thule (since it was the most southerly land discovered to
that point), then later christened with the name of Sandwich, the moniker this group still keeps
*Edmund Fanning: Voyages around the world (1833). FPW

on geographic charts and that it already bore in 1830, when Biscoe left it to head eastward in
search of a route to the pole.
Since then plenty of other mariners have visited the South Sandwich Islands, and fisher-
men hunt right whales, sperm whales, and seals in the vicinity of these waterways.
In 1820 Captain Morrell ran out of firewood and landed here in hopes of finding some.
Fortunately Len Guy wasn’t stopping for this purpose. He wouldn’t have been repaid for his
efforts, since the climate of these islands doesn’t allow trees to grow hereabouts.
The schooner would lay over in the Sandwich group for forty-eight hours, and that’s
because we thought it wise to inspect every island that our course brought us to in these polar
regions. A scrap of paper, a clue, a footprint might turn up on one of them. Since Patterson
had been carried off on a slab of ice, couldn’t the same thing have happened to one or another
of his companions?
Therefore, since we weren’t in a hurry, it was best to not overlook a thing. After South
Georgia Island, the Halbrane would head to the Sandwich group, after the Sandwich group the
South Orkney Islands, after them the Antarctic Circle, and after that straight to the ice barrier.
We managed to land that same day at the far end of a rocky haven on Bristol Island, a
sort of little natural harbor on its east coast.
Located in latitude 59° and longitude 30° west, this island group has several members,
the main ones being Bristol and Thule. A number of others only deserve to be classified as
humble islets.
West got the mission of going over to Thule aboard our biggest longboat and exploring
the reachable spots, while Captain Guy and I stepped down onto the shores of Bristol Island.
In a nutshell, what a desolate place—its only residents were antarctic birds of various
dreary species! It featured the same sparse vegetation as South Georgia Island. Moss and lichen
covered the naked, unproductive soil. Beyond the beaches a few scrawny pine trees reared to a
considerable height over the gaunt hillsides, where masses of rock sometimes collapsed with
an earsplitting crash. Nothing anywhere except awe-inspiring solitude. There wasn’t a scrap
of evidence on Bristol Island that humans had passed through or castaways were present. The
excursions we made that day and the next didn’t turn up a thing.
It was the same with First Officer West’s exploration of Thule, where he vainly scoured
the appallingly torn-up coastline. We fired a few cannon shots from the schooner, but they had
no effect other than to drive away flocks of petrels and terns and scare the dim-witted penguins
lined up along the beach.
While strolling beside Captain Guy, I happened to tell him:
“No doubt you’re aware of Cook’s views on the Sandwich group when he discovered it.
Right off he thought he’d set foot on a continent. In his opinion the icebergs drifting to the
Antarctic Ocean had gotten detached from this continent. Later he realized these Sandwich
lands amounted to just an island group. Nevertheless he stood by his views concerning the
existence of a polar continent more to the south.”
“I know that, Mr. Jeorling,” Len Guy replied, “but if this continent exists, we have to
conclude it has a wide entryway—by which Weddell and my brother managed to get in six years
apart. England’s great mariner didn’t have a chance to discover this passage because he halted at
the 71st parallel! Others got to it after him, and others will continue to do so . . .”

There wasn’t a scrap of evidence.
“And we’ll be among them, captain.”

Yes, with God’s help! Though Cook dared to state that nobody would ever venture far-
ther than he had, that nobody would ever scout out this land even if it existed, the future will
prove him wrong. Already they’ve made it all the way past latitude 84°.”7
“And who knows,” I said, “maybe our amazing Mr. Pym got even farther.”
“Maybe, Mr. Jeorling. It’s true we haven’t given much thought to Pym, because he and
Peters got back to America—”
“But . . . what if he didn’t get back?”
“I don’t believe we need to consider that possibility,” Captain Guy merely replied.8

11. From the South Sandwich Islands
to the Antarctic Circle
T
he schooner cast off, headed southwest with continually favorable weather, and
six days later arrived in sight of the South Orkney Islands.
This group consists of two main islands: the bigger to the west, Corona-
tion Island, whose giant crown towers a good 2,500 feet in the air; to the east
Laurie Island, ending in Cape Dundas, which points toward the rising sun.1 Around it emerged
some lesser islands, Saddle Island, Powell Island, and a number of islets shaped like sugar
loaves. Finally the Inaccessible Isles lay to the west, plus Despair Rocks, no doubt christened by
some mariner who couldn’t pull alongside the one and gave up on reaching the other.
This island group was jointly discovered in 1821–22 by the American Palmer and
the Englishman Powell.2 Intersected by the 61st parallel, it lies between the 44th and 47th
meridians.
During her approach the Halbrane let us study the north coast with its convoluted masses
and steep bluffs, whose slopes—above all on Coronation Island—leveled off as they got down
to the seashore. Piled in a fearsome jumble at the foot of those banks were monstrous masses
of ice, which, in two months, would be drifting toward the ocean’s temperate zones.
By then it would be whaling season, time for fishermen to arrive and concentrate on
hunting cetaceans, while some of their shipmates would stay on the islands to chase seals and
sea elephants.
Oh, what a land of gloom and frost—and that’s such an apt description when the south-
ern summer’s first rays haven’t yet pierced its wintry shroud!
Not wanting to tackle the strait (which divvied these islands into two distinct batches
and was cluttered with reefs and ice floes), Captain Guy initially stood into the southeast end
of Laurie Island, where he spent the day of the 24th; then, after working his way around Cape
Dundas, he went down the south coast of Coronation Island and parked his schooner beside
it on the 25th. We searched the area for the Jane’s seamen but got nowhere.
In 1822—during the month of September even—Weddell came to these islands to hunt
hairy seals and found it a waste of time and energy, but that’s because the winter weather was

still too harsh. This time around the Halbrane could have amassed a whole shipload of these
aquatic animals.
Birds resided on these islands and islets by the thousands. The rocks were covered with a
carpet of droppings, and aside from penguins, there were a large number of those white pigeons
I’d already seen a few times previously. They’re wading birds, aren’t web-footed, have longish
conical beaks, boast eyelids encircled in red, and you can bag one without having a coronary.
The South Orkneys are predominately quartzose schist and not volcanic in origin, and
as for the vegetable kingdom in these parts, it’s represented exclusively by grayish lichen and a
few sparse fucus plants of the kelp genus. Quantities of limpets flourish on the beaches and
hens along the rocks, so folks help themselves.
I have to mention that the bosun and his men didn’t miss this chance to dispatch several
dozen penguins with clubs. They weren’t acting out of some reprehensible lust for destruction
but from a perfectly legitimate desire to get fresh food.
“It tastes as good as chicken, Mr. Jeorling,” Hurliguerly told me. “Didn’t you have some
in Kerguelen’s Land?”
“I did, bosun, but Atkins cooked it.”
“All right, down here Endicott will cook it and you won’t know the difference.”
And in fact both the wardroom and the crew’s quarters were treated to these penguins,
conclusive proof of our chef ’s culinary talents.
The Halbrane set sail on November 26 at six o’clock in the morning, prow pointing south.
She advanced to the 43rd meridian, a fact we established for certain the instant we took some
decent sights. This was the course that Weddell, then William Guy, had followed, and if our
schooner didn’t veer east or west, she would inevitably stumble on Tsalal Island. All the same
we had to make allowances for navigational difficulties.
The easterly winds were in our favor and held steady. The schooner ran under full canvas,
even the topmast studding sails, flying jib, and staysails. Under those wide-spreading sheets, she
had to be doing a speed between eleven and twelve miles per hour. If she maintained this speed,
it would be a short crossing from the South Orkney Islands to the Antarctic Circle.
Beyond it, as I knew, we would be faced with crashing the massive gates of the ice
barrier—or, being more practical, with finding some opening that went through that frozen
fortification.
And when Captain Guy and I chatted about this topic:
“So far,” I said, “the Halbrane has been scudding right along, and if this continues, we’re
bound to reach the barrier before the ice breakup.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no, Mr. Jeorling, because the warm season is arriving with amazing
speed this year. On Coronation Island, as I myself verified, ice floes are already breaking loose
from the coastline—that’s six weeks ahead of schedule.”
“A lucky state of affairs, captain, and it’s possible our schooner could clear the ice barrier as
early as the first weeks of December, while most ships haven’t managed it till the end of January.”
“We’re definitely benefiting from mild temperatures,” Len Guy replied.
“I might add,” I resumed, “that when Biscoe went on his second expedition and reached
longitude 64°, he didn’t pull up to those shores beneath Mt. William and Mt. Moberly till
mid-February.3 It’s mentioned in those travel books you passed along to me.”

“Mentioned at length, Mr. Jeorling.”
“In less than a month from now, captain—”
“In less than a month I hope to have gone beyond the ice barrier and found that open
sea Weddell and Pym describe so emphatically, and from that point on we’ll simply navigate
under normal conditions, first to Bennet’s Islet, then to Tsalal Island. The ocean will be almost
completely clear—what obstacles could stop us or even slow us down?”
“None that I can foresee, captain, once we’re on the other side of the ice barrier. But
getting through it will be the hard part, it’s sure to be a constant source of worry, and if the
easterly winds hold steady—”
“They’ll hold steady, Mr. Jeorling, and every mariner in the polar seas, myself included,
has been able to vouch for the persistence of these winds. I’m well aware that between the 30th
and 60th parallels, squalls come out of the western sector as a general rule. But farther on, due
to a very sharp turnabout, contrary winds have the upper hand, and since we’re beyond that
boundary, they normally blow in that direction, as you know.”
“True, captain, and I’m delighted to hear it. What’s more, I have to confess—and this is
a voluntary confession—that I’m starting to get superstitious.”
“And what’s wrong with that, Mr. Jeorling? Why is it illogical to accept a higher power
interceding in the events of our daily lives? Is it given to us, the Halbrane’s seamen, to question
this? Just remember how we found poor Patterson in our schooner’s path . . . that slab of ice
drifted right into the waterways we were crossing, then melted almost immediately. . . . Think
about it, Mr. Jeorling, wasn’t that on the order of a heaven-sent happening? I’ll go farther and
say that after doing so much to guide us to our countrymen from the Jane, God won’t let us
down . . .”
“I think as you do, captain! No, I can’t deny that He intercedes in human affairs, and as I
see it, chance doesn’t play the role that shallow minds say it does! All these events are connected
by a mystic bond . . . a chain . . .”
“A chain, Mr. Jeorling, whose first link for our purposes is Patterson’s ice slab and whose
last will be Tsalal Island. Oh, my brother, my poor brother! Left down there for eleven years
along with his companions in misery . . . not able to cling to even the hope of being rescued!
And Patterson was carried far away from them . . . under conditions we don’t know, just as they
don’t know what happened to him! If my heart constricts when I think of those catastrophes,
Mr. Jeorling, at least it won’t falter—except maybe at the moment my brother dashes up to
give me a hug!”
The feelings that gripped Captain Guy were so acute, my eyes grew moist. No, I didn’t
have the nerve to reply that this rescue operation had plenty of things that could go wrong!
True, less than six months ago William Guy and five of his sailors undoubtedly were still on
Tsalal Island, since Patterson’s diary said so. But what were their circumstances? Were they in
the power of those islanders, who numbered several thousand according to Pym’s estimate, not
counting the residents of the islands located to the west? From here on out, shouldn’t we expect
the chief of Tsalal Island, that Too-wit, to launch some attack that the Halbrane might not repel
any more effectively than the Jane did . . . ?

Yes, we were better off leaving things in the hands of Providence! God’s interceding was
already dazzlingly obvious, and He had entrusted us with a mission we would do everything
humanly possible to accomplish!
I should mention that the schooner’s crew were fired up with the same feelings and shared
the same hopes—I’m talking about the oldtimers on board, who were so dedicated to their
captain. As for the newcomers, maybe they didn’t care—or care much—about the cruise’s out-
come, so long as they took home the earnings guaranteed by their terms of hire.
At least that’s what the bosun said—except for Hunt, however. Apparently it wasn’t the
lure of wages or bonuses that had motivated this man to sign on. Certainly he didn’t talk about
it . . . and in fact he never talked about anything to anybody.
“And I guess he thinks about it just as little,” Hurliguerly told me. “If he knows any
colorful lingo, I’ve yet to see what shade it is . . . as for entering into a conversation, he doesn’t
budge any farther than a ship tied down to her bow anchor!”
“If he doesn’t say anything to you, bosun, he says even less to me.”
“Here’s my thought, Mr. Jeorling—do you know what this character has already gone
and done?”
“Tell me.”
“Well, he’s been far into the polar seas . . . yes, far . . . though on that topic he’s as mute
as a carp in a frying pan. Why he keeps his trap shut is his business. But if that old sea hog
hasn’t cleared the Antarctic Circle and even the ice barrier by a good dozen degrees, may the
next wave over our deck sweep me away!”
“How do you figure that, bosun?”
“By his eyes, Mr. Jeorling, his eyes! It makes no difference what time it is or which direc-
tion the schooner’s heading, his eyes are always aimed south, never flickering, as steady as run-
ning lights.”
Hurliguerly wasn’t exaggerating, and I’d already noticed this myself. To use one of Poe’s
expressions, Hunt’s glances were like “hawk eyes flashing.”4
“When he isn’t on watch,” the bosun continued, “that savage spends all day propping his
elbows on the rails, as stock-still as he’s silent. Honestly, his rightful place would be at the tip
of our prow, where he could serve as the Halbrane’s figurehead—a disfigured figurehead, I grant
you! And when he’s at the helm, Mr. Jeorling, look at him! Those enormous hands of his grasp
the pegs on the wheel like they’re nailed to ’em! When he looks at the binnacle, you’d swear the
compass dial had a magnetic hold on his eyes. I pride myself on being a good pilot, but I’m not
in Hunt’s league, no way! With him, the needle doesn’t veer from the lubber line for a second,
no matter how sharply we swerve! Look here . . . at night . . . if the binnacle lamp went out, I
bet Hunt wouldn’t even need to get it going again. He would keep us heading the right direc-
tion just by lighting up the dial with the gleam in his eyes!”
The bosun definitely liked to make up for lost time when I was around, given the lack of
attention Captain Guy or West usually paid to his endless yakking. To sum up, if Hurliguerly’s
opinion of Hunt seemed a bit extreme, that odd individual’s behavior justified it, I must say.
It was definitely appropriate to class him in the category of hard-to-believe humans. And to

tell the truth, if Poe had known him, he could have used Hunt as the model for one of his
strangest heroes.
For several days our navigating continued under first-rate conditions, completely unevent-
ful, nothing breaking the monotony. The easterly wind grew stronger, and the schooner got up
to her top speed—which was marked by a long, low, even wake trailing behind us for several
miles.
Meanwhile the season of spring was getting on with it. Pods of whales started to show
up. In these waterways vessels of heavy tonnage need only a week to fill up their tanks with
the precious oil from these mammals. Accordingly the new sailors on board—especially the
Americans—couldn’t hide their dismay when they saw the captain so uninterested in all those
animals, which were worth their weight in gold and more plentiful than anybody had ever seen
them at this time of year.
Out of the whole crew, the one who especially registered his disappointment was Hearne,
an expert sealer his companions eagerly listened to. With his bullying ways, the brazen aggres-
siveness that showed his true colors, he was able to dominate the other sailors. This master
sealer was forty-five years old and American by nationality.5 I could imagine him standing in
his double-prowed whaleboat, deft and energetic, brandishing his harpoon, hurling it into the
flank of a whale, and paying out the line . . . he must have been a sight to see! Now then, given
his intense passion for this type of work, it didn’t surprise me that his discontent reared into
view once in a while.
Nevertheless our schooner hadn’t been fitted out as a whaling vessel, and the equipment
this trade requires simply wasn’t on board. For as long as he’d been sailing on the Halbrane, Len
Guy had limited himself strictly to carrying goods between the islands in the south Atlantic
and Pacific.
Be that as it may, I thought it was downright amazing how many cetaceans we could see
within just a quarter-mile radius.
That day, around three o’clock in the afternoon, I’d just leaned over the forward rail to
watch several pairs of those enormous animals frolic about. Hearne pointed them out to his
companions, these sentence fragments popping out of his mouth the whole time:
“There . . . there . . . it’s a finback . . . and even two or three more of ’em . . . their dorsal
fins run five or six feet high! See how they swim in midwater . . . calmly . . . not leaping around.
Oh, if I just had a harpoon, I bet you anything I could nail one of those four yellowish spots
they’ve got on their bodies! But there’s nothing you can do on this cargo barge . . . and there’s
no way you can warm up your throwing arm! The hell with it! While we’re sailing these seas,
we should be fishing and not—”
Then, cussing angrily, he interrupted himself:
“And look at that other whale!” he exclaimed.
“The one with a hump like a camel?” one of the sailors asked.
“Aye . . . he’s a humpback,” Hearne answered. “See those pleats in his belly, and his long
dorsal fin? They’re no picnic to capture, those humpbacks, because they dive to great depths
and eat up an armload of your line . . . honestly, we’d deserve it if his tail smacked our side,
since we didn’t stick a harpoon in his!”

“Look alive!” the bosun shouted. “Watch out!”
He wasn’t concerned about that smack of the tail the master sealer was wishing on us.
No, an enormous cetacean had just pulled alongside the schooner, and almost instantly a filthy
waterspout burst out of its blowhole, as noisy as a distant barrage of gunfire! The ship’s bow
was soaked all the way to the main hatch.
“Nice work!” Hearne snorted, shrugging his shoulders while his companions shook
themselves off and made critical remarks about the humpback’s spray.
In addition to these two species of cetacean, we also spotted some bowhead whales—
also known as right whales—and they’re the ones you come across most often in the polar
seas. They don’t have fins and pack a heavy layer of fat. Hunting them isn’t tremendously
dangerous. Accordingly bowheads are popular items down in these antarctic waters, where tiny
crustaceans—nicknamed “krill”—congregate by the thousands and provide the only thing
these cetaceans eat.
“There . . . there . . . it’s a finback.”

Sure enough, floating less than 600 yards from our schooner, there was a sixty-foot right
whale—in other words, it was good for a hundred barrels of oil. These monstrous animals
yield such huge amounts, it takes only three to fill up a ship of medium tonnage.
“Aye, that’s a bowhead!” Hearne exclaimed. “You can tell just from his short, fat spout.
Hold on . . . see that one to port . . . like a puff of smoke . . . it’s coming from a right whale
too! And here they are, going to waste right under our noses! God in heaven, it’s like dumping
bags of gold pieces into the sea to not fill up your tanks when you can! What a dismal captain,
letting down his crew and missing out on a payload like this . . .”
“Hearne! Get up in the crosstrees!” said a commanding voice. “You can inventory your
whales up there!”
It was Jem West’s voice.
“But sir . . .”
“No backtalk, or you’ll stay there till tomorrow! Get going! On the double!”
And since nothing good would have come of his resisting, the master sealer obeyed with-
out a word. In sum, as I’ve said, the Halbrane wasn’t entering these high latitudes for the thrill of
hunting marine mammals, and she hadn’t recruited sailors from the Falklands to be fisherman.
Nothing was supposed to divert us, as you know, from our cruise’s sole purpose.
By then the schooner was heading over the surface of reddish waves, a color supplied
by shoals of shrimplike crustaceans belonging to the genus Thysanopoda. You could see baleen
whales lying casually on their sides, gathering the crustaceans in with the bristles on their
baleen plates (which stretched like nets between their two jaws), then engulfing myriads of the
tiny creatures in their enormous bellies.
In short, during the month of November in this sector of the south Atlantic, there were
so many cetaceans of various species, it had to have been caused—I can’t say this too often—by
the warm season’s arriving with a speed that was truly unusual. However not a single whaling
vessel was visible in these fishing grounds.
We’ll comment in passing that as of the first half of this century, whale fishermen have
virtually given up on the seas of the northern hemisphere, where, thanks to years of wholesale
destruction, no more than a few rorqual whales can be found. Currently French, English, and
American whalers are scouring the southern waterways of the Atlantic and Pacific for the kind
of fishing that now can be practiced only by paying a very strenuous price. There’s an actual
likelihood this formerly prosperous industry will end up grinding to a halt.
Here’s what that amazing assembly of cetaceans led us to conclude.
Since the time Captain Guy and I had that conversation on the topic of Poe’s novel, I
couldn’t help noticing that he’d grown less reserved. We chatted fairly often about this and that,
and on this particular day he told me:
“The presence of these cetaceans normally indicates a coast nearby, and for two reasons.
First, the crustaceans they eat never stray very far from shore. Second, the females need shal-
lower water for giving birth to their babies.”
“If this is so, captain,” I replied, “why haven’t we raised any island groups between the
South Orkneys and the Antarctic Circle?”

“Valid point,” Len Guy remarked, “and to find a coast, we’ll need to veer some fifteen
degrees west to Bellinghausen’s South Shetland group and his islands of Alexander I and Peter
I, then finally to that Graham Land Biscoe discovered.”
“So,” I continued, “the presence of whales doesn’t necessarily indicate that land is close
by?”
“I’m not too sure how to answer you, Mr. Jeorling, and it’s possible the comment I made
to you wasn’t justified. Accordingly it’s more logical to attribute all these animals to the circum-
stances of this year’s weather cycle.”
“I don’t see any other explanation,” I stated, “and it agrees with our own findings.”
“Well then, we’ll hurry and take advantage of this state of affairs,” Captain Guy replied.
“And while paying no attention,” I added, “to complaints from some of the crew.”
“And what do the swabs have to complain about?” Len Guy snapped. “They bloody well
weren’t recruited to go fishing! They know the orders they shipped under, and Jem West was
right to nip their grousing in the bud! My old crew wouldn’t take such liberties! As you can see,
Mr. Jeorling, I’m sorry I couldn’t be content with just the men I had! Unfortunately, with so
many natives living on Tsalal Island, it simply wasn’t possible!”
I hasten to say that though we didn’t hunt whales, no other type of fishing was banned
aboard the Halbrane. Given her speed, it would have been hard to use a net or a trawl. But the
bosun dropped some fishing lines in our wake, and our daily menus benefited, to the tremen-
dous satisfaction of bellies getting tired of lightly salted meat. Our lines fetched up gobies,
salmon, cod, mackerel, conger eels, mullet, and parrotfish. As for our harpoons, they bagged us
some dolphins and some porpoises with blackish flesh, much to the crew’s approval since steaks
and livers from these mammals make excellent eating.
With regard to birds, the same ones always showed up from every corner of the horizon:
petrels of various species—some white, others blue, with remarkably stylish patterns—plus
countless flocks of kingfishers, loons, and cape pigeons.
I likewise saw—out of range—a giant petrel whose dimensions were truly cause for
astonishment. It was one of those birds Spaniards call quebrantahuesos.* This remarkable bird
from the Magellan waterways had long, broad, arching wings, spanning thirteen to fourteen
feet and as wide as a great albatross’s. The latter weren’t in short supply either—including,
among other varieties of these high-powered flyers, the sooty albatross, a frequent guest of
these chilly latitudes and currently paying a return visit to this zone of ice.
For the record, let it be noted that if Hearne and his countrymen among the recruits
showed so much eagerness and disappointment while those pods of cetaceans were in sight, it’s
because they’re Americans who specialize in whaling cruises down to these polar seas. I have a
recollection that the United States convened an inquiry around 1827, and it showed that the
number of American ships fitted out for whale fishing in these seas amounted to 200, total-
ing 50,000 tons overall, each bringing home 1,700 barrels of oil, which came from cutting up
8,000 whales not counting 2,000 others lost. Four years ago, according to a second inquiry, the
*Ospreys. FPW

number had increased to 460 ships, which totaled 172,500 tons—hence a tenth of the Union’s
entire merchant marine—and which accounted for nearly $1,800,000 out of a gross national
product of $40,000,000.*
You can appreciate that the master sealer and a few others felt strongly about this rugged,
rewarding trade. But Americans had better be careful about indulging in all this destructiveness!
Whales are getting scarcer and scarcer in the South Seas, and it will become necessary to hunt
them on the far side of the ice barrier.
When I made this comment to Captain Len Guy, he answered me that the English have
always been more restrained—and I had to agree.
On November 30, after taking our readings of hour angles at ten o’clock, we got our
exact bearings at noon. Based on these figures, it turned out we were at latitude 66° 23' 2" on
that date.
The Halbrane had just cleared the Antarctic Circle, which stakes out the zone around the
pole.
*To estimate the purchasing power of these nineteenth-century dollars in today’s marketplace, multiply them by
twenty. FPW

12. Between the Antarctic Circle
and the Ice Barrier
O
nce the Halbrane had gone past that imaginary curving line drawn 23½ degrees
from the pole, she seemed to enter a new land, that land of desolation and
silence Edgar Allan Poe mentions, that magical prison of splendor and glory in
which the author of “Eleonora” hoped to be shut up for eternity, that immense,
indescribable ocean of light.1
In my opinion—to stick with less fanciful ways of looking at it—this land of Antarc-
tica, whose surface area exceeds 5,000,000 square miles, has remained the way our planet used
to be back in the ice age.
During the summer, as you know, Antarctica enjoys 24-hour daylight due to the rays the
sun casts above the horizon during its upward spiral. Then, as soon as it vanishes, the long night
begins—a night often lit up by glimmers from polar auroras.
So our schooner was going to cross these daunting lands during a time of continual day-
light. This 24-hour brightness would persist as far as the coordinates of Tsalal Island, where
we hadn’t any doubt we would find the Jane’s men.
During his first hours spent on the threshold of this new region, a person with a highly
imaginative mind would surely experience the weirdest overexcitement—visions, nightmares, a
sleepwalker’s hallucinations . . . as if he’d been transferred to the world of the uncanny. . . . On
the outskirts of these antarctic regions, he might wonder what was hidden behind that misty
veil trailing into the far-off distance. . . . Would he discover new data there in the three fields
of geology, botany, and zoology, new beings whose “humanness” was unusual, like those Pym
claimed he’d seen? What would he witness on this cosmic stage with its foggy curtain still
lowered over it? Under the intense oppression of his dreams, wouldn’t he start to despair while
thinking it over on his return journey? Wouldn’t he hear, via the stanzas of that strangest of
poems, the raven of its poet cawing to him:
“Nevermore . . . nevermore . . . nevermore!”

True, this wasn’t the mental state I was in, and though I’d been feeling overstimulated for
some time, I managed to keep a firm grip on reality. I offered up just one prayer: that the wind
and sea would stay as favorable on the far side of the Antarctic Circle as they’d been on the near.
As for Captain Guy, our first officer, and the veteran sailors on our crew, an obvious sat-
isfaction covered their rugged features and sun-bronzed faces when they learned the schooner
had just cleared the 70th parallel.2 The next day Hurliguerly, his face beaming, pulled alongside
me on deck, and in a chipper tone:
“Hoho, Mr. Jeorling,” he crowed, “there’s the notorious circle—far behind us!”
“Not far enough, bosun, not far enough!”
“Give it time, give it time! But I am disappointed.”
“Why?”
“Because we didn’t do what ships are supposed to do when they cross a major boundary
line!”
“That makes you unhappy?” I asked.
“You bet—the Halbrane should have had a polar christening ceremony.”
“A christening ceremony? And who would have gotten christened, bosun, since you and
the whole crew have already sailed past that parallel?”
“Us, yes . . . you, no. And why, may I ask, shouldn’t we have a baptismal service on your
behalf, Mr. Jeorling?”
“True, bosun, it’s the first time in the course of my travels that I’ve been at such a high
latitude.”
“Which calls for a christening ceremony, Mr. Jeorling. Oh, without any big fuss, or
drums and trumpets, or anybody dressing up as King Neptune! If you’ll allow me to give you
my blessing—”
“Fine, Hurliguerly!” I replied, fishing around in my pocket. “Bless and christen me all you
like! Here’s a gold piece so you can drink my health at the nearest pub.”
“That’ll have to be on Bennet’s Islet or Tsalal Island, assuming they’ve got any taverns on
those backward isles and any Atkinses to run ’em.”
“Tell me, bosun, getting around to Hunt as usual—does he seem as happy about cutting
the Antarctic Circle as the Halbrane’s oldtimers are?”
“Who knows!” Hurliguerly answered me. “He keeps himself under wraps, that lad, and
you can’t get a word out of him by hook or crook. But as I said before, if he hasn’t already had
a taste of icebergs and the barrier—”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Everything and anything, Mr. Jeorling! You can sense it in him! Hunt’s an old sea wolf
who has hauled his bag to every corner of the world!”
I shared the bosun’s views, and out of some hunch or other, I kept an eye on Hunt, who
was always on my mind in the oddest way.
After a few lulls during the early days of December (the 1st to the 4th), the wind showed
a definite inclination to blow from the northwest. Now then, this means from north of these
high latitudes, i.e., from anywhere south of the equator—not a good omen. As a general
rule foul weather down here comes at you in the form of squalls and typhoons. However we
wouldn’t have grounds for too much complaining if the wind didn’t retreat to the southwest.

In this latter case the schooner would be tossed off course, or at least would need to fight to
stay on it, and when all’s said and done, it was better to not veer away from the meridian we’d
followed since leaving the South Orkney Islands.
This anticipated change in atmospheric conditions didn’t fail to worry Len Guy. What’s
more, the Halbrane suddenly lost a fair amount of speed, because, during the day of Decem-
ber 4, the breeze started to die down; then, during the night of December 4–5, it gave out
completely.
In the morning the sails hung down the masts, lifeless and deflated, giving sideways flut-
ters under the action of the swell.3 Not a puff of air reached us, and there wasn’t a ripple on
the surface of the ocean, but the swell’s long oscillations came out of the west and made the
schooner rock sharply.
“The sea feels something,” Captain Guy told me. “And it must be facing rough weather
on that side,” he added, pointing west.
“The horizon’s foggy, it’s true,” I replied. “Maybe around noon the sun—”
“—no longer has much strength in this latitude, Mr. Jeorling, not even during the
summer . . . Jem!”
Our first officer came over.
“What do you make of the sky?”
“It isn’t encouraging, captain. So we need to be ready for anything. I’m going to lower the
upper sails, run in the jib, and clear the storm jib. It’s possible the horizon will brighten in the
afternoon. . . . If rough weather hits the ship, we’ll be in a position to handle it.”
“The main thing, Jem, is to keep to our longitude heading.”
“We’ll do all we can, captain, because we’re right on course.”
“Hasn’t the lookout sighted our first drift ice?” I asked.
“He has,” Captain Guy answered, “and if we collide with any icebergs, they won’t be the
injured parties. So if caution dictates that we veer east or west, we’ll have to bite the bullet—
but only in cases of absolute necessity.”
Our lookout wasn’t mistaken. In the afternoon you could see frozen masses slowly mov-
ing south, a few ice islands that weren’t sizable as yet, neither in length nor height. Fragments
from ice fields, for instance, floated around in fairly large quantities. The English call them
“packs” when they’re pieces 300 to 400 feet long and rubbing against each other, “patches”
when they’re circular in shape, and “streams” when they form long strips. These fragments were
easy to dodge and couldn’t impede the Halbrane’s navigating. True, the wind had let her stay on
course till then, but she wasn’t moving forward at that point in time, had no speed, and was
maneuvering only with difficulty. And what was worse, we had a rough sea with deep hollows,
hard to handle when it hit back.
At about two o’clock, huge air currents rushed past in the form of whirlwinds, some
from one side, some from the other. The wind blew from every point on the compass.
The schooner got horribly jolted around, and the bosun had to tie down everything on
deck that could blow away during the ship’s rolling and pitching.
At about three o’clock some amazingly strong gusts were unleashed, clearly heading west-
northwest. Our first officer close reefed his spanker sail, fore trysail, and fore staysail. In this
way he hoped to face into the blast and not get tossed back to the east and off Weddell’s path.

True, chunks of drifting or floating ice were tending to collect on that side, and nothing was
as dangerous for a ship as getting caught in such a moving maze.
Due to the hurricane winds and the rolling swell, our schooner sometimes heeled over
to an extreme degree. Luckily her cargo couldn’t shift around, since it had been stowed with a
perfect understanding of what might happen at sea. We had no worries about coping with the
Grampus’s fate, with the negligence that caused her to flip over, leading to her loss. We didn’t
forget how that brig lay overturned, keel in the air, and how Pym and Peters spent several days
hanging onto her hull.
What’s more, our pumps didn’t let a drop of water get away. Not one seam in the side
planks or the deck had popped open, thanks to the repairs carried out so meticulously during
our layover in the Falklands.
As for how long this storm would continue, the shrewdest, most “weatherwise” fore-
caster couldn’t have said. You never know what you’re in for down here, because foul weather in
these polar seas can last from twenty-four hours to two or three days.
An hour after the blast struck the ship, squalls arrived one on top of the other, almost
without a break and featuring rain, light blows, and snow—or, rather, snowy downpours.
Which was in line with what the temperature had noticeably dropped to. Our thermometer
didn’t get above 36° Fahrenheit, and the barometer barely topped 26.7 inches.4
It was ten o’clock in the evening—I can’t help using this word, though the sun always
stayed above the horizon. In essence Old Sol took two weeks to reach the highest point of his
orbit, and at twenty-three degrees from the pole, he cast his pale, slanting rays on Antarctica’s
surface without any letup.
At 10:35 the blast grew twice as intense.
I couldn’t bring myself to go back to my cabin and I took cover behind the deckhouse.
Captain Guy and his first officer were talking things over a few steps away from me.
Beneath the roar of the elements, it must have been hard for them to hear each other; but sea-
men can communicate anything simply with gestures.
By then it was obvious the schooner was drifting southeast to the side where ice was col-
lecting—and it wouldn’t be long before she met up with some, because those frozen masses
weren’t moving as fast as she was. By a twofold piece of bad luck, we’d been driven off course,
plus we were in danger of having a fearsome collision. At this point the ship was rolling so
severely that it put the masts in visible jeopardy, because their tips were sweeping in frightfully
wide arcs. You could envision the Halbrane splitting in half during these squalls. From stem to
stern it was impossible to see a thing.
Farther out a few hazy rifts in the darkness revealed a raging sea, which broke furiously
over the edges of icebergs as if they were rocks along a coastline, covering them with fine,
windblown spray.
These pieces of moving ice were increasing in number, grounds for hoping this storm
would accelerate the breakup and make the region of the barrier more approachable.
Nevertheless the main thing was to keep facing into the wind. Ergo the need to lie to.
The schooner labored horribly, caught sideways by the waves, shooting into their deep troughs,
not righting herself without getting ferociously jolted around. Running before the wind was

unthinkable, because, in that case, a vessel would face very serious perils from waves coming
over her sternrail.
As for the former procedure, it involves, first of all, sailing close into the wind. Next
the Halbrane would lie to under a close-reefed topsail, fore topmast staysail ahead, and storm
jib astern, then she would be in a promising position for withstanding both the blast and the
drift, leaving herself the option of taking in more sail if the weather went from bad to worse.
Seaman Drap took his turn at the helm. Captain Guy stood beside him, watching that
we didn’t veer off course.
In the bow the crew stood by to carry out West’s orders, while six men under the bosun’s
direction were busy replacing the spanker sail with the storm jib. A storm jib is a triangular
piece of heavy canvas that’s shaped like a jib, hoisted to the lower masthead under the rigging,
then tied at the foot of the mast and hauled aft.
In order to take in all the reefs of the topsail, you’ve got to shinny up to the crosstrees of
the foremast—and to do the job adequately, you need four men.
Hunt was the first to dash up the ratlines. The second was Martin Holt, our master
sailmaker. Seaman Burry and one of the recruits were right behind them.
I never would have believed a man could display as much agility and dexterity as Hunt
did. His hands and feet barely seemed to grab the ratlines. Arriving in the crosstrees, he went
along the footropes to one end of the yard, ready to loosen the lashings of the topsail.
Holt got to the opposite tip, while the other two stayed in between them.
As soon as they’d lowered the sail, all they had to do was take its reefs in completely.
Then, after Hunt, Holt, and the two sailors were back down, they would pull it tight from
below.
Captain Guy and his first officer knew that once they’d trimmed the Halbrane’s sails in this
way, she would properly lie to.
While Hunt and the others were working, the bosun had cleared the storm jib and was
waiting for the first officer’s order to hoist home.
The blast had been unleashed with incomparable fury. Stretched to the breaking point,
shrouds and backstays were quivering like telegraph lines. Even though we’d taken in canvas,
you wondered if the sails might not rip into a thousand pieces . . .
Suddenly there was a frightful lurch and the whole deck was flooded. A couple of bar-
rels snapped loose from their lashings and rolled to the rails. The schooner heeled so far to
starboard, the ocean came in the scuppers.
It knocked me off my feet against the deckhouse and I couldn’t get up for a few seconds.
Our schooner had careened so sharply, the end of her topsail yard plunged three or four
feet into a wave crest . . .
Holt had been straddling the tip of it to finish his work, but when the yard popped back
out of the water, Holt was gone.
We heard a yell—it came from our master sailmaker, carried off by the swell, waving his
arms desperately, surrounded by white foam.
Sailors rushed to the starboard side, one throwing out a line, another a barrel, still anoth-
er a spare yard—any object whatever that could float and that Holt could hang onto.

Just as I’d grabbed hold of a cleat for support, I saw a large object cleave the air and van-
ish into the surging waves.
Was it a second accident? No! It was a deliberate act . . . an act of self-sacrifice.
Done with tying his last reef point, Hunt had wriggled along the yard and just now dived
in to rescue the master sailmaker.
“Two men overboard!” somebody shouted on deck.
Yes, two . . . one trying to rescue the other . . . and would they both perish together?
West ran to the helm, gave the wheel one turn, and had the schooner come up a point to
the wind—which she could solidly manage while staying in the wind’s eye. Then, her jib aloft
and storm jib flattened, she stood nearly stock-still.
Right off we spotted Holt and Hunt on the foaming surface of the sea, their heads above
water . . .
Hunt swam with swift strokes, shooting across the waves and closing in on the master
sailmaker.
The latter was already 200 yards away, vanishing and reappearing by turns—a blackish
speck, hard to make out through the gusts.
After they’d tossed down spare yards and barrels, the crew waited, having done all they
could. As for breaking out a longboat in these furious waves sweeping over the forecastle, that
was unthinkable! It would capsize or smash against the schooner’s sides.
“They’re both done for! Both of them!” Len Guy muttered.
Then, to his first officer:
“The dinghy, Jem . . . the dinghy . . .” he exclaimed.
“If you order me to lower away,” his officer replied, “I’ll be the first man inside, but I’ll
be putting my life on the line. So I need your orders!”
There were a few minutes of indescribable agony for the attendees at this drama. Nobody
had another thought for the Halbrane’s situation, precarious though it was.
Soon there was an outburst of shouting when Hunt appeared a second time between two
waves. You saw him sink from view again, then, as if his foot had found some solid point of
purchase, he lunged with superhuman strength toward Holt—or, rather, toward the spot where
the poor fellow had just gone under . . .
However, the schooner overtook them little by little, and after West slackened the sheets
of her fore topmast staysail and storm jib, she wound up a hundred yards away.
Then, above the racket of the unleashed elements, new yells erupted.
“Hooray . . . ! Hooray . . . ! Hooray . . . !” the whole crew cut loose.
Hunt’s left arm was supporting Holt, who seemed unable to do anything and was tossing
about like flotsam. Hunt’s other arm swam powerfully, overtaking the schooner.
“Hug the wind . . . hug the wind!” West ordered the pilot.
Helm hard to leeward, the sails swung parallel to the wind with cracking sounds like
firearms going off.
The Halbrane jumped about in the waves, like a rearing horse when the bit restraining it
nips its mouth. Given the frightful way her rolling and pitching made her lurch around, you
would have sworn—to get back to my metaphor—that she was pawing the ground.

A minute went by, taking forever. One towing the other, the two men were barely visible
in the midst of the swirling waters.
Hunt finally reached the schooner and grabbed one of the lines hanging down from the
deck.
“They made it!” the first officer exclaimed, signaling the pilot at the wheel.
The schooner gave herself the room she needed to carry her topsail, fore topmast stay-
sail, and storm jib, then she lay to under just enough canvas to face into the wind.
In a flash they’d hoisted Hunt and Holt up on deck, setting the one down at the foot of
the foremast while the other looked all set to help out with the operation.
They attended to the master sailmaker’s needs. He’d come close to suffocating, but grad-
ually his breathing returned to normal. A little brisk rubbing brought him around, and he
opened his eyes.
Len Guy leaned over the master sailmaker. “Holt,” the captain told him, “you’ve come
back from a faraway land.”
“Aye, captain, aye!” Martin Holt answered, looking around. “But who went and got me?”
“It was Hunt!” the bosun exclaimed. “Hunt risked his life to bring you in!”
Holt sat up halfway, leaned on his elbow, and turned to where Hunt was.
The latter was hanging back, so Hurliguerly went and shoved him toward Holt, whose
eyes expressed the deepest gratitude.
“Hunt,” he said, “you rescued me . . . I would have been a goner if you hadn’t . . . thanks!”
Hunt didn’t answer.
“Come now, Hunt,” Captain Guy went on, “didn’t you hear him?”
Apparently Hunt hadn’t.
“Hunt,” Holt said again, “come here . . . thank you . . . I want to shake your hand.”
And he held his out.
Hunt backed away a couple steps, shaking his head, as if he felt there was no need to
praise anybody for such a simple thing . . .
Then, going to the bow, he got busy replacing one of the sheets on the fore top-
mast staysail, which had just split after a heavy sea that shook the schooner from keel to
mastheads.
Unquestionably he was a courageous, self-sacrificing hero, that Hunt! But just as unques-
tionably he was somebody who didn’t care about appearances, and the day still hadn’t come
when the bosun would find out if he knew “any colorful lingo” or “what shade it was!”
The storm raged away without any letup, and several times it gave us serious worries. In
the midst of this frenzied turmoil, there were a hundred occasions for fearing that the masts
would come down even though we’d shortened sail. Yes, a hundred occasions when—despite
Hunt’s strong, sure hand at the helm—the schooner would lose control during some unavoid-
able swerve, then heel over far enough to be thrown on her beam-ends. To keep lying to, we even
had to lower the topsail and stick with just the storm jib and fore topmast staysail.
“Jem,” Len Guy said, “it’s five in the morning by now—we need to run before the
wind . . .”
“We can run, captain, but there’s a danger the sea will eat us alive!”

In essence nothing’s more hazardous than sailing with a tailwind when you can’t make
further headway against the waves, and you do it only when it’s impossible to keep lying to.
Besides, in running eastward, the Halbrane was going far off course into the maze of ice slabs
piling up in that direction.
During those three days of December 6–8, the storm unleashed in these waterways came
with blizzards that brought a noticeable drop in temperature. But we could continue lying to
after we’d replaced the fore topmast staysail—which had ripped apart in a gust—with another
made of sturdier canvas.
It hardly needs mentioning that Captain Guy proved to be a true seaman, that West kept
his eye on everything, that the crew assisted them valiantly, and that Hunt was Johnny-on-the-
spot whenever there were jobs to do or risks to run.
Honestly it’s impossible to give any real idea of what the fellow was like! How differ-
ent he was from most of the sailors we’d recruited on the Falkland Islands—especially from
Hearne the master sealer! In their case it had been very difficult to get what we’d reasonably
expected and needed. Of course they were obedient, because, like it or not, they had to obey
an officer like West. But behind his back what grumping and groaning! Which didn’t bode well
for the future, I’m afraid.
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before Holt got back to work and he did so without a
murmur. He was a savvy professional, and for zeal and skill the only one in Hunt’s league.
“Well, Holt,” I asked him once while he was chatting with the bosun, “are you getting
along these days with that old devil Hunt? Since the night he rescued you, has he been a bit
more sociable?”
“No, Mr. Jeorling,” the master sailmaker answered. “Seems like he actually tries to avoid
me.”
“Avoid you?” I echoed.
“Just like he did before, matter of fact.”
“That’s odd.”
“Not only odd but true,” Hurliguerly added. “I’ve noticed it more than once.”
“Then he stays away from you like he does everybody?”
“Me . . . even more than the rest.”
“What’s it all about?”
“Dunno, Mr. Jeorling!”
“Anyhow, Holt, you owe him one,” the bosun stated. “But don’t bother lighting a church
candle in his honor . . . I know him . . . he’d just blow it out!”
I was surprised by what I’d just learned. Yet when I looked into it, I could verify that
Hunt did indeed shrink from any chance to come into contact with our master sailmaker.
He’d saved Martin Holt’s life, so why would he feel unworthy of the fellow’s gratitude? Hunt’s
behavior was definitely peculiar, to say the least.
In the after-midnight hours of December 8–9, the wind revealed a distinct tendency to
turn easterly again, which meant more manageable weather.
If this state of affairs came to pass, the Halbrane could make up the time she’d lost while
adrift and resume her course down the 43rd meridian.

However, though the sea was still rough, it became safe to carry more canvas by around
two o’clock in the morning. Accordingly, with her fore trysail and her spanker sail double-
reefed, while carrying her fore staysail and her fore topmast staysail, the Halbrane stayed on a
port tack and headed back to the course from which she’d been driven during all that turmoil.
The amount of drift ice had increased in this sector of the Antarctic Ocean, and there
were grounds for thinking that the storm had accelerated the ice breakup, maybe busting open
the barrier’s gates to the east.

13. Alongside the Ice Barrier
T
hough the waterways beyond the Antarctic Circle were extremely agitated, it’s
only fair to acknowledge that, so far, we’d been navigating under exceptional con-
ditions. And what a stroke of luck it would be if, during these first two weeks in
December, the Halbrane found Weddell’s route open . . .
Honestly, look at me—talking about Weddell’s route as if it were an overland road that
was nicely maintained, had mileage markers, and featured signposts reading South Pole This Way!
During the whole day of the 10th, our schooner had no difficulty maneuvering in the
midst of those isolated masses called ice floes and brash ice.* The wind direction didn’t require
her to do any tacking, it just let her proceed in a straight line through openings in the ice fields.
Though we were still a month away from the time polar ice generally cracks apart, Captain Guy
was used to these phenomena and stated that what normally happens in January—a wholesale
breakup—would take place this year in December.
Dodging these wandering masses didn’t give the crew any trouble. Genuine difficulties
wouldn’t arise till the day the schooner actually tried to clear a path through the ice barrier.
What’s more, we didn’t have any unpleasant surprises to fear. When ice was present, it
was indicated by those yellowish hues in the sky that whalers refer to as “ice blinks.” They’re
a phenomenon of reflected light that’s characteristic of these frozen regions, and they never
mislead the viewer.
Over the next five days, the Halbrane navigated without getting a scratch, without worry-
ing about collisions for even a second. True, the farther south she went, the more ice there was
and the narrower the passages were. A sight we took on the 14th gave us latitude 72° 37' with
the longitude pretty much as before, namely between the 42nd and 43rd meridians. This was
already a position beyond the Antarctic Circle that few mariners—neither Balleny nor Belling-
hausen—had managed to reach. We were just two degrees shy of James Weddell.
*Clusters of small ice fragments. FPW

Consequently it got trickier to maneuver the schooner in the midst of that pallid, dreary
rubble, which birds had soiled with their droppings. A few pieces had a rotting, scaly look as if
leprous. Compared to their already substantial bulk, how small our ship seemed next to some
of those icebergs—they towered higher than her masts!
Speaking of those masses of ice, their range of sizes went along with their range of
shapes, offering an infinite variety. The effect was wondrous when their complicated forms
emerged from the fog, reflecting the sunlight like enormous gemstones. Sometimes their differ-
ent layers gave off a reddish hue whose source was hard to exactly determine, then it deepened
into shades of violet and blue, most likely due to certain effects of refraction.
I couldn’t help marveling at this sight, which Pym described so memorably in his narra-
tive: here, sharp-pointed pyramids; there, rounded domes like the ones on a Byzantine church,
or bulbous ones like those on a Russian church; upright mammaries; dolmens supporting
horizontal slabs; cromlechs; monoliths like those standing outside Karnak; broken vases; cups
tipped over—in short, every kind of thing an imaginative person has fun seeing in some whim-
sical cloud formation . . . and aren’t clouds the drift ice of heaven’s seas?
I need to acknowledge that Captain Len Guy combined great boldness with great cau-
tion. He never passed to leeward of an iceberg unless he had enough distance to guarantee he
could pull off any maneuver that suddenly became necessary. He was thoroughly familiar with
this unpredictable navigating and didn’t worry about venturing among these flotillas of drift
and pack ice.
That day he told me:
“This isn’t the first time, Mr. Jeorling, that I’ve tried to enter this polar sea, but I wasn’t
successful before. Well, I made those attempts when I was simply guessing at the Jane’s fate—so
can you imagine what I’ll do this time, when those guesses have changed into certainties?”
“I can, captain, and I think your experience with navigating these waterways is bound to
increase our chances of success.”
“No doubt, Mr. Jeorling. But beyond that ice barrier lies an unknown world, for me as
for many other mariners!”
“An unknown world? No, not completely, captain, since we have Weddell’s ultracareful
reports—in addition to those by Pym.”
“Yes, I’m aware of them! They mention an open sea.”
“Don’t you believe in it?”
“Yes, I believe in it! It does exist, and the arguments that say so have merit! In essence it’s
obvious that these masses we call ice fields and icebergs couldn’t have formed in midocean. The
violent, irresistible action of the waves dislodges them from continents or islands in the high
latitudes. Then the currents carry them off to more temperate waters, where collisions wear
down their edges while the increasingly warmer temperatures break up their bases and sides.”
“Seems perfectly clear to me,” I replied.
“Therefore,” Captain Guy went on, “these frozen masses didn’t originate at the ice bar-
rier.1 As they drift, they come to it, sometimes smash into it, and pass through its openings.
Besides, we shouldn’t judge southern zones as if they were northern zones. The conditions
aren’t the same. That’s why Captain Cook could claim he never found icebergs in Greenland’s

seas equal to those in the Antarctic Ocean, even at northern latitudes that were higher than
southern ones.”
“And what accounts for this?” I asked.
“Surely the fact that in those northern regions, southerly winds have the most influence.
Now then, they arrive up north imbued with heat particles from America, Asia, and Europe,
and they contribute to raising the air temperature. Down here, the closest shores end with the
promontories at the Cape of Good Hope, Patagonia, and Tasmania, so they don’t affect the air
currents. That’s why the temperature stays uniform in this antarctic domain.”
“That’s a significant insight, captain, and it bears out your views concerning an open sea.”
“Yes, open . . . at least over some ten degrees beyond the ice barrier. So our first task is to
get through it, then our greatest difficulty will be behind us. You were right to say, Mr. Jeorling,
that Weddell has officially recognized the existence of this open sea.”
“As did Pym, captain.”
“As did Pym.”
After December 15 the amount of ice kept increasing, likewise our navigational prob-
lems. Nevertheless the wind stayed favorable, shifting from northeast to northwest without
ever showing any inclination to drop to the south. There wasn’t an hour when we weren’t faced
with tacking among the icebergs and ice fields, or with doing short tacks all night long, always
an arduous, risky operation. The breeze picked up at times and we needed to take in sail.2 At
this point we saw the sea foaming along the frozen chunks, covering them with spray as if they
were the rocks of a floating island, but without managing to impede their progress.
West measured our observed bearings several times, and his calculations revealed that
those chunks had elevations that generally ran from 60 to 600 feet.
For my part I shared Captain Guy’s views on this issue, namely that such frozen masses
could have formed only along a coastline—maybe the shores of a polar continent. But it was
quite obvious that this continent must have been cut into by bays, split up by sounds, and sliced
through by straits, thus allowing the Jane to reach the coordinates of Tsalal Island.
And when you get down to it, doesn’t the existence of such polar lands hamper the
efforts of discoverers to reach the arctic and antarctic poles? Don’t these landmasses give ice-
bergs a solid point of purchase, which they only detach from when it’s time for the breakup?
If the northern and southern icecaps were covered just by seas, might not ships have cleared a
path through them already?
So you could argue that while Captain William Guy was heading for the 74th parallel
aboard the Jane, he must have sailed through some wide sounds, whether guided by his mariner’s
instincts or by sheer luck.3
The crew were no end impressed at seeing the schooner cope with these masses in
motion—the recent hires at least, because the veterans were past being surprised. True, it soon
became old hat, and even the newcomers got used to the novelties of this navigating.
At this juncture we needed a carefully scheduled 24-hour watch. Accordingly, West had
an open cask hoisted to the foretop—a “crow’s nest,” in other words—and there a lookout was
continually on duty.

Assisted by a steady breeze, the Halbrane sped along. The temperature was bearable—
about 42° Fahrenheit.4 The danger came from fog, which all too often drifted over these clut-
tered seas and made collisions hard to avoid.
The day of the 16th left the men tremendously tired. There were only narrow, jagged
openings among the pack and drift ice, with sharp turns that frequently forced us to change
tacks.
Four or five times an hour, these orders rang out:
“Close into the wind . . . ! Take her around!”
At the steering wheel the pilot wasted no time, while sailors kept heaving the topsail and
topgallant sail or kept roping the lower sails.
Nobody grumbled about his job while these things were going on, and Hunt was the
standout among them all.
There was Hunt . . . scrambling onto some slippery surface.

Where this man—a sailor to his soul—proved most useful was when a line had to be
run from the windlass, carried over icebergs, attached to them with a kedge anchor, and slowly
hauled back in so as to pull the schooner around an obstacle. We had only to lay out rope for
looping around some projection, and there was Hunt jumping into the dinghy, steering it out
into the frozen rubble, and scrambling onto some slippery surface. Accordingly Captain Guy
and his crew rated Hunt a world-class seaman. But there was something secretive about him
that continually aroused our curiosity to the highest pitch.
It happened more than once that Hunt and Holt set out in the same dinghy to perform
some hazardous task in tandem. If the master sailmaker gave him an order, Hunt carried it out
with as much zeal as skill. Only he never said anything back.
By this date the Halbrane couldn’t have been too far away from the ice barrier. If she stayed
on her path in that direction, she definitely wouldn’t have long to wait and would simply need
to find a way through. But above those frozen tracts, or between the jagged peaks of those float-
ing mountains, our lookout still hadn’t managed to spot any continuous ridge of ice.
All day long on the 16th, we had to take the most meticulous basic precautions, because
our rudder got roughed up during some unavoidable brushes with those slabs and was in dan-
ger of coming unshipped.
At the same time we took several hits from rubble that scraped against the schooner’s
underside, a more dangerous proposition than running into huge chunks. In essence, when the
latter smack against a ship’s flanks, naturally there’s a violent impact. Nevertheless, given the
Halbrane’s strong timbers and planking, she wasn’t in danger of getting staved in—or of losing
her sheathing, since she didn’t have any.
As for the rudder blade, West had it sandwiched between two duplicate blades, then
reinforced with spare yards attached to the post—a sort of protective scabbard that would have
to do for the time being.
Though these seas were clogged with floating masses of all sizes and shapes, you mustn’t
assume that marine mammals had given up on them. Large numbers of whales put in an
appearance, and what a spellbinding sight it was when waterspouts burst from their blowholes!
In addition to finbacks and humpbacks, there were porpoises of colossal size that Hearne skill-
fully harpooned when they got within range. They were always welcome and much appreciated,
these porpoises—especially after receiving a few attentions from Endicott, no slouch when it
came to whipping up sauces.
As for the usual antarctic birds (petrels, cape pigeons, cormorants), they sped by in
screeching flocks, plus there were legions of penguins lined up along the edges of ice fields and
watching the schooner do her stuff. Penguins are the native sons of these dismal wastes, and
nature couldn’t have produced a critter better adapted to the dreariness of these frozen regions.
During the morning of the 17th, the crewman in the crow’s nest finally sighted the ice
barrier.
“It’s off the starboard bow!” he shouted.
Five or six miles to the south, an endless ridge reared up, its jagged contours standing out
against a backdrop of reasonably clear skies, while thousands of ice slabs drifted beside it. This
motionless barricade ran from northwest to southeast, and our schooner could advance a few
more degrees southward just by going along it.

Here’s what to keep in mind if you’d like a good, clear idea of the differences between
the ice barrier and the ice shelf.
As I’ve already noted, the latter doesn’t form in midocean. In order to stand straight along
a coastline, or to sprout mountain peaks in the background, it must have a solid base to rest
on. But even though the aforesaid shelf can’t disconnect from its underlying, immovable core, it
supplies this region—according to your most competent mariners—with the endless progres-
sion of icebergs, ice fields, drifts, packs, floes, and brash ice that we find in the open ocean. The
coasts supporting the shelf are affected by currents coming down from warmer seas. On those
occasions when the earth, sun, and moon are in alignment, tides sometimes run very high, the
shelf ’s underpinnings weaken, crumble, and erode, then enormous chunks of ice—hundreds
of them in a few hours—break loose with an earsplitting racket, fall into the sea, sink in the
midst of fearsome eddies, and come back to the surface. Then, with just their top thirds poking
above water, they become ice mountains that float around till—thanks to the weather cycles in
the warmer latitudes—they melt for good.
And one day, as I was discussing this topic with Captain Guy:
“That’s a reasonable explanation,” he answered me, “and it’s why the ice shelf presents
an insuperable obstacle to mariners, since its base is a coastline. But that isn’t the case with
the ice barrier. It precedes the landmasses, it’s built from the drifting rubble that continually
accumulates in the Antarctic Ocean itself. It’s likewise affected by assaults from the waves and
by warmer waters gnawing at it during the summer, so it breaks apart, channels open, and a
number of vessels have already managed to reach the other side . . .”
“True,” I added, “which means this mass won’t go on forever and be impossible to get
around.”
“Accordingly Weddell was able to double the end of it, Mr. Jeorling . . . due, I’m aware,
to temperature conditions that arrived well ahead of schedule. Now then, since those condi-
tions have turned up again this year, it isn’t unrealistic to say that we could take advantage of
them.”
“Positively, captain. And now that the ice barrier is in sight—”
“I’ll bring the Halbrane as close to it as I can, Mr. Jeorling, then launch her through the
first opening we manage to find. If none appears, we’ll try going along this ice barrier to its
eastern end, riding the current that flows that way, sailing on starboard tacks wherever possible,
and praying the northwesterly breeze keeps up.”
Heading south, our schooner met with ice fields of considerable dimensions. Taking
several angular distances with a reflecting circle, then measuring the base with the log, we
assigned them surface areas of some 3,000 to 3,500 square feet. Deep inside corridors where
we didn’t always see a way out, we had to maneuver with both accuracy and caution to avoid
getting boxed in.
When the Halbrane lay no more than three miles away from the ice barrier, she heaved to
in the middle of a wide basin that gave her total freedom of movement.
They broke out a longboat. Captain Guy and the bosun went down in it, four sailors at
the oars and one at the tiller. They headed off toward those enormous ramparts, vainly search-
ing for an opening into which the schooner could slip, and after three tedious hours of scout-
ing around, rejoined the ship.

Then a blizzard came up mixed with rain, which made the temperature drop to 36°
Fahrenheit and hid the ice barrier from our eyes.5
So it became essential to point our prow to the southeast and navigate in the midst of
those countless slabs of ice, always taking care to bear toward the ice shelf, because sheering off
could lead to serious difficulties later.
West issued orders to brace the yards so as to hug the wind as closely as possible.
The crew went nimbly to work, while the schooner, leaning to starboard and speeding at
seven to eight miles per hour, shot into the midst of the slabs scattered over her path. She knew
to avoid their touch when any contact would have been hurtful, and when they were merely thin
sheets, she ran them over and ripped them up, her cutwater doing double duty as a battering
ram. Then, after a series of rustling and crackling sounds during which her whole framework
sometimes quivered, the Halbrane lay in open water.
Our overriding priority was to guard against collisions with icebergs. It was no problem
to move about under a clear sky, which gave the schooner time to maneuver whether she was
speeding up or slowing down. Even so, the frequent fogs wouldn’t let us see more than 200 to
400 yards away, so the hazards of this navigating didn’t let up.
But aside from icebergs, wasn’t the Halbrane in danger of running afoul of the ice
fields . . . ? Undoubtedly, and you couldn’t help noticing or imagining the power these masses
had when they were in motion.
That day we saw one of those ice fields, which was moving only moderately fast, crash
into another that was standing still. Well, it cracked the ridges and overwhelmed the surface of
that second field, almost totally demolishing it. All that remained were enormous fragments
climbing over each other, hummocks towering a hundred feet in the air, pieces calving and sink-
ing under the waves. And why should this surprise anybody, since the invading ice field weighed
several million tons?
Twenty-four hours went by under these circumstances, our schooner staying three to four
miles away from the ice barrier. Hugging it could mean getting into assorted twists and turns
and being unable to get out. Not that Captain Guy wasn’t itching to do this, because he worried
about sailing on by and missing the mouth of some passageway . . .
“If I had a consort,” he told me, “I’d sail nearer to the ice barrier, and it’s a big advantage
to have two ships when you’re undertaking cruises like this! Now then, the Halbrane is by herself,
and if she were to let us down . . .”
Indeed, though our maneuvers were as cautious as you could wish, the schooner ran some
real risks. After a couple of 200-yard runs, we would suddenly have to stop and change direc-
tion, sometimes right when the boom of her bowsprit was about to smack into some mass of
ice. At these times, accordingly, West had to change her trim and stay with short tacks, to avoid
being run down by an ice field.
Luckily the wind blew from the east to the north-northeast without shifting, which let
us continue sailing close-hauled and then edging off. Otherwise it didn’t pick up. But if it had
changed into a storm, I don’t know what would have happened to the schooner—or I know
only too well: she would have been lost with all hands.
The fact is that in this case, there wouldn’t be any way for us to escape, and the Halbrane
would be stranded at the foot of the ice barrier.

After scouting it out for a good while, Len Guy had to give up looking for some passage-
way through that wall. Our only alternative was to reach its southeast end. Besides, if we headed
in that direction, we wouldn’t sacrifice any of our gains in latitude. And in fact, when we took
our position during the day of the 18th, it indicated that the Halbrane lay on the 73rd parallel.
But I’ll say again that no trip into the antarctic seas may ever have found better con-
ditions—the summer season arriving so early, the consistency of the northerly winds, tem-
peratures on our thermometer that averaged 49° Fahrenheit.6 Needless to add, we enjoyed
24-hour daylight, and the sun’s rays reached us around the clock from every corner of the
horizon.
Accordingly many rivulets were dripping off the icebergs, furrowing their sides and com-
ing together to form roaring waterfalls. In short, they were all set to flip over, and as soon as
their submerged bases eroded and their centers of gravity shifted, they would somersault.
Two or three more times we got within a couple of miles of the ice barrier. It was impos-
sible that the weather cycle hadn’t led to ruptures occurring here or there.
Our search was fruitless, and we had to fall back on going with the current from west
to east.
Even so, this was a help, and what a shame the current would carry us past the 43rd
meridian—our schooner needed to follow it in order to head for Tsalal Island. But in this
instance, as a matter of fact, the easterly wind would put her back on course.
Otherwise I need to mention that while we were scouting out these seas, we never raised
land or even a semblance of any, nothing that jibed with the charts drawn up by earlier mari-
ners—charts probably incomplete but accurate enough in their broad outlines. I’m aware that
ships have often sailed across areas down here where some sources indicate land. Even so, this
wasn’t applicable to Tsalal Island. If the Jane managed to sail there, it meant that sector of the
Antarctic Ocean was open, and in a year so far ahead of schedule as this one, we didn’t have to
worry about obstacles in that direction.
Finally, between two and three o’clock in the afternoon on the 19th, we heard a shout
from the lookout up in the crosstrees of the foremast.
“What is it?” West asked.
“Opening in the ice barrier to the southeast.”
“What’s beyond it?”
“Nothing in sight.”
Our first officer climbed the rigging and in a few seconds had made it all the way up the
topmast.
How impatiently the rest of us waited below him! If the lookout was wrong . . . if it had
been an optical illusion. . . . But in any case Jem West himself didn’t make mistakes!
After ten minutes of scrutiny—ten minutes that lasted an eternity—his clear voice
reached the deck below:
“Open sea!” he shouted.
Unanimous cheers answered him back.
The schooner pointed her prow to the southeast, hugging the wind as closely as possible.
Two hours later we’d gone around the end of the ice barrier, and spread out before our
eyes lay a sparkling sea that was totally free of ice.

14. A Voice in a Dream
T
otally free of ice? No, it was too early to say this for certain. Off in the distance a
few icebergs were visible, plus drift and pack ice still floating eastward. Neverthe-
less the breakup on that side was in full swing, the sea was open wide, and ships
could navigate freely.
It was undoubtedly in these waterways, and up this wide sound (a sort of channel cutting
through the antarctic continent), that Weddell’s vessels had made it to latitude 74°, a position
the Jane was to go some 600 miles beyond.
“God has come to our assistance,” Captain Guy told me, “and may He see fit to take us
to our destination!”
“In a week,” I replied, “our schooner could be in sight of Tsalal Island.”
“Yes, Mr. Jeorling . . . so long as the easterly winds keep up. Now then, don’t forget that
in going along the ice barrier to its eastern end, the Halbrane veered off course, so we need to
bring her back west.”
“The breeze is in our favor, captain.”
“And we’ll make the most of it, because I plan on heading to Bennet’s Islet. That’s the
first place where my brother William went ashore. When we’ve sighted that island, we’ll be
certain we’re on the right path . . .”
“Who knows, captain—we might pick up some fresh clues there.”
“It’s possible, Mr. Jeorling. So today, after we’ve taken our sights and gotten our exact
bearings, we’ll make for Bennet’s Islet.”
Needless to say, it was time to check the most reliable guide available to us. I mean Edgar
Allan Poe’s book—in reality a factual narrative by Arthur Gordon Pym.
After rereading this narrative with all the care it deserves, I’ve come to a conclusion that
I’ll stand by from now on:
The core of it is true, meaning that the Jane had located and put into Tsalal Island—there
weren’t any doubts about this aspect of it, nor about the survival of those six shipwrecked men

at the time Patterson was carried off on a drifting ice slab. This was the factual, definite, and
indisputable part of the narrative.
But shouldn’t another part of it be chalked up to the narrator’s imagination—a puffed-
up, extravagant, out-of-control imagination, in line with his own self-portrait . . . ? And right
off the bat, is it reasonable to give any credence to those strange events he claimed he witnessed
in the heart of far-off Antarctica? Should we accept the reality of those peculiar men and ani-
mals? Was it true about the odd character of the island’s soil, the abnormal composition of the
currents in its waters? Those hieroglyphic chasms whose layouts Pym gives—were they for real?
Was it believable that seeing the color white could have such a terrifying effect on the island-
ers? And yet why not—isn’t white the badge of winter, the color of snow, the herald of cold
weather that would lock them in a prison of ice? It’s true, but what are we to make of those
weird phenomena reported beyond that point—the gray vapor on the horizon, the gathering
darkness in space, the luminous transparency of the ocean depths, finally that cataract in the
air, and that white giant standing at the threshold of the pole?
I registered the above reservations and waited. As for Captain Guy, he paid no atten-
tion to anything in Pym’s narrative that didn’t directly relate to the castaways on Tsalal Island,
because rescuing them was his only ongoing concern.
Now then, since I had Pym’s narrative under my eyes, I resolved to double-check it step
by step, separating true from false, real from fictitious. And it was my belief that I wouldn’t
turn up any trace of those last peculiarities, which, in my opinion, must have been inspired by
that “Angel of the Odd” from one of our American author’s slyest short stories.
By the date of December 19, our schooner lay 1½ degrees farther south than the Jane had
eighteen days later. Ergo our conclusion that circumstances—weather conditions, wind direc-
tion, early arrival of the warm season—had been tremendously beneficial to us.
An open sea—or at least a navigable one—spread out before Captain Len Guy just as
it had before Captain William Guy, and behind us the ice barrier unfolded its huge hardened
masses from northwest to southeast.1
Right off West wanted to check whether the current in this sound was bearing south as
Pym had recorded. At his command the bosun dropped 1,200 feet of line overboard with a
heavy-enough sinker, and this sounding verified that the current’s direction was the same—and
therefore very helpful to our schooner’s progress.
At 10:30 and at noon, we took two highly accurate sights, the sky being exceptionally
clear. The readings gave latitude 74° 45' and—to nobody’s surprise—longitude 39° 15'.
As you can see, the detour that was forced on us—sailing down the ice barrier and need-
ing to double its eastern end—had required the Halbrane to fall back about four degrees east.
After fixing his position, Captain Guy pointed his prow to the southwest, getting back to the
43rd meridian while heading south.
I’ve posted reminders in these pages that the words morning and evening—which I’ve
used because they’re all we’ve got—don’t imply either a rising or a setting sun. Sweeping in
its unbroken spiral above the horizon, that shining disk lit up the sky without a break. A
few months later it would vanish. Nevertheless, during the cold, dark length of the antarc-
tic winter, polar auroras would illuminate the heavens almost every day. Later on maybe we

would witness those indescribably splendid phenomena, whose electrical effects shine with
such intensity!
Over January 1–4 in the year 1828, according to Pym’s narrative, the Jane’s crossing ran
into serious complications due to foul weather. Coming from the northeast, a mighty storm
hurled pieces of ice at her that couldn’t help banging up her rudder. A massive ice barrier also
blocked her way, but luckily it let her through. The upshot was that she didn’t get past her final
obstacles till the morning of January 5 in latitude 73° 15'.2 Though she’d had an air tempera-
ture of 33° Fahrenheit, ours had risen to 49°.3 As for compass variations, both needles came
up with the identical numbers, i.e., 14° 28' east.
One last comment is worth making, to show the numerical difference in the two schoo-
ners’ respective positions at that date. The Jane took the two weeks of January 5–19 to cover
those ten degrees—or 600 miles—that separated her from Tsalal Island, while on December
19, the Halbrane lay no farther away than about seven degrees—or 400 miles. If the wind kept
up on this side of the barrier, we would raise the island before the week was out—or at least
Bennet’s Islet, which was fifty miles closer and where Len Guy intended to lay over for twenty-
four hours.
Our navigating proceeded under first-rate conditions. We had to dodge only a few pieces
of ice, which the currents carried southwest at the speed of a quarter mile per hour. Our schoo-
ner had no trouble passing them by. Though the breeze had picked up, West set the upper sails,
and the Halbrane glided smoothly over a lightly rippling sea. We didn’t see any of those icebergs
Pym spotted at this latitude, some of them measuring 600 feet high—before they started to
melt, I mean. Our crew weren’t required to maneuver in the midst of those fogs that impeded
the Jane’s progress. We didn’t face either the hailstorms or the snowstorms that sometimes
pitched into her, or those drops in temperature her sailors had to put up with. Ice floes drifted
into our path only rarely, some loaded down with penguins that behaved like tourists on a
sightseeing cruise, also dark-skinned seals glued to those white surfaces like enormous leeches.
Above this flotilla birds were continually taking to the air—petrels, cape pigeons, black puffins,
loons, grebes, terns, cormorants, and those sooty albatrosses found in the high latitudes. On
the waves big medusas floated here and there, arrayed in pastel colors, spread out like open
parasols. As for fish, the schooner’s anglers got busy with their lines and tridents and laid in an
ample supply, out of which some dolphinfish deserve special mention—they’re a sort of giant
sea bream, three feet long, with firm, tasty meat.4
The next morning, after a calm night during which the breeze let up a little, the bosun
rejoined me, happy of face, clear of voice, a man untroubled by life’s uncertainties.
“Good morning, Mr. Jeorling, good morning!” he called out. Incidentally, at this time of
year in these southern regions, bidding somebody good evening isn’t allowed, since there aren’t
any evenings good or bad.
“Good morning, Hurliguerly,” I replied, all set to get into a conversation with this merry
babbler.
“Well, what do you think of these seas stretching beyond the ice barrier?”
“I’m inclined to compare them,” I answered, “to the great lakes in Sweden or America.”
“Aye . . . for sure . . . lakes surrounded by icebergs standing in for mountains!”

“Which means we couldn’t ask for more, bosun, so long as our voyage keeps on this way
till we sight Tsalal Island—”
“And why not the pole, Mr. Jeorling?”
“The pole . . . ? It’s a long way off, the pole—and we don’t know what we’ll find there!”
“We’ll know when we get to it,” the bosun fired back, “and that’s the only way we’ll know!”
“Of course, Hurliguerly, of course . . . but the Halbrane didn’t set out to discover the
South Pole. If Captain Guy manages to bring your countrymen from the Jane home, his work
will be done in my opinion, and I don’t see that he needs to take on anything else.”
“Granted, Mr. Jeorling, granted! But when he’s only three or four hundred miles from the
pole,” the bosun replied with a chuckle, “won’t he be tempted to go see the tip of that axis our
earth’s turning on like a chicken on a spit?”
“Is it worth the trouble of running new risks,” I said, “and is it so fascinating to get
caught up in this lust for geographical conquest?”
“Yes and no, Mr. Jeorling. I admit it, though—to go farther than the mariners who came
ahead of us, maybe farther than the ones following us can go, that appeals to my seaman’s vanity.”
“Yes . . . you figure there isn’t much left to discover, bosun . . .”
“You got it, Mr. Jeorling, and if somebody made us a proposition to push on a few
degrees past Tsalal Island, I wouldn’t raise any objections.”
“I don’t think Captain Guy would ever entertain such thoughts, bosun.”
“Me neither,” Hurliguerly replied, “and as soon as he picks up his brother and those five
sailors from the Jane, I expect our captain will run ’em straight back to England!”
“Which is both logical and likely, bosun. Besides, even if the oldtimers on this crew are
men who’ll go anywhere their leader wants them to, I expect the newcomers will say no. We
didn’t recruit them for such a long, dangerous trip as a cruise to the pole.”
“You’re right, Mr. Jeorling, and to persuade ’em, we’d have to dangle a handsome bonus
for each parallel we clear beyond Tsalal Island . . .”
“And even that isn’t surefire,” I replied.
“Naw, because Hearne and the Falkland recruits—they make up the majority on
board—really hoped we wouldn’t manage to clear the ice barrier and the voyage wouldn’t go
past the Antarctic Circle! So already they’re bellyaching about how far they’ve come! Anyhow
I’m not too sure how things will turn out, but that Hearne’s a lad who bears watching, and I’m
watching him!”
In essence, maybe we weren’t in danger, but at least we were in for a complicated future.
During the night—or what should have been the night—of December 19–20, my sleep
was disturbed for an instant by a peculiar dream. Yes, this could only have been a dream! Yet I
feel the need to mention it in this narrative because it’s further evidence of the obsessive fears
that were starting to prey on my brain.
The weather was still cold, so after lying down on my cot, I wrapped myself tightly in
my covers. Usually I dozed off around nine o’clock in the evening, then slept through till five
o’clock in the morning.
So I was asleep when—it must have been a couple hours past midnight—a sort of plain-
tive, drawn-out muttering aroused me.

I opened my eyes—or imagined I did. The shutters on the two windows were closed, my
cabin was plunged in total darkness.
The muttering started again; I cocked an ear, and it seemed to me that a voice—a voice
I didn’t recognize—was whispering these words:
“Pym . . . Pym . . . poor Pym!”
Obviously this could only be a hallucination . . . unless somebody had snuck into my
cabin, whose door wasn’t locked.5
“Pym!” the voice continued. “We mustn’t forget him . . . we mustn’t ever forget poor
Pym!”
This time the words were spoken close to my ear, and I caught them very clearly. What
was the meaning of this entreaty, and why was I the recipient? Don’t forget Pym? But after he
went back to America, didn’t he die . . . die under sudden and distressing circumstances whose
details nobody knew . . . ?6
Then I got to feeling that I was talking nonsense, and I woke up in earnest, this time feel-
ing that I’d just been disturbed by some tremendously intense dream due to my being mentally
disturbed . . .
I was out of my cot in a single bound and I opened the shutter over one of my cabin
windows . . .
I looked outside.
Nobody in the schooner’s stern—other than Hunt standing at the steering wheel, his
eyes glued to the binnacle.
All I could do was go back to bed. Which is what I did, and though Pym’s name seemed
to ring in my ear several times, I slept till morning.
When I got up, only a very hazy, fleeting impression of that nighttime incident was still
with me, and it soon faded away.
On rereading—usually with Len Guy at my elbow—on rereading, I say, Pym’s narrative
(as if that narrative were the Halbrane’s daily gazette),7 I noted the following event mentioned
on the date of January 10:
During that afternoon a very unfortunate accident occurred, and sure enough, in that
sector of the sea we were crossing just then. One of the ablest seamen on the Jane’s crew—an
American hailing from New York named Peter Vredenburgh—slipped and fell between two
cakes of ice, vanished, and couldn’t be rescued.
He was the first casualty on that fatal cruise, and how many others were still to be
recorded in the death register for that unlucky schooner!
Pertinent to this, both Captain Guy and I noted that according to Pym, the whole day
of January 10 had been exceptionally cold, weather conditions marked by severe atmospheric
disturbances, squalls from the northeast following each other in the form of snow and hail.
True, at that point in time the ice barrier stood far to the south, which explains why the
Jane hadn’t yet gone around it coming from the west. As the narrative tells it, she didn’t man-
age this till January 14. At that juncture an ocean “without a particle of ice” stretched to the
horizon, its current moving at half a mile per hour. The temperature was 34° Fahrenheit and
soon got up to 51°.8

That’s exactly the temperature the Halbrane enjoyed—and like Pym, we would have been
inclined to say that “all hands on board now felt certain of attaining the pole.”
That day the sight taken by the Jane’s captain gave latitude 81° 21' and longitude 42°.9 A
couple minutes of arc nearer and these bearings would have been ours as well on the morning
of December 20. So we were sailing straight to Bennet’s Islet, and twenty-four hours wouldn’t
go by before it came in view.
I haven’t any incidents worth describing from our navigating through these waterways.
Nothing in particular happened aboard our schooner, while the Jane’s log features several pretty
unusual events on the date of January 17. Here’s the main one, which gave Pym and his com-
panion Peters a chance to show their dedication and courage.
Around three o’clock in the afternoon, their lookout discovered the presence of a drift-
ing ice floe—proof that a few slabs of ice were reappearing on the surface of this open sea.
Riding on this floe was an animal of gigantic size. Captain William Guy issued orders to man
the biggest longboat; seated inside it were Pym, Peters, and the Jane’s mate—sure enough, that
same poor Patterson whose body we recovered between Prince Edward’s Island and Tristan da
Cunha.
The animal was a species of arctic bear, measuring fifteen feet in its greatest length, its
fur very coarse, “curling tightly,” and perfectly white, its snout rounded like a bulldog’s. They
fired several shots that hit it but weren’t enough to bring it down. Diving into the sea, the mon-
strous beast swam toward them, climbed half onto the longboat, and would have tipped them
over if Dirk Peters hadn’t thrust his knife into it and jabbed its spinal cord. Dragged off by the
bear, the half-breed had to be thrown a line to help him back into the boat.
Hauled up onto the Jane’s deck, the bear was of exceptional size, but it didn’t have any-
thing outlandish about it that could justify classing it with those strange quadrupeds Pym
reported in these southern regions.
With that let’s get back to the Halbrane.
Since the northerly breeze had been neglecting us and didn’t resume, only the current
drove the Halbrane southward. Ergo a delay that thoroughly tried our patience.
Finally, on the 21st, we took a sight that gave latitude 82° 50' and longitude 42° 20'
west.
It wouldn’t be long now till we reached Bennet’s Islet—if it existed. . . .
Yes, this islet did exist! And at the same coordinates given by Arthur Gordon Pym.
In fact, at about six o’clock in the evening, a shout from one of the crewmen announced
land off the port bow.

15. Bennet’s Islet
A
fter covering about 800 miles from the Antarctic Circle, the Halbrane had worked
her way in sight of Bennet’s Islet! The sea was dead calm, so for the last couple
of hours the crew had towed the schooner with her dinghies, were worn out, and
desperately needed a rest. Accordingly we put off going ashore till the next day,
and I retired to my cabin.
This time no mutterings disturbed my sleep, and five hours later I was one of the first
out on deck.
Needless to say, West had taken every precautionary measure called for by a trip through
these dubious waterways. The strictest security reigned on board. The swivel guns were load-
ed, shells and cartridges piled up, rifles and pistols primed, boarding nets ready to hoist. We
remembered how the Jane had been attacked by the residents of Tsalal Island. By then our
schooner lay less than sixty miles from the scene of that disaster.
Night had gone by without any alarms being given. Daytime came and no boats showed
up in the Halbrane’s waters, no natives on the beach. The area seemed deserted, and anyhow
Captain William Guy hadn’t found a trace of humanity hereabouts. You couldn’t make out any
huts along the coastline, or any smoke behind it indicating that Bennet’s Islet was populated.
What I saw of the islet was—in line with Pym’s description—a rocky foundation
that measured about 2½ miles around and was so arid, you couldn’t find the tiniest hint of
vegetation.
A mile to the north, our schooner dropped a single anchor.
Len Guy pointed out that we’d gotten our bearings without any possibility of error.
“Mr. Jeorling,” he said to me, “do you see that promontory running northeast?”
“I see it, captain.”
“Isn’t it made up of piles of rocks that look like corded bales of cotton?”
“It is, just like the narrative says.”

“So all we need to do is go ashore by that promontory, Mr. Jeorling. Who knows, we
might come across a few traces of the Jane’s men, assuming they managed to escape from Tsalal
Island!”
A quick word about our overall state of mind aboard the Halbrane.
About 400 yards away lay that islet where Pym and William Guy set foot eleven years
ago. When the Jane got to it, her situation was far from positive, since her fuel had started to
run low and symptoms of scurvy had broken out among the crew. Aboard our schooner, on
the other hand, our sailors were in such good health that they were a treat for the eyes, and
though the recruits grumbled among themselves, the oldtimers looked full of zeal and hope,
tremendously pleased to be so close to their destination.
As for Captain Guy’s thoughts, desires, and fits of impatience, you can guess what they
had to be . . . he stared hungrily at Bennet’s Islet.
But there was one man who glued his eyes to it even more tenaciously: Hunt.
Ever since we’d dropped anchor, Hunt didn’t lie down on the deck as he’d been in the
habit of doing—not even to grab two or three hours of sleep. His elbows propped on the
starboard rail in the bow, his wide mouth clamped shut, his forehead creased into a thousand
furrows, he didn’t budge from that spot and his eyes didn’t dart away from the shore a single
second.
For the record, I’ll remind you that Bennet was the name of William Guy’s partner, and
to honor him, the Jane’s captain gave it to the first piece of land they discovered in this sector
of Antarctica.
Before leaving the Halbrane, Len Guy warned his first officer to not relax security in the
slightest—a warning West wasn’t in need of. Our exploring would take no more than half a
day. If our dinghy didn’t return during the afternoon, that would be reason enough to send the
second longboat in search of it.
“Keep an equally close watch on our recruits,” Captain Guy added.
“Don’t worry, captain,” our first officer replied. “And in fact, since you need four men to
row, help yourself to the newcomers. That’ll leave four less whiners on board.”
This was good advice—because, thanks to Hearne’s baleful influence, his Falkland com-
panions seemed to be getting grumpier and grumpier.
The longboat ready, four newcomers took their seats in the bow while Hunt called dibs
on the tiller. Len Guy, the bosun, and I sat in the stern, armed to the teeth, then we shoved off
and headed north of the islet.
Half an hour later we’d gone around the promontory—which, seen up close, no longer
resembled a pile of corded cotton. Then we found the little bay where the Jane’s dinghies had
docked at the far end.
Hunt steered us toward that bay. We could trust his instincts on top of everything else.
He maneuvered with remarkable certainty between tips of rocks poking up here and there. You
would have sworn he was familiar with this entryway.
It wouldn’t take much time to explore this islet. Captain William Guy had spent only a
few hours here, and if he’d left any traces, surely we wouldn’t fail to find them.

At the far end of the bay, we stepped ashore onto stones sparsely carpeted with lichens.
The tide had already gone out, exposing the sandy bottom of a kind of strand scattered with
blackish shards, which looked like oversized nail heads.
Captain Guy pointed out the large number of mollusks on that carpet of sand—they
were oval shaped, ranging from three to eighteen inches long and one to eight inches thick.
Some were lying on their flattish sides; others were crawling in search of a sunny spot or to feed
on the minute organisms responsible for creating coral. And at two or three localities, in fact, I
noticed several indications of a coral bank forming.
“This mollusk,” Len Guy told me, “is called the sea cucumber, or biche de mer, a delicacy
the Chinese are quite fond of. I call it to your attention, Mr. Jeorling, because the Jane visited
these waterways intending to harvest sea cucumbers. You haven’t forgotten that my brother
negotiated with Too-wit, the chief on Tsalal Island, for the preparation of a couple hundred
barrels of these mollusks, that houses were built near the shore, that three men were left in
charge of curing this item while the schooner continued her cruise of discovery. . . . And finally
you recall the circumstances under which she was attacked and destroyed.”
Yes! All these details were still in my memory, along with the ones Pym had given con-
cerning this sea cucumber, the Gasteropoda pulmonifera that Cuvier described. It looked like a sort
of worm or caterpillar, didn’t have any shell or feet, and sported only elastic rings around it.
After you pile up these mollusks on the sand, you slice them open lengthwise, remove their
innards, wash them, boil them, store them for a few hours, and afterward air them in hot
sunlight; then, once they’re dried and packed in barrels, you ship them to China. In the mar-
ketplaces of the Celestial Empire, they’re considered a health food and are prized as highly as
swallow’s nests, so premium shipments sell for up to $90 a barrel—i.e., 133⅓ pounds—and
not just in Canton but in Singapore, Jakarta, and Manila.
When we reached the rocks, we left two men behind to guard the dinghy. Then the other
two came with us, while Captain Guy, the bosun, Hunt, and I headed for the center of Ben-
net’s Islet.
While I exchanged a few words with Len Guy and the bosun, Hunt walked in the lead,
silent as ever. Honestly, you would have sworn his job title was trail guide, and I couldn’t help
tossing out comments to this effect.
Anyhow it didn’t make much difference. The main thing was to stay out till we’d finished
our survey.
The land underfoot was arid in the extreme. It was totally unfit for cultivating and
couldn’t have offered any means of subsistence—not even to savages.
How could anybody live here? The place didn’t generate any plant life other than a species
of prickly pear, which would have been tough going for the hardiest ruminant! After the Jane’s
catastrophe, if William Guy and his companions hadn’t found any refuge other than this islet,
hunger would have wiped them out long ago.
From a modest hillock swelling up in the center of Bennet’s Islet, our eyes could take in
its whole expanse. Nothing . . . nothing anywhere. . . . But could human footprints have been
preserved here and there, ashes left from a fire, huts in ruins—in short, any physical evidence
that some of the Jane’s men had come this way?

Accordingly, anxious to verify this, we decided to go down the coastline, starting at the
far end of the little bay where we’d beached our dinghy.
Coming down from the hillock, Hunt took the initiative again since it seemed to be his
calling to lead the way. So we followed him while he headed for the southern end of the islet.
Reaching that spot, Hunt swept his eyes around him, bent over, and pointed to a piece
of half-rotted wood in the midst of some loose stones.
“I remember!” I exclaimed. “Pym mentions this piece of wood—which, from the marks
carved on it, seemed to have come from the prow of a canoe . . .”
“My brother thought some of the carving looked like the outline of a tortoise,” Len
Guy added.
“So he did,” I went on, “but Pym thought the likeness was pretty dubious. It makes no
difference, because this piece of wood is still at the same locality given in the narrative, so we’re
forced to conclude that no crews have set foot on Bennet’s Islet since the Jane’s layover. I’d say
we’re wasting our time looking around here for traces of anything at all. It’s only at Tsalal Island
that we’ll settle this.”
“Yes . . . at Tsalal Island,” Captain Guy replied.
We doubled back toward the bay, going along its rocky outskirts till the tide was about to
turn. At various localities banks of coral were taking rough shape. As for sea cucumbers, they
were so outrageously plentiful, our schooner could have filled her entire hold with the things.
Hunt walked in silence, eyes always on the ground.
As for us, when we looked out to sea, all we saw was an immense emptiness. To the
north the Halbrane was on view, her masts swaying as the waves rolled gently past. To the south
not a semblance of land—and in any case we couldn’t have spied Tsalal Island out there,
because its coordinates put it at thirty minutes of arc to the south, hence nearly thirty-five
miles off.1
Once we’d gone all the way around the islet’s rim, we wouldn’t have anything left to do
except return to the ship and set out immediately for Tsalal Island.
By then we were heading back up the eastern shore, Hunt about ten steps out in front,
when he suddenly pulled up short and this time hurriedly waved us over.
In a second we were at his side.
Though Hunt hadn’t shown any surprise when he’d found that piece of wood, his atti-
tude changed when he knelt in front of a length of worm-eaten plank left on the sand. He felt
it over with his enormous hands, stroking it as if detecting patches of roughness, searching its
surface for scratches that might mean something . . .
The plank was five to six feet long, six inches wide, and solid oak; it must have come
from a boat of pretty substantial dimensions—maybe a ship of several hundred tons burden.
The black paint that once covered it was invisible under the heavy coat of grime deposited
by the nasty weather cycles down here. To be more specific, it seemed to have come from the
sternboard of a vessel.
The bosun pointed this out.
“Yes, yes,” Captain Guy repeated, “it’s part of a sternboard!”
Still kneeling, Hunt nodded his huge head in agreement.

“But,” I replied, “this plank could only have been cast up on Bennet’s Islet after a ship-
wreck . . . countercurrents must have found it in the open sea . . .”
“And if so . . . ?” Len Guy snapped.
The same thought had dawned on both of us.
And how startled, how astonished, how indescribably moved we felt when Hunt showed
us seven or eight letters inscribed on the plank, not painted but carved into it, so that you could
feel them under your fingers.
It was all too easy to recognize the letters of two names, laid out in two lines like this:
JAN
L VERPO L
Jane, Liverpool . . . ! The schooner under Captain William Guy’s command! What differ-
ence did it make that time had rubbed out the other letters? Weren’t enough of them left to
give the ship’s name and her home port? Jane, Liverpool . . . !
Captain Len Guy took this plank in his hands and pressed it to his lips while a large tear
fell from his eyes . . .
It was a piece of rubble from the Jane, one of many scattered by her explosion—a piece
of rubble that had been carried to this shore, whether by countercurrents or on some slab of
ice!
I didn’t say a word and let Len Guy compose his feelings.
As for Hunt, I’d never seen such a fiery look break from his eyes—his hawk eyes flash-
ing—while he scanned the southern horizon.
Captain Guy stood up.
Hunt, still silent, put the plank on his shoulder, and we continued on our way.
When we’d finished circling the island, we halted at the far end of the bay, at the spot
where the two sailors were guarding our dinghy, and we were back aboard the schooner by
around 2:30 in the afternoon.
Len Guy wanted to stay at anchor till the next day, hoping a northerly or easterly wind
might just turn up. We kept our fingers crossed—can you imagine the Halbrane’s longboats
towing her all the way to Tsalal Island? Though the current would carry us toward it, especially
during rising tide, this thirty-five-mile crossing could take more than two days.2
Therefore we cast off again at daybreak. Now then, a mild breeze had come up around
three o’clock in the morning, so we could hope our schooner would reach her journey’s ulti-
mate destination without too much delay.
On December 23, leaving her anchorage off Bennet’s Islet by 6:30 that morning, the Hal-
brane headed south under full sail. One thing wasn’t in dispute—we’d collected new supporting
evidence of the catastrophe that had played out on Tsalal Island.
The breeze propelling us was extremely feeble, and all too often our deflated sails just
flapped against the masts. Luckily we tossed out a sounding line and found the current running
consistently southward. Given our fairly slow progress, however, Captain Guy wouldn’t raise the
coordinates of Tsalal Island before thirty-six hours had gone by.

Captain Len Guy took this plank in his hands.
The whole day I watched the ocean waves very closely and I thought they weren’t as deep
a blue as Pym said. Nor did we come across any of those thorny bushes with red berries that the
Jane hauled on board, nor the likes of that monstrosity of polar fauna: an animal three feet long
and six inches high, which had four short legs, feet with long claws a coral coloring, a silky white
body, a rat’s tail, a cat’s head, the floppy ears of a dog, and bright red teeth. Anyhow I’d always
viewed a number of these details as suspect and entirely due to an overdose of imagination.

Sitting in the stern with Poe’s book in my hands, I couldn’t help noticing as I read that
when Hunt’s duties called him to the vicinity of the deckhouse, he never stopped staring at me
with the oddest persistence.
And it so happened that I’d gotten to the end of chapter 17, where Pym acknowledges
that he’s responsible for the “unfortunate and bloody events which immediately arose from my
advice.” He was indeed the one who overcame Captain William Guy’s objections, who urged
him to profit from so “tempting an opportunity of solving the great problem in regard to
an antarctic continent.” And what’s more, while accepting that responsibility, he still patted
himself on the back for “having been instrumental, however remotely, in opening to the eye
of science one of the most intensely exciting secrets which has ever engrossed its attention.”
That whole day many whales frolicked out by the Halbrane. Likewise countless flocks of
albatross went by as well, always heading south. As for ice, not a chunk in sight. Overhead, all
the way to the horizon, there wasn’t a single ice blink reflecting off some frozen mass beneath it.
The wind didn’t show any inclination to pick up, and a few patches of fog hid the sun.
It was already five o’clock in the afternoon when the last contours of Bennet’s Islet faded
away. What pitiful progress we’d made since the morning!
Hourly compass checks gave only the tiniest variations—confirming what the narrative
says. Our various soundings didn’t find bottom, though the bosun used 1,200 feet of line.
Luckily the current’s direction took the schooner farther south little by little—at a speed of
just half a mile per hour.
After six o’clock the sun vanished behind a dense curtain of fog, beyond it continuing to
sweep in its long downward spiral.
Nobody felt a breeze anymore—a nuisance we didn’t have the patience to put up with.
If these delays persisted, if the wind happened to shift, what options did we have? This sea
wouldn’t offer shelter from storms, and a squall that drove the schooner northward might be
“the winning hand” for Hearne and his companions, justifying their complaints to some extent.
But after midnight the wind picked up, and the Halbrane managed to advance a dozen
more miles.
Accordingly our position fix the next day, December 24, gave us latitude 83° 2' and
longitude 43° 5'.3
The Halbrane lay no farther than eighteen minutes of arc from the bearings of Tsalal
Island—hence less than a third of a degree, or less than twenty miles.
Unfortunately, at a little past noon the wind snubbed us again. Nevertheless, thanks to
the current, we sighted Tsalal Island at 6:45 in the evening.
As soon as we’d dropped anchor, we kept ultracareful watch, cannons loaded, firearms
close at hand, boarding nets in place.
The Halbrane ran no risk of being surprised. Too many eyes on board were keeping
watch—especially Hunt’s, which didn’t for a second break contact with the horizon of that
polar zone.

16. Tsalal Island
T
he night went by without any alarms being given. No canoes left the island. No
natives showed up on its beach. The only conclusion to draw from this was that
the island’s occupants had to reside far inland. In fact, as we knew from Pym’s
narrative, it took two or three hours to walk to the main village on Tsalal Island.
So they hadn’t spotted the Halbrane’s arrival—which, in a nutshell, was all to the good.
We’d dropped anchor three miles offshore in sixty feet of water.
From six o’clock on we had a gentle morning breeze at our service, so the schooner raised
anchor, then went and found a new berth half a mile from a girdle of coral, which resembled
the circular coral formations in the Pacific Ocean. From that far out it was pretty easy to take
in the island’s entire expanse.
This was the appearance Tsalal Island presented: a circumference of nine to ten miles
(which Pym hadn’t mentioned), an ultra-steep coastline that was hard to approach, long arid
plains that were blackish in color and flanked by a series of moderately high hills. The coast was
clear, as I’ve said. We didn’t see any boats at sea or in the coves. No smoke rose over the rocks,
and it definitely seemed that there wasn’t a single person on this side of the island.
So what had been going on over the last eleven years? Could it be that Too-wit, the chief
of the islanders, was no longer alive . . . ? So be it, but what about the comparatively sizable
population . . . and William Guy . . . and the survivors of that English schooner?
When the Jane appeared in these waterways, it was the first time the Tsalal populace
had seen a ship. Accordingly, after boarding her, they viewed her as an enormous animal, her
masts as limbs, her sails as garments.1 These days they surely knew where they stood on this
issue. Now then, they hadn’t tried to pay us a visit—what accounted for this oddly restrained
behavior?
“Lower the big dinghy!” Len Guy ordered in an impatient voice.
Once this command was carried out, Captain Guy spoke to his first officer:
“Jem, have Holt take eight men down, plus Hunt at the tiller. You’ll stay at the anchorage
and keep a lookout both landward and seaward.”

“Don’t worry, captain.”
“We’ll go ashore and try to reach the village of Klock-klock. If any complications arise out
here, fire three warning shots from the swivel gun.”
“Right,” his first officer replied. “Three shots at one-minute intervals.”
“If we don’t reappear before evening, send the second dinghy with ten well-armed men
under the bosun’s command, and station them 200 yards offshore to pick us up.”
“We’ll do that.”
“Stay with the ship, Jem, no matter what . . .”
“No matter what.”
“If we haven’t turned up and you’ve done everything in your power, take command of the
schooner and sail her back to the Falklands.”
“I will.”
The big dinghy was soon ready. Eight men got into it, including Holt and Hunt, armed
to the teeth with rifles, pistols, bulging ammunition pouches, and knives in their belts.
Just then I stepped forward and said:
“Won’t you let me go ashore with you, captain?”
“If you would like, Mr. Jeorling.”
Going back to my cabin, I took my rifle (a double-barreled hunting rifle), a powder flask,
a bag of shot, and some bullets, then went and rejoined Len Guy, who’d saved me a seat in the
stern.
The longboat shoved off; energetically rowed, it headed toward the reef of rocks, search-
ing for the inlet that Pym and Peters had gone into aboard the Jane’s dinghy on January 19,
1828.
That was the point when the savages had appeared in their long dugout canoes . . . when
William Guy had held up a white handkerchief as a sign of friendship . . . when they’d respond-
ed by calling Anamoo-moo! and Lama-Lama! . . . and when the captain had let them come aboard
with their chief, Too-wit.
Then the narrative says that the Jane’s crew entered into friendly relations with those sav-
ages. The visitors had decided to take a cargo of sea cucumber on board following the return
of their schooner, which, at Pym’s urging, was going to push on to points south. A few days
later on February 1, as you know, Captain William Guy and thirty-one of his men fell into a
trap in the ravine by Klock-klock, and as for the six men left behind to guard the Jane, every last
one of them was destroyed in an explosion.
For twenty minutes our dinghy skirted the reef of rocks. As soon as Hunt discovered the
inlet, he made for it, aiming to reach a narrow gap in the boulders.
It was a little sound 400 yards wide, and we cut back across it, heaved our grapnel into
the rocks right at the inlet’s mouth, and left two sailors in the dinghy.
After we went up a winding gorge, which came out on top of the riverbank, our little
band headed toward the island’s center, Hunt in the lead.
While walking, Len Guy and I exchanged reactions on the topic of this countryside,
which differed, as Pym says, “from any hitherto visited by civilized men.”

We would see this for ourselves. In any case, I can state that the overall color of the
plains was black, as if its humus were composed of powdered lava—and nowhere did we see
“anything white.”
Hunt took off running for an enormous mass of rock a hundred steps away. As soon as
he got to it, he scaled it with the agility of a mountain goat, straightened up when he reached
the top, and swept his eyes over an expanse of several miles.
Hunt stood there like a man who “didn’t know where he was.”
“What’s the matter with him?” Captain Guy asked me, after watching him closely.
“I have no idea what’s the matter, captain,” I remarked. “Anyhow, as you’re aware, every-
thing about that fellow is peculiar, everything he does is bewildering, and in some respects he
deserves to be lumped with those new humans Pym claims he found on this island! You could
even say . . .”
“Say . . . ?” Captain Guy repeated.
And then, not finishing my sentence, I exclaimed:
“Captain, are you sure you took decent sights when you worked up your position
yesterday?”
“Definitely.”
“So your readings gave you . . . ?”
“They gave me latitude 83° 20' and longitude 43° 5'.”
“You’re positive?”
“I’m positive.”
“Then there’s no doubt whatever that this is Tsalal Island?”
“No, Mr. Jeorling, if Tsalal Island is really at the coordinates Pym gives.”
Actually there couldn’t be the slightest doubt on this issue. But if Pym truly wasn’t mis-
taken about the degrees and minutes of those coordinates, you had to wonder how faithful his
narrative was in describing this region our little band had been crossing under Hunt’s guidance.
He mentions oddities not a bit familiar to him. . . . He mentions trees that aren’t like any plant
life in the torrid zone, temperate zone, northern tundra, or latitudes just south of the equa-
tor—they’re this area’s home-grown articles. . . . He mentions rocks with novel components in
their mass or stratification . . . he mentions phenomenal watercourses, streambeds containing
an indefinable liquid without the appearance of limpidity, a kind of solution of arabic gum
divided into distinct veins, which offered all the iridescence of shot silk and didn’t have the
power to cohere again after a knife blade separated them.
Well, none of those things were here—or they weren’t here anymore! Not a tree, shrub,
or bush was visible in the whole countryside. We didn’t see any semblance of those forest-
covered hills with the village of Klock-klock on display in their midst. . . . As for those streams
where the Jane’s crewmen hadn’t dared to quench their thirst, I didn’t spot a single one—not
the tiniest drop of water, whether normal or abnormal. All around us it was fearfully, dismally,
utterly arid!
Even so, Hunt walked with a quick step, showing no hesitation. His natural instincts
seemed to guide him, the way swallows and carrier pigeons are led back to their nests by the

shortest route—going “as the crow flies” or “in a beeline” as we say in America. I’m not sure
what hunch prompted us to latch onto him as the best guide among us, a second Leatherstock-
ing or Magua! And come to think of it, was it maybe because he was a countryman of James
Fenimore Cooper’s heroes?
But I can’t repeat too often that we weren’t laying eyes on that fabulous land Pym describes.
Our feet were stepping on a contorted, ravaged, chaotic soil. It was black . . . yes . . . black and
charred as if it had been spewed out of the earth’s innards as a result of volcanic action. You
would have sworn that some frightful, invincible cataclysm had overwhelmed the entire surface
of this region.
As for the animals that figured in the narrative, we didn’t spot any of them either—nei-
ther canvasback ducks of the species Anas valisneria, nor Galapagos tortoises, black gannets,
those black birds the size of buzzards, black hogs with bushy tails and legs like antelopes,
breeds of sheep with black fleece, or gigantic albatrosses with black plumage.2 Even penguins,
so common in these antarctic waterways, seemed to have cleared out of this now-inhospitable
land. . . . This was the grim, noiseless solitude of the most fearful wilderness!
And no human beings . . . not a soul . . . nobody inland any more than along the coast!
In the midst of this devastation, did we still have any chance of finding William Guy and
the Jane’s survivors?
I looked at Len Guy. His face was pale and his forehead furrowed with deep wrinkles,
which said all too clearly that he was starting to lose hope.
At last we reached the valley whose windings once contained the village of Klock-klock.
Nothing left, same as everywhere else. Not a single wretched home (and there used to be
so many), neither those Yampoo dwellings made up of big black skins resting on tree trunks
chopped off four feet above the ground, nor those shanties built from rough branches, nor
those cave dwellings gouged into the hillsides, not even that dark stone resembling fuller’s
earth. . . . And that rippling stream going down the slopes of the ravine—where was it, and
what had happened to its magical water that rolled over a riverbed of black sand?
And what about the Tsalal populace, those men who were nearly all stark naked, those
few who wore shaggy black skins and wielded spears and clubs, those tall, straight, well-built
women who—quoting Pym’s words again—had “a grace and freedom of carriage not to be
found in civilized society,” and the many processions of children behind them—yes, what had
become of all those hosts of natives with their black skins, black hair, black teeth, and utter
horror of the color white?
I looked in vain for Too-wit’s hut, made out of four big skins fastened together by wood-
en skewers and secured by little pegs driven into the ground . . . I couldn’t even tell where it had
been! And yet it was there that William Guy, Arthur Gordon Pym, Dirk Peters, and their com-
panions were welcomed with signs of respect while throngs of islanders crowded outside. . . . It
was there that they were served a meal that featured the palpitating entrails of some unknown
animal, which Too-wit and his men wolfed down with repulsive eagerness.
Just then a light went on in my brain. It came like a revelation. I sensed what had hap-
pened on the island, what was behind all this solitude, what had caused the upheaval that left
its traces on the ground to this day.

“An earthquake!” I exclaimed. “Yes, it would take only two or three of those dreadful
tremors—they’re so common in these lands, which the sea invades by seeping underneath them!
One day all the pent-up steam forced its way out and demolished everything aboveground . . .”
“Would an earthquake change Tsalal Island this much?” Captain Guy muttered.
“Yes, captain, and it destroyed that distinctive vegetation . . . those streams full of pecu-
liar liquid . . . those natural oddities we find no trace of because now they’re buried deep in the
ground! Nothing Pym saw is visible here anymore!”
Hunt had come up and cocked an ear, lifting and lowering his enormous head in
agreement.
“Aren’t the lands in these polar seas volcanic?” I went on. “If the Halbrane took us to
Victoria Land, couldn’t we catch Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror right in the act of erupting?”3
“But,” Holt pointed out, “if there’d been an eruption here, you would see lava around.”
“I’m not saying there was an eruption,” I answered the master sailmaker, “but I am saying
that an earthquake has turned the landscape upside down!”
When you thought about it, the explanation I gave added up perfectly.
And just then I remembered that according to Pym’s narrative, Tsalal Island belonged
to a group stretching to the west. If the Tsalal populace hadn’t been destroyed, it was possible
they’d escaped to a neighboring island. So the thing to do was to go scout out this island
group—where the Jane’s survivors might have found refuge after they’d left Tsalal Island, which,
in the wake of that cataclysm, would no longer offer any means of subsistence . . .
I mentioned this to Len Guy.
“Yes,” he exclaimed, and tears glistened in his eyes. “Yes, maybe so! And yet how would
my brother and his poor companions have found a way to escape, and isn’t it more likely they
all perished in that earthquake . . . ?”
Hunt motioned us to follow him, and we stayed at his heels.
After tramping across the valley till we were a couple gunshots away, he came to a halt.
What a sight our eyes took in!
Lying there in piles were mounds of bones, clumps of sternums, tibias, femurs, spines, all
the skeletal rubble that make up the human anatomy and without a scrap of flesh, just clusters
of skulls with a few tufts of hair—in short, an enormous jumble that the sun had bleached
right at this spot . . . !
We looked at that fearsome boneyard, gripped with horror and loathing.
So whatever was left of the island populace lay here, several thousand individuals at a
guess? But if every last one had perished in that earthquake, how did their remains come to be
heaped over the surface of the earth and not buried in its innards? Furthermore, was it credible
that these natives, whether men, women, youngsters, or oldsters, were caught by surprise at this
locale and didn’t have time to take their canoes and reach the other islands in the group?
We stood stock-still, devastated, despairing, unable to speak a word.
“My brother . . . my poor brother!” repeated Len Guy, who had just sunk to his knees.
But after thinking it over, there were things my mind refused to accept. Namely, how did
this catastrophe fit in with Patterson’s diary entries? Those entries stated categorically that the
Jane’s mate had left his companions on Tsalal Island seven months ago. So they couldn’t have

perished in this earthquake, which, given the condition of these bones, dated back several years
and must have occurred after Pym and Peters had left the island, since Pym’s narrative didn’t
mention it.
In fact those events couldn’t be reconciled. If the earthquake took place recently, the
presence of these skeletons couldn’t be attributed to it because they’d already been bleached
by the march of time. In any case, the Jane’s survivors weren’t among them. But then . . . where
were they?
Since the valley of Klock-klock didn’t reach beyond this spot, we needed to return in our
tracks and get back on the coastal path.
We’d barely gone half a mile along the embankment when Hunt halted again in front
of some bone fragments, which were almost reduced to powder and didn’t seem to be human
in origin.
So were these the remains of one of those peculiar animals Pym described, which we
hadn’t seen a single specimen of so far?
A shout—or rather a kind of wild roar—broke from Hunt’s lips.
His enormous hand stretched toward us, holding a metal collar.
Yes! A brass collar . . . a collar that was half oxidized, which had engraved letters that
were still readable.
These letters formed the following three words:
Tiger—Arthur Pym
Tiger! He was the Newfoundland dog who saved his master’s life when the latter was hid-
ing in the Grampus’s hold . . . Tiger, who’d already shown signs of rabies . . . Tiger, who helped
when the crew mutinied by going for the throat of seaman Jones, allowing Peters to finish him
off almost immediately!
So the faithful animal hadn’t perished after the Grampus came to grief. They’d taken him
aboard the Jane at the same time as Pym and the half-breed . . . and yet the narrative didn’t men-
tion this, and even before the schooner found them, the dog wasn’t in the picture anymore . . .
A thousand contradictions crowded into my brain . . . I didn’t know how to reconcile
those events. But no doubt Tiger had been retrieved from the wrecked ship like Pym, then had
followed him to Tsalal Island, survived the landslide at the hill near Klock-klock, and finally met
his death in the catastrophe that had wiped out this segment of the Tsalal populace.4
But once again, William Guy and his five sailors couldn’t be among these skeletons scat-
tered over the ground, because they were alive when Patterson left them seven months ago, and
this catastrophe already dated back several years!
Three hours later we were aboard the Halbrane once more, after failing to make any other
discoveries.
Captain Len Guy retired to his cabin, shut himself in, and didn’t come out even at
dinnertime.
I felt it was best to not disturb his grieving and didn’t try to speak with him.

The next day I was eager to return to the island and continue exploring it from coast to
coast, so I asked our first officer to arrange for my going ashore.
West agreed after getting permission from Captain Guy, who declined to come with us.
Hunt, Holt, the bosun, four men, and I took our seats in the dinghy—unarmed, since
there was nothing to fear anymore.
We went ashore at the same locality as the day before, and again Hunt led us toward the
hill by Klock-klock.
Once there, we went up a narrow ravine—the same ravine where Pym, Peters, and the
sailor Allen had gotten separated from William Guy and his twenty-nine companions, then had
gone down through a crevice gouged into a substance called soapstone, a type of steatite that
was rather brittle.
At this location there wasn’t a trace of those walls, which must have vanished during
the earthquake . . . nor of that crevice where a few filbert bushes shaded the opening back
then . . . nor of that dark channel leading to the maze in which Allen died of suffocation, nor
of the terrace where Pym and the half-breed stood and watched natives in canoes attack the
schooner, then heard the explosion that claimed thousands of victims.
Nothing was left anymore of the hillside that had caved in during that manufactured
landslide, from which the Jane’s captain, his mate Patterson, and five of his men had managed
to escape . . .
Likewise there wasn’t any sign of that maze whose intertwining loops were shaped like
letters, the said letters forming words, the said words making up a phrase reproduced in Pym’s
text—that phrase whose first line means “to be white” and its second, “region of the south.”
So they’d vanished—the hillside, the village of Klock-klock, and everything that made this
island seem so uncanny. As it stood now, the secret of those incredible discoveries would prob-
ably never be revealed to anybody!
All we could do was head back to our schooner by going east up the coast.
Hunt then took us over the site where houses had been set up for curing sea cucumbers,
but all we saw of them was rubble.
Needless to add, that shriek of Tekeli-li didn’t ring in our ears—that shriek let out by the
islanders and those gigantic black birds in space . . . on every side, silence and nothingness!5
We made one last stop at the locality where Pym and Peters got hold of the canoe that
took them toward the highest latitudes . . . to that horizon of gloomy vapor that was torn in
places, allowing them to see the huge human figure . . . the white giant . . .
Arms folded, Hunt devoured the endless expanse of sea with his eyes.
“Well, Hunt?” I said to him.
Hunt didn’t seem to hear me—and didn’t even turn his head my way.
“What are we waiting for?” I asked him, tapping him on the shoulder.
He trembled at my touch, giving me a look that went to my heart.
“Come on, Hunt,” Hurliguerly snapped. “You planning to put down roots at the tip
of this rock? Don’t you see the Halbrane out there waiting for us? Off you go! We’ll up anchor
tomorrow! There’s nothing more to do here!”

It struck me that Hunt’s quivering lips echoed that word “nothing,” while his whole bear-
ing objected to the bosun’s words.
The dinghy took us back to the ship.
Captain Guy hadn’t left his cabin.
Not getting orders to cast off, West paced around in the stern waiting for them.
I went and sat at the foot of the mainmast, studying the wide open sea in front of us.
Just then Len Guy came out of the deckhouse, his face pale and tense.
“Mr. Jeorling,” he told me, “I realize that I’ve done everything possible! Can I hold
out any hope for my brother William and his companions after this? No! We’ve got to turn
back . . . before winter . . .”
Captain Guy straightened and shot one last look at Tsalal Island.6
“Tomorrow, Jem,” he said, “tomorrow we’ll cast off at the crack of dawn.”
Just then a harsh voice spoke these words:
“What about Pym . . . poor Pym?”
That voice . . . I recognized it . . .
It was the voice I’d heard in my dream!

PART TWO
17. What About Pym?
L
en Guy’s decision to leave his Tsalal anchorage and head north again at day-
break . . . this cruise ending so fruitlessly . . . our unwillingness to look for the
Jane’s castaways in another part of the Antarctic Ocean—all these things left my
mind in turmoil.1
Excuse me? The Halbrane would desert the six men Patterson’s diary said were still in
these waterways just months ago? Her crew weren’t going to do their duty to the end as human
decency demanded? When that earthquake made Tsalal Island unfit to live on, the Jane’s survi-
vors might have taken refuge on some other continent or island—and we weren’t going to do
everything we could to find it?
Yet it was only the end of December, the day after Christmas, almost the start of the
warm season. Two full months of summer would let us navigate all over this sector of Ant-
arctica. We would have time to get back across the polar circle before the dreaded cold sea-
son . . . and by that point the Halbrane would be ready to head north.
Yes, this clearly was the “pro” side of the issue. I’m forced to admit, however, that the
“con” side was backed by a series of perfectly valid arguments.
To begin with, up to now the Halbrane hadn’t been sailing at random. In following the
course Pym indicated, she’d been heading for a clearly defined destination—Tsalal Island. Poor
Patterson had stated that this island—whose coordinates were known—was where our captain
would pick up William Guy and the five sailors who’d escaped from the Klock-klock ambush.
Now then, they were no longer to be found on Tsalal Island—nor any of the local populace,
wiped out by some undetermined catastrophe on some unknown date. Had they managed to
get away before the aforementioned catastrophe, which took place after Patterson left, in other
words, seven to eight months ago?
In any case the issue boiled down to a very simple choice between two alternatives:
Either the Jane’s men had perished and the Halbrane needed to go home without delay, or
they’d survived and it was crucial to not give up the search.

All right, say we went with the second alternative, didn’t this entail scouring every island
the earthquake had spared in that western group mentioned in the narrative? Plus, instead of
that group, couldn’t the escapees from Tsalal Island have set foot on some other part of Ant-
arctica? Weren’t there many islands in the middle of this open sea that Pym and the half-breed,
heading Lord knows where, had gone past in their boat?
But if their canoe had been carried beyond latitude 84°, where could they have gone
ashore, since no land—either island or continent—has turned up in that immense stretch
of water? What’s more, I can’t help repeating that the end of the narrative features nothing
but oddities, improbabilities, and puzzlements—hallucinations hatched by a half-demented
brain. . . . Ah, now’s the time when Dirk Peters would have come in handy, if Len Guy had
been lucky enough to find him in his Illinois hideaway and he’d come with us on the Halbrane!
Therefore, to get back to the issue: in case we decided to continue the cruise, toward what
part of those mysterious regions would our schooner need to steer? Wouldn’t she be reduced
to sailing, so to speak, by guess and by golly?
And then there was the added difficulty that the Halbrane’s crew would be all set to head
back to the seas of America and Africa—would they agree to run the risks of navigating
through so much unexplored territory, of plunging deeper into the polar regions, of colliding
frightfully with some insuperable ice barrier?
In essence the antarctic winter would return in some weeks with plenty of nasty weather
and chilly temperatures in attendance. This sea that was currently open would freeze over com-
pletely and wouldn’t be navigable anymore. Now then, that meant being confined in the ice for
seven or eight months with no guarantee of even putting to shore somewhere—wouldn’t that
scare off the bravest sailors? When it came to our crew’s safety, did the ship’s officers have the
right to risk it in the faint hope of recovering the Jane’s survivors, who weren’t to be found on
Tsalal Island?
This is what Captain Len Guy had been thinking over since the day before. Then, grief-
stricken, having no more hopes of finding his brother and his countrymen, he issued his orders
in a voice trembling with emotion:
“We’ll leave tomorrow at daybreak!”
And I felt it must have taken as much strength of mind for him to turn back as he’d
shown in going forward. But he’d made his decision, and he simply couldn’t bottle up the
unspeakable anguish that this cruise’s failure caused him.
As for me, I admit that I was deeply disappointed, and nobody could have been more
troubled by our expedition’s ending under these dismal circumstances. After getting so pas-
sionately caught up in the Jane’s adventures, I wasn’t willing to call off the search, so long as we
could continue on through the waterways of Antarctica . . .
And so many mariners in our shoes would have jumped at the chance to settle the geo-
graphic challenge of the antarctic pole! In essence the Halbrane had traveled beyond the regions
visited by Weddell’s ships, since Tsalal Island lay less than seven degrees from the spot where
the meridians crossed. No obstacle seemed to stand in the way of her advancing to those final
latitudes. Thanks to this season’s exceptional conditions, might not the winds and currents
take her to the tip of the earth’s axis, now just 400 miles away . . . ? If the open sea stretched

that far, it would be the work of a couple of days. . . . If there was a landmass, it would be the
work of a couple of weeks. . . . In actuality, though, none of us thought about the South Pole,
and its conquest wasn’t the reason our Halbrane had been facing the Antarctic Ocean’s dangers!
And even supposing Len Guy wanted to press his investigations farther, then got West,
the bosun, and the crew’s oldtimers to agree, could he persuade the twenty recruits he’d hired in
the Falklands, especially since Hearne the master sealer went on and on about how awful things
were? No, these men made up the majority of the crew, and since Captain Guy had already
taken them as far as Tsalal Island, he couldn’t possibly count on them. Surely they would refuse
to venture deeper into the antarctic seas, which must have been one of the reasons the captain
decided to head north again, despite the intense anguish he felt.
Consequently we thought the cruise was over with, so you can imagine our surprise when
we heard these words:
“What about Pym . . . poor Pym?”
I turned around.
It was Hunt who’d just spoken.
Standing stock-still beside the deckhouse, that strange individual was devouring the hori-
zon with his eyes . . .
We were so used to not hearing Hunt’s voice on the schooner (these may have been the
very first words he’d uttered in public since coming on board), the crew gathered around him in
curiosity. Did this unexpected interruption herald—I had a kind of hunch about this—some
phenomenal revelation?
West motioned the crew off to the bow. In addition to the first officer, that left just
the bosun, Holt the master sailmaker, and Hardie the master caulker, who were automatically
allowed to remain with us.
“What did you say?” Captain Guy asked, going up to Hunt.
“I said . . . what about Pym . . . poor Pym?”
“Well, how dare you bring up the name of that man? His abominable advice led my
brother to this island where the Jane was destroyed, where most of her crew were slaughtered,
where we didn’t find one person left out of those who were still here seven months ago!”
And since Hunt kept silent:
“Answer me!” Len Guy snapped, heartsick and losing control.
Hunt’s hesitation didn’t come from not knowing what to answer, but, as we would soon
find out, from a kind of difficulty in expressing his thoughts. Yet they were quite clear, though
his sentences were choppy and his words pretty disjointed. In short, he had a sort of language
of his own, phrases sometimes full of imagery, pronunciation heavily stamped with the harsh
accent of Indians out west.
“There . . .” he said. “Don’t know how to tell things . . . tongue sticks . . . if you take my
meaning . . . I talked about Pym . . . poor Pym, eh?”
“Yes,” our first officer countered in a curt tone, “and what do you have to say about
Pym?”
“I say . . . we mustn’t leave him behind.”
“Leave him behind!” I exclaimed.

“No . . . never . . . !” Hunt continued. “Imagine . . . ! It’d be cruel, just too cruel . . . ! We
have to look for him . . .”
“Look for him?” Captain Len Guy echoed.
“That’s why I shipped out on the Halbrane . . . if you take my meaning . . . aye, to find
poor Pym . . . !”
“Then where is he,” I asked, “if he isn’t down in some grave . . . in his hometown
cemetery?”
“No . . . he’s where he still is . . . alone . . . all alone,” Hunt answered, pointing south.
“And since then, the sun’s come back above that horizon eleven times now.”2
Obviously this was Hunt’s way of referring to the antarctic regions, but what was he
getting at?
“Don’t you know that Pym’s dead?” Len Guy said.
“Dead!” Hunt shot back, underscoring the word with an expressive gesture. “No . . . !
Listen to me . . . ! I know things . . . if you take my meaning. . . . He’s not dead . . .”
“Look here, Hunt,” I resumed. “You remember—in the last chapter of Pym’s adventures,
doesn’t Edgar Allan Poe tell us he met a sudden and distressing end?”
True, our American author didn’t describe how Pym’s amazing life had come to a close,
and let me emphasize that this had always struck me as pretty suspicious! If we were to believe
Hunt, Pym had never come back from the polar regions, so would the mystery of his death
finally be cleared up?
“Explain yourself, Hunt,” Captain Guy ordered, sharing my surprise. “Think . . . take
your time . . . and say what you have to say!”
And while Hunt mopped his brow, as if gathering some distant recollections, I made this
comment to Len Guy:
“There’s something odd about the fellow’s coming forward, and if he isn’t crazy—”
The bosun shook his head at these words, because in his view Hunt didn’t enjoy good
mental health.
The latter picked up on this, and in a harsh voice:
“No . . . not crazy . . .” he exclaimed. “And crazy people back there . . . on the prai-
ries . . . we respect ’em, even if we don’t believe ’em! And me . . . you have to believe me . . . !
No . . . ! Pym’s not dead!”
“Poe claims he is,” I replied.
“Aye . . . I know . . . Poe in Baltimore. . . . But . . . he never laid eyes on poor
Pym . . . never . . .”
“Excuse me?” Len Guy exclaimed. “The two men hadn’t met each other?”
“No!”
“And it wasn’t Pym himself who told his adventures to Poe?”
“No . . . captain . . . no!” Hunt answered. “Back there . . . in Baltimore . . . Poe just had
the notes Pym wrote, from the day he hid on the Grampus to the last hour . . . the last . . . if you
take my meaning . . . !”
Obviously Hunt was afraid he wouldn’t be understood, so he said this phrase over and
over. But I can’t deny that his statements seemed impossible to go along with. Thus, accord-

ing to him, Arthur Gordon Pym and Edgar Allan Poe would never have been in contact?
Would our American author have been acquainted only with Pym’s notes, composed day by
day throughout that whole incredible voyage?
“Then who brought his journal back?” Captain Guy asked, clutching Hunt by the hand.
“Pym’s friend . . . who loved him like a son, his poor Pym . . . Dirk Peters the half-
breed . . . who came back alone from down there . . .”
“Dirk Peters the half-breed!” I exclaimed.
“Aye.”
“Alone?”
“Alone.”
“And where might Pym be?”
“There!” Hunt answered in a forceful voice, leaning toward those southern regions where
his eyes stayed stubbornly focused.
Could these statements of his overcome the skepticism we all felt? Certainly not! Accord-
ingly Holt elbowed Hurliguerly in the side and they both seemed to give Hunt pitying looks,
while West watched him without hinting at his feelings. As for Captain Guy, he pantomimed
to me that nothing worthwhile was to be gotten from the poor devil, whose mind must have
been disturbed for a good while.
And yet when I studied Hunt, I thought I caught his eyes giving off the kind of look
that radiates truthfulness.
Then I knuckled down to cross-examining Hunt, asking him quick, careful questions,
which he attempted to answer with a series of yes responses—and with complete consistency,
as you’ll see.
“Look here,” I asked, “after Pym and Peters got picked up from the Grampus’s hull, did
they really come to Tsalal Island aboard the Jane?”
“Aye.”
“During Captain William Guy’s visit to the village of Klock-klock, did Pym get separated
from his companions along with the half-breed and one of the sailors?”
“Aye,” Hunt answered. “Allen was the sailor . . . almost right away he got smothered
under the stones . . .”
“Then, from the hilltop, the other two watched while the schooner was attacked and
destroyed?”
“Aye.”
“Then, some time later, they both left the island after laying hold of one of the boats,
which the natives weren’t able to recapture?”
“Aye.”
“And twenty days after that, they arrived in front of the curtain of vapor, then both of
them were swept down into the chasm under the cataract?”
Hesitating, stammering vague words, Hunt didn’t answer with a yes response this
time . . . it seemed as though he was trying to rekindle the dying embers of his memo-
ry. . . . Finally he looked at me and shook his head:
“No . . . not both, if you take my meaning,” he answered. “Peters . . . never said that . . .”

“Peters?” Len Guy instantly demanded. “You met Dirk Peters?”
“Aye.”
“Where?”
“Vandalia . . . in the state of Illinois.”
“And you learned all these details about the voyage from him?”
“From him.”
“And he came back alone . . . alone . . . from down there . . . after he’d left Pym?”
“Alone.”
“Then tell us about it . . . tell us about it!” I exclaimed.
In fact I was boiling over with impatience. What! Hunt had met Peters, and the half-
breed had told him things I thought were doomed to remain mysteries forever! He knew the
conclusion of those amazing adventures!
And then, in choppy but understandable sentences, Hunt answered:
“Aye, there . . . a curtain of vapor . . . the half-breed often told me . . . if you take my
meaning. . . . Both of ’em, Arthur and him, were in the canoe from Tsalal Island . . . then . . . an
ice slab . . . a great big ice slab came at ’em. . . . When it hit, Peters fell overboard . . . but he
could hang onto the ice slab . . . climb onto it . . . and . . . if you take my meaning . . . he saw
the canoe drifting far away on the current . . . very far away . . . too far away . . . ! Pym tried to
get back to his friend, but he failed . . . he couldn’t . . . the canoe kept going . . . kept going . . . !
And Pym . . . poor dear Pym got carried off . . . he’s the one who didn’t come back . . . and he’s
there . . . still there!”
Honestly, if the fellow had been Peters himself, he couldn’t have spoken about “poor
dear Pym” with more feeling, force, and heartfelt sincerity!
But the truth was out—and why would we doubt it? So it was in front of the curtain of
vapor that Pym and the half-breed had gotten separated from each other?
Even so, if Pym had kept advancing toward the highest latitudes, how had his companion
Peters managed to go back north . . . go back past the ice barrier . . . go back past the Antarctic
Circle . . . go back to America, where he’d carried those notes that he passed on to Poe?
We went over these various issues in detail with Hunt, and he answered them all—in line,
he said, with what the half-breed had told him many times.
According to Hunt’s account, Peters had Pym’s diary in his pocket while he was hanging
onto the ice slab, which is how the half-breed rescued the journal that he made available to the
American storyteller.
“I’m telling you things I got from Peters . . . if you take my meaning,” Hunt said again.
“Pym, poor Pym . . . he hollered as loud as he could, but that drift carried him off . . . soon he
was out of sight past the curtain of vapor. The half-breed, he caught fish and ate ’em raw . . . a
countercurrent carried him back to Tsalal Island, and he went ashore, half starved to death . . .”
“To Tsalal Island!” Captain Guy exclaimed. “And how long had he been away from
there?”
“Three weeks . . . aye, three weeks at most . . . that’s what Peters told me.”
“Then,” Len Guy asked, “shouldn’t he have found everybody left from the Jane’s crew—
my brother William and the men who’d survived with him?”

“No,” Hunt answered, “and Peters always figured they’d died . . . aye, every last one!
Nobody else was on the island . . .”
“Nobody?” I echoed, quite surprised by this statement.
“Nobody” Hunt asserted.
“But what about the Tsalal natives?”
“Nobody . . . I’m telling you . . . the island was empty . . . aye, empty!”
Which flatly contradicted certain facts we were sure about. After all, when Peters got
back to Tsalal Island, it could be that the local populace—in the grip of Lord knows what
fears—were already looking for a refuge among the southwestern islands, and that William
Guy and his companions were still hiding in the gorges by Klock-klock. This explained why the
half-breed hadn’t run into them and also why the Jane’s survivors had no problems with natives
during their eleven-year stay on the island. Then again, if Patterson had left them there seven
months ago and they weren’t there now, they must have vacated Tsalal Island after the earth-
quake made it unfit to live on.
“Therefore,” Captain Guy went on, “when Peters came back, there weren’t any more
people on the island?”
“Nobody . . .” Hunt said again, “nobody . . . the half-breed didn’t find a single native.”3
“And then what did Peters do?” the bosun asked.
“Somebody left a boat behind . . . if you take my meaning,” Hunt answered. “At the
far end of that bay . . . it had some dried meat and several kegs of drinking water. The half-
breed jumped inside it. . . . A southerly wind . . . aye . . . southerly . . . very brisk . . . same as
helped the countercurrent take his ice slab to Tsalal Island—it blew him along for weeks and
weeks . . . down the side of the ice barrier . . . into a channel through it . . . you need to believe
me . . . because I’m just repeating what Peters told me a hundred times . . . aye, a channel . . . !
And he made it to the Antarctic Circle . . .”
“And beyond it?” I inquired.
“Beyond it . . . he got picked up by an American whaler, the Sandy Hook, and she took him
back to America.”
Therefore, accepting Hunt’s account as the truth (and maybe it was), this was how that
dreadful drama of the antarctic regions had played out, at least where Peters was concerned.
Back in the United States, the half-breed got in contact with Edgar Allan Poe, editor at that
time of the Southern Literary Messenger, who published this prodigious narrative from Pym’s notes,
which weren’t imaginary as originally thought and didn’t have a definitive conclusion.
As for any imaginative touches in the work by our American writer, surely they were the
oddities reported in the last chapters—unless, while delirious during his final hours, Pym did
believe he saw those prodigious, uncanny phenomena inside the curtain of vapor . . .
Be that as it may, the one thing we’d gained was that Poe had never met Pym. That’s why,
wanting to leave the reader in nail-biting suspense, he’d had Pym die a death that was “sudden
and distressing” but didn’t hint at its nature or cause.
However, though Pym never came back, could we reasonably suppose he hadn’t promptly
perished after being separated from his companion . . . that he was still alive, though eleven
years had gone by since his disappearance?

“Aye . . . aye,” Hunt replied.
And he said this with the conviction Peters had breathed into his soul when both of
them lived in the town of Vandalia in the heart of Illinois.
Now, were there grounds for wondering if Hunt was in his right mind? Wasn’t he the
one who had snuck into my cabin in a deranged condition—I was sure of it now—and had
mumbled these words in my ear:
“Pym . . . poor Pym?”
Yes . . . ! And I hadn’t been dreaming!
To sum up, if everything Hunt just said was true, if all he was doing was faithfully
reporting secrets Peters had confided in him, what were we to think when he kept saying in a
voice that was both urgent and pleading:
“Pym’s not dead . . . ! Pym’s still there . . . ! We mustn’t leave poor Pym behind!”
When I’d finished cross-examining Hunt, Len Guy came out of his trance deeply trou-
bled, ordering in a sharp voice:
“All crewmen aft!”4
When the ship’s company had gathered around him, he said:
“Hunt, I’m going to ask you some serious questions, so listen and think carefully before
you answer them!”
Looking up, Hunt swept his eyes over the Halbrane’s sailors.
“Are you claiming, Hunt, that everything you’ve just told us about Arthur Gordon Pym
is true?”
“Aye,” Hunt answered, emphasizing his claim with a fierce gesture.
“You’d met Dirk Peters?”
“Aye.”
“You lived in Illinois with him for a few years?”
“For nine years.”
“And he often talked to you about these things?”
“Aye.”
“And you have no doubts in your mind that he spoke the exact truth to you?”
“No doubts.”
“All right, didn’t it ever occur to him that some of the Jane’s men could have been left on
Tsalal Island?”
“No.”
“He thought William Guy and all of his companions must have perished during the
landslide in the hills by Klock-klock?”
“Aye . . . and according to what he said over and over, Pym thought so too.”
“And where did you last see Peters?”
“In Vandalia.”
“How long ago?”
“Two years back.”
“And of the two of you, was it you . . . or he . . . who left Vandalia first?”
I seemed to catch a slight hesitation in Hunt’s answer:

“We left it together . . .” he said.
“And you went . . . ?”
“To the Falklands.”
“And he . . .”
“He . . . !” Hunt repeated.
And his eyes finally came to rest on Martin Holt, our master sailmaker, whose life he’d
saved during that storm while endangering his own.
“Well,” Len Guy went on, “do you understand what I’m asking you?”
“Aye.”
“Answer me then! When Peters left Illinois, did he go out of the country?”
“Aye.”
“Keep talking . . . he went . . . ?”
“To the Falklands.”
“And where is he now?”
“In front of you!”

18. Reaching a Decision
D
irk Peters! Hunt was Dirk Peters, the half-breed . . . Pym’s devoted companion,
whom Captain Len Guy had wasted so much time looking for in the United
States, and whose presence might furnish us with a new reason for continuing
this cruise . . .
I’ve included enough clues in my yarn for readers to have spotted Hunt as Peters many
pages back, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d expected this plot twist, in fact I would be
amazed if they hadn’t.
In truth, making this connection couldn’t be more natural or logical: Captain Guy and I
had often reread Poe’s book, and its physical portrait of Peters is drawn with detailed strokes—
so why hadn’t we suspected that the half-breed and the sailor boarding in the Falklands were the
same man? Didn’t this go to show that the two of us weren’t outstandingly perceptive? Granted,
yet it’s understandable up to a point.
Yes, everything about Hunt indicated he was of Indian origin the same as Peters (who
belonged to the Upsarokas tribe out west), and maybe this should have put us on the right
track. But please remember the circumstances in which Hunt approached Len Guy, circum-
stances that didn’t give us any reason to question his identity. Hunt lived in the Falklands, a
long way from Illinois, in the midst of sailors of every nationality waiting to ship out on a
whaler during fishing season. . . . He’d been extremely unsociable with everybody since coming
on board. This was the first time we’d had a chance to hear him speak, and till now nothing—at
least in his manner—led us to think he wasn’t going by his real name. . . . And as we just saw, he
came out with the name Dirk Peters only when the captain finally put pressure on him.
True, Hunt was a pretty amazing fellow, a breed apart, somebody who caught your atten-
tion. Yes, now it all came back to me—his peculiar behavior after the schooner cut the Antarc-
tic Circle, after she started navigating the waters of this open sea . . . his looking continually at
the southern horizon . . . impulsively pointing that direction. . . . Then, too, it seemed like he’d
already been to Bennet’s Islet—where he collected rubble from the Jane’s shipwreck—and Tsalal

Island on top of it. There he took the lead as if we’d hired him as trail guide, and we followed
him across that devastated plain to the location of the village of Klock-klock, to the mouth of
that ravine near the hill, which had mazes dug inside that were gone without a trace. Yes . . . all
of this should have tipped us off and given rise to the notion (in me at least) that this Hunt
fellow could have been mixed up in Pym’s adventures!
Well, both Captain Guy and his passenger Jeorling needed eye surgery! I admit it, the
two of us had been blind as bats—and yet certain pages of Poe’s book should have led us to
foresee this!
To sum up, Hunt was really Peters beyond a shadow of a doubt. Though he was eleven
years older, he still resembled Pym’s portrait of him. True, he was no longer as ferocious-
looking as the narrative says—and anyhow, according to Pym himself, he wasn’t as “ferocious
as he appeared.” So he hadn’t changed physically at all—his short stature, powerful muscles,
limbs that were “of the most Herculean mold,” hands that were “so enormously thick and
broad as hardly to retain a human shape,” bowed arms and legs, head of prodigious size, mouth
gaping the whole width of his face, and teeth that were “exceedingly long and protruding, and
never even partially covered . . . by the lips.” As I’ve indicated, this description fit our Falkland
recruit to a tee. But you no longer caught any expression on his face that suggested “the mer-
riment . . . of a demon.”
Actually the half-breed had changed with age, experience, life’s setbacks, and the dreadful
dramas in which he’d played a part—incidents “entirely out of the range of human experi-
ence . . . far beyond the limits of human credulity,” as Pym says. Yes, like a rasp, those ordeals
had filed down Peters’s mental outlook. It didn’t make any difference! He was still the loyal
companion who so often had looked after Pym: Dirk Peters, who loved him like a son and
never lost—not ever!—his hope of someday finding him again in Antarctica’s fearful wastes!
Now, why had Peters hidden in the Falklands under the name Hunt? Why had he kept
traveling incognito after boarding the Halbrane? Why didn’t he say who he was, once he knew
Len Guy’s plans, knew our captain would do all he could to rescue his countrymen by follow-
ing the Jane’s course?
Why? Surely because he was afraid his name would be a source of horror. In truth wasn’t
he the man who’d been mixed up in those appalling events on the Grampus . . . who’d struck
down the sailor Parker . . . who’d feasted on Parker’s flesh and slaked his thirst with Parker’s
blood! To have revealed his true name as he’d just done, he must have been hoping this revela-
tion would cause the Halbrane to try and find Pym!
Therefore, after living for a few years in Illinois, the half-breed went and took up resi-
dence in the Falklands, meaning to grab the first chance that came his way to head back to
the antarctic seas. When he shipped out on the Halbrane, was he figuring to persuade Len
Guy—after our captain retrieved his countrymen from Tsalal Island—to keep on toward the
highest latitudes, to continue the expedition in order to help Pym? And yet what sensible man
could think the poor fellow was still around after eleven years? At least Tsalal Island had the
wherewithal to guarantee that Captain William Guy and his companions could stay alive, and
besides, Patterson’s diary said they were still there when he left them. As for Arthur Gordon
Pym being alive . . .

Nevertheless, faced with what Peters claimed (which, I must admit, didn’t rest on any-
thing concrete), my mind wasn’t as outraged as it should have been. Not at all! And the half-
breed troubled me deeply when he pleaded: “Pym’s not dead . . . ! Pym’s still there . . . ! We
mustn’t leave poor Pym behind!”
And then I thought about Edgar Allan Poe and wondered what his reaction would be—
what discomfort he might feel—if the Halbrane brought back the man he said had died under
“sudden and distressing” circumstances!
No doubt about it, since I’d decided to get involved in the Halbrane’s cruise, I wasn’t the same
man anymore—I wasn’t the practical, logical fellow I used to be!1 When it came to Pym, I felt that
Peters and I were two hearts throbbing as one! If we left Tsalal Island and headed north again to
the Atlantic, I would view it as running out on a moral responsibility, the responsibility to rescue
somebody in trouble, somebody left behind in the frozen wastes of Antarctica!
True, it would be risking a rebuff to ask Captain Guy to take his schooner deeper into
these seas, to get a new commitment from his crew after they’d already braved so many dangers
for nothing—and anyhow, was it my place to step in at this point? And yet I felt that Peters
was counting on me to argue poor Pym’s case!
A pretty long silence followed the half-breed’s announcement. For sure, nobody had
dreamed of questioning his truthfulness. He’d said: I’m Dirk Peters, and Dirk Peters he was.2
As for Pym, his never going back to America, getting separated from his companion, then
being carried off to the polar regions in his Tsalal canoe, these were believable events on the
face of it, and nothing suggested that Peters hadn’t told the truth. But whether Pym was still
alive as the half-breed insisted, and whether it was our duty to run a slew of new risks and start
looking for him as Peters asked—that was another story.
But even though I’d decided I would go to bat for Peters, I was afraid to step onto a
battleground where I risked getting clobbered at the outset, so I fell back on a time-tested
argument—namely, we should resume our quest for Captain William Guy and the five sailors
we hadn’t found any traces of on Tsalal Island.
“My friends,” I said, “before we make any hard-and-fast decisions, let’s be calm and use our
heads. If we give up on our expedition just when it might have a chance of succeeding, wouldn’t
we be setting ourselves up for a lifetime of regret and bitter remorse? Think about it, captain—
and you too, my friends. Less than seven months ago, poor Patterson left your countrymen
alive and well on Tsalal Island! If they were there at that time, it means the island gave them the
wherewithal to stay alive for eleven years—and with nothing to fear from the islanders, a segment
of whom died of unknown causes while the rest probably relocated to some neighboring island.
Obviously that was the case, and I don’t see what objections you can raise to this analysis.”
Nobody had a comeback to what I’d just said: there weren’t any comebacks.
“If we haven’t met up with the Jane’s captain and his men,” I went on more aggressively,
“it’s because they were forced to leave Tsalal Island after Patterson’s departure. What for? In
my opinion it’s because the earthquake had wreaked such havoc, the island wasn’t fit to live on.
Now then, a native boat was all they needed to ride the northerly current to another island or
some part of the antarctic landmass. I don’t think it’s too outlandish to claim this is what took
place. In any case, what I know and will keep saying is that the welfare of your countrymen
depends on this search, and we won’t have accomplished a single thing if we don’t stay at it.”

I gave my listeners an inquiring look . . . I got no response.
Captain Guy, in the grip of conflicting emotions, bowed his head and acknowledged
I was right: by bringing up our moral responsibilities, I’d pointed to the only action well-
meaning people could take!
“And what are we dealing with?” I threw out after a brief silence. “Covering a few degrees
of latitude, and doing it while the sea is navigable, when the time of year guarantees us two
months of fair weather and we’ll have nothing to fear from the polar winter—so I’m not asking
you to brave its hardships! Are we going to hang back when the Halbrane’s amply provisioned,
when her crew are fit and at full complement, when no illnesses have broken out on board?
Are we going to be scared off by imaginary dangers? Are we going to lack the courage to even
travel . . . from here . . . to there?”
And I pointed to the southern horizon. Without a word Peters pointed to it as well, mak-
ing an insistent gesture that did the talking for him.
All eyes still stayed on us, but once again there wasn’t any response!
No question, the schooner would be able to venture into those waterways for eight to
nine weeks without much risk. It was December 26, and earlier expeditions had taken place
in January, February, and even March—those of Bellinghausen, Biscoe, Kendall, and Weddell,
which all managed to head north again before the freeze closed every exit. What’s more, though
their ships hadn’t gone as far into the polar regions as the Halbrane would, they didn’t have the
favorable conditions we could hope to enjoy.
I made the most of these various arguments, watching for signs of agreement from any-
body willing to shoulder his responsibilities . . .
Utter silence . . . all eyes were lowered.
And yet I hadn’t once mentioned Pym’s name or backed Peters’s proposition. If I
had, my answer would have been shrugs of the shoulder, and maybe threats against my
person!
So I was wondering whether or not my heartfelt beliefs had gotten through to my com-
panions, when Captain Guy took the floor:
“Peters,” he asked, “would you say that after you and Pym left Tsalal Island, you glimpsed
some lands to the south?”
“Aye . . . lands,” the half-breed answered. “Islands or a continent . . . if you take my
meaning . . . and I think . . . I’m sure . . . that’s where Pym . . . poor Pym . . . is waiting for
somebody to come rescue him . . .”
“Maybe William Guy and his companions are waiting there too,” I blurted out, trying to
lead the discussion back to safer ground.
And in fact the lands they’d glimpsed were an honest-to-goodness destination, a destina-
tion we could easily reach! The Halbrane wouldn’t be navigating at random, she would be going
to a place where it was possible the Jane’s survivors had taken refuge!
After mulling things over for a few seconds, Len Guy took the floor again.
“And is it true, Peters,” he said, “that beyond latitude 84° the horizon was closed off
by that curtain of vapor figuring in the narrative? Did you see it . . . see it with your own
eyes . . . and that cataract in the air . . . and that chasm Pym’s boat vanished into?”
After looking from one to the other of us, the half-breed shook his huge head.

“Dunno,” he said. “What’re you asking, captain . . . ? A curtain of vapor . . . ? Aye, may-
be . . . and also the sight of lands to the south . . .”
Obviously Peters had never read Poe’s book, and it was quite likely he didn’t know how to
read. After delivering Pym’s journal, he gave no further thought to its publication. Retreating
first to Illinois, later to the Falklands, he didn’t puzzle his head over the uproar caused by this
literary work or over the fantastically unbelievable conclusion our great author added to those
strange adventures . . . !
And besides, given Pym’s fascination with the uncanny, couldn’t he have imagined he’d seen
those phenomenal things, thanks to his extravagant mind-set?
Then, for the first time since this discussion started, Jem West’s voice chimed in. As to
whether our first officer sided with my views, whether he’d been motivated by my arguments,
or whether he was in favor of continuing the cruise, I couldn’t have said. In any case he took
it on himself to ask:
“Captain, what are your orders?”
Len Guy turned and faced his crew. Both oldtimers and newcomers gathered around him
while Hearne the master sealer hung back a little, ready to step in if he judged he needed to.
Captain Guy gave the bosun and his comrades an inquiring look, knowing they were
wholeheartedly devoted to him. I’m not too sure he sensed any kind of inclination in them to
continue the voyage, because I heard these whispered words come to his lips:
“Oh, if it was only up to me . . . if everybody would promise to help!”
Which meant that without a consensus of opinion, we couldn’t start on this new search.
Then Hearne took the floor—in no uncertain terms.
“Captain,” he said, “two months have gone by since we left the Falklands. Now then, my
companions were hired for a trip beyond the ice barrier that wasn’t supposed to take ’em any
farther than Tsalal Island—”
“That isn’t so!” Len Guy exclaimed, flaring up at Hearne’s assertion. “No, that isn’t
so . . . !3 I recruited all of you for a cruise where I have the right to go anyplace I like!”
“Oh, excuse me, captain,” Hearne continued in a satirical tone, “but here we are where
no mariners go, where no ship besides the Jane has ever ventured. So before it gets cold, my
comrades and I think it’s time we returned to the Falklands—from there you can sail back to
Tsalal Island, or all the way to the pole . . . or anyplace you like.”
Others muttered their agreement. Without a doubt, the master sealer had conveyed the
feelings of the majority, which consisted of all the newcomers on the crew. To buck their opin-
ion, to require obedience from men in no mood to obey, and to venture under these circum-
stances into the far-off waterways of Antarctica—this would be a foolhardy move, a lunatic
move that would lead to disaster.
But West stepped in, turning and speaking to Hearne in a dangerous voice:
“Who said you could talk?”
“The captain raised these issues with us,” Hearne countered. “I’ve got a right to respond.”
And he spoke these words in such an uppity way, our first officer—known for his self-
control—was about to give his temper free rein, when Captain Guy signaled him to hold off
and merely said:

“Easy, Jem! We won’t do anything unless we’re in complete agreement!”
Then, addressing the bosun:
“Your verdict, Hurliguerly?”
“It’s pretty cut and dried, captain,” the bosun answered. “Whatever your orders are, I’ll
obey ’em. So long as there’s still a chance of rescuing William Guy and the others, it’s our duty
to hang in there!”
The bosun paused for a second, while several sailors—Drap, Rogers, Gratian, Stern, and
Burry—nodded their full approval.
“As for this Pym fellow—” he went on.
“We aren’t concerned with Pym,” Len Guy countered with unusual heat, “but with my
brother William . . . and his companions.”
And when I saw Peters about to object, I grabbed him by the arm—and though he was
trembling with anger, he kept still.
No, this wasn’t the time to reopen Pym’s case! We needed to leave that for another day,
be ready to run with any piece of luck that turned up as we went, let the men take the lead, and
proceed unconsciously or even instinctively—I saw no other way of going about it. Even so,
when it came to getting help for Peters, I felt that more direct methods were called for.
Captain Guy kept cross-examining the crew. He wanted to know by name who he could
count on. The oldtimers all agreed to his propositions, swearing to never question his orders
and to go with him as far as he felt like going.
The gallant fellows inspired a few of the recruits to put in their oar—three in all, English
in nationality. Nevertheless the majority seemed to side with Hearne. For them, the end point
of the Halbrane’s cruise was Tsalal Island. Hence their refusal to continue beyond it, plus their
categorical demands to head north again and clear the ice barrier at the most favorable time
of year.
There were close to twenty of them who would have seconded this motion, and I’m sure
the master sealer had transmitted their true feelings. Now then, if we made them lift one finger
to work the schooner while she headed south, it would be an invitation to mutiny.
To change the minds of these sailors influenced by Hearne, the only thing we could do
was appeal to their selfishness and feed their greed.
I took the floor again, and in a forceful voice that left no doubts about the seriousness
of my proposition:
“Seamen of the Halbrane, hear me out!” I said. “Just as different nations have done during
their voyages of discovery in the polar regions, I’m offering a bonus to the ship’s company! For
every degree beyond the 84th parallel, our crew will receive $2,000!”
Nearly $70 per man—that couldn’t fail to tempt them.*
I could tell I’d hit the bulls-eye.
“I’m going to put this promise in writing,” I added, “and give it to the captain, who’ll act
as your representative—and the sums you’ve earned will be handed over to you on your return,
regardless of the circumstances in which that comes about.”
*Equivalent to around $1,500 in today’s dollars. FPW

I waited to see how this promise would be received, and I must say I didn’t have to wait
long.
“Hooray!” the bosun called out, cueing his comrades, who joined in with virtually unani-
mous cheers of their own.
Hearne didn’t mount any opposition. He would always have the option of talking things
over at a more promising time.
So that was the bargain we struck, and to achieve my ends, I would have sacrificed a larger
sum.
But we lay just seven degrees from the South Pole—if the Halbrane had to go that far, I
would be out a tidy $14,000!*
*Equivalent to around $300,000 in today’s dollars. FPW

19. The Lost Islands
A
t the crack of dawn on Friday, December 27, the Halbrane put to sea and headed
southwest.
Work on board proceeded as usual, same discipline, same dependability.
At that point there weren’t any stresses or strains. The weather stayed fair, the
sea smooth. If these conditions kept up, the seeds of insubordination wouldn’t germinate—at
least I hoped not—and no problems would arise on that score. But lowlife types rarely use their
heads. Greedy, ignorant men have no time for obsessive imaginings. Stuck in the present, they
don’t bother with the future. Only the unvarnished truth—which brings them face to face with
reality—can knock some concern into them.
Would this truth ever come out?
As for Peters, now that we knew who he was, he didn’t have to change his little ways—
would he stay just as unsociable? I should point out that since he came clean, the crew didn’t
seem to bear him any ill will over those events aboard the Grampus—which were understand-
able, after all, given the circumstances. And furthermore, how could we forget that the half-
breed risked his life to rescue Holt? Even so, he went right on keeping to himself, ate in one
corner, slept in another, and gave the crew “a wide berth.” So did he have some other reason for
behaving this way, a reason that we didn’t know about, that might someday be revealed to us?1
Winds kept blowing from the northern quadrant (as they’d done while propelling the
Jane to Tsalal Island, then Pym’s canoe some degrees beyond it), and they were a big help to our
schooner’s progress. On a port tack, wind on our quarter, West could use every stitch of canvas
and run with this brisk, steady breeze. Our stempost cut swiftly through those clear, unclouded
waters, scooping out a white wake that trailed far behind us.
After yesterday’s dramatics Captain Guy grabbed a few hours of rest. And this rest must
have been troubled by whatever thoughts obsessed him—on the one hand, the hopes he had
for this new search, on the other, the responsibilities that went with such an expedition across
Antarctica!

I ran into him on deck the next day, while our first officer was pacing back and forth in
the stern, and he called both of us over to him.
“Mr. Jeorling,” he told me, “it cut me to the quick to make that decision to sail our
schooner north again! I felt I hadn’t done everything I should have for my poor country-
men . . . ! But I was well aware that most of the crew would have been against me if I’d tried to
take them beyond Tsalal Island.”
“In fact, captain, it would have invited insubordination on board,” I replied, “and might
ultimately have led to a mutiny breaking out—”
“A mutiny we would have settled,” West countered coolly, “simply by smacking Hearne
upside the head, since he’s the one who keeps fomenting rebellion.”
“And you wouldn’t be in the wrong, Jem,” Len Guy stated. “But after you saw justice
done, what would happen to the teamwork we need?”
“You’re right, captain,” his first officer said. “It’s smarter to handle things without resort-
ing to force. But from now on Hearne had better watch his step!”
“We’ve coerced his companions,” Captain Guy pointed out, “with those bonuses they’ve
just been promised. Love of money has improved their stamina and resilience. Mr. Jeorling’s
generosity has succeeded where our pleas certainly would have come to nothing. I can’t thank
him enough.”
“Captain,” I said, “when we were in the Falklands, I told you I wanted to go shares with
you in this undertaking. I got my chance, I hopped on it, and no thanks are called for. Let’s
reach our destination, then let’s rescue your brother William and the Jane’s five remaining sail-
ors—that’s all I ask.”
Captain Guy held out his hand to me, and I shook it heartily.
“Mr. Jeorling,” he added, “you’ve noticed that the Halbrane isn’t heading due south, though
the lands Peters glimpsed—or at least a semblance of them—are located in that direction . . .”
“I’ve noticed, captain.”
“And while we’re on the subject,” West said, “don’t forget there’s nothing in Pym’s nar-
rative about any semblance of land to the south, so we have only the half-breed’s word for it.”
“That’s true, sir,” I replied. “But is there any reason to doubt Peters? Since he came on
board, hasn’t his behavior earned our full confidence?”
“Yes, so far as his work is concerned—there I have no complaints,” West remarked.
“Nor do we question his courage or his honesty,” Captain Guy asserted. “Our high
opinion of him is borne out by his behavior aboard the Halbrane, likewise by everything he did
earlier while sailing on the Grampus and the Jane.”
“He definitely deserves that high opinion!” I added.
And I’m not sure why, but I did have a tendency to run to the half-breed’s defense. Was
it because I had a hunch he would still play a role in the course of this expedition, because he
was so positive he would find Pym again, and because I certainly had a surprising amount of
interest in this outcome?
All the same I admit that the notions Peters had about his old companion seemed to
verge on the ridiculous. Which Captain Guy didn’t fail to point out.

“We mustn’t forget, Mr. Jeorling,” he said, “that the half-breed keeps hoping that
after Pym was carried through the antarctic seas, he managed to go ashore someplace farther
south . . . and he’s still alive there!”
“Alive . . . after eleven years in these polar waterways!” West shot back.
“It’s pretty hard to believe, captain, I’ll be the first to admit,” I remarked. “Yet if you think
about it, wouldn’t it be possible for Pym to find an island south of here that’s like Tsalal Island,
where William Guy and his companions managed to stay alive over the same period of time?”
“It’s possible, Mr. Jeorling, but I don’t think it’s very probable!”
“And likewise, since we’re theorizing,” I countered, “after your countrymen left Tsalal
Island and were carried south by the same current, couldn’t they have run into Pym down there,
or maybe . . .”
I didn’t finish, because, try as I might, my theories would have fallen on deaf ears—so
this wasn’t the time to harp on the idea of hunting for Arthur Gordon Pym, not while the Jane’s
men were still out there, as they surely must have been.
Then Captain Guy returned to the point of this discussion, which, with all its digres-
sions, “kept swerving badly” as the bosun would say; so it was high time we got back on track.
“As I was explaining,” Len Guy went on, “I haven’t set our course due south, because first
I plan to scout out the coordinates of that group close to Tsalal Island, those isles located to
the west.”
“Good idea,” I agreed, “and while we look those islands over, maybe we’ll learn for sure
if the earthquake took place recently.”
“Recently—there’s no doubt about it,” Captain Guy asserted. “And it happened after
Patterson’s departure, because the Jane’s mate left his companions behind on the island!”
As you know, our views had never changed on this issue—and you know the valid reasons
behind those views.
“Didn’t Pym’s narrative say there were exactly eight islands in all?” West asked.
“Eight,” I answered, “or at least that’s what Peters got from the savage who rode in the
boat with Pym and himself. Nu-Nu even claimed the island group was governed by a sort of
overlord, a monarch named Tsalemon who lived on the smallest of the islands—and we can
check this detail with the half-breed if we need to.”
“Accordingly,” Captain Guy resumed, “it could be that the earthquake’s ravages didn’t
reach as far as those islands and they’re still populated, so we’ll stay on our guard as we get near
their coordinates.”
“Which can’t be far off,” I added. “And then, captain, who knows—your brother and his
sailors might have taken refuge on one of those islands . . . ?”
A distinct possibility but not very comforting in the last analysis, because the poor fel-
lows would have fallen back into the hands of those very savages who’d cleared out during their
stay on Tsalal Island. And then, assuming their lives had been spared, wouldn’t the Halbrane need
to use force to save them, and could she pull off such an attempt?
“Jem,” Len Guy went on, “we’re holding at eight to nine miles and we’re sure to sight land
in a few hours . . . give orders to keep a good lookout.”

“Already done, captain.”
“There’s a man in the crow’s nest?”
“Peters himself volunteered his services.”
“Fine, Jem, we can rely on his vigilance.”
“And also his eyes,” I added, “because he’s got phenomenal vision!”
Till ten o’clock the schooner kept running westward without a peep from the half-breed.
Accordingly I wondered if this group was going to pan out like the Auroras or Glass’s islands,
which we’d failed to find between the Falklands and South Georgia Island. No protrusions
broke the surface of the sea, no geographical features stood out against the horizon. Maybe
these islands kept a literally low profile, and you saw them only from one or two miles away?
Anyhow, the breeze died down noticeably as the morning wore on. The southerly current
was driving our schooner more than we would have preferred. Fortunately the wind picked
up around two o’clock in the afternoon, and West maneuvered to regain the ground he’d lost
because of the current.
For two hours the Halbrane headed the right direction at a speed of seven to eight miles
per hour, but the tiniest hilltop hadn’t poked above the ocean.
“It’s incredible that we haven’t reached the locality,” Captain Len Guy told me. “Because,
according to Pym, Tsalal Island belongs to quite a large group.”
“He doesn’t say he actually saw them while the Jane was at anchor,” I pointed out.
“You’re right, Mr. Jeorling. But I’d estimate the Halbrane has covered at least fifty miles
in this direction since morning, and we’re dealing with islands fairly close to each other . . .”
“Then, captain, we have to conclude something that isn’t at all unlikely—the group that
included Tsalal Island vanished completely during the earthquake.”
“Land off the starboard bow!” Peters shouted.
Every eye looked in that direction, but we didn’t make out a thing on the surface of the
waves. True, the half-breed was stationed in the foretop and could see things the rest of us
still couldn’t. Anyhow, given the strength of his eyesight and his habit of sweeping the entire
horizon line, I doubted he was mistaken.
In fact, fifteen minutes later our nautical spyglasses helped us identify a few islets scat-
tered over the surface of the water two or three miles to the west, the sunlight falling across
them at an angle.
Our first officer struck the upper sails, and the Halbrane carried on under her spanker sail,
fore trysail, and standing jib.
Would it be better to go on the defensive right away, haul our weapons up on deck, load
the swivel guns, and hoist the boarding nets? Before taking these precautionary measures, Cap-
tain Guy felt he could close in and hug the shore without running too many risks.
Things must have changed—what happened here? Pym had indicated there were sizable
islands in these parts, but we saw only a small number of islets—half a dozen at best—poking
just fifty to sixty feet out of the water.
Just then the half-breed slid all the way down the starboard backstay and leaped onto
the deck.
“Well, Peters,” Len Guy asked him, “do you recognize this group?”

“Group?” the half-breed responded, shaking his head. “No . . . just saw the tops of five
or six islets . . . nothing but pebbles here . . . not one island!”
In essence, a couple of promontories, or rather a couple of rounded mountaintops, were
all that remained of that island group—the western part of it at least. Even so, if its coordi-
nates took in several degrees, it was possible the earthquake had wiped out just the islands to
the west.
Anyhow, this was what we proposed to verify while visiting each of these islets, also
whether it was long ago or recently that they’d experienced those earth tremors that left such
indisputable traces on Tsalal Island.
As the schooner closed in, you could easily make out the last crumbs of this group
whose western part had been almost completely obliterated. The surface areas of the bigger
islets didn’t exceed 300 to 350 square feet, while the smaller ones totaled only 20 or 25 square
feet. The latter consisted of a sprinkling of reefs, a fringe for the sea to splash gently against.
It was a given that the Halbrane wouldn’t venture among these rocks, which were a threat
to her sides and keel. She confined herself to circling the whole locality and determining if the
entire group had been engulfed. Nevertheless it would be essential to go ashore anyplace where
we might be able to pick up a few clues.
A little over a mile away from the main islet, we pulled up and Captain Guy had a sound-
ing line tossed out. It found bottom forty yards down—a bottom that must have been the
surface of a submerged island, whose middle portion swelled thirty to thirty-five feet above
sea level.
The schooner drew closer and dropped anchor in ten yards of water.
West had figured on heaving to while we were busy exploring the island. But with the
current moving so briskly to the south, the schooner would have been carried off by the drift.
It was smarter to anchor in the vicinity of the islands. The sea barely rippled in these parts, and
nothing in the sky hinted at any atmospheric changes.
As soon as the anchor caught, Captain Guy, the bosun, Peters, Holt, and I got into one
of the longboats.
The first island lay a quarter of a mile away. We went through some narrow channels
and quickly reached it. Tips of rock disappeared and reappeared with the long rise and fall of
the swell. Scrubbed, washed, and rinsed in this way, they couldn’t have preserved any evidence
pointing to when the earthquake took place. Once again, there wasn’t any doubt in our minds
that it had taken place, as you know.
The dinghy went among the rocks. Peters was on his feet in the stern, tiller between his
legs, trying to dodge the reefs whose edges broke the surface here and there. The calm, clear
water revealed not only a sandy bottom sprinkled with shells but also blackish slabs carpeted
in terrestrial plant life, tufts of vegetation that didn’t belong to any family of marine flora and
in some cases were floating on the surface of the sea.
Which was already proof that the soil that gave them birth had subsided recently.
When our longboat reached the island, one of the men tossed out the grapnel and its
flukes found their way into a crevice.
As soon as the mooring line was taut, we were able to go ashore without any difficulty.

Peters was on his feet in the stern.
In this locality, then, we’d found one of the group’s big islands, reduced these days to a
lopsided oval measuring 300 yards around and swelling 8 to 10 yards above sea level.
“Does the tide sometimes rise that high?” I asked Captain Guy.
“Never,” he answered me, “and maybe we’ll find some leftover plant life in the middle of
this island, or the remains of dwellings or campsites . . .”
“The best thing for us,” the bosun said, “is to stick with Peters, and he’s already leaving
us behind. That devil of a half-breed has the eyes of a lynx, and he can see things we’ll miss!”
In a few seconds we’d all made our way to the cape at the end of the islet.
Bones weren’t in short supply there—most likely the bones of those farm animals figur-
ing in Pym’s journal, various types of poultry, canvasback ducks, a species of common hog with

a tough hide covered in black bristles. Nevertheless—a point to remember—these remains
differed in origin from the ones on Tsalal Island, namely the piles at this location were only a
few months old at best. Which jibed with the earthquake’s happening recently as we believed.
What’s more, plants were turning the soil green here and there—celery, spoonwort, and
bunches of little flowers that were still fresh.
“And they sprang up this year!” I exclaimed. “They haven’t been through a polar winter.”
“Makes sense, Mr. Jeorling,” Hurliguerly remarked. “But isn’t it possible they sprouted
on this islet after the big breakup?”
“I can see objections to that,” I answered, hating to let go of a good idea.
In many areas a few scrawny shrubs also grew, a sort of wild hazel tree, and Peters yanked
loose a branch dripping with sap.
Some filberts hung from this branch, like the ones he and his companion ate during their
captivity in the fissures of that hill by Klock-klock and down in those hieroglyphic chasms that
we found no traces of on Tsalal Island.
Peters took a couple of filberts out of their green pods and cracked them open with his
powerful teeth, which could grind up ball bearings.
Once we’d made these discoveries, there couldn’t be any further doubt that the cataclysm
took place after Patterson’s departure. So that cataclysm wasn’t responsible for wiping out the
segment of the Tsalal populace whose remains were scattered outside the village. As for Cap-
tain William Guy and the five sailors from the Jane, we’d established to our satisfaction that
they’d managed to escape in time, since we hadn’t found any of their bodies on the island.
Where could they have taken refuge after leaving Tsalal Island?
This was the question mark that kept popping up in our minds, and what answer would
it receive? To me, however, it didn’t seem any more extraordinary than all the other questions
that had come up at every turn of this story!
I didn’t have to talk anybody into completely exploring these islands. It took thirty-
six hours, because the schooner did a full circle around them. The same clues—plants and
bones—turned up on the surfaces of these different islands, leading to the same conclusions.
With regard to the natives, they’d been utterly destroyed during the disturbances enacted on
the stage of these waterways, as Captain Guy, his first officer, the bosun, and I unanimously
agreed. The Halbrane had nothing to fear from any future attacks, something that was worth
taking to the bank.
Now, should we conclude that William Guy and his five sailors had reached one of these
islands, then perished as well when the islands were engulfed?
Here’s the analysis of this business that Len Guy ended up agreeing with:
“To pick up where I left off,” I said, “I feel that the manufactured landslide at the hill
by Klock-klock spared a number of the Jane’s men—at least seven counting Patterson—and also
the dog Tiger, whose remains we found near the village. Then, at a later date, some unknown
development destroyed a segment of the native populace, and those locals who didn’t die left
Tsalal Island to take refuge on some other member of the group. On their own and perfectly
safe, Captain William Guy and his companions were easily able to live where several thousand
savages had lived previously. The years went by—ten or eleven of them—without these men

managing to leave their prison, though I’m sure they must have tried to, either by using one of
the native canoes or a vessel they built themselves. Finally, about seven months ago—after Pat-
terson’s disappearance—an earthquake devastated Tsalal Island and engulfed its neighboring
isles. That, in my opinion, was the point when William Guy and his men decided the island was
no longer fit to live on, so they must have set sail and tried to get back to the Antarctic Circle.
In all likelihood this attempt would have failed, so ultimately why couldn’t they have ridden a
southbound current and reached those lands Peters and Pym glimpsed beyond latitude 84°?
Consequently, captain, that’s the right direction to take the Halbrane. If we clear two or three
more parallels, we’ll have some chance of finding them. There lies our goal, and who among us
wouldn’t sacrifice his very life to reach it?”
“God is our guide, Mr. Jeorling!” Len Guy answered.
And when I was alone later with the bosun, the latter just had to tell me:
“I listened with both ears, Mr. Jeorling, and I swear you almost won me over.”
“You’ll wind up going the whole nine yards, Hurliguerly.”
“When?”
“Maybe sooner than you think!”
At six o’clock the next day, December 29, the schooner got under way with a mild north-
easterly breeze, and this time she pointed her prow directly south.

20. From December 29 to January 9
I
n the morning, Edgar Allan Poe’s book under my eyes, I carefully reread chapter
25 of Pym’s narrative.1 There it describes how, when the natives tried to catch
them, the two escapees and the savage Nu-Nu were already at sea five or six miles
from the bay. Out of that cluster of six or seven islands to the west that we’d just
looked over, only a few remnants were left in the form of islets.
What especially interested me in this chapter were the following lines, which I can’t resist
quoting:
In coming from the northward in the Jane Guy [in order to reach Tsalal Island] we had been gradu-
ally leaving behind us the severest regions of ice—this, however little it may be in accordance with the gener-
ally received notions respecting the antarctic, was a fact experience would not permit us to deny. To attempt
getting back, therefore, would be folly—especially at so late a period of the season. Only one course seemed
to be left open for hope. We resolved to steer boldly to the southward, where there was at least a probability
of discovering other lands and more than a probability of finding a still milder climate.
That’s how Pym reasoned it out—as we, a fortiori,* had to do ourselves. Well, on Febru-
ary 29—1828 was a leap year—the escapees reached “the wide and desolate Antarctic Ocean”
beyond the 84th parallel. Now then, it was only December 29. The Halbrane had a jump of two
months on the little boat escaping from Tsalal Island and already under threat from the com-
ing of the long polar winter. What’s more, our well-equipped, well-commanded, well-staffed
schooner inspired more confidence than Pym’s open boat, a willow-timbered canoe fifty feet
long by four to six feet wide and carrying only three tortoises to feed three men.
So I had high hopes for the success of this second leg of our cruise.
*Latin: “on the best evidence.” FPW

Over the course of the morning, the last islets in that group vanished beneath the hori-
zon. We had the same sort of ocean we’d seen ever since Bennet’s Islet—not a single piece of
ice, understandable since the water temperature read 43° Fahrenheit.2 There was a very notice-
able current—four to five miles per hour—and it proceeded north to south with unvarying
steadiness.
Flocks of birds livened up the sky—always the same species of kingfishers, pelicans, cape
pigeons, petrels, and albatrosses. Even so, I must admit that the latter didn’t feature the gigantic
dimensions noted in Pym’s journal, and none of them let out that sempiternal Tekeli-li, which,
anyhow, seemed to be the most overused word in the Tsalal language.
The next two days were uneventful. We didn’t sight land or even a semblance of any. Our
seamen had a productive time fishing these waters, which teemed with parrotfish, hake, rays,
conger eels, azure-hued dolphins, and other breeds of fish. The combined talents of Hurliguer-
ly and Endicott added some pleasant changes of pace to the menus in the wardroom and crew’s
mess, and I think it’s only fair to give the two pals equal credit in this culinary collaboration.
The next day was January 1, 1840—also a leap year—and a light fog veiled the sun
during the early morning hours, but we didn’t take this as a sign of any change in atmospheric
conditions.
By then it had been four months and seventeen days since I left Kerguelen’s Land, and
two months and five days since the Halbrane left the Falklands.
How long would this trip last? That wasn’t what worried me, but rather the question of
just where we would end up in these antarctic waterways.
I have to acknowledge at this point that a definite shift took place in the half-breed’s
attitude toward me, if not toward Captain Len Guy or the other men on the crew. Realizing, no
doubt, that I was interested in what happened to Pym, he would look me up, and without ever
needing to exchange a single word, “we understood each other,” to use a hackneyed expression.
Sometimes, moreover, he even broke his habitual silence when I was around. If his duties made
no demands on him, he would shuffle toward the bench behind the deckhouse where I liked to
sit. We would take three or four halfhearted stabs at chitchatting. But anytime Captain Guy,
the first officer, or the bosun joined us, Peters made himself scarce.
Around ten o’clock that day, while West was on watch and Len Guy cooped up in his
cabin, the half-breed ambled down the corridor with the clear intention of having a conversa-
tion—and you can easily guess what about.
As soon as he was beside me on the bench:
“You want to talk about him, Peters?” I said, skipping to the heart of the matter.
The half-breed’s pupils flared up like live coals under a bellows.
“Him!” he muttered.
“You’ve never forgotten him, Peters!”
“Never, sir . . . always think of him!”
“He’s still there . . . in front of you.”
“Still . . . ! If you take my meaning . . . so many dangers we went through together . . . that
doesn’t make us brothers, no . . . but father and son, aye! I love him like my kid . . . ! We went

so far, the two of us . . . he went so far . . . and hasn’t come back yet . . . I showed up again in
the land of America, I did . . . but Pym . . . poor Pym’s still down there . . . !”
The half-breed’s eyes were damp with big tears! And why didn’t they vaporize from the
blazing fires that flickered in his eyes?
“Peters,” I asked him, “you have no idea what course you and Pym took after you left
Tsalal Island in that canoe?”
“No idea, sir! Poor Pym didn’t have any equipment . . . you know that . . . no nautical
instruments for taking our position . . . we had no way of finding out. . . . But the current car-
ried us south for a good week, and the wind too . . . steady breeze, smooth sea . . . we stood two
paddles against the gunwales for a mast. . . . used our shirts for a sail.”
“Yes,” I replied, “white linen shirts whose color positively terrified your prisoner Nu-Nu!”
“Maybe . . . didn’t realize that at all . . . but if Pym said so, we should believe him!”
All I got from this was that the half-breed apparently hadn’t noticed some of the phe-
nomena described in that journal he brought to the United States. So I couldn’t let go of the
idea that those phenomena were simply the fruits of a stupendously overwrought imagination.
Even so, I intended to keep after Peters on this topic.
“And over that week,” I went on, “you were able to get food?”
“Aye, sir, and over the days that followed . . . us and the savage . . . as you know, we had
three tortoises on board . . . those critters carry a supply of fresh water . . . and their meat is
tasty . . . even raw . . . oh, sir . . . raw flesh!”
As he spoke these last words, Dirk Peters lowered his voice as if afraid of being over-
heard, and he gave a quick look around him . . .
So the poor soul still shuddered at the undying memory of those events on the Grampus!
You can’t imagine the frightful expression that came over the half-breed’s face the moment
he talked about raw flesh! And it wasn’t the expression of a cannibal in Australia or the New
Hebrides, but the expression of a man filled with uncontrollable self-loathing.
After a fairly long silence, I got our conversation back on track.
“Peters,” I asked, “if I can believe your companion’s narrative, wasn’t March 1 the earliest
you saw that wide veil of gray vapor, and those bright, flickering streaks that cut through it . . .”
“Dunno, sir! But if Pym says so, we should believe what he says!”
“Did he ever mention anything to you about shafts of fire falling from the sky?” I
continued, not wanting to use the words “polar aurora,” which the half-breed might not have
understood.
In asking this I was revisiting the theory that those phenomena could have been caused
by intense discharges of electricity—which might be quite powerful in the high latitudes,
assuming there actually were any.
“He never talked to me about ’em, sir,” Peters said, thinking a bit before he answered my
question.
“In addition, did you notice that the sea’s color had changed . . . that it lost its transpar-
ency . . . that it turned white . . . that it had a milky appearance . . . that its surface was agitated
around your boat . . .”

“Dunno, sir . . . if it was . . . if you take my meaning. . . . Didn’t pay attention to things
anymore . . . the canoe kept going . . . kept going . . . and my mind along with it . . .”
“And then, Peters, that very fine powder that fell . . . fine like ashes . . . white ashes?”
“Don’t remember . . .”
“Was it snow?”
“Snow . . . ? Yes . . . no! It was warm . . . did Pym say so? We should believe what Pym
says!”
When it came to those incredible events, I could see I wouldn’t get any explanations by
badgering the half-breed. Even if he had witnessed the uncanny things described in the narra-
tive’s final chapters, he no longer had any recollection of them.
And then, in a hushed voice:
“But Pym will tell you everything, sir . . . he knows . . . me, I dunno . . . he saw . . . so
you believe him.”
“I believe him, Peters, I really do believe him,” I replied, not wanting to get on his bad
side.
“Then we’ll go search for him, eh?”
“I hope so.”
“After we’ve found William Guy and the Jane’s sailors?”
“Yes, after that.”
“And even if we don’t find ’em . . . ?”
“Even in that case, Peters, I think I can persuade our captain.”
“He won’t refuse to go rescue a fellow . . . a fellow like him . . .”
“No, he won’t refuse! And yet,” I added, “if William Guy and his men are alive, can we
believe that Pym is—”
“Alive? Aye, he’s alive!” the half-breed exclaimed. “By the Great Spirit of my Fathers, he’s
still there . . . waiting for me . . . my poor Pym . . . and how happy he’ll be when he gives his old
Dirk a hug and I hug him back . . . when I’ve sniffed him out . . . down there . . .”
And Dirk Peters’s huge chest swelled like a sea running high.
Then off he went, leaving me indescribably moved by the depth of tenderness in his
semi-savage heart for his unlucky companion . . . for the man he called his son!
During the days of January 2, 3, and 4, the schooner kept advancing southward without
raising land. The boundary line of an endless horizon stood out against the background of sea
and sky. Nobody up in the crow’s nest sighted a single continent or island in this part of Ant-
arctica. Should we doubt what Peters said about those lands he’d glimpsed? Optical illusions
are so common in these regions near the pole!
“It’s true,” I pointed out to Captain Guy, “that after Pym left Tsalal Island, he didn’t have
any instruments for getting his bearings.”
“I know that, Mr. Jeorling, and it’s quite possible those lands lie either east or west of our
course. I’m just sorry Pym and Peters didn’t set foot on them. I’m afraid their existence is still
open to question, but we’ll keep faith and we’ll find them one of these days.”
“We’ll find them, captain, when we advance a few degrees farther south.”

“So be it, but I wonder, Mr. Jeorling, if it wouldn’t be better to explore those waterways
lying between the 40th and 45th meridians.”
“Our time’s limited,” I replied quickly, “and that could be a waste of several days, since
we still haven’t reached the latitude where the two escapees got separated from each other.”
“And what, if you please, is that latitude, Mr. Jeorling? I don’t find it recorded in Pym’s
narrative, simply because he had no way of reckoning it.”
“That’s correct, captain, just as it’s correct that their boat must have been carried very far
from Tsalal Island, according to that passage in the last chapter.”
And the chapter did indeed contain these lines:
. . . we continued on our course, without any incident of moment, for perhaps seven or eight days, during
which period we must have proceeded a vast distance to the southward, as the wind blew constantly with us
and a very strong current set continually in the direction we were pursuing.
Captain Guy knew this passage, having read it many times. I added:
“It says ‘a vast distance,’ and the date was only March 1. Now then, their trip continued
till the 22nd of the same month, and as Pym later recorded, his canoe was moving hideously
fast and ‘hurrying on to the southward under the influence of a powerful current’—that’s how
he described it. From all this, captain, you can see the conclusion to be drawn . . .”
“That he was going to the pole, Mr. Jeorling?”
“Why not—wasn’t he just 400 miles away when he left Tsalal Island?”
“It doesn’t matter in any case!” Len Guy replied. “The Halbrane isn’t here to search for
Pym but for my brother and his companions. If they managed to go ashore on those lands
Peters glimpsed, that’s the one place it’s essential to investigate.”
Captain Guy was right on this particular point. Accordingly I was in constant fear that
he would issue orders to bear east or west. Nevertheless, because the half-breed insisted that his
boat had gone south, that the lands he spoke of lay in that direction, the schooner didn’t change
her heading. If she hadn’t stayed on Pym’s course, I would have been downright devastated.
Besides, I was convinced that if the aforementioned lands did exist, they were to be found
in the highest latitudes.
It isn’t irrelevant to point out that no extraordinary phenomena showed up in the course
of our navigating on January 5–6. We didn’t see anything of that barricade of flickering vapor,
anything of those changes in the sea’s upper strata. As for the water being so tremendously hot
that “the hand could no longer be endured within it,” it must have simmered down a good deal.
Its temperature didn’t exceed 50° Fahrenheit, a level already abnormal in this sector of the antarc-
tic regions.3 And though Peters kept telling me that “if Pym says so, we should believe him,” my
common sense had severe reservations about the reality of those uncanny events. And no, there
wasn’t any veil of mist, or water that had a milky appearance, or downpour of white powder.
In these waterways the two escapees also spotted one of those enormous white animals
that filled the Tsalal islanders with such terror. Under what circumstances had that monster
passed in sight of Pym’s boat? His narrative fails to mention them. And as for marine m ammals,

Off he went, leaving me indescribably moved.
gigantic birds, or fearsome carnivores from the polar regions, the Halbrane didn’t come across a
single one on her course.
I’ll add that nobody on board fell under that odd spell Pym mentions, a numbness of
body and mind, a sudden listlessness that makes you incapable of the tiniest physical effort.
And does this pathological and physiological condition suggest that he might have imag-
ined those phenomena, that they were simply due to some disturbance of his mental faculties?
Finally, on January 7—according to Peters, who could only guess based on the travel
time—we reached the locality where the savage Nu-Nu lay in the bottom of the canoe and
breathed his last. A date two and a half months after this—March 22—headed up the final

entry in the journal of this amazing voyage. And that’s when a deeper darkness drifted in,
relieved by the glare of the water thrown back from the veil of white vapor spreading over the
sky . . .
Well, the Halbrane didn’t witness any of those astonishing marvels, and as the sun traveled
over its long tilting spiral, it continued to light up the horizon.
And we were lucky the skies weren’t plunged in gloom, because it would have been impos-
sible to get our bearings.
That day, January 9, we took a decent sight that gave latitude 86° 33' and a longitude
that still hung in there between the 42nd and 43rd meridians.
It was in this locality, according to the half-breed’s recollections, that the two escapees
got separated after an ice slab hit their canoe.
But a question came up. Since the slab of ice carrying Peters had drifted northward, did
that mean it had gotten caught in a countercurrent?
Yes, that must have been the case, because for two days now our schooner no longer felt
the drag of that current she’d ridden after leaving Tsalal Island.4 And why should this amaze
anybody, since everything’s so iffy in these polar seas! Luckily the brisk northeasterly breeze
held up, and the Halbrane advanced under full sail toward the highest latitudes, going thirteen
degrees farther than Weddell’s ships and two degrees farther than the Jane. As for those lands—
island group or continent—that Captain Guy kept looking for on the surface of this immense
sea, they didn’t put in an appearance. I could tell he was gradually losing his confidence, which
had already taken quite a beating from so much fruitless searching earlier.
As for me, I was obsessed with the desire to rescue Pym as well as the Jane’s survivors.
And yet wasn’t it ridiculous to think he could still be there . . . ? Yes, I know! The half-breed
had this fixation that we would bring him back alive! And if the captain gave orders to return in
our tracks, I wondered what drastic actions Peters might resort to! Maybe he would jump over-
board rather than go north again! That’s why, when most of the crew objected to this lunatic
voyage and talked of putting about, I was continually afraid he would turn violent, especially
with Hearne, who kept slyly inciting his Falkland comrades to insubordination!
However, it was essential to not allow any negativity or lack of discipline to take root on
board. Therefore I wanted to cheer up the crew that day, so I asked Captain Guy to gather them
together at the foot of the mainmast, where he spoke to them as follows:
“Seamen of the Halbrane, since leaving Tsalal Island, our schooner has gone two degrees
farther south, so I can announce to you that according to the promise Mr. Jeorling put in writ-
ing, you’re now owed $4,000—that’s $2,000 for each degree—and it will be paid out at the
end of the voyage.”
There were quite a few mutterings of approval at this, but no cheers except the ones let
out by Hurliguerly the bosun and Endicott the cook—which nobody else echoed.

21. Tipping Point
E
ven assuming the oldtimers on the crew agreed with the bosun, chief cook, Cap-
tain Guy, West, and me that the cruise should continue, if the newcomers were
determined to turn back, we couldn’t prevail by force. Fourteen men counting
Peters weren’t enough to take on nineteen. And besides, was it wise to rely on the
ship’s oldtimers? Wouldn’t they have trepidations about navigating through these regions that
seemed outside the circles of the world? Could they stand up to the constant haranguing by
Hearne and his comrades? Wouldn’t they side with them and demand that the ship head back
toward the ice barrier?
And to tell the truth, would Len Guy himself let a cruise go on that wasn’t working
out? Wouldn’t he soon abandon his last hopes of rescuing the Jane’s sailors from those far-off
waterways? Under threat from the coming of the southern winter, its unbearable cold, its
polar storms that his schooner couldn’t withstand, wouldn’t he finally issue orders to change
direction? And what impact would my arguments, pleas, and prayers have if I was the only one
voicing them?
The only one? Not quite! Peters would back me up . . . but who would listen to just the
two of us?
Even if Len Guy still held out, heartbroken at the thought of deserting his brother and
his countrymen, I felt he had to be at the end of his tether. Nevertheless, the schooner didn’t
swerve from the straight line she’d adopted since Tsalal Island. It was as if an underwater lode-
stone were binding her to that longitude the Jane had followed, and Heaven forbid that either
currents or winds caused her to veer off! Though we can master our worries and fears, we must
bow to the forces of nature . . .
I also need to mention a circumstance that was helpful to our southward progress. After
letting up for a few days, the current reappeared at a speed of three to four miles per hour.
Obviously—as Captain Guy pointed out to me—it held sway in this sea, though now and
then it got knocked off course or held in check by countercurrents that were very hard to

accurately indicate on charts. Unfortunately, what we most wanted was just what we couldn’t
determine—finding out whether the open boat carrying William Guy and his men from Tsalal
Island had gotten caught in the former or the latter. It was critical to remember that their effect
had to be greater than the wind since the islanders’ canoes didn’t have sails and were propelled
just by paddles.
Be that as it may, what we found important about these two natural forces was that they
teamed up to take the Halbrane toward the boundaries of the polar zone.
Which came about on January 10, 11, and 12. There wasn’t anything significant to report
other than a definite falling off in our thermometer readings. The air temperature dropped
back to 48° Fahrenheit, the water temperature to 33° Fahrenheit.1
Quite a difference from the figures Pym got, where (if we can believe him) the water was
so hot, your hand couldn’t endure it!
Still and all, it was only the second week of January. We had two more months to go
before winter would get the icebergs moving, form ice fields and drift ice, firm up the ice bar-
rier’s enormous bulk, and freeze Antarctica’s vast stretches of water. In any event, we’d clearly
established that the area between the 72nd and 87th parallels was open sea during the summer
months.
Weddell’s ships, the Jane, and the Halbrane have traveled these seas at different latitudes,
and that being the case, why wouldn’t this antarctic domain enjoy the same benefits and privi-
leges as the arctic one?
On January 13 the bosun and I had a conversation whose nature justified my concerns
about the worrisome mood our sailors were in.
The men were eating lunch in the crew’s mess, except for Drap and Stern, who were on
watch in the bow at that time. The schooner cut the waves under a brisk breeze and all her
upper and lower canvas. At the helm Francis steered south-southeast to keep the sails full.
I strolled between the foremast and the mainmast, watching the flocks of birds—they
let out earsplitting calls, and a few petrels among them sometimes came and perched on the
yardarms. Nobody tried to catch them or shoot them. Which would have been needlessly cruel
since their meat is tough, oily, and inedible.
Just then Hurliguerly left off watching those birds, came over, and said to me:
“I’m noticing one thing, Mr. Jeorling . . .”
“What, bosun?”
“Those birds aren’t flying due south like they’ve been doing till now. Some of ’em are
getting set to head north.”
“I’ve noticed it too, Hurliguerly.”
“What’s more, Mr. Jeorling, the ones still down there will be back up mighty quick.”
“And what do you conclude?”
“I conclude they can feel winter coming.”
“Winter?”
“Sure enough.”
“Wrong, bosun, the temperature’s still high—it’s too soon for birds to think of going
back to the warmer zones.”

“Oh, it’s not too soon, Mr. Jeorling.”
“Look here, bosun, mariners have always been able to sail these antarctic waterways till
the month of March—don’t you know that?”
“They haven’t sailed ’em at this latitude,” Hurliguerly replied, “not at this latitude! And
besides, winters arrive ahead of schedule just like summers. This year we had warm weather
a good two months early, so there’s a danger we’ll be getting cold weather sooner than usual.”
“It’s worth considering,” I replied. “Even so, it makes no difference, because in less than
three weeks our cruise is bound to be over with.”
“If some obstacle doesn’t turn up before then, Mr. Jeorling.”
“What obstacle?”
“A continent, for instance, that stretches to the south and blocks our way.”
“A continent, Hurliguerly?”
“You know, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit, Mr. Jeorling.”
“And come to think of it, it won’t be anything surprising,” I remarked.
“As for those lands Peters glimpsed,” Hurliguerly went on, “those lands where the Jane’s
men might’ve taken refuge—I don’t believe in ’em.”
“Why not?”
“Because all William Guy had to work with was a piddling little boat, which couldn’t
have gotten this far into these seas.”
“I’m not as positive about that as you are, bosun.”
“But Mr. Jeorling—”
“Now what’s so amazing,” I snapped, “about the currents carrying William Guy to some
shore or other? Surely he hasn’t been stuck in his canoe for eight months! He and his com-
panions could have set foot on some island or even some continent, and that’s a good enough
reason to keep looking.”
“Sure it is . . . but not everybody in the crew agrees with you,” Hurliguerly replied, shak-
ing his head.
“I know they don’t,” I said, “and that’s what really worries me, bosun. Is their bad mood
getting worse?”
“Afraid so, Mr. Jeorling. They were glad to get hundreds of extra dollars, but that’s
already worn off, and the promise of hundreds more doesn’t keep ’em from whining. But it’s a
tantalizing bonus all right! From Tsalal Island to the pole—assuming we can make it that far—
is six degrees. Now then, six degrees at $2,000 each makes a total of $12,000 for thirty men,
which means $400 a head! * A tidy sum to stick in your pocket when the Halbrane gets back to
port! In spite of which, that damned Hearne’s been working on his comrades so deviously, the
whole crowd look ready to cut and run, as they say!”
“I can believe it with the recruits, bosun . . . but as for the oldtimers . . .”
“Humph! There are three or four of ’em who are starting to have second thoughts . . . and
they aren’t easy in their minds about the trip dragging on.”
*Equivalent to about $8,000 per man in today’s dollars. FPW

“I imagine Captain Guy and his first officer will be able to keep them in line.”
“That remains to be seen, Mr. Jeorling! And isn’t it possible our captain himself could
lose heart . . . that his sense of responsibility might win out . . . and he’ll call off the cruise?”
Yes, that’s exactly what I was afraid of, and nothing could be done about it!
“As for my pal Endicott, Mr. Jeorling, I’ll answer for him the same as for myself. We’d
go to the ends of the earth—assuming it has any—if the captain wanted to visit ’em. But you,
Peters, and the two of us are mighty few to be laying down the law to everybody else!”
“And what are your thoughts on the half-breed?” I asked.
“Ye gods, our men blame him the most for this voyage dragging on! Sure, Mr. Jeorling,
you’re behind it big-time, to be honest with you, but you’re paying ’em and paying well—while
that pigheaded Peters keeps claiming his poor Pym is still alive, even though he drowned, froze,
got crushed, or otherwise kicked the bucket eleven years ago!”
Which was so much my own feeling, I’d stopped discussing this topic with the half-breed.
“You see, Mr. Jeorling,” the bosun went on, “at the start of the trip, Peters made folks
curious. Then, when he saved Holt, he intrigued ’em. Sure, he didn’t get any friendlier or chat-
tier than before, and the bear still wouldn’t come out of his cave! But these days we know who
he is . . . and ye gods, it hasn’t exactly made him popular! Anyhow, when he brought up those
lands located south of Tsalal Island, he talked our captain into taking his schooner that way,
and it’s due to him that she’s now gone beyond latitude 86°.”
“You’re right, bosun.”
“So, Mr. Jeorling, everyday I’m scared somebody will try to teach him a lesson!”
“Peters can take care of himself, and I pity the man who dares to lay a finger on him!”
“That’s right, Mr. Jeorling, you’d be in a bad way if he got his hands on you, because
they can bend sheet iron! But if everybody ganged up on him and held him tight, I expect they
could lock him in the hold.”
“Well, I hope we aren’t that far along, and I’m counting on you, Hurliguerly, to keep
anybody from taking a crack at Peters. Have a commonsense talk with the men. Help them see
that we’ve got time to return to the Falklands before the warm weather ends. Their whining
mustn’t give our captain an excuse to head back before he does what he came to do.”
“Count on me, Mr. Jeorling! I’m at your service . . . send me a good wind.”
“You won’t be sorry, Hurliguerly! Nothing’s easier than adding a zero to the $400 each
man gets . . .2 if that man’s above the level of common sailor . . . even if he performs only the
duties of bosun on board!”3
That got the old sinner on his soft spot, and I knew he was with me. Yes, while watch-
ing over Peters, he would do anything to thwart the schemes of the one faction and boost the
bravery of the other! Would he succeed in keeping a mutiny from breaking out on board?
Nothing noteworthy happened over the days of the 13th and 14th. Nevertheless another
drop in temperature took place. Captain Guy pointed this out to me while indicating the many
flocks of birds that kept heading north.
As he spoke with me, I could tell that his last hopes were fading fast. And why should
this surprise anybody? We hadn’t seen a sign of those lands the half-breed mentioned, and we’d
already come more than 180 miles from Tsalal Island. At every point on the compass nothing

was visible but sea, that immense sea whose empty horizon the sun’s disk had been nearing
since December 21 and would touch on March 21, just before vanishing into the six-month
polar night! Honestly, how could anybody believe William Guy and his five companions were
able to cover this distance in a puny open boat . . . and was there one chance in a hundred of
ever rescuing them?
On January 15 we took some very accurate sights that gave longitude 43° 13' and lati-
tude 88° 17'. The Halbrane was less than two degrees from the pole—less than 140 miles away.4
Len Guy made no attempt to conceal the position he’d worked up from these sights, and
his sailors were familiar enough with celestial navigation to know what it meant. Besides, if
anybody needed the implications explained, weren’t masters Holt and Hardie on hand to do
this? Then wasn’t Hearne available to blow things ridiculously out of proportion?
Accordingly, that afternoon I was positive the master sealer was at work getting the crew
riled up. Squatting at the foot of the foremast, the men were talking in low voices and kept
giving us dirty looks. They were having private confabs.
Turning toward the bow, two or three sailors didn’t refrain from shaking their fists in that
direction. Soon the mutterings became so vehement, West couldn’t help hearing them.
“Quiet!” he snapped.
And, coming forward:
“The first man who opens his mouth,” he said curtly, “will have me to deal with!”
As for Captain Guy, he was cooped up in his cabin. But I expected him to emerge any
second—and after he’d glanced out to sea one last time, I was sure he would issue orders to
put about.
But the next day the schooner was still heading the same direction. The pilot kept his
prow pointing south. Unfortunately—a matter of some moment—patches of fog were start-
ing to materialize out to sea.
I was getting jumpy, I admit it. My worries were piling up.
It was clear that our first officer was simply waiting for orders to change direction.5
Whatever mortal anguish Len Guy must have been suffering, I knew only too well that he
wouldn’t drag his feet in issuing those orders.6
For several days I hadn’t seen the half-breed, or at least I hadn’t seen him to speak to.
Obviously he’d been blacklisted, and the second he showed up on deck, folks walked the other
way. If he went and propped his elbows on the port rail, the crew instantly relocated to star-
board. Only Hurliguerly, who kept innocently running into him, would say anything to the
man. It’s true, though, that the bosun’s questions generally didn’t get an answer back.
I must admit, however, that Peters wasn’t a bit bothered by this state of affairs. Wrapped
up in his fixations, he probably hadn’t even noticed. But I repeat: if he ever heard West shout
“Head north,” Lord knows what acts of violence he might commit!
And since he seemed to be avoiding me, I wondered if this wasn’t out of consideration
for my welfare, so I “wouldn’t get into more trouble.”
But during the afternoon of the 17th, the half-breed indicated he wanted to speak
with me, and never—no, never—could I have imagined what I was about to learn during this
conversation.

It was around 2:30.
A little tired, feeling uneasy, I’d just gone back inside my cabin, whose side window was
open while the one at the rear was shut.
A fist knocked quietly on my door, which gave onto the deckhouse wardroom.
“Who is it?” I said.
“Dirk Peters.”
“You need to talk?”
“Aye.”
“Be right out.”
“Please . . . I’d rather . . . could I come inside your cabin?”
“Come on in.”
The half-breed pushed the door open, then shut it behind him.
Without getting up from my cot, where I’d been lying, I motioned him to the chair.
Peters stayed standing.
Since he seemed at a loss as usual and in no hurry to take the floor:
“What do you want, Peters?” I asked.
“To tell you something . . . if you take my meaning . . . because I think you’d better
know . . . and just you . . . ! The rest of the crew . . . they mustn’t suspect . . .”
“If it’s serious and you’re afraid I’ll blab, Peters, why mention it to me?”
“If . . . I have to . . . aye, I have to . . . ! I can’t keep it in . . . ! It weighs on me . . .
here . . . here . . . like a rock . . . !”
And Peters thumped his chest fiercely.
Then, continuing:
“Aye . . . I’m always scared I’ll let it out when I’m asleep . . . that somebody will
hear . . . because I dream about it . . . and when I’m dreaming—”
“Dreaming about what?” I responded.
“About him . . . about him . . . so . . . that’s why I sleep in corners . . . by myself . . . I’m
scared somebody will find out his real name . . .”
By this point I had a hunch the half-breed might be going to answer something I hadn’t
asked him yet—something that was still unclear in my mind: after he left Illinois, why did he
go live in the Falklands under the name Hunt?
As soon as I put this question to him:
“That’s not it . . .” he countered. “No, that’s not what I came to—”
“I insist, Peters, and before anything else I want to know why you didn’t stay in America,
why you picked the Falklands.”
“Why, sir . . . ? Because that got me closer to where Pym was . . . poor Pym . . . because
I hoped I’d have a chance in the Falklands to ship out on a whaler bound for the polar seas.”
“But why call yourself Hunt?”
“I didn’t want to use my name anymore. . . . No, not anymore . . . because of what hap-
pened on the Grampus! ”
The half-breed was referring to the drama aboard the American brig when they drew
straws, when Augustus Barnard, Arthur Gordon Pym, Dirk Peters, and the sailor Parker decided

they would sacrifice one of the four of them to feed the other three. I recalled Pym’s stubbornly
resisting, how he was forced to submit so he wouldn’t be refused “fair play in the tragedy that
I knew would speedily be enacted”—his own wording—and how he then participated in the
horrible act “whose stern recollection” would embitter the lives of everybody who survived it.
Yes, they drew straws! Small splinters of wood, pieces of unequal length that Pym held
in his hand. The man who picked the shortest one would die for the sake of the others. And
Pym mentions how he felt a sort of instinctive heartlessness and wanted to cheat his compan-
ions, “trick” them—that’s the verb he uses. But he didn’t and begs forgiveness for even having
the idea! Before you judge him, put yourself in his place.
Then, making up his mind, he held out his hand with the four splinters.
Peters was the first man to draw . . . luck was on his side . . . he had nothing more to fear.
Pym figured he had one less chance.
Augustus Barnard drew next. He made it too!
And now Pym had a fifty-fifty chance—it was between him and Parker.
Just then the ferocity of a tiger took full possession of his soul. He felt the deepest, most
diabolical hatred for his poor comrade, his fellow human being . . .
Five minutes went by before Parker nerved himself to draw. Eyes closed, not knowing if
fate was for him or against him, Pym finally felt a hand take his.
It was Peters’s hand. Pym’s life had just been spared.
And then the half-breed rushed at Parker and struck him down from behind. After that
came the fearful meal—immediately—and “words have no power to impress the mind with
the exquisite horror of their reality.”
Yes, I knew this fearful story—anything but imaginary, as I’d thought for so long! That’s
what happened aboard the Grampus on July 16, 1827, and I tried in vain to understand why
Peters had just reminded me of it.
I would soon find out.
“Well, Peters,” I said, “since you were so dead set on hiding your real name, tell me why
you revealed it while the Halbrane was anchored off Tsalal Island—why didn’t you keep on as
Hunt?”
“Sir . . . if you take my meaning . . . they weren’t sure about going farther . . . they
wanted to turn back. . . . They decided to . . . and then I thought . . . aye, if I say who I
am . . . Dirk Peters . . . line manager on the Grampus . . . poor Pym’s companion . . . they’ll lis-
ten to me . . . they’ll believe me if I say he’s still alive . . . they’ll go look for him. . . . And yet
it was dangerous . . . admitting I’m Dirk Peters . . . the one who killed Parker! But we were
hungry . . . hungry as dogs . . .”
“Look here, Peters,” I continued, “you’re making too much of this! If you’d drawn the
short straw, you would have suffered Parker’s fate. They can’t charge you with any crime.”
“Sir . . . if you take my meaning . . . do you really think Parker’s family will talk that
way?”
“His family? So he had relatives?”
“Aye . . . and that’s why . . . in his narrative . . . Pym changed Parker’s name . . . his name
wasn’t Parker . . . he was named—”

“Pym was right,” I replied, “and as for me, I don’t want to know Parker’s real name! Keep
it to yourself.”
“No . . . I’m going to tell you. . . . It weighs on me . . . it’s so heavy . . . and maybe it’ll get
lighter . . . if I tell you . . . Mr. Jeorling.”
“Don’t, Peters, don’t!”
“He was named Holt . . . Ned Holt.”7
“Holt!” I exclaimed, “Holt . . . the same name as our master sailmaker—”
“Who’s his brother, sir.”
“Martin Holt . . . is Ned’s brother?”
“Aye . . . his brother . . . if you take my meaning.”
“But he thinks Ned Holt died with everybody else when the Grampus came to grief.”
“But he didn’t . . . and if it gets out how I—”
Right at that moment a sharp lurch threw me out of my cot.
The schooner had just heeled so far to starboard, she almost went under.
And I heard an angry voice shout:
“Who’s the dog at the helm?”
It was West’s voice, and it was directed at Hearne.
I rushed outside my cabin.
“Did you leave the wheel?” West asked repeatedly, grabbing Hearne by the collar of his
jersey.
“Sir . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Yes you did! You had to have left it! A little farther and the schooner would have gone
down under full sail!”
It was obvious that Hearne—for whatever reason—had momentarily deserted the wheel.
“Gratian, take the helm!” Jem West snapped, calling to one of the sailors. “And you,
Hearne—down into the hold!”
Suddenly a yell of “Land!” rang out, and every eye looked toward the south.

22. Land?
T
his is the single word that heads up the 17th chapter in Edgar Allan Poe’s book.1
I thought it would be appropriate to tack on a question mark and have it head up
the twenty-second chapter of my own yarn.2
Did this word, yelled down from the foretop, refer to an island or a conti-
nent? And whichever it was, were we in for a disappointment? Those men we’d come to find in
these latitudes—would they be here? What about Pym, dead, indisputably dead despite what
Peters says—had he ever set foot on these shores?
When a shout rang out aboard the Jane on January 17, 1828—a day packed with inci-
dents, according to Pym’s journal—it went like this:
“Land off the starboard bow!”
Aboard the Halbrane the same words would have applied.
Some shapes were actually taking form to starboard, standing out hazily against the line
between sky and sea.
True, the land those words had announced earlier to the Jane’s seamen was arid, empty
Bennet’s Islet, lying less than a degree north of Tsalal Island—which back then was fertile,
livable, and lived on, the place where Captain Len Guy later hoped to meet up with his coun-
trymen. But this unknown land now facing us, this land five degrees farther into the depths
of the polar seas—what would it mean for our schooner? Was it the destination we desired so
passionately, were searching for so tenaciously? Would the two brothers William and Len Guy
rush to hug each other on these shores? Would the Halbrane reach the end of her voyage, whose
success would be complete when she took the Jane’s survivors back home?
As I’ve indicated, I was after the same thing as the half-breed. Our destination wasn’t just
this destination—nor was this success our success. However, since land lay in front of our eyes,
the first thing we had to do was pull up to it . . . then we would see.
What I should mention right off is that our lookout’s yell created an immediate diver-
sion. I no longer thought about what Peters had just confided in me—and maybe the half-
breed forgot it as well, because he dashed to the bow and glued his eyes to the horizon.

As for West, whom nothing could distract from his duties, he repeated his orders. Gra-
tian came and took the helm, Hearne got locked up in the hold.
A just punishment all in all—and nobody would have any right to complain, because
Hearne’s carelessness or clumsiness had put the schooner in real jeopardy for an instant.
Even so, five or six of the Falkland sailors said a few things under their breath.
Our first officer shut them up with a gesture, and they immediately went back to their
workstations.
Needless to say, when Captain Guy heard the lookout’s yell, he rushed out of his cabin
and feverishly studied those lands lying ten to twelve miles away.
As I said, I no longer thought about the secret Peters had just confided in me. Besides,
so long as we were the only ones who knew this secret—and neither of us gave it away—there
wouldn’t be any cause for concern. But God forbid that some unfortunate happenstance ever
revealed to Holt that his brother’s name had been changed to Parker . . . that the poor fellow
hadn’t gone down with the Grampus . . . that fate had condemned him to death to keep his com-
panions from dying of hunger . . . that Peters (whom Martin Holt himself owed his life to)
had struck him down with his own hand! All of which is why the half-breed kept refusing to
accept Holt’s thanks . . . why he steered clear of Holt . . . brother of the man he’d feasted on.
The bosun had just sounded the hour of three o’clock. The schooner moved cautiously,
essential when navigating unknown waterways. Maybe there were shallows or reefs flush with
the water, where she could be in danger of running aground or cracking up. If the Halbrane
went aground under her current circumstances (even granting she could float off ), that would
make it impossible for her to head back before winter came. We needed to have everything in
our favor and nothing against us.
West gave orders to shorten sail. After the bosun took in her topgallant sail, topsail,
and gaff topsail, the Halbrane carried on under her spanker sail, fore trysail, and jibs—enough
canvas to cover the distance between her and those shores in a couple of hours.
Captain Guy had a sinker and line tossed out immediately, and they gave a depth of 720
feet. Several other soundings indicated the coastline was very steep and had to reach down into
the sea like a sheer wall. Nevertheless, since it was possible the bottom might rise abruptly
instead of merging with the shore up a gradual slope, we had to go forward with sounding line
in hand.
The weather stayed fair, though the sky was misting over a little from southeast to south-
west. Ergo our difficulty in making out those hazy silhouettes, which took shape like vapor
drifting across the sky, disappearing and reappearing between the patches of mist. Nevertheless
we agreed we could assign that shore an elevation of 150 to 180 feet—at its highest point at
least.
No, it was unthinkable that this might be an illusion fooling us, and yet that’s what our
overanxious minds were afraid of! After all, isn’t it natural that a thousand fears would bom-
bard our hearts as we got closer to our ultimate destination? We’d piled so many hopes on this
barely glimpsed coast—what despair we would feel if it was just a mirage, a shadow with no
substance! At this thought my muddled brain started seeing things. The Halbrane seemed to be
shrinking, decreasing in size to a canoe lost in the vastness—the opposite of that boundless
sea Edgar Allan Poe speaks of, where the ship itself will grow in bulk . . . like a living body . . .3

In areas where nautical charts, or even simple sailing manuals, give you decent informa-
tion on coastal features, the nature of their landing places, and their bays or coves, you can
navigate with a little derring-do. In any other region, captains can promptly issue orders to
anchor offshore and not get branded as reckless. But here how cautious we had to be! And yet
there wasn’t a single obstacle in front of us. What’s more, the skies wouldn’t be losing an atom
of their brightness during the sunny nighttime hours. At this time of year, Old Sol didn’t fall
asleep behind the western horizon, and his rays bathed Antarctica’s vast domains with con-
tinual light.
From this day forward the ship’s log recorded temperatures that continued to fall. If
you held out a thermometer in the shade, it didn’t read any higher than 32° Fahrenheit. If you
dipped it in the water, it gave only 26° Fahrenheit.4 The antarctic summer was in full swing—
what could be driving the temperature down?
Be that as it may, the crew had to unpack their woolens, which they’d put away a month
earlier after we cleared the ice barrier. True, the schooner was traveling downwind, the breeze on
our quarter, and these first nips in the air were less noticeable. Even so, we knew it was essential
to reach our destination pronto. To hang around in these parts, to run the risk of wintering
here, would be defying the gods.
Several times Len Guy had heavy sounding lines tossed out to check the current’s direc-
tion; he could see it was starting to change course.
“Whether that’s a continent or an island lying in front of us,” he said, “we don’t yet have
any way of knowing. If it’s a continent, we’re forced to conclude that the current must be find-
ing a way through toward the southeast.”
“And it’s actually possible,” I replied, “that this solid part of Antarctica has shrunk to a
simple polar ice cap, which we’ll be able to sail around. However, it’s good to record any of our
findings that turn out to be reliable.”
“Which is what I’m doing, Mr. Jeorling, and we’ll bring back a body of information on
this sector of the southern seas that mariners can use in the future.”
“Assuming any of them ever venture into these parts, captain! For us to have gotten this
far, we’ve had to be blessed with unusual conditions—the warm weather arriving early, higher-
than-normal temperatures, the ice breaking up so quickly. Do these conditions materialize once
in twenty years . . . in fifty years?”
“Accordingly, Mr. Jeorling, there’s a special providence in this, and my hopes are slowly
returning. Since the weather has been continually fair, why wouldn’t the winds and currents
have carried my brother and my countrymen here, why wouldn’t they have put to shore on this
coast? Our schooner made it, and their canoe could have as well. Before they left, surely they
stocked up for a voyage that could go on indefinitely . . . why wouldn’t they have found the
same resources here that Tsalal Island offered them for so many years? They brought ammuni-
tion and weapons . . . fish swarm in these waterways, aquatic game as well . . . yes, my heart’s
full of hope, and if only I were a few hours older!”
I didn’t totally share Captain Guy’s confident outlook, but I was glad to see him get a
grip on himself. Maybe, if his search paid off, maybe I could get him to continue it on Pym’s
behalf—even into the interior of this land that was no longer far away.

The Halbrane advanced slowly over the surface of these clear waters, which teemed with
fish belonging to species we’d already come across. Greater numbers of aquatic birds turned
up and didn’t seem terribly nervous as they flew around the mast or perched on the yards. We
hauled several whitish lanyards on board, five to six feet long. They were honest-to-goodness
necklaces with millions of beads, actually strings of little iridescent mollusks.
Shooting plumes of water from their blowholes, whales showed up farther out, and I
noticed they all took the southern route. So there were grounds for thinking the sea extended
a good way in that direction.
The schooner covered two or three miles without trying to speed up. The coast appeared
for the first time—did it stretch northwest to southeast? It did without a doubt. Nevertheless
our telescopes couldn’t pick out any details—even after sailing for three hours.
Gathering on the forecastle, the crew gave it a glance without letting on how they felt.
After hoisting himself to the foremast crosstrees, West stood looking for ten minutes but had
nothing specific to pass along.
Stationed on the port side behind the deckhouse, I propped my elbows on the rails and
eyeballed the curving line between sky and sea, which broke off only to the east. Just then the
bosun rejoined me, saying without any preamble:
“Like to know what I think, Mr. Jeorling?”
“Let’s hear it, bosun,” I replied, “so long as I can argue if it seems out of line.”
“It isn’t, and when we get closer, you’d have to be blind to disagree!”
“So what do you think?”
“That it isn’t land in front of us, Mr. Jeorling!”
“What do you mean, bosun?”
“Take a close look . . . hold your finger out in front of your eyes . . . stop . . . keep level
with that beam poking to starboard . . .”
I did as Hurliguerly said.
“You see?” he went on. “May I lose my love of liquor if those masses aren’t shifting
around—not in relation to the schooner, in relation to themselves!”
“And what do you conclude?”
“That they’re icebergs in motion.”
“Icebergs?”
“You bet, Mr. Jeorling.”
Was the bosun right? Were we in for a letdown? Instead of a coastline over there, were
they just drifting mountains of ice?
Soon there was no room for doubt—and a few seconds earlier, the crew had already quit
believing any land lay in that direction.
Ten minutes later the crewman in the crow’s nest announced that several icebergs to the
northwest were coming down diagonally into the Halbrane’s path.
What a calamitous effect this news had on board! Out of the blue our last hopes had just
been dashed! And what a blow for Len Guy! As for those lands in this southern zone, he would
have to look for them at higher latitudes—without even being sure he would ever find them!
And meanwhile this nearly unanimous shout rang out aboard the Halbrane:

“Put about! Put about!”
Yes, the Falkland recruits were speaking their mind and demanding we head on back,
even though Hearne wasn’t there to fan the flames of their insubordination—and I must admit,
most of the oldtimers on the crew seemed to agree with them.
Not daring to shut them up, West waited for orders from his superior.
At the helm Gratian was all set to give the wheel a turn, while his comrades had their
hands over the cleats, ready to let out the sails.
Peters leaned against the foremast, head down, slumped posture, mouth clamped shut,
never moving a muscle, and not a word left his lips.
But right then he turned in my direction, and what a look he gave me—a look that was
both angry and imploring!
I don’t know what irresistible force made me personally step in and object yet again!
One last argument had just popped into my head—an argument whose validity nobody could
question.
I took the floor, determined to stand up to the pack of them, and I did so with such a
tone of conviction, nobody tried to cut me off.
Here’s the gist of what I said:
“No, we mustn’t abandon all hope . . . we can’t be far from land! We aren’t dealing with
an ice barrier here—they form only in midocean from slabs of ice accumulating. These are ice-
bergs, which means they must’ve ripped loose from a solid foundation, either a continent or an
island. Now then, it’s the time of year when ice starts breaking up, so the drift will drag them
for only a very short time. Behind them we’re bound to find the coastline where they formed.
It’ll take just twenty-four hours more, forty-eight at the most, and if no land shows up, Captain
Guy will head north again!”
Had I persuaded the crew? Or maybe I needed to tack on another bonus and make the
most of the fact that Hearne wasn’t with his comrades, that he couldn’t communicate with
them, rile them up, proclaim they were being hoodwinked all over again, or keep insisting the
schooner would be going to her doom.
The bosun came to my assistance, and in a hearty tone:
“That’s good thinking,” he said, “and speaking for myself, I go along with Mr. Jeorling’s
views. We’re definitely near land! If we look beyond those icebergs, we’ll find it without much
work or much risk! One degree south—what’s that next to stuffing hundreds of extra dollars in
your pocket? And don’t forget, if they’re nice going in, they’re even nicer coming out!”
And right here Endicott the cook lent his bosun friend a hand.
“Yes, dollars are mighty handy to have!” he exclaimed, displaying two rows of shiny white
teeth.
Would the crew go along with Hurliguerly’s argument, or would they try to resist if the
Halbrane started toward the icebergs?
Captain Guy picked his telescope up again and aimed it at those moving masses; he
watched them, oh so closely, and in a loud voice:
“Head south-southwest!” he snapped.
West gave orders to execute this maneuver.

The sailors balked for a second. Then, obedient once more, they set about lightly brac-
ing the yards and hauling the sheets taut; under fuller sail, the schooner got back up to speed.
When this operation was finished, I went over to Hurliguerly and took him aside:
“Thanks, bosun,” I told him.
“Well, Mr. Jeorling, you got away with it this time!” he replied, shaking his head. “But
we’d better not start pulling on the halyards that much again! They’d all be against me, maybe
even Endicott—”
“I didn’t suggest anything that wasn’t pretty likely,” I countered instantly.
“I don’t deny it, Mr. Jeorling, and things might pan out like you predicted.”
“They will, Hurliguerly, they will . . . I stand by what I said, and I haven’t any doubt we’ll
wind up seeing land beyond those icebergs.”
“Possibly, Mr. Jeorling, possibly! But if it doesn’t show up before two days are out, you
can take my word for it as bosun—we’ll put about and nothing can stop us!”
Over the next twenty-four hours, the Halbrane plied a course to the south-southwest.
True, we often needed to adjust her heading and reduce her speed in the midst of those frozen
masses. It got very hard to navigate once the schooner entered the row of icebergs, which she
needed to cut through at an angle. But there wasn’t any of the pack or drift ice that cluttered the
neighborhood of the ice barrier at the 70th parallel, nothing of the wholesale confusion found
in the Antarctic Circle’s waterways, lashed by polar storms.5 The enormous shapes around us
drifted with leisurely majesty. These masses seemed “perfectly fresh,” to use a completely apt
expression—and could they have formed just a few days ago? Even so, they stood 100 to 150
feet high, and you needed to reckon their volume in millions of tons. To avoid colliding with
them, West kept meticulous watch and didn’t leave deck for a second.
I looked in vain down the passageways between the icebergs, trying to make out signs
of land whose bearings would force our schooner to travel due south again. . . . I didn’t see
anything of the kind.
However Captain Guy could still count on the accuracy of his compass readings here-
abouts. The magnetic pole was several hundred miles farther off and in longitude east, so it
hadn’t any influence on his compass. Instead of jumping around six to seven points while going
berserk near that pole, its needle stayed steady and you could rely on it.
So, despite my beliefs—which were based, after all, on quite valid arguments—there
wasn’t any semblance of land, and I wondered if it wouldn’t be advisable to head more to the
west, leading the Halbrane farther away from that endpoint where the globe’s meridians cross.
Accordingly, as the hours went by (and I’d been allotted just forty-eight), it was all too
clear that attitudes were gradually sinking back into discouragement and potential insubordina-
tion. In another day and a half, I would no longer be able to battle this breakdown in morale.
The schooner would reverse direction and go north for good.
The crew worked silently while West gave orders in a curt voice, maneuvering down the
passageways, sometimes shooting nearer the wind to avoid a collision, sometimes keeping off
almost flat before the wind. Nevertheless, despite their constant vigilance, despite their seaman-
ship, despite their instantaneous maneuvering, on occasion our hull would scrape dangerously
against an iceberg, leaving long black marks on its ridges as we went. And in all honesty the

bravest of us couldn’t stave off a sense of panic at the thought that the planks might bust open
and the sea rush in.
It should be noted that the bases of these floating mountains were firmly shored up.
Disembarking on one of them wouldn’t have been doable. Accordingly we didn’t see any seals,
usually so common where ice fields are plentiful—nor even a colony of those shrill penguins
the Halbrane used to send diving in huge numbers as she went by. Birds in general seemed scarcer
and more skittish. These desolate, deserted regions gave off a feeling of anguish and horror
none of us were fully immune to. If the Jane’s survivors had been swept into the midst of these
frightful wastes, how could anybody keep hoping they’d been able to find shelter or any means
of subsistence? And if the Halbrane came to grief in her turn, would a single witness live to tell
about it . . . ?
Since the day before, from the moment we’d left our southbound course to cut through
the row of icebergs, a noticeable change had come over the half-breed’s habitual outlook. Most
of the time he squatted at the foot of the foremast, looking away to sea, getting up only to
lend a hand with some task, not working with anything like his former zeal or attentiveness. He
looked demoralized, to tell the truth. It wasn’t that he’d stopped believing his comrade from the
Jane was still alive—this thought was incapable of crossing his mind! But he instinctively felt he
wouldn’t find any traces of poor Pym by going in this direction.
“Sir,” he would tell me, “this isn’t the way . . . if you take my meaning . . . no . . . this
isn’t the way!”
And what answer could I give him?
Toward seven o’clock in the evening a pretty heavy fog came up, promising a nervous,
perilous trip for our schooner while it lasted.
That day of emotions, anxieties, and endless fresh alternatives left me a broken man.
Accordingly I retired to my cabin, where I threw myself fully clothed on my cot.
But sleep wouldn’t come thanks to the obsessive ideas stirring up my imagination, for-
merly so calm, nowadays so overwrought. I was starting to think that reading Poe’s works on
a constant basis—and while visiting this amazing realm where his heroes had reveled—was
exercising more of an influence on me than I’d realized.6
Tomorrow, my forty-eight hours would be up—and this time when I’d begged, the crew
had given me their last dime.
“Things not going the way you’d like?” the bosun had said to me just as I entered the
deckhouse.
Definitely not, since no land had shown up behind the flotilla of icebergs! If we didn’t
raise any signs of a coastline between those moving masses, Len Guy would head north
tomorrow.
Oh, if only I were skipper of this schooner . . . ! If I’d been able to buy her, even by liq-
uidating my entire fortune, and if these men were my slaves whom I could drive with a whip,
the Halbrane would never give up on this cruise . . . though it led her through Antarctica to the
axis itself, there under the glittering lights of the Southern Cross!
My muddled wits swarmed with a thousand thoughts, a thousand regrets, a thousand
desires! I wanted to get out of bed, but it felt like an irresistibly heavy hand was pinning me to

my cot! I was fighting off nightmares in my semiconscious state, and I instantly had an urge to
leave this cabin . . . to put one of the Halbrane’s longboats to sea . . . to jump into it with Peters,
who wouldn’t hesitate to come along . . . then surrender to the current proceeding south . . .
And I did that . . . yes, I did that . . . in a dream! It’s tomorrow . . . after one last look
at the horizon, Len Guy issues orders to put about . . . we’re towing one of the dinghies
astern . . . I alert the half-breed . . . we tiptoe aft without anybody spotting us . . . we cut loose
the painter . . . while the schooner sails off, we stay behind, and the current carries us away . . .
So we go over the ocean, totally free . . . finally our dinghy comes to a halt . . . we’ve
reached land . . . I think I see a sort of sphinx towering over the polar ice cap . . . the sphinx of
the ice realm . . . I go up to it . . . I question it . . . it gives me the secrets of those mysterious
regions . . . and then, around this mythical monster, those phenomena appear that Pym claimed
were real . . . the curtain of flickering vapor, streaked with bright rays, torn open. . . . And it
isn’t a figure of superhuman size that rises in front of my dazzled eyes . . . it’s Arthur Gordon
Pym, fierce guardian of the South Pole, unfurling in the winds of those high latitudes the ban-
ner of the United States of America . . . !
I don’t know whether my dream abruptly broke off or shifted at the whims of my
deranged mind, but I felt as if I’d suddenly been shaken awake . . . it seemed like a change had
occurred in the schooner’s rocking motion, as if she were listing gently to starboard and gliding
over the surface of this ultrasmooth sea . . . and yet there wasn’t any rolling . . . there wasn’t any
pitching . . .
Yes . . . it positively felt like I was being lifted up, as if my cot were an airship’s gon-
dola . . . as if gravity no longer had any effect on me . . .
I wasn’t mistaken, and I tumbled out of my dream into reality.
A series of crashes thundered overhead, their cause not yet clear to me. Inside my cabin
the bulkheads tilted so far over, you would have sworn the Halbrane had toppled onto her side.
Almost immediately I was heaved out of my cot, and it was sheer luck I didn’t crack my skull
on the corner of the table.
Finally I got up again, managed to hang onto the sill under the side window, leaned
against the door giving onto the wardroom, and kicked it open.
Just then there were sounds of the rails cracking and our port side ripping open . . .
Did this mean the schooner had collided with one of those colossal floating masses,
which West hadn’t managed to dodge in the midst of the fog?
Suddenly, astern, fierce outcries erupted above the deckhouse, then yells of fright min-
gled with the panic-stricken voices of all the crew.
There was one last jolt, and the Halbrane lay motionless.

23. Iceberg Somersault
I
had to crawl over the deckhouse floor to reach the door and get out on deck.
Captain Guy had already left his cabin, and the ship was heeling so sharply,
he dragged himself on his knees, holding on as well as he could to the row of
cleats along the bulwarks.
Toward the bow, between the forecastle and the foremast, a couple of heads emerged
from the folds of the fore staysail, which had collapsed like a tent whose ropes just popped
loose.
Hanging onto the starboard rigging were Peters, Hardie, Holt, and Endicott, who had a
stunned look on his black features.
If you can believe it at this juncture, since the 84th parallel he and the bosun had been
gleefully selling the bonuses they were owed at half off!1
A man managed to crawl over to me, the deck slant keeping him from standing up at
even a fifty-degree angle.
It was Hurliguerly, wriggling along like a foretopman on a yardarm.
Stretching out full length, bracing my feet against the door frame, I wasn’t worried any-
more about sliding to the end of the corridor.
I held out a hand to the bosun, and he hauled himself up next to me, not without some
difficulty.
“What’s going on?” I asked him.
“We’re stranded high and dry, Mr. Jeorling.”
“We went aground?” I exclaimed.
“Ground implies land,” the bosun answered wryly, “and you can forget about land,
because there never was any except in that old devil Peters’s imagination!”
“All right—what happened?”
“What happened was an iceberg in the middle of the fog—an iceberg we couldn’t dodge.”
“An iceberg, bosun?”

“Aye, an iceberg that picked this moment to do a somersault! When it flipped over, it
came up under the Halbrane and lifted her into the air like a racket scoops up a shuttlecock—
and now here we are, stranded a good hundred feet above the surface of the Antarctic Ocean.”
Could anybody envision a more dreadful ending to the Halbrane’s venturesome cruise! In
the midst of these far-off waterways, our only means of transportation had just been snatched
from her natural element by an overturning iceberg, then carried more than a hundred feet into
the air! Yes, I’ll say it again—some ending! To capsize at the height of a storm, to perish in an
attack by savages, to get crushed between slabs of ice—these are dangers any ship faces when
she sails the polar seas! But to imagine that a floating mountain could flip over, instantly lift the
Halbrane, and now leave her stranded practically at the mountain’s summit—no, it was outside
the bounds of credibility!
I had no idea if we could successfully get the schooner down from such a height with the
means at our disposal. What I did know, on the other hand, was that once they’d gotten over
their initial alarm, Captain Guy, our first officer, and the oldtimers on the crew wouldn’t give in
to despair no matter how horrible things were. I had no doubts on this score. Yes, they would
do all they could for the general welfare! As for what steps we would have to take, nobody
could say as yet.
In fact a veil of fog, a sort of grayish shroud, still covered the iceberg. We couldn’t see
where it was situated in that flotilla drifting to the southeast, or even anything of its enormous
mass, other than that cramped crevice where the schooner was wedged.
The most basic caution demanded that we vacate the Halbrane, which could start slid-
ing anytime the iceberg gave a sudden lurch. Were we even certain it had definitely gone back
to a stable position on the surface of the sea? Would it definitely keep its balance? Shouldn’t
we expect another somersault? And if the schooner hurtled into space, who among us could
emerge safe and sound from such a nosedive, let alone from her final plunge into the ocean
depths?
In a few minutes the crew had left the Halbrane. Everybody looked for a safe place on the
slopes, waiting for the iceberg to throw off its cloak of mists. Shining at an angle, the sun’s rays
weren’t able to pierce them, and we could barely detect its reddish disk through all those opaque
droplets that kept putting out its fires.
But we could see each other at twelve paces. As for the Halbrane, she was just a blurred,
blackish mass that instantly stood out against the whiteness of the ice.
By then we had reason to wonder about the men who’d been on the schooner’s deck at
the time of the catastrophe—had any of them been thrown over the rails, dragged down the
slopes, dumped into the sea?
At Captain Guy’s command the sailors nearby joined the group where I was standing
with the first officer, the bosun, and masters Hardie and Holt.
West called for all hands . . . five men didn’t report: seaman Drap, one of the oldtim-
ers on the crew, and four of the recruits who’d come aboard in the Falklands, specifically two
Englishmen, an American, and a fellow from Tierra del Fuego.
Consequently this catastrophe had cost the lives of five men—the first casualties on this
cruise since we’d left Kerguelen’s Land . . . but would they be the last?

And there wasn’t any actual doubt that the poor fellows had perished, because we called
for them in vain, and also looked for them in vain down the sides of that iceberg, especially
where they might have been able to hang onto some ledge.
These efforts, which we made after the fog lifted, proved fruitless. Right when the Hal-
brane got picked up from underneath, the jolt had been so forceful, so sudden, those men
wouldn’t have been able to hang onto the rails, and the current must have carried their bodies
out to sea, therefore we weren’t likely to ever find them.
When we’d verified that five men had vanished, despair gripped every heart. This devel-
opment gave us a frighteningly clear perspective of the dangers that threaten an expedition into
the antarctic!
“What about Hearne?” a voice said.
Holt had just tossed this name out in the midst of the overall silence.
We’d forgotten that the master sealer was locked in the hold—had he been crushed to
death inside that cramped cubbyhole?
West ran over to the schooner, hauled himself up a line hanging from the bow, and
reached the workstation where you can get down into that part of the hold.
Motionless and silent, we waited to hear about Hearne’s fate—though, as the bad actor
on the crew, he didn’t deserve a lot of compassion from us.
Even so, how many of us were thinking by then that if we’d followed his advice, if the
schooner had gone north again, her whole crew wouldn’t be taking refuge on a drifting iceberg!
And during this speculating I could hardly bear to look at where I had to claim responsibility,
I who kept nagging us to continue this cruise!
Finally the first officer reappeared on deck, Hearne at his heels. By some miracle neither
the bulkheads, timbers, nor planks had given way at the location where the master sealer was
incarcerated.
Hearne traveled the length of the schooner, rejoined his comrades without saying a word,
and ceased to be a pressing concern.
Toward six o’clock in the morning, the fog cleared thanks to a pretty noticeable drop in
temperature. We didn’t have to deal with vapor fully solidifying but rather with that phenom-
enon known as rime frost or frozen haze, which sometimes crops up in these high latitudes.
Len Guy recognized it from its many prismatic fi bers, their tips pointing the way the winds
blew—winds that roughed up the delicate crust deposited over the iceberg’s sides. Mariners
know to not confuse this rime frost with the hoarfrost found in temperate zones, which solidi-
fies only after it’s deposited on the surface of the ground.
By then we could estimate the size of this mountain, which we stood on like flies on a
sugar loaf—and believe me, if you saw the schooner from the sea below, she wouldn’t look
much bigger than a merchantman’s lifeboat.
This iceberg seemed to be 600 to 800 yards around by 130 to 140 feet high. According
to standard calculations, therefore, it had to sink underwater to a depth four or five times that,
so it weighed millions of tons.
Here’s what had taken place:

She was listing to starboard.
Its base eroded by contact with warmer waters, the iceberg had gradually risen. Its center
of gravity shifted, and it could regain its balance only by suddenly keeling over, so its bottom
part swung around and ended up above sea level. As it overturned, it acted like the arm of an
enormous lever, scooped up the Halbrane, and carried her off. Many icebergs flip over like this
on the surface of the polar seas, and this is one of the huge risks a ship runs in going near them.
Our schooner had gotten caught in a fissure on the iceberg’s western face. She was listing
to starboard, stern raised, bow lowered. It occurred to us that the tiniest lurch would make her
slide all the way down the iceberg’s slopes into the sea. On the side where she was heeling, the

impact had been forceful enough to stave in twelve feet of planking along her hull and bul-
warks. Following that initial impact, the galley secured in front of the foremast had snapped
its cables and tumbled as far as the deckhouse entrance—where, between the two cabins for
Captain Guy and the first officer, the door had ripped off its hinges. The fore topmast and pole
mast had come down after the backstays popped, and you could see the perfectly fresh break
at the height of the masthead. All sorts of rubble—yards, spare masts, a piece of sail, barrels,
crates, chicken coops—must have been floating at the foot of the mountain and drifting along
with it.
An especially troubling aspect of our situation was that one of the Halbrane’s longboats,
the starboard one, had gotten crushed at the moment of impact, though the second—the big-
ger of the two, it’s true—still hung by its tackle from the port davits.2 More than anything, it
needed to be put in a secure location, because it might be our only ticket to safety.
During this initial examination we saw that the schooner’s lower masts were still in place
and could be of use if we managed to free her. But we had to get her out of her berth in the
ice and back into her natural element—in short, “launch” her the way you launch a craft into
the sea. How were we to do this?
When Len Guy, the first officer, the bosun, and I were alone together, I questioned them
on this topic.
“It’ll be a tremendously risky operation, I grant you,” West answered. “But we definitely
have to do it, so we will do it. I think we’ll need to dig out a sort of chute going down to the
foot of the iceberg.”
“And we don’t have a single day to lose,” Captain Guy added.
“You hear, bosun?” West went on. “We get to work right away.”
“I hear you, and everybody pitches in,” Hurliguerly answered. “All the same, captain, I’d
like to bring one thing up, by your leave.”
“What’s that?”
“Before we start work, let’s check over the hull and see what the damage is and if we can
fix it. What’s the point of launching a gutted ship that’ll go straight to the bottom?”
We gave in to the bosun’s just request.
The fog had cleared, bright sunshine lit up the iceberg’s eastern portion, and from there
your eyes could take in a wide stretch of sea. Instead of slick surfaces where you couldn’t find
footholds, on this side the iceberg featured crevices, ledges, embankments, and even level areas
where it would be easy to set up a temporary campsite. But we would need to keep out of the
way of huge pieces of falling ice, since they were poorly balanced and any lurch could jar them
loose. And that morning several of those pieces actually rolled down into the sea, sounding
frightfully like avalanches.
By and large the iceberg seemed quite secure on its new base. Besides, so long as its center
of gravity stayed below the level of its waterline, there was no danger of its overturning again.
I hadn’t yet had a chance to speak with Peters following the catastrophe. Since he’d
answered when his name was called, I knew he didn’t number among the casualties. Just then I
spotted him standing motionless on a narrow overhang, and you can guess which direction he
was looking.

With me tagging along, Captain Guy, the first officer, the bosun, and masters Hardie and
Holt went back up to the schooner to carry out a meticulous inspection of her hull. On the
port side this wouldn’t be a problem because the Halbrane was tilting the opposite way. On the
other side, to not miss any part of her planking, we would have to dig into the ice and more
or less squirm up to the keel.
Here’s what emerged after a two-hour inspection: all in all the damage was inconse-
quential, a routine repair job. Two or three planks had cracked from the force of the impact,
leaving their bent dowels and gaping seams out in view. On the inside the timbers were intact,
the floorboards hadn’t given way. Made to navigate through the polar seas, our craft had held
up where so many others, less sturdily built, would have gone completely to pieces. True, the
rudder had come unshipped from its braces, but it would be easy to fix.
Once we’d finished looking her over inside and out, we saw that the damage wasn’t as
substantial as we might have feared, and on this point we felt encouraged.
Encouraged . . . right . . . assuming we managed to get our schooner back in the water!
After breakfast that morning we decided the men would start to dig out a slanting chute
that the Halbrane could slide down to the foot of the iceberg. We could only hope to Heaven
that the operation succeeded, because who in our circumstances wouldn’t be horrified at the
prospect of braving the harsh polar winter, spending six months on this floating mass, being
carried off to Lord knows where? Once winter came, none of us would be able to escape from
that most dreadful of deaths—dying of cold.
Just then Peters, who was a hundred steps away and scanning the horizon south to east,
hollered in a harsh voice:
“We’re lying to!”
Lying to? What did the half-breed mean by this, other than that the iceberg had suddenly
stopped drifting? As for the cause of this layover, this wasn’t the time to go looking for it, or
to wonder what the consequences might be.
“It’s true all the same!” the bosun snapped. “This iceberg isn’t budging, and maybe it
hasn’t since it somersaulted.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Isn’t it moving anymore?”
“No,” our first officer answered me, “and there’s your proof—the others are parading by
and leaving it behind!”
Sure enough, while five or six ice mountains were heading down south, ours was as sta-
tionary as if stranded on a shoal.
The simplest explanation was that its new bottom had run into an underwater ledge and
gotten stuck there—and it would stay stuck till its submerged part started to rise, increasing
the risk of a second somersault.
All in all this was a serious complication, because the dangers of coming to a permanent
standstill in these waterways were dire enough that the risks of drifting were actually preferable.
There, at least, we could hope to come across a continent or an island—or even, if the currents
didn’t shift and the sea stayed open, to make it back to the threshold of the polar regions!
So here we were after three months of this dreadful cruise! As for Arthur Gordon Pym,
William Guy, and his companions from the Jane, weren’t they out of the picture for good?

Shouldn’t we be using all the means at our disposal to save ourselves? And would anybody be
a bit surprised if the Halbrane’s sailors ended up staging a mutiny, if they followed Hearne’s
suggestions, and if they held their leaders responsible—me especially—for the disasters of
this expedition?
And it could come to that, because, despite losing four of their number, the master sealer
and his comrades were still in the majority.
Which—I could clearly see—was what Len Guy and Jem West were thinking over.
In essence, though the Falkland recruits made up a total of just fifteen men, versus thir-
teen of us including the half-breed, wasn’t there a danger some of the latter were close to going
over to Hearne’s side?3 Who knew if his comrades, driven to desperation, weren’t planning to
lay hold of the only longboat we had left, take it north again, and ditch us on this iceberg? So
it was essential to put our dinghy in a safe place and guard it around the clock.
What’s more, Captain Guy had undergone a notable change since these latest incidents.
The presence of these future perils seemed to have transformed him. Till this point he’d thought
only of finding his countrymen and had left his first officer in charge of the schooner—and he
couldn’t have entrusted her to a mate of greater competence and dedication. But from this day
forward he would take back his leadership prerogatives, exercise them with the forcefulness that
circumstances dictated, and again be sole master on board after God.
At his command the crew came and lined up around him on a level area just to the Hal-
brane’s right. There they gathered into two groups: on the oldtimers’ side were masters Holt and
Hardie, seamen Rogers, Francis, Gratian, Burry, Stern, and Endicott the cook—plus, I might
add, Dirk Peters; on the newcomers’ side were Hearne and the fourteen other Falkland sailors.4
The latter kept to themselves—the master sealer was their mouthpiece and a bad influence on
them.
Captain Guy looked steadily at his entire crew, and in a ringing voice:
“Sailors of the Halbrane,” he said, “first I have to speak with you about those who are
gone. Five of our companions have just perished in this catastrophe—”
“While we’re waiting for our turn to perish in these seas, where you’ve dragged us even
though—”
“Be quiet, Hearne,” West snapped, pale with anger. “Be quiet, or—”
“Hearne has spoken his piece,” Len Guy went on coolly, “and now that he’s done, I rec-
ommend that he not interrupt me a second time!”
The master sealer might have countered this, feeling he had the majority of the crew
behind him. But Holt instantly went over and reined him in, and he kept his mouth shut.
Then Captain Len Guy took his cap off and spoke these words with an emotion that
reached to the depths of our souls:
“We have to pray for those who’ve passed away during this perilous cruise, which we
undertook out of humane concern. May it please God to not remain deaf to our voices and
to consider how dedicated these seamen were to their fellows! Kneel, sailors of the Halbrane! ”
Everybody knelt on that frozen surface, and the prayers we murmured rose into the
heavens.
We waited till Captain Guy got up before we got up ourselves.

“Now,” he went on, “those who’ve died leave behind those who’ve survived. To the latter
I say that even under our current circumstances, they’ll have to obey me, no matter what orders
I give them. I won’t tolerate any balking or backtalk. Responsibility for the general welfare rests
with me, and I won’t delegate it to anybody. I’m in command here just as I am aboard ship—”
“Aboard ship . . . and we haven’t even got one anymore!” the master sealer had the gall
to respond.
“Wrong, Hearne. There’s our vessel, and we’ll put her to sea again. What’s more, if all we
had was our longboat, I’m still captain . . . and woe to the man who forgets it!”
Neither our sextant nor our chronometer had gotten damaged in the encounter, and that
day Captain Guy took his sights and fixed the time, working out our position as follows:
Latitude 88° 55' south.

Longitude 39° 12' west.
The Halbrane was only one degree and five minutes—or sixty-five miles—away from the
South Pole.

24. The Finishing Stroke
T
“ o work!” Captain Guy said; and starting that very afternoon, the crew went at it
with everything they had.
We didn’t have a single hour to lose. Every one of us understood that it was
a question of time above all else. Concerning provisions, the schooner still had
enough to allow full rations for another eighteen months. Accordingly we weren’t in any danger
of going hungry—or thirsty either, though the water tanks had ruptured during the crash, and
the liquid they held had leaked out the punctures in their sides.
Luckily the kegs of gin, whiskey, beer, and wine were almost completely intact—they’d
been stored in the section of the hold that suffered the least. We hadn’t experienced any set-
backs on this score, and the iceberg itself would supply us with drinking water.
As you know, whether ice is formed from fresh water or sea water, it doesn’t contain
any salt. During the transformation from a liquid state to a solid one, all sodium chloride is
eliminated. So it doesn’t seem to make much difference which way the ice was formed, the water
coming from it will be drinkable. Even so, we must state a preference for the kind from certain
ice slabs characterized by their slightly greenish tint and perfect transparency. They’re actually
solidified rainwater and infinitely more suitable for drinking purposes.
Accustomed as he was to these polar seas, our captain certainly wouldn’t have had trouble
spotting this type of ice; but he couldn’t find any on our iceberg, since the part that had now
somersaulted into the open was the part that used to be submerged.
At the outset Captain Guy and West decided to lighten the vessel by emptying her com-
pletely. The masts and rigging had to be dismantled, then transferred to a level area. Launching
her would be a difficult and dangerous operation, and it involved getting her weight down as
far as possible, even unloading the ballast. Since the operation needed to be carried out under
optimum conditions, it was better to wait a few days before leaving. We could reload her later
without much difficulty.
After this pressing matter, a second one came up, just as serious. Essentially, it would be
unforgivably reckless to leave our provisions in the Halbrane’s hold, given how precariously she

was perched on the iceberg’s flank. Wouldn’t a single lurch be enough to knock her loose? If the
slabs making up her berth shifted around, wouldn’t she lose her point of purchase? And then
she would vanish into the depths . . . along with the provisions our lives depended on!
We were busy that day unloading crates of lightly salted meat, dried vegetables, flour,
biscuits, tea, coffee, and kegs of gin, whiskey, wine, and beer, which were removed from the
hold and storeroom, then put in safekeeping inside crevices near the Halbrane.
We likewise had to protect the longboat from any eventuality—and, I’ll add, from the
possible scheming of Hearne and some of his gang to lay hold of it and head back to the ice
barrier.
About thirty feet to the schooner’s left, we put the big dinghy (with its set of oars, rud-
der, painter, grapnel, masts, and sail) down in a cavity that would be easy to keep an eye on.
During the day there was nothing to worry about. During the night, or rather during bedtime
hours, the bosun or another of the higher-ups would stand guard by this cavity, and we could
feel confident that the longboat would be safe from any wrongdoing.
We did double duty over the days of January 19, 20, and 21, transferring the cargo and
dismasting the Halbrane. We slung the low masts, using yards as stays. Later West would see to
replacing the topmast and pole mast, and in any case they weren’t essential for getting back to
the Falklands or some other place where we could spend the winter.
Needless to say, we’d set up a campsite not far from the Halbrane on that level area I’ve
mentioned. Draping sails over spars and tying them down with hawsers, we pitched several
tents over the bedding from the cabins and crew quarters, which gave us adequate shelter from
the inclement conditions already common at this time of year. Even so, the fair weather con-
tinued, enhanced by a steady breeze from the northeast and a temperature that had risen to 46°
Fahrenheit.1 As for Endicott’s kitchen, its new home was at the far end of the level area, near a
spur whose gradual slope let us climb all the way to the iceberg’s summit.
I have to acknowledge that during these three days of extra tiring work, Hearne’s behav-
ior was above reproach. The master sealer knew he was under particular scrutiny, just as he
knew Len Guy wouldn’t go easy on him if there were any signs he was inciting his colleagues
to insubordination. It was a shame his malicious tendencies drove him to act this way, because
his energy, skill, and shrewdness made him a valuable man, and he proved as helpful under
these circumstances as he’d ever been. Had he come back to his senses? Had he realized that the
general welfare called for general agreement? I couldn’t say, but I didn’t get my hopes up—nor
did Hurliguerly.
I don’t need to emphasize how much fervor the half-breed brought to this hard labor,
always first on the job and last to quit, doing the work of four, sleeping barely a few hours,
resting only at mealtimes and eating by himself. He’d hardly spoken a word to me since the
schooner had suffered this dreadful accident. And what could he say to me . . . ? Didn’t I real-
ize, just as he did, that we would have to give up all hope of continuing this unlucky cruise?
Sometimes I happened to catch sight of Martin Holt and the half-breed next to each
other, working on some tricky task. Our master sailmaker never missed a chance to come up to
Peters, who kept away from him for reasons you’re aware of. And when I thought of the secret
he’d confided to me about that frightful drama on the Grampus and about Holt’s own brother,
the so-called Parker, I was filled with abject horror. If this secret got out, I was sure the half-

breed would be viewed with disgust. Everybody would forget he’d rescued the master sailmaker,
and as for the latter, if he ever learned how his brother . . . luckily Peters and I were the only
ones privy to this secret.
While we were busy unloading the Halbrane, Captain Guy and his first officer analyzed
the problem of how to launch the vessel—a problem rife with difficulties, no doubt about it.
It boiled down to negotiating a 100-foot drop from the berth where the schooner lay to the
surface of the sea—a feat to be accomplished using a chute dug out along a slanting path down
the iceberg’s western flank, a chute that was to measure no less than 1,200 to 1,800 feet in
length. Accordingly, while one work gang was busy unloading the schooner under the bosun’s
supervision, a second gang under West’s direction started lining out a route among the slabs
that garnished this side of our floating mountain.
Floating? I’m not sure why I used this word, because our iceberg no longer did any such
thing. It was as stock-still as an islet, and nothing suggested it would ever drift again. Farther
out a fair number of other icebergs went by heading southeast, while ours was “lying to,” as
Peters put it. Would its base erode enough for it to break free from that underwater ledge?
Would some heavy mass of ice come along, bang into it, and tear it loose during the collision?
There was no way to predict such a development, and to get out of these waterways for good,
the only thing we could count on was the Halbrane.
These various tasks took us till January 24. The air was still, the temperature didn’t go
down, the mercury in our thermometer had even risen two or three degrees above freezing.
Accordingly a growing number of icebergs were coming from the northwest—a hundred or so,
and a collision with any of them could have the most serious consequences.
Hardie our master caulker got going first on repairing the hull, changing out dowels,
replacing planks, and caulking seams. He had everything he needed to do the job, and we could
rest assured his work would be up to snuff. In the midst of these silent, lonely wastes, sounds
rang out now—hammers driving nails into planks, mallets pounding oakum into seams. These
noises joined the ear-splitting calls of the gulls, sea ducks, albatrosses, and petrels flying around
the iceberg’s summit.
When I ended up alone with Captain Guy and West, our main topics of conversation
were, as you can well imagine, our current predicament, ways of getting out of it, and our
chances of pulling the thing off. Our first officer was optimistic, and so long as no accidents
happened during it, he was convinced the launching operation would succeed. Captain Guy
himself seemed more guarded. What’s more, he would be permanently abandoning any hope
of finding the Jane’s survivors, and the thought must have broken his heart.
And indeed, when the Halbrane was ready to put back to sea and his first officer asked
him what course to set, would he dare tell West to head south? No, this time he wouldn’t have
the allegiance of either the newcomers or even most of the oldtimers on the crew. To continue
searching in that direction, to advance beyond the pole, and to do so without any guarantee
of making it to the Indian Ocean instead of the Atlantic—this was a foolhardy move for any
mariner to indulge in.2 If some landmass closed off the sea on that side, wouldn’t the schooner
risk getting trapped by hosts of icebergs, with no possible way of breaking free before the polar
winter?

Under these circumstances, trying to get Captain Guy to continue the cruise would be
asking for a rebuff. It was a hopeless proposal, and stern necessity demanded that we head
back north without loitering another day in this sector of the antarctic seas. Still, though I’d
decided to not bring it up with Len Guy, I didn’t miss my chance to feel out the bosun on
the matter.
After he’d finished his work, Hurliguerly very often came and joined me, then we would
chat and try to top each other’s travel stories.
One day, while we were sitting on that frozen mountain peak and looking intently at the
treacherous horizon, he exclaimed:
“Who ever would have imagined, Mr. Jeorling, that the Halbrane would leave Kerguelen’s
Land, and 6½ months later she’d be down here hanging onto the side of an iceberg!”
“Which makes this an even bigger nuisance,” I replied. “Because otherwise we would have
achieved our goal and we’d be on our way back.”
“I’m not trying to be ornery,” the bosun remarked, “but when you say we would have
achieved our goal, do you mean we would have found our countrymen?”
“Maybe, bosun.”
“Speaking for myself, I don’t think so, Mr. Jeorling, though that’s our main reason, even
the only one, for navigating across this polar ocean.”
“The only one . . . yes . . . originally,” I got in slyly. “But since the half-breed revealed
those things about Arthur Gordon Pym—”
“Aw, Mr. Jeorling, are you going to keep on about him like old Peters?”
“Forever, Hurliguerly, and all it took was this outrageous, outlandish accident to sink us
in sight of shore.”
“If you think we’ve sunk in sight of shore, Mr. Jeorling, dream on.”
“Well, haven’t we?”
“Then it’s a newsworthy way of sinking, however you look at it,” the bosun asserted.
“Instead of going to the bottom, here we are high in the air.”
“But anyhow, Hurliguerly, I’m right in calling it an unfortunate state of affairs.”
“Unfortunate for sure, and I feel we should take it as a warning.”
“Against what?”
“We aren’t supposed to be trespassing this far into these parts, and I don’t think our
Creator wants his creatures climbing to the tips of the earth’s axis!”
“But right now one of those tips is no more than sixty miles away.”
“That’s so, Mr. Jeorling. However those sixty miles might as well be a thousand since we
haven’t any way of covering ’em! And if we don’t manage to launch the schooner, we’re doomed
to spend the winter in a place even polar bears would snub!”
I replied with a gesture Hurliguerly couldn’t misinterpret: I slowly shook my head.
“You know what I think about the most, Mr. Jeorling?” he asked me.
“What, bosun?”
“Kerguelen’s Land, a place we definitely won’t be heading to! Boy, we had some fine
freezes there after the cold weather hit. Not much difference between those islands and the
ones down here at the edge of the antarctic seas . . . but the point is, you were close to the Cape

of Good Hope, and if you felt like going there to warm your lower limbs, you didn’t have an ice
barrier blocking the way! Meanwhile, down here in this frozen water, it’s hell weighing anchor,
and you never know if the door will open up and let you out.”
“I repeat, bosun: if it hadn’t been for this latest accident, everything would be wrapped
up by now, one way or another. We’d still have six more weeks to leave these polar seas. By and
large it’s rare for a ship to face as many problems as our schooner has, and this was downright
bad luck after we’d enjoyed such promising conditions . . .”
“Those conditions are no more, Mr. Jeorling,” Hurliguerly snapped, “and I’m honestly
afraid . . .”
“What—you too, bosun? You always seem so confident!”
“A man’s confidence, Mr. Jeorling, can wear out like the seat of his pants! What do you
want from me! I compare myself to my pal Atkins at home in his cozy inn . . . I think about
the Green Cormorant with its big pub room downstairs, its little tables where you can enjoy
your whiskey and gin with a chum . . . while the stove’s going full blast and drowning out the
weathervane squealing on the roof. Well, compared to that, we don’t come off so good—and
to my mind Mr. Atkins just may have a better grasp of what life’s all about . . .”
“Oh, you’ll see them again, bosun—good old Atkins, the Green Cormorant, Kerguelen’s
Land! For God’s sake, don’t get down on yourself! If a sensible, determined fellow like you is
already starting to lose heart—”
“Look, if it were just me, Mr. Jeorling, things wouldn’t be half so bad!”
“Is the crew . . . ?”
“Yes . . . and no,” Hurliguerly contended, “because I can see that some of ’em aren’t too
happy!”
“Has Hearne started griping again and getting his comrades worked up?”
“Not openly at least, Mr. Jeorling, and I haven’t seen or heard a thing since I started
keeping an eye on him. Besides, he knows what to expect if he makes the tiniest move. So the
rascal’s off on a new tack, I’m sure of it. Which I don’t find at all surprising—though Holt our
master sailmaker does surprise me.”
“What do you mean, bosun?”
“The two of ’em seem on speaking terms! Watch how Hearne goes looking for Holt,
chats with him a good deal, and Holt doesn’t seem at all unreceptive.”
“I don’t think he’s the type to listen to Hearne’s advice,” I replied, “and he would never
join in if Hearne tried to get the crew to mutiny.”
“Probably not, Mr. Jeorling . . . but I’m not keen on seeing ’em together. That Hearne’s a
risky, unreliable individual, and Holt might not be careful enough around him . . .”
“He’s in the wrong there, bosun.”
“And . . . hold on . . . the other day I happened to overhear a few snatches of a conversa-
tion they were having—do you know what they were talking about?”
“I won’t know a thing till you tell me, Hurliguerly.”
“Well, while they were jawing on the Halbrane’s deck, I heard ’em bring up Peters. And
Hearne said: ‘You mustn’t hold it against the half-breed, Master Holt, if he won’t be friendly

and accept your thanks! He’s from a tribe of savages, but he has plenty of courage, and he
proved it when he risked his life to get you out of a tough spot. And don’t forget, he also was
on the Grampus’s crew along with your brother Ned, if I’m not mistaken.’ ”
“He said that, bosun?” I exclaimed. “He mentioned the Grampus by name?”
“Aye, the Grampus.”
“Also Ned Holt?”
“That’s right, Mr. Jeorling!”
“And how did Holt answer him?”
“He answered: ‘My poor brother—I don’t even know the way he died! Was it during a
mutiny on board? He was a gallant man and he never would have let his captain down, so maybe
they killed him . . .’ ”
“Is that what Hearne claimed, bosun?”
“Aye . . . but he added: ‘It’s a sad thing for you, Master Holt . . . from what I hear, they
ditched the Grampus’s captain in a dinghy along with two or three of his men . . . and who
knows if your brother wasn’t one of ’em?’ ”3
“And then what happened?”
“Then, Mr. Jeorling, he added: ‘Didn’t you ever think of getting Peters to tell you about
it?’ Holt replied: ‘Aye, one time I asked the half-breed what went on, and I never saw a man
so upset—he answered that he didn’t know, he didn’t know . . . he mumbled so much, I could
barely understand him, and off he ran, covering his face with his hands.’ ”
“This is everything you caught of that conversation, bosun?”
“Everything, Mr. Jeorling, and it seemed so odd, I wanted to let you in on it.”
“And what have you concluded?”
“Nothing, except I see our master sealer as a first-class rascal, thoroughly capable of
working out some nasty secret scheme—which he wants to drag Holt into!”
In fact, what was the meaning of this new attitude of Hearne’s? Why was he trying to be
friends with Holt, one of our ablest seamen? Why was he harking back like this to events on
the Grampus? Was Hearne better informed than the rest on the topic of Dirk Peters and Ned
Holt—on that secret the half-breed and I thought only the two of us knew?
This didn’t fail to cause me serious worries. Even so, I was careful to not say anything
to Peters. If he should suspect that Hearne was telling tales about what took place aboard the
Grampus, if he heard that this rascal—as Hurliguerly called him with good reason—kept talk-
ing to Holt about his brother Ned, I’m not too sure what would happen!
Anyhow, whatever Hearne might be up to, it was a shame our master sailmaker—whom
Captain Len Guy had every right to depend on—was in cahoots with him. The master sealer
definitely had some motive for acting this way. As for what it was, I hadn’t a guess. Accordingly,
though the crew seemed to have given up any thoughts of mutiny, we kept a stern eye on them,
and on Hearne especially.
Besides, things were winding down—at least where the schooner was concerned.
Two days later our work was complete. The men had finished repairing the hull and dig-
ging out the chute for launching the ship down to the foot of our floating mountain.

By this time the upper level of the ice had softened a little, so these latest efforts didn’t
require any major exertions with picks and mattocks. Going on a slant so that its gradient was
never too steep, the chute worked its way down the iceberg’s western flank. With cables attached
to properly restrain her, she seemed sure to slide down without suffering any damage. My only
worry was that the rising temperatures could cause her to slide less easily over the chute’s surface.
Needless to say, no cargo, masts, anchors, chains, or anything else had been put back on
board. The hull was already plenty heavy and hard to handle, so our challenge was to lighten it
as much as possible. When the schooner was back in her watery element, reloading her would
be the work of a few days.
By the afternoon of the 28th, the final arrangements were in place. We had to shore up
the sides of the chute at spots where the ice was noticeably melting. Then everybody knocked
off at four o’clock in the afternoon. Captain Guy ordered double rations for all hands, and
they deserved those extra shots of whiskey and gin because they’d put in a hard week’s work.
I’ll say again that there weren’t any more stirrings of insubordination, now that Hearne
had stopped inflaming his comrades. The crew—every man jack of them, in all honesty—
thought only about this major operation of launching the ship. Once the Halbrane was in the
water, that meant it was time to leave . . . which meant it was time to go home! True, for Peters
and me it also meant deserting Pym for good!
The temperature that night was one of our highest to date. Our thermometer read 53°
Fahrenheit.4 Accordingly, though the sun was starting to close in on the horizon, the ice was
melting, and from every direction a thousand rivulets were winding their way downward.
The early risers woke up at four o’clock, including me. I’d barely slept—and I expect
Peters also hadn’t gotten a wink, devastated at the thought of turning back!
The launching operation was scheduled to get under way at ten o’clock. Making allow-
ances for all possible delays, likewise for the strictest precautions it was appropriate to take,
Len Guy hoped we would be done before the day was over. Nobody doubted that by evening
the schooner would at least be down at the foot of the iceberg.
Needless to say, we all had to pitch in with this difficult project. Each man was assigned
to his work station—some to help the hull slide better, assisting with wooden rollers if need
be . . . others, contrariwise, to slow it down if its descent threatened to get out of hand, hold-
ing it back with cables and hawsers available for this purpose.
We’d finished breakfast in our tents by nine o’clock. Our ever-confident sailors couldn’t
help drinking one last time to the operation’s success, and we added our slightly premature
hoorays to theirs. In fact Captain Guy and his first officer had laid their plans so shrewdly, the
launching had a very serious chance of coming off.
At last we’d gotten up to leave the campsite and head to our stations (some of the sailors
were already there), when shouts of astonishment and terror rang out . . .
It was an appalling sight—and as brief as it was, it left an indelible feeling of horror in
our souls!
Melting at the base, one of the enormous slabs forming an embankment for the Hal-
brane’s berth had shifted off balance, slid downward, then rolled in enormous, bounding arcs
over other slabs.

No longer held in place, the schooner teetered over that slope an instant later . . .
Two men, Rogers and Gratian, were on deck in the ship’s bow. The poor fellows vainly
tried to leap over the rails, weren’t quick enough, and were carried off in that horrifying descent.
Yes, I saw it! I saw the schooner topple onto her left flank, start sliding down, crush one
of the recruits who’d waited too long to jump aside, then rebound from slab to slab and finally
hurtle into space . . .
Staved in, dismembered, planks split open, timbers in pieces, the Halbrane sank under
the waves a second later, flinging up an enormous fountain of spray at the foot of the iceberg!

25. Now What?
W
e were stupefied . . . yes, after the schooner had vanished into the depths, carried
off like a boulder in an avalanche, we stood in stupefaction! Not a thing was left
of our Halbrane, not even flotsam and jetsam! Just a second ago she was 100 feet
in the air, now she was 500 feet under the waves! Yes, we stood in stupefaction
without even one thought for the dangers the future had in store . . . it was the stupefaction of
folks who “can’t believe their eyes,” as the saying goes!
Next came shock, a natural result. Nobody screamed, nobody moved. We stood stock-
still, feet frozen to the ice beneath us. No words could describe the horror of our predicament!
As for First Officer West, after the schooner had gone to her doom in the depths, I saw
a large tear fall from his eyes. That Halbrane he’d loved so dearly was now gone forever! He was
a man of the sternest fi ber, and yes, he wept . . .1
Three of our men had just perished, and in the ghastliest manner! I’d seen Rogers and
Gratian, two of our most loyal sailors, frantically reach out their hands, get thrown about as
the schooner bounded downhill, then go to their deaths along with her! As for that other fel-
low from the Falklands, that American she crushed as she went by, he lay in a pool of blood,
a shapeless mass. . . . After our first casualties just ten days ago, we had three more to record in
the death register for this disastrous cruise! Ah, how fortune had smiled on us till the Halbrane
got snatched from her natural element . . . and now we were staggering under fate’s cruelest
blows! And hadn’t this last one hit us hardest of all—wouldn’t it be our deathblow?
Then thunderous outcries broke the silence, yells of despair worthy of this irreparable
calamity! And surely more than one man told himself he would have been better off aboard the
Halbrane as she bounded down the iceberg’s flanks! He would have gotten it over and done with,
like Rogers and Gratian! The recklessness and stupidity of this deranged expedition could lead
to only one logical outcome!
Finally the instinct for self-preservation prevailed, and though Hearne stood to one side
and made a point of keeping quiet, his comrades started shouting:

It was an appalling sight.
“Break out the dinghy!”

The poor fellows couldn’t control themselves. They were panic-stricken. They turned
and took off for the crevice where our only longboat—too small to hold them all—had been
in safekeeping since we’d unloaded the schooner.
Len Guy and Jem West rushed out of the campsite.
I joined them instantly, the bosun at my heels. We were armed and determined to make
use of our weapons. We had to keep those maniacs from laying hold of the dinghy—it didn’t
belong to a few but to everybody!
“Hold it, sailors!” Captain Guy barked.

“Hold it!” West repeated. “Or we’ll fire at the first man who takes another step!”
Both of them had their pistols out and trained on the men. The bosun aimed his gun at
them. I held my rifle, ready to shoulder it.
It was no use! Those madmen didn’t hear a thing, and just as one of them was climb-
ing over the final slab, the first officer’s bullet brought him down. His hands couldn’t grip the
embankment and he slid down its icy backside, vanishing into the depths.
Was that the opening salvo of a slaughter? Would others go to their deaths at this spot?
Would the oldtimers on the crew side with the newcomers?
Right then I could tell that Hardie, Holt, Francis, Burry, and Stern were hesitant to come
over to our side—though Hearne stood motionless a few steps away and was careful to do
nothing that might encourage the mutineers.
But we couldn’t let them be the ones with the boat, the ones lowering it, the ones launch-
ing it with ten or twelve men inside, in a word, the ones ditching us on this iceberg without any
possibility of sailing away . . .
Frightened out of their wits, oblivious to danger, deaf to threats, they’d almost reached
the longboat when a second shot—fired by the bosun—got one of the sailors right through
the heart and dropped him in his tracks.
Among the master sealer’s diehard supporters, there were now one less from America and
one less from Tierra del Fuego!
Then a man sprang out in front of the dinghy.
It was Dirk Peters, who’d scaled the opposite slope.
The half-breed clapped one of his enormous hands on the dinghy’s stempost, while his
other motioned the maniacs to back off.
With Peters there we didn’t have to resort to gunfire anymore—on his own, all by him-
self, he was equal to guarding the longboat.
And in fact, when five or six sailors came closer, he rushed them, seized the nearest one
by the belt, lifted him up, and sent his flailing body ten yards through the air—and since the
poor fellow couldn’t grab hold of anything, he would have rebounded into the sea if Hearne
hadn’t managed to catch him on the way.
Two men had died from gunshots—it was already too much!
The half-breed’s participation put the mutiny down on the spot. What’s more, we’d made
it to the dinghy, along with those oldtimers who’d quit hesitating.
It made no difference! The others still outnumbered us.
Captain Guy, eyes furious, showed up with West behind him, unemotional as ever. Words
failed him for a few seconds; but his gaze said everything that his lips couldn’t. Finally, in a
fearsome voice:
“I should treat you like criminals,” he snarled, “and yet what I saw was mass panic! This
dinghy is nobody’s property, it belongs to all of us! At this point it’s our only means of salva-
tion, and you tried to steal it—steal it shamefully! Pay attention, because this is the only time
I’ll say this! The Halbrane’s dinghy is the Halbrane herself! I’m her captain, and woe to any of
you who disobey me!”
While flinging out these last words, Captain Guy looked at Hearne, aiming this sentence
straight at him. Even so, the master sealer hadn’t figured in these latest goings-on, at least

overtly. But nobody doubted that he’d urged his comrades to make off with the dinghy, nor that
he meant to encourage them further.
“Back to the campsite,” Len Guy said. “Peters, you stay here.”
In response the half-breed simply moved his huge head up and down, then he resumed
his post.
The crew went back to the campsite without putting up any resistance. Some stretched
out in their berths, the rest were scattered around nearby.
Hearne didn’t try to rejoin them, nor did he go over to Holt.
Now that the sailors were reduced to twiddling their thumbs, our top priority was to
study our deteriorating situation and think of a way to get out of it.
Captain Guy, his first officer, and the bosun held a staff conference, and I joined them.
The captain led off by saying:
“We’ve secured the dinghy and we’ll keep it secured.”
“Till our last breath!” West stated.
“Who knows,” I said, “if we won’t have to set out before too long?”
“In that case,” Len Guy went on, “since there isn’t room for everybody, we’ll need to face
a hard choice. We’ll let fate decide which of us should go, and I don’t ask to be treated any
differently than the others!”
“Dammit, we aren’t at that point yet!” the bosun replied. “The iceberg’s solid, there’s no
danger it’ll melt before winter.”
“No,” West stated, “that isn’t a worry. But we need to watch over the provisions as well
as the dinghy.”
“And it’s a good thing we stashed our cargo in a safe place,” Hurliguerly added. “Our
poor dear Halbrane . . . laid to rest in these seas like the Jane, her older sister!”
It’s true, I thought, and for very different reasons—the one destroyed by savages from
Tsalal Island, the other by the kind of catastrophe no human power can avert.
“You’re right, Jem,” Captain Guy resumed, “and this way we’ll keep the men from turning
to thievery. Our provisions will certainly last us over a year, not to mention the fish we’ll catch.”
“And we need to watch extra closely, captain,” the bosun replied, “because I’ve already
seen ’em prowling around the kegs of whiskey and gin.”
“And think what those poor devils will be capable of,” I exclaimed, “when they’re stark
raving drunk!”
“I’ll take some steps on the matter,” West replied.
“But,” I asked, “shouldn’t we plan on spending the winter on this iceberg?”
“Heaven save us from such a dreadful possibility!” Captain Guy remarked.
“Anyhow we’ll cope if we have to, Mr. Jeorling,” the bosun said. “If we dig shelters in the
ice, we’ll weather these nasty polar temperatures, and so long as we’ve got food . . .”
Just then that appalling drama acted out on the stage of the Grampus popped into my
head—that drama in which Dirk Peters struck down Ned Holt, brother of our master sail-
maker. Would we ever be backed into such a corner?
But before we started setting up quarters for a winter seven or eight months long,
wouldn’t it be better to get off this iceberg if we could?
I raised this issue with Captain Guy and West.

It was a question without an easy answer, and there was a long silence.
Finally Len Guy said:
“Yes, that would be the wisest course! If our longboat could hold all of us, plus pro-
visions for a journey of at least three or four weeks, I wouldn’t hesitate to head back north
immediately.”
“However,” I pointed out, “we’ll have to go against both the wind and the current, and
our schooner herself would have had a hard time managing that . . . but if we keep on to the
south—”
“To the south?” Captain Guy echoed, looking at me as if trying to read my innermost
thoughts.
“Why not?” I responded. “If this iceberg hadn’t quit moving, it might have drifted to
some lands in that locality—and if it could do that, why couldn’t our dinghy?”
Captain Guy shook his head and didn’t answer, while West kept quiet.
“Oh, our iceberg will end up casting off!” Hurliguerly remarked. “It isn’t connected to
the bottom like the Falklands or the Kerguelen isles! So our best bet is to wait, since the dinghy
can’t take all twenty-three of us.”
“Twenty-three won’t be necessary,” I insisted. “All we need are five or six, so we can scout
out the sea over twelve to fifteen miles . . . down to the south.”
“To the south?” Captain Guy echoed.
“Of course, captain,” I added. “As you’re aware, geographers are agreed that the antarctic
regions consist of an ice cap on top of solid ground.”
“Geographers don’t know anything about it,” West replied coolly, “and couldn’t know
anything about it.”
“Even so,” I said, “it’s a shame we aren’t trying to settle this issue of a polar continent,
seeing as we’re so near . . .”
I decided I’d better not press the matter, at least for the time being.
What’s more, sending our only longboat out exploring had its dangers, whether the cur-
rent carried it too far or the rest of us weren’t in the same place when it came back. In essence,
if our iceberg managed to get clear of the sea bottom and resumed its interrupted progress,
what would happen to the men aboard the dinghy?
Unfortunately, the longboat was too small to hold everybody plus adequate supplies.
Now then, ten of the ship’s oldtimers were left including Dirk Peters, and thirteen of the
newcomers were left—a total of twenty-three. Well, eleven or twelve people were the most
our dinghy could carry. So would we have to ditch eleven men on this ice islet—the ones fate
selected? And what would happen to those left behind?
However Hurliguerly made a comment on this matter that was worth mulling over.
“After all,” he said, “I’m not too sure the ones who go to sea will be any better off than
the ones who don’t! I’ve got my doubts, speaking for myself, and I’ll be glad to give my seat to
anybody who wants it!”
Could the bosun be right? But when I’d asked about using the dinghy, I was thinking
just of scouting out the sea beyond the iceberg. Anyhow we adjourned after deciding to make
arrangements for wintering here, even if our iceberg should start drifting again.

“That’ll be tough for the men to swallow!” Hurliguerly stated.
“It is what it is,” the first officer remarked. “And now let’s roll up our sleeves!”
We started getting things ready and had a dismal day.
To tell the truth, the only person who accepted the situation without griping was Endi-
cott the cook. A Negro who didn’t worry about the future, an easygoing personality, happy-go-
lucky like all his race, he had no trouble accepting his lot—and this habit of acceptance just
might be the ideal philosophy. Besides, when it came to his cooking, it made little difference to
him whether he set up his stoves here or there, so long as it was somewhere.
And flashing his big dusky grin, he told his friend the bosun:
“We’re lucky my kitchen didn’t go to the bottom with our schooner, and you’ll see,
Hurliguerly—I’ll whip you up some tasty dishes just like on the Halbrane . . . till supplies run
out at least!”
“Oh, they won’t run out anytime soon, Mr. Endicott,” the bosun contended. “We don’t
have to worry about hunger, just the cold—cold that’ll turn you into an icicle the second you
quit stamping your feet . . . cold that’ll make your skin split and your head burst! If only we
still had a couple hundred tons of coal . . . but still and all, there’s enough to make the kettle
boil—”
“No touching!” Endicott snapped. “You’re on hallowed ground! The kitchen forever and
ever amen!”
“So that’s why you don’t bother complaining, you fiendish Negro! You can always warm
your toes in front of your stove!”
“What do you expect, bosun? Either a man’s a blue-ribbon cook or he’s not. If he is, he
enjoys the benefits . . . but I could save a teensy spot for you in front of my grate.”
“Oh thank you, Endicott, thank you. No special treatment, everybody gets a chance,
even bosuns . . . I bow to you so long as you’re in charge of stirring the soup. As a general rule,
starvation’s something I can do without. The cold you learn to fight off and live with. We’ll dig
holes in the iceberg . . . get nice and snug inside ’em. And why not stay in the same boarding-
house—a cave manufactured by mattocks? Ice retains heat, I’ll remind you, so it’ll retain ours
too, and who could ask for more!”
It was time to go back to camp and lie in our berths.
Peters wouldn’t let anybody relieve him and stayed on guard duty by the dinghy; nobody
felt like challenging him for the honor.2
Len Guy and Jem West didn’t reenter their tents till they were sure Hearne and his com-
rades were back where they were supposed to be.
I came back in my turn and stretched out.
I don’t know how long I slept, or what time it was, when there was a sharp jolt and I
rolled onto the ground.
What was going on? Was the iceberg doing a new somersault?
All of us were on our feet in a second; then, outside the tents, in the broad daylight of
that polar nighttime . . .
Another floating mass, huge in size, had just banged into our iceberg—which “weighed
anchor,” as seamen say, and started drifting southward.

26. Hallucinations
O
ur circumstances had unexpectedly changed! We weren’t stranded at that local-
ity anymore—what would the consequences be? After getting stalled near the
intersection of the 39th meridian and the 89th parallel, now we were riding the
current in the direction of the pole! So our initial feelings of delight gave way to
a wholesale fear of the unknown—and what an unknown!
Maybe only Peters was overjoyed at the thought of resuming this course, which he insist-
ed would turn up traces of his poor Pym! As for his companions, they had other ideas running
through their heads!
In fact Len Guy no longer held out any hope of picking up his countrymen. William
Guy and his five sailors had left Tsalal Island at least eight months ago, there were no doubts
on that score . . . but where had they taken refuge? In thirty-five days we’d covered a distance of
some 400 miles without finding a thing. Even if they could have reached this polar continent
(which my clever countryman Maury theorizes is about 2,500 miles wide), what part of it
should be the stage for our investigations? And besides, if this end of the earth’s axis is washed
by a sea, hadn’t the Jane’s survivors gone to the bottom by now, and wouldn’t a carapace of ice
soon cover them over?
Therefore, since we’d run out of hope, it was Captain Guy’s sworn duty to take his crew
north again and cut the Antarctic Circle while the weather was still amenable—and here we
were, sweeping southward . . .
As I’ve noted, the drift took the iceberg in that direction after we started moving, and it
wasn’t long before we got terrified all over again.
And here’s what everybody needed to understand: though we weren’t stranded anymore,
we still had to resign ourselves to wintering here for a good while, trusting to luck that we
might bump into one of the whalers busy fishing between the South Orkneys, South Georgia
Island, and the Sandwich group.

As a result of the collision that floated our iceberg off, a number of objects had hurtled
into the sea—the Halbrane’s swivel guns, anchors, chains, a section of mast, and some spare
yards. But when we inventoried our cargo, the losses turned out to be inconsequential, thanks
to our precaution of storing it the day before. And what would have happened to us if that
crash had totally wiped out our stockpiles?
From the sights he took that morning, Captain Guy concluded that our ice mountain
was heading down to the southeast. So there hadn’t been any change in the current’s flow. In fact
those other frozen masses had continued moving that direction, which was why one of them
banged into our eastern flank. From this point forward the two icebergs added up to just one,
now moving south at a speed of two miles per hour.
The thing worth pondering was the persistence of this current, which, ever since the ice
barrier, had been carrying the waters of this open sea toward the South Pole. If, in line with
Maury’s views, there’s a vast antarctic continent, did the aforesaid current sidestep it, traveling
down some wide strait that split this continent into two parts, offering this mass of liquid a
way through, together with the floating masses it carted along on its surface?
I figured we would soon settle the matter. At this speed of two miles per hour, it would
take just thirty hours to reach the tip of that axis where the earth’s meridians meet up.
As for whether the current went right to the pole, and whether it was land we could step
onto, that was another story.1
And when I talked this over with the bosun:
“What do you want, Mr. Jeorling,” he answered me. “If the current goes to the pole,
we’ll go there; if it doesn’t, we won’t. These days we don’t have any say-so about where we travel.
Pieces of ice aren’t ships—they haven’t got sails or rudders, so they travel anywhere the drift
takes ’em.”
“No argument, Hurliguerly. Therefore I figure two or three of us could set out . . . in
the dinghy—”
“Not again! You’re fixated on that dinghy!”
“Of course, because if it turns out there’s land down there, isn’t it possible the Jane’s
men—”
“Went ashore, Mr. Jeorling . . . 400 miles away from Tsalal Island?”2
“Who knows, bosun?”
“So be it, but let me remind you that the place for these arguments is when land comes
in sight, if it ever does. Our captain’ll do what’s right and not forget that time’s running out.
We can’t dillydally in these waterways, and anyhow this iceberg isn’t going to drop us off at the
Falklands or Kerguelen’s Land, so who cares if we leave on another one? The main thing is to
clear the Antarctic Circle before winter makes it impossible to get across.”
Hurliguerly was talking horse sense, I had to admit.
While the first officer took charge of carrying out Captain Guy’s orders and getting
things ready, I repeatedly climbed to the iceberg’s summit. I sat at the very top, spyglass to my
eye, and kept scouring the horizon. From time to time its curving line was broken by some
passing mountain that floated by or hid behind patches of fog.

Sitting at an elevation of 150 feet above sea level, I put my line of sight at a good twelve
miles. Even over that range no distant shapes stood out against the background of the sky.
On two occasions Len Guy clambered up to the summit to take sights.
The results he worked up that day, January 30, gave the following figures:
Longitude 67° 19' west.

Two conclusions could be drawn from the specifics he’d worked up.
First, since the last readings he’d taken to fix our longitude, the current had tossed us
about twenty-four degrees back into the southeast.3
Second, our iceberg wasn’t much more than forty miles from the South Pole.
Over the course of that day, we transferred the better part of the cargo to a wide crevice
the bosun had discovered in our eastern flank—there the crates and barrels would be safe even
in the event of another collision. As for the kitchen stove, our men helped Endicott set it up
between two ice slabs that kept it securely braced, then they piled several tons of coal close by.
Nobody did any whining or muttering while carrying out these various tasks. Clearly the
crew were content to hold their tongues. They obeyed Captain Guy and his first officer because
they weren’t ordered to do anything that didn’t urgently need doing. Now then, in the fullness
of time wouldn’t our men end up getting discouraged again? As yet they weren’t disputing their
leaders’ authority, but where would they stand in a few days? Needless to say, we could depend
on the bosun, on Master Hardie if not Master Holt, and maybe two or three of the oldtimers.
As for the others, especially the Falkland recruits who didn’t think this disastrous cruise would
ever end—could they resist the temptation to grab the dinghy and make a run for it?
To my mind, however, this eventuality wasn’t worth worrying about so long as our ice-
berg kept drifting, because the longboat wouldn’t have made better time. But if we should go
aground yet again, if we got beached on some continent or island, what lengths would the poor
fellows go to, trying to escape the horrors of wintering down here?
This was the topic of conversation during our noon meal. Len Guy and Jem West agreed
that the master sealer and his companions wouldn’t attempt anything so long as this floating
mass stayed in motion. Even so, we were realistic to not relax our vigilance for a single instant.
Hearne aroused too many justifiable suspicions for us to not watch him around the clock.
That afternoon, during the crew’s scheduled rest hour, I had another chat with Dirk
Peters.
I’d taken my usual seat on top of the iceberg, while Captain Guy and his first officer
went down to its base to work up draft marks at its waterline. Twice every twenty-four hours
they had to examine those marks, trying to see if the iceberg’s draft of water was increasing or
decreasing—in other words, if its center of gravity was rising and threatening to make it flip
over again.
I’d been sitting for half an hour when I saw the half-breed climbing quickly up the slopes.
Was he coming—he too—in hopes of sighting land by studying the farthest reaches of
the horizon? Or (which struck me as more likely) did he have some plan concerning Pym that
he wanted to tell me about?

Ever since the iceberg had started moving again, we’d traded barely three or four words.
When the half-breed made it to my side, he stopped and swept his eyes over the sea
around us, searching for the same thing I’d been searching for, and what I hadn’t found, he
didn’t find . . .
Two or three minutes went by before he said a word, and he was so preoccupied, I won-
dered if he’d seen me . . .
Finally he leaned on an ice slab, and I figured he would bring up what he always brought
up; he did nothing of the sort.
“Mr. Jeorling,” he said to me, “you remember . . . in your cabin on the Halbrane . . . I told
you what happened . . . what happened on the Grampus . . .”
Did I remember! He’d played the leading role in that appalling drama, and not one thing
he told me about it had faded from my memory.
“I said to you,” he continued, “that Parker wasn’t named Parker . . . he was named Ned
Holt . . . he was Martin Holt’s brother . . .”
“I know, Peters,” I replied. “And here you are, rehashing the whole sad story—why?”
“Why, Mr. Jeorling? Didn’t you . . . haven’t you ever mentioned it to anybody?”
“Not to a soul,” I stated. “How could I be so foolish, so careless, as to give away your
secret . . . a secret that should never come to our lips . . . a secret we should carry to our graves?”
“To our graves . . . aye!” the half-breed mumbled. “And . . . yet . . . if you take my mean-
ing . . . I think . . . the crew knows . . . they must know something . . .”
And right then I recalled what the bosun told me—he’d overheard Hearne talking with
Holt, encouraging him to ask the half-breed about the way his brother died on the Gram-
pus. Had parts of that secret leaked out, or were these misgivings just a figment of Peters’s
imagination?
“Tell me more,” I said.
“Dunno how to say things . . . if you take my meaning, Mr. Jeorling . . . aye, yester-
day . . . can’t stop thinking about it . . . yesterday Martin Holt took me aside . . . away from
everybody . . . and said he wanted to speak to me . . .”
“About the Grampus?”
“About the Grampus . . . aye . . . and about his brother Ned Holt! It was the first time he
said that name to me . . . the name of the man who . . . and yet . . . we’ve sailed together close
on three months . . .”
The half-breed spoke in such a different voice, I had trouble following him.
“No, I’m not wrong . . .” he went on. “I felt that in Holt’s mind . . . there was a little
suspicion . . . if you take my meaning.”
“Go on, Peters!” I snapped. “What did Holt ask you?”
And I definitely felt Holt had questioned him at Hearne’s suggestion. Nevertheless I
decided to not bring this up, believing there were good reasons why the half-breed shouldn’t
know about the master sealer’s involvement, which was as troubling as it was bewildering.
“What did he ask me, Mr. Jeorling?” he responded. “He asked me . . . if I remembered
Ned Holt on the Grampus . . . if he died in the fight against the mutineers or when the ship
turned over . . . if he was one of the men who got ditched at sea with Captain Barnard . . . in
other words . . . if I could tell him the way his brother died . . . but how . . . how . . .”

The half-breed spoke these words in utter horror, hinting at the depths of his self-loathing!
“And what answer did you give Holt?”
“Nothing . . . nothing!”
“You should have said that Ned Holt perished when the brig was swamped.”
“I couldn’t . . . if you take my meaning . . . I couldn’t. . . . those two brothers are so alike!
I looked at Martin Holt . . . and thought I saw Ned Holt! I was scared . . . I had to get away . . .”
The half-breed straightened up with a sharp movement, and for my part I put my head
between my hands and got to thinking. I was sure Holt had made those belated inquiries about
his brother at Hearne’s instigation. I hadn’t breathed a word of Peters’s secret to a soul, so had
the master sealer gotten wind of it in the Falklands?
In sum, what was Hearne up to, provoking Holt to question the half-breed like that?
What was he after? Was he simply trying to get even with Peters, the only sailor from the Falk-
lands who always sided with Captain Guy, who kept Hearne and his companions from laying
hold of the dinghy? In encouraging Holt, did he hope to peel the fellow off, entice the master
sailmaker to become one of his accomplices? And as a matter of fact, didn’t he need Holt, one
of the Halbrane’s ablest seamen, to pilot the longboat successfully through these waterways—
where Hearne and his companions would come to grief if left to their own devices?
You can see the line of thought my mind was running on—and the complications it
added to a situation that was already plenty complicated.
When I looked up again, Peters wasn’t next to me anymore. He’d vanished without my
noticing—he’d said what he wanted to say and at the same time he’d made certain I hadn’t
spilled his secret. Since it was getting late, I took one last look at the horizon and climbed back
down, seriously troubled and as fiercely impatient as ever for tomorrow to come.
It was evening, so we took our usual precautions and didn’t let anybody stay away from
the campsite—anybody other than the half-breed, who kept watch over the dinghy.
Mentally and physically drained, I passed out and slept next to Captain Guy while his
first officer stayed on watch outside, then next to the latter when he traded places with the
captain.
Bright and early the following day, January 31, I pushed back the canvas flaps of our
tent . . .
We were in for a disappointment!
Mists all around—and not the kind that evaporate as soon as the sun comes out, the
kind that vanish when air currents get to work! No, it was a yellowish, mildewy haze, as if
this antarctic January were the Month of Fog in the French Revolutionary Calendar up north.
What’s more, we noticed a significant drop in temperature, maybe an early-warning sign of
winter at the pole. The overcast sky oozed heavy droplets of vapor, hiding the summit of our
ice mountain. It was a mist that wouldn’t dissolve into rain, as if the horizon were plastered
over with cotton wool.
“An aggravating setback!” the bosun told me. “Because if we go past any land, we won’t
be able to see it.”
“What about our drift?” I asked.

“Faster than yesterday, Mr. Jeorling. The captain took soundings and put our minimum
speed at three to four miles per hour.”
“All right, and what do you conclude from that, Hurliguerly?”
“I conclude we must be in a sea that’s narrowing, since the current’s gotten so much
stronger. Over the next ten or fifteen miles, I wouldn’t be surprised to see land both to port
and starboard.”
“So we’ll be in a wide strait that cuts through the antarctic continent?”
“Aye, at least that’s our captain’s view.”
“And given that view, Hurliguerly, won’t he try to pull up to either side of the strait?”
“I was scared . . . I had to get away.”

“How could he do that?”
“With the dinghy.”
“Risk the dinghy in all this fog?” the bosun exclaimed, folding his arms. “Mr. Jeorling,
what are you thinking? Can the iceberg drop anchor and sit tight till we come back? No, it’s all
odds we’d never see it again. Oh, if we just had the Halbrane . . . !”
But we didn’t have the Halbrane. Sigh.
Despite the difficulty of climbing through half-condensed vapor, I made it to the top of
the iceberg. Who knows, couldn’t some rift in the clouds let me sight land to the east or west?
Getting to my feet, I tried in vain to see through the impregnable coat of gray that cov-
ered these waterways.
I stood there, buffeted by a northeasterly wind that was starting to pick up and maybe
would break the fog apart.
But new vapors were gathering, driven by enormous drafts off the open sea. Under a two-
fold pressure from currents of air and water, we were drifting faster and faster, and it seemed
like the iceberg was shuddering . . .
And it was right then that I fell under the sway of a sort of hallucination—one of those
strange hallucinations that must have unsettled Pym’s mind. I felt his extraordinary personality
merging with mine . . . ! At last I thought I was seeing what he’d seen! This unrippable mist was
that curtain of vapor stretching over the horizon in front of his deranged eyes! I looked for those
shafts of radiant light mottling the sky from east to west! I looked for the uncanny fires at its
summit! I looked for those picturesque flickerings in space, as well as those in the transparent
waters whose glare burst from the ocean depths! I looked for that boundless cataract, rolling down
silently from the heights of some immense rampart lost in remoteness overhead! I looked for
those wide streaks where the fabric was torn, exposing a chaos of flitting, indistinct images that
quivered in the powerful air currents! I looked for the white giant, the giant at the pole!
Finally I came back to my senses. That starry-eyed disturbance, that fantasy that grew
into an extravaganza, gradually faded away, and I climbed down to the campsite again.
The whole day went by under these weather conditions. Not once did the curtain part
in front of our eyes—the iceberg had gone forty-odd miles since the day before, and if it had
traveled past the tip of the earth’s axis, we had no way of knowing!*
*What Mr. Jeorling didn’t manage to even glimpse, another man viewed twenty-eight years later—on March 21,
1868, that other man set foot on this part of the globe. The season was seven weeks farther along, and the polar
winter had already left its mark on these desolate regions, which would soon be covered by six months of darkness.
But this hardly mattered to the extraordinary mariner we’re recalling here. He could brave the cold and the storms in
his marvelous submersible. After clearing the ice barrier and passing under the Antarctic Ocean’s frozen carapace, he
managed to advance as far as latitude 90°. There his skiff dropped him off on a volcanic shore littered with basaltic
rubble, slag, ash, lava, and blackish boulders. The surface of this seacoast teemed with such marine animals as seals
and walruses. Flying overhead were countless flocks of sheathbills, kingfishers, and gigantic petrels, while rows of
penguins stood in line and didn’t budge. Then, in the midst of crumbling glacial deposits and pumice stones, this
mysterious individual scaled the steep slopes of a half-crystal, half-basalt peak and reached the tip of the South Pole.
And right when the northern horizon cut the sun’s disk into two equal parts, he claimed this continent in his own
name, unfurling a flag with a gold N embroidered on its bunting. The name of the submersible floating offshore was
the Nautilus, and the name of her commander was Captain Nemo. J.V.

27. Fogbound
W
“ ell, Mr. Jeorling,” the bosun told me, “when you and I meet again tomorrow, we’ll
have to say good-bye!”1
“What do you mean, Hurliguerly?”
“Good-bye to seeing the South Pole—we haven’t spotted even the tip of it!”
“True . . . and by now it must be some twenty miles astern.”
“What did you expect? The south wind snuffed out our overhead light just as we passed
the place.”
“And we won’t get another chance, I imagine.”
“Afraid not, Mr. Jeorling. The earth’ll just keep turning on her skewer and we’ll never
find out what’s cooking!”
“You come up with such eloquent metaphors, bosun.”
“And in addition I’ll point out that our chariot of ice is carting us to the devil, with
no stopovers at the Green Cormorant! Let’s face it, this was a pointless cruise . . . a wasted
cruise . . . a cruise we won’t try again anytime soon . . . a cruise, in any case, to wrap up without
further ado! Because winter’ll soon be poking his red nose, chapped lips, and frostbitten hands
into it—this cruise where Captain Guy didn’t find his brother, us our countrymen, or Peters
his poor Pym!”
It was true, every bit of it—this was what we had to show after all those problems,
setbacks, and letdowns! In addition to losing the Halbrane, this expedition had already run up
nine casualties. Thirty-two men had set sail on the schooner, now we were down to twenty-
three . . . and how much lower would the figure go?
In fact we reckoned the distance from the South Pole to the Antarctic Circle at about
twenty degrees, hence nearly 1,400 miles, and we would need to cover them in a month to six
weeks at the outside—or be locked in when the ice barrier solidified again!2 As for wintering
in this part of Antarctica, none of us would live to tell of it.
Besides, we’d abandoned all hope of picking up the Jane’s survivors, and the crew had only
one wish: to cross these fearful, lonely wastes as fast as possible. Our southbound drift to the

pole had now changed to a northbound one, and if it continued, maybe we would enjoy a little
good luck as compensation for so much bad! In any case, to use an overworked expression, we
had to “go with the flow.”
Never mind that our iceberg was heading for the Pacific Ocean instead of the south
Atlantic, that the nearest lands were Australia and New Zealand instead of the South Orkney,
Sandwich, and Falkland islands, or Cape Horn, or Kerguelen’s Land. Which is why Hurliguerly
was correct to say—much to his regret—that he wouldn’t be revisiting his pal Atkins’s place
and tipping a few in the Green Cormorant’s pub room downstairs!
“Anyhow, Mr. Jeorling,” he kept telling me, “Melbourne, Hobart, and Dunedin have
first-rate inns too . . . all it takes is getting to a good port!”
Since the fog didn’t lift during the days of February 2, 3, and 4, we had trouble estimat-
ing the distance our iceberg had traveled since going past the pole. But Len Guy and Jem West
felt justified in putting it at 250 miles.
In fact the current didn’t seem to have slowed down or changed direction. It definitely
looked like we’d entered a sound between two half continents, one to our east and the other to
our west, which made up the whole vast realm of Antarctica. Accordingly I was very sorry we
couldn’t go ashore on either side of this wide strait, which winter would soon be freezing over.
When I brought this up with Captain Guy, he gave me the only reasonable response:
“What do you expect, Mr. Jeorling? We’re powerless, there’s nothing we can do, and these
persistent fogs are another example of the bad luck that keeps dogging us. I don’t know where
we are anymore. And now the sun’s about to vanish for many months, yet it’s impossible to take
any sights.”
“I keep thinking of the dinghy,” I said one last time. “With the dinghy, couldn’t we . . . ?”
“Go exploring? What are you thinking? I wouldn’t do such a reckless thing, and the crew
wouldn’t let me!”
I was on the verge of exclaiming:
“And suppose your brother William and your countrymen took refuge somewhere in
these lands . . .”
But I got a grip on myself. Why rub salt in the captain’s wounds? Surely he’d weighed
such an eventuality and had given up on searching further, recognizing both the futility and the
foolishness of any additional attempt.
Then again, there was another line of reasoning that still held out a faint hope to him,
and maybe he thought it was worth looking into:
When William Guy and his men left Tsalal Island, the summer season was under way.
The open sea spread out in front of them, crossed by these same southeasterly currents that
had influenced our own movements, first aboard the Halbrane, then aboard this iceberg. In addi-
tion to these currents, they must have benefited, as we had, from the steady breezes out of the
northeast. Which meant that their canoe—if it hadn’t perished in some accident at sea—must
have gone in a direction similar to ours and gotten as far as these waterways down this wide
strait. And after that, since they had a head start of several months on us, was it unreasonable
to assume that their craft sailed north, crossed the open sea, went past the ice barrier, managed

to clear the Antarctic Circle, and finally put William Guy and his companions in contact with
some ship that already would have taken them home?
Assuming our captain subscribed to this scenario (which I admit called for quite a run
of luck—a huge run), he’d never said a word about it to me. The man liked to cling to his
illusions, and maybe he was afraid somebody would show him the weaknesses in this line of
reasoning?
One day I mentioned this matter to West.
Not given to flights of fancy, our first officer didn’t go along with my thinking. The idea
that we hadn’t turned up the Jane’s men because they’d left these waterways before we arrived,
that they were already back in Pacific seas—his practical mind couldn’t swallow such a notion.
As for the bosun, when I called his attention to this possibility:
“You know, Mr. Jeorling,” he remarked, “anything’s possible, or at least that’s what we
like to say! And yet to imagine that, this instant, Captain William Guy and his men are busy
downing a healthy swig of brandy, gin, or whiskey at some tavern in the New World or the
Old—naw, no way! It’s as far-fetched as us having breakfast at the Green Cormorant two days
from now!”
I didn’t see Peters during these three foggy days—he stayed stubbornly at his post by the
longboat and didn’t try to look me up. Holt’s questions pertaining to his brother Ned seemed
to indicate that the half-breed’s secret had leaked out—at least partly. Accordingly, Peters kept
to himself more than ever, sleeping while others stood guard through the day, standing guard
while others slept through the night. I even got to wondering if he was sorry he’d confided in
me, if he imagined he’d aroused my disgust. . . . He hadn’t done anything of the sort, and I felt
a good deal of compassion for the poor half-breed.
The wind couldn’t tear open that heavy curtain of fog, and I can’t express how dreary,
monotonous, and never-ending the hours were that we spent in the midst of it. No matter
how carefully you looked or what time it was, you couldn’t tell the sun’s location above that
horizon it was gradually spiraling toward. So we couldn’t fix the iceberg’s longitude and lati-
tude. It kept drifting to the southeast—or rather to the northwest, assuming it had gone past
the pole (which seemed highly likely if not absolutely certain). Going at the same speed as the
current, how could Captain Guy determine the iceberg’s movements while the mists kept him
from picking out any landmarks? If it were standing stock-still, we wouldn’t have known the
difference because the wind had lulled—at least we assumed it had—and not a breath of air
could be felt. If we opened a lantern, there wasn’t enough breeze to cause its flame to flicker.
Birdcalls, cawing feebly through that fogbound sky, broke nothing more than the silence of the
void. Petrels and albatrosses flew past, skimming the summit where I stood watching. Maybe
the coming winter was already driving those speedy wildfowl toward the outskirts of Antarc-
tica—which way were they fleeing?
One day, at the risk of breaking his neck, the bosun climbed to the summit to find out
where we stood, and there a powerful specimen of quebrantahuesos—a sort of gigantic petrel with
a twelve-foot wingspan—flew into him, banging him on the chest so forcefully that he fell flat
on his back.

“Damn bird!” he told me when he was back down in camp. “That was a close shave! All
at once, wham! My four hooves are in the air like an overturned plow horse! I hung onto what-
ever I could, but any minute I could see my hands clawing at empty space! Those ice ridges slip
through your fingers like water, you know . . . ! Anyhow I hollered ‘Watch where you’re going!’
at that bird, but the worthless varmint didn’t even say ‘Excuse me!’ ”
The truth is, the bosun had been in danger of tumbling from slab to slab right into the
sea.
During the afternoon of that day, a horrendous braying filled the air from below and
took the skin off our ears. As Hurliguerly pointed out, there weren’t any donkeys handy, so
penguins must have been doing the braying. Till then these superabundant residents of the
polar regions hadn’t seen fit to keep us company on our mobile islet, and even though we could
look a good way out to sea, we hadn’t spotted a single one, neither at the foot of the iceberg nor
on any of the slabs drifting past. No doubt about it, right then there were hundreds of them,
thousands even, because the concert they gave had reached a pitch of volume that indicated
plenty of performers.
Now then, the favorite haunts of these birds are the ice fields hereabouts, or the coast-
lines of the continents and islands in these high latitudes. Didn’t their presence point to land
nearby?
I knew we were in a frame of mind to clutch at the tiniest ray of hope, like a drowning
man clutches at straws—anything for a lifeline! And how often they sink or snap just as the
poor fellow grabs hold of one . . . ! Wasn’t that the fate waiting for us in these dreadful climes?
I asked Captain Guy what inferences he drew from the presence of those birds.
“I think as you do, Mr. Jeorling,” he answered me. “While we’ve been drifting, not a
single one has tried to take refuge on this iceberg—and now, judging from their earsplitting
calls, they’re here in droves. Where do they come from? Undoubtedly some patch of land that
may be fairly close by.”
“Is that also our chief officer’s view?” I asked.
“Yes, Mr. Jeorling, and you know he isn’t a man who spins tall tales.”
“Definitely not.”
“And then there’s something else that has struck the two of us, yet it doesn’t seem to have
aroused your attention.”
“What might that be?”
“There are mooing sounds mixed in with the penguins’ braying . . . listen carefully and
you’ll soon hear them.”
I cocked an ear, and clearly it was a better-staffed orchestra than I’d realized.
“You’re right,” I said, “I can make out some plaintive mooing. So there are seals or wal-
ruses down there.”
“It’s a certainty, Mr. Jeorling, and since birds, mammals, and other creatures have been
quite scarce since we left Tsalal Island, I conclude they’re common in these waterways where the
currents have carried us. This strikes me as a perfectly safe assumption.”
“Perfectly, captain, likewise the presence of land nearby. Yes, it’s a calamity that we’re
surrounded by these impregnable mists, which won’t let us look a quarter of a mile out to sea!”

“And which even keep us from descending to the foot of the iceberg!” Captain Guy
added. “Down there we surely could determine if any salps, kelp, or fucus are riding on the
waves—which would furnish us with new indications . . . you’re right, it’s a calamity!”
“Why not try going down anyway, captain?”
“No, Mr. Jeorling, we’d be in danger of taking some bad falls, and I’m not letting any-
body leave the campsite. After all, if there are shores nearby, I imagine our iceberg will pull up
to them before much longer.”
“And if it doesn’t?” I countered.
“If it doesn’t, what can we do?”
There’s the dinghy, I thought, if he could bring himself to use it. But Captain Guy pre-
ferred to sit tight—and who knows, maybe this was the wisest course under the circumstances.
As for getting to the foot of the iceberg, the truth is that nothing would have been more
hazardous than climbing blind on those slippery slopes. Our toughest, ablest crewman, Dirk
Peters himself, couldn’t have managed it without a major accident. This dismal cruise had
already racked up too many casualties, and we didn’t want to increase the total.
It’s beyond me to describe how those mists piled up and got even heavier during the
evening. On that level area where the tents stood, it became impossible after five o’clock to
make out anything a couple of steps away. To be certain you were near somebody, you had to
reach out and touch him. It wasn’t enough to speak up, because in this muffled environment
you couldn’t hear any better than you could see. The light from a lantern came off as nothing
more than a pale yellow flame, too feeble to illuminate a thing. A shout reached the ear only
very faintly, and the penguins alone were raucous enough to be audible.
There wasn’t any reason, I’ll note here, to mistake this mist for rime frost, that frozen
haze we’d seen earlier. The truth is, rime frost requires a fairly high temperature, ordinarily stays
at sea level, and even with a strong breeze rises only 100 feet or so. Now then, this mist lay at
a much greater altitude, and I figured we wouldn’t be rid of it till it was 300 feet higher than
the iceberg.
By about eight o’clock in the evening, this half-condensed fog was so heavy, you felt it
push back when you walked through it. The air’s composition seemed to be changing, as if
it were transforming into a solid state. And I instinctively thought of the oddities on Tsalal
Island, that peculiar water whose molecules cohered according to some special law.
As for whether this mist had any influence on our compass, we couldn’t really tell. Even
so, I knew meteorologists had studied this issue and felt safe in saying this influence hadn’t any
bearing on magnetic needles.
But I’ll add that since we’d left the South Pole behind, we no longer could have confi-
dence in what our compass indicated, because it went berserk in the vicinity of the magnetic
pole, which undoubtedly was coming closer. Consequently we had no way of determining the
iceberg’s direction.
By nine o’clock in the evening, these waterways were plunged in fairly substantial gloom,
though it still wasn’t time for the sun to sink below the horizon.
To make sure the men were back in camp and not out blundering into danger, Captain
Guy ordered a roll call.

The men answered when they heard their names, then went and took seats under the
tents, where murky lanterns gave little or no light.
Though the bosun read Peters’s name repeatedly, hurling it out in an earsplitting voice,
the half-breed was the only one who didn’t answer when called.
Hurliguerly waited a few minutes.
Peters didn’t appear.
Probably he was still by the dinghy, which was pointless since there was no danger some-
body would make off with it in this foggy weather.
“Has anybody seen Peters today?” Captain Guy asked.
“Nobody,” the bosun answered.
“Not even at lunchtime?”
“Not even then, captain, but he still had food left over.”
“Could he have had an accident?”
“Not to worry!” the bosun exclaimed. “Peters is in his natural element down here, he’s as
much at home in these fogs as a polar bear! He’s already gotten out of one tight spot . . . he’ll
get out of another!”
I let Hurliguerly rattle on, knowing perfectly well why the half-breed was keeping to
himself.
Anyhow Peters continued to not answer (and the bosun’s shouts had to have reached
him), but at this point it was impossible to send out a search party.
I’m sure nobody could sleep that night—except maybe Endicott. We were suffocating in
the confines of the tents, where we couldn’t get enough oxygen. And anyhow we were all more
or less in the grip of a very odd sensation, a sort of peculiar foreboding, as if our circumstances
were about to change for better or worse—assuming they could get any worse.
The night went by with no alarms being given, and at six o’clock in the morning, we all
went outside and inhaled a breath of fresher air.
Same weather conditions as the day before, the fog unusually heavy. We noted that the
barometer had gone up—too quickly, it’s true, for the rise to be anything serious. The mercury
column said 30.2 inches, its highest reading since the Halbrane cut the Antarctic Circle.3
Plus there were other indications we had to take into account.
The wind picked up—a southerly wind since we’d gone past the South Pole—and it
soon turned into a stiff breeze, a two-reefer as sailors say. The noises from below carried more
clearly through an atmosphere swept by air currents.
Suddenly, around nine o’clock, the iceberg doffed its cap of vapor.
Words can’t describe how the décor changed—and it wouldn’t have happened in less time
and with more efficiency if somebody had waved a magic wand!
In a few seconds the sky had cleared all the way to the horizon, and the sea reappeared
in the light of the sun’s slanting rays, which gleamed just a few degrees above it. A turbulent
backwash bathed the foot of our iceberg in white foam, while we drifted along with a multi-
tude of other floating mountains, thanks to the twofold action of winds and currents sweeping
toward the east-northeast.
“Land!”

This shout burst from the summit of our mobile islet, and Peters popped in sight, stand-
ing on the topmost slab, his hand pointing northward.
The half-breed wasn’t mistaken. The land in the distance—yes, this time it was land—
unfolded its blackish peaks over a range of three or four miles.
And after taking two sights (at ten o’clock and at noon), we got these bearings:

Longitude 114° 17' east.
The iceberg was about four degrees beyond the antarctic pole, and we’d gone from longi-
tude west—where our schooner had followed on the Jane’s heels—to longitude east.

28. Making Camp
B
y a little past noon, land lay no more than a mile off. The unanswered question
was whether or not the current would take us beyond it.
I have to admit, if we’d had the choice of pulling up to that shoreline or
staying in motion, I’m not sure which would have been preferable.
I was talking it over with Captain Guy and his first officer when West interrupted me,
saying:
“Mr. Jeorling, what’s the point of discussing this possibility, may I ask?”
“Yes, what’s the point, since our hands are tied,” Len Guy added. “Maybe the iceberg will
blunder into that coastline, or maybe we’ll sidestep it if we keep riding the current.”
“True,” I went on, “but my question’s still on the table. Are we better off leaving this
iceberg or staying on it?”
“Staying on it,” West answered.
Actually, if the dinghy could have taken everybody plus provisions for a five-to-six-week
trip, we would have launched it without hesitation, struck out across the open sea, and benefit-
ed from the northbound wind. But since the dinghy could handle only eleven or twelve men at
best, we would need to draw straws. And think of the men who would be left behind—weren’t
they doomed to die of cold, if not hunger, in this region that winter would soon bury under
ice and vile weather?
Now then, if our iceberg kept drifting in the same direction, it would, after all, do an
acceptable job of taking us most of the way back. True, our chariot of ice could let us down
by getting stuck again, even somersaulting, or falling in with some countercurrent that would
take it off course . . . whereas our dinghy could tack with the wind when it became contrary
and carry us to our destination—assuming storms left it alone and the ice barrier offered it a
way through.
But as West just said, what was the use of discussing this possibility?

After dinner the crew headed up to the ice slab on top where Peters was. As we drew
near, the half-breed retreated down the opposite slope, and when I got to the summit, he was
out of sight.
By then we were all at that locality—all except Endicott, who tended to get nervous away
from his stove.
The shore visible to the north stood out against a tenth of the horizon, its coastline
trimmed with beaches, perforated by coves, and bulging with promontories, its background
topped by the craggy outlines of mountains with hills a bit closer in. It was a continent, or at
the very least an island of pretty substantial size.
These lands stretched to the east as far as the eye could see, and their remotest reaches
didn’t seem to be on this side.
At their western end a pointy cape took form, topped by a bluff whose profile looked
like the head of an enormous seal. Then, beyond it, the sea seemed to widen out.
Every one of us was clear on our situation. To pull up to those lands depended on the
current and nothing else: either it would drop the iceberg off in an eddy that might drag us to
the coast, or it would keep taking us northward.
Which was the more feasible theory?
Captain Guy, his first officer, the bosun, and I had another talk, while the crew broke into
groups and exchanged thoughts on the topic. As it turned out, the current was more inclined
to bear northeast of these shores.
“After all,” Len Guy told us, “even if these lands are livable during the summer months, no
one actually seems to be living on them, since we haven’t seen a single human being on the beach.”
“Remember, captain,” I replied, “that an iceberg by its very nature isn’t going to arouse
attention the way our schooner would have!”
“Obviously, Mr. Jeorling, and the Halbrane would already have drawn out the natives . . . if
there are any!”
“Just because we haven’t seen them, captain, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions—”
“Of course not, Mr. Jeorling,” Captain Guy remarked. “You’ll agree, however, that these
shores don’t look anything like Tsalal Island in the days when the Jane visited it. Back then you
could see leafy hills, dense forests, trees in full bloom, huge pastures . . . and here you can tell
immediately that everything’s barren and desolate!”
“No question. Barren and desolate says it all about this place! Even so, may I ask if you’re
planning to go ashore, captain?”
“With the dinghy?”
“With the dinghy, just in case the current takes our iceberg away.”
“We haven’t a single hour to spare, Mr. Jeorling, and laying over even a few days could
doom us to a brutal winter—if we reach the ice barrier too late to find a way through.”
“And considering how far it is, we won’t be a moment too soon,” West pointed out.
“You’re right,” I replied, then forged ahead. “But to leave these shores without even
setting foot on them, captain, without making sure they don’t preserve any traces of a camp-
site . . . your brother . . . his companions . . .”

As he listened to me, Len Guy shook his head. The appearance of that arid coastline
wasn’t getting his hopes up—those long fallow plains, those gaunt hills, that beach bordered
by a line of blackish boulders. How could the castaways have remained alive for months in
that place?
Besides, we were flying the Union Jack on top of the iceberg, where it was unfurling in
the breeze. William Guy would have recognized it and already would be down at the water’s
edge.
Not a soul . . . not a soul!
Jem West had just sighted some landmarks and said at this juncture:
“Hold on, we aren’t ready to make a decision. We’ll know where we stand in less than
an hour. We seem to be slowing down, and it’s possible some eddy may bring us to the coast
at an angle.”
“That’s my feeling,” the bosun stated, “and if this floating contraption hasn’t come to a
halt, it’s about to! You’d think it was turning completely around . . .”
West and Hurliguerly weren’t mistaken. For one reason or another, our iceberg was taking
steps to leave that current it had followed so faithfully. Its drifting motion had changed into a
rotating one, under the influence of an eddy that was bearing toward shore.
What’s more, some icebergs ahead of us had just run aground in the shallows near the
beach.
So there was no point in debating whether or not we should put the dinghy to sea.
As we drew closer, the desolate nature of these shores grew more pronounced, and the
prospect of wintering here for six months would have horrified the stoutest heart.
Ultimately, around five o’clock in the afternoon, the iceberg entered a deep inlet in the
coastline that culminated on the right in a long promontory—against which we soon came to
a standstill.
“Let’s go ashore! Let’s go ashore!”
This was the shout on everybody’s lips.
The crew were already heading down the iceberg’s slopes when West yelled a command:
“Wait for orders!”
There was some hesitation—especially on the part of Hearne and several of his com-
rades. Then discipline instinctively prevailed, and everybody finally lined up around Captain
Guy.
Since the iceberg had made contact with the promontory, there was no need to break out
the dinghy.
Leaving camp ahead of the others, Captain Guy, the bosun, and I were the first to set
foot on these new lands, surely virgin territory where no man had ever left his mark.
The volcanic soil was strewn with rocky rubble—fragments of lava, obsidian, pumice
stone, and slag. Past the sandy shoreline the ground rose toward the foothills and far-side
slopes, which furnished the beach with a half-mile backdrop.
Those hills rose to an altitude of about 1,200 feet, and the thing to do, it seemed to us,
was to reach the top of one of them. From its summit our eyes could look in all directions and
take in a wide area, both landward and seaward.

For twenty minutes we had to walk over rough, rugged soil without any vegetation. Not
a thing was reminiscent of those fruited plains on Tsalal Island before that earthquake over-
whelmed it, nor those dense forests Pym spoke of, nor those streams full of strange water, nor
those soapstone embankments, nor those steatite hills with that hieroglyphic maze hollowed
out inside. Everywhere the rocks were of igneous origin (hardened lava, powdery slag, and gray
ash), but not a bit of humus, which even the least demanding rural plants need if they plan to
grow.
Despite both difficulties and dangers, Captain Guy, the bosun, and I managed to climb
the hill—which took us a solid hour. Though evening had arrived, it didn’t bring any darkness
in its wake, because it still wasn’t time for the sun to vanish beneath the antarctic horizon.
From this hilltop we could see to a distance of thirty or thirty-five miles, and here’s what
our eyes took in.
In the background stretched the open sea, ferrying a number of other icebergs, and some
recent arrivals had piled up along the beach, making it almost unapproachable.
An ultra-rugged shore ran off to the west with no end in sight, and it was washed to the
east by a boundless sea.
Whether we were on a big island or the antarctic continent, that wasn’t an issue we could
settle.
True, when Captain Guy aimed his naval spyglass to the east and gave that region his best
attention, he thought he spotted some blurred, indistinct shapes among the thin mists rising
from the sea.
“Look,” he said.
The bosun and I took turns with the instrument, peering through it with care.
“It really does seem,” Hurliguerly said, “that something like a coast is over there.”
“I think so too,” I replied.
“So that drift definitely took us into a strait,” Len Guy concluded.
“A strait,” the bosun added, “that the current travels through from north to south, then
south to north . . .”
“Does this mean,” I asked, “that this strait cuts the polar continent in half ?”1
“No doubt about it,” Captain Guy answered.
“Oh, if we just had our Halbrane!” Hurliguerly exclaimed.
Yes, aboard the schooner (and even on our iceberg, at this point beached like a disabled
ship) we could have advanced a few hundred miles farther . . . maybe up to the barrier . . . may-
be up to the Antarctic Circle . . . maybe up to the nearest land! But all we had was a puny din-
ghy that could hold barely a dozen men, and there were twenty-three of us!
Our only option was to go back down to the beach, return to our campsite, transfer the
tents ashore, and arrange everything with a view to spending the sort of winter that conditions
were about to inflict on us.
Needless to say, there weren’t any human footprints on the ground, no signs of any
dwellings. Hereafter we could safely claim that the Jane’s survivors hadn’t set foot on this land,
this “uncharted territory” as the latest maps labeled it. Neither they nor anybody else, I might
add—nor would Peters be turning up any traces of Pym on these shores!

“Let’s go ashore!”
And an additional result was the absolute stillness, which revealed that the only living
things at this locality weren’t alarmed by our presence. The seals and walruses didn’t dive under-
water, the petrels and cormorants didn’t fly off in a flurry of wings, the penguins stood in line
without moving, probably viewing us as some weird species of flightless bird. Yes, this definitely
was the first time they’d laid eyes on a human being—proof they’d never left these shores to
venture into the lower latitudes.
When we got back to the beach, the bosun was tickled to discover several spacious cav-
erns hollowed out of the granite cliffside, some with enough room to house all of us, others
with enough to hold the Halbrane’s cargo. Whatever decisions we might make in the future, we

couldn’t have found a better place for stowing our equipment and promptly proceeding to take
up residence.
After heading back up the iceberg’s slopes to our campsite, Captain Guy gave orders to
assemble the men. Everybody was present—other than Peters, who’d definitely severed all rela-
tions with the crew. Even so, we didn’t have to worry about his attitude or state of mind in the
event of a mutiny. He would side with the party of the faithful against the mutineers, and we
could count on him under any circumstances.
Once his men had formed a circle around him, Captain Guy spoke his mind with-
out saying a discouraging word. Briefing his companions, he tallied up their situation for
them . . . down to the last decimal, you might say. First, it was essential to take the cargo down
to the shore and store it in one of the caverns off the beach. On the issue of food, it was cer-
tain that the supplies of flour, processed meat, and dried vegetables would be enough to last
through the winter, no matter how long or harsh it might be. Concerning the issue of fuel, it
was clear that their coal wouldn’t run out so long as nobody squandered it—plus it could be
rationed, because, with a carpet of snow and a covering of ice overhead, winter visitors could
brave the polar zone’s coldest temperatures.
So Captain Guy’s remarks on these two issues were designed to remove all anxieties. Was
his confident air a pretense? I didn’t think so, especially since West corroborated what he said.
There was still a third issue, which the master sealer raised—a huge one, with pros and
cons, plus plenty of potential to arouse the crew’s envy and anger.
In essence, it concerned our deciding what to do with the single longboat we had at our
disposal. Should we keep it for our needs while we wintered down here, or make use of it to
get back to the ice barrier?
Len Guy wouldn’t take a stand on this. He merely asked that we wait twenty-four to for-
ty-eight hours before making a decision. Don’t forget, if the dinghy were loaded with enough
provisions for a longish trip, it could hold only eleven or twelve men. So if the dinghy was to
set out, we would draw straws to determine its passengers—and for the sake of the men who
would stay behind on this coast, there were good reasons to proceed with taking up residence.
Then the captain stated that he, West, the bosun, and I wouldn’t ask for special treatment
but would abide by the same rules as everybody else. As for the Halbrane’s two masters, Holt
and Hardie were peas in a pod and both perfectly capable of guiding the dinghy to the fishing
grounds, where whalers might still be at work.
What’s more, the men who left weren’t to forget the men who stayed to winter at the 86th
parallel, and when it was summer again, they were to send a ship to pick their companions up.
All this was spoken—I’ll say again—in a tone as calm as it was firm. I need to pay Cap-
tain Guy the compliment of saying that as our problems grew, so did his authority.
When he finished—and there hadn’t been any interruptions, not even from Hearne—
nobody made the tiniest comment. What was there to say, since, if it came to that, we would
be drawing straws under conditions of perfect fairness?
Since it was time for bed, the men headed back to camp, helped themselves to the supper
Endicott had fixed, and spent one last night sleeping inside tents.
Peters hadn’t reappeared, and I had no luck tracking him down.

Next day, February 7, we got to work with a will.
We had fair weather, a faint breeze, a mildly cloudy sky, and a bearable temperature of
46°.2
First off, the men lowered the dinghy to the foot of the iceberg, taking every precaution
the operation called for. From there they pulled it out of the water onto a patch of sand safe
from the undertow. The longboat was in perfect shape, and we could expect good work from it.
Next the bosun got busy with the cargo and equipment that came from the Halbrane—
furniture, bedding, sails, clothes, instruments, and kitchenware. Stored at the rear of the cavern,
these items wouldn’t be in danger anymore from the iceberg’s keeling over or disintegrating.
We transferred crates of canned goods, bags of flour and vegetables, and kegs of whiskey, gin,
and beer to the beach, using tackle to haul them alongside the promontory poking out east of
the cove.
I pitched in with these chores along with Captain Guy and his first officer, because from
the start this work had to be done as quickly as possible.3
I need to mention that Peters came and gave us a hand that day, but he didn’t say a word
to a soul.
Whether or not he’d abandoned all hope of finding Pym, I had no way of knowing.
We spent February 8, 9, and 10 taking up residence, a task we finished during the
afternoon on the last of these days. The cargo had been stowed inside a large cave, which you
could enter through a narrow opening. It contained only the necessities of existence, and at the
bosun’s recommendation, Endicott set up his kitchen there. In this way we benefited from the
heat of his stove, which would serve both to cook our food and to warm the cavern during the
long days—or nights, rather—of the polar winter.
The inner surfaces of this cavern were dry, it was carpeted in fine-grained sand, adequate
light came through its entryway, and as of the evening of the 8th, we’d already taken the place
over.
Located right by the actual junction of the promontory and the beach, its layout would
surely protect us from any dreadful blasts or snowstorms the cold weather might conjure up.
It had more room than the schooner’s deckhouse and crew quarters, so it not only could hold
our bedding but also various amenities such as tables, cupboards, and seats—enough furniture
for wintering there several months.
While we were busy taking up residence, I didn’t detect anything suspicious in the atti-
tudes of Hearne and our Falklanders. All of them displayed exemplary obedience and praise-
worthy energy. Nevertheless the half-breed still stood guard on the beach next to the dinghy,
since it would be easy to make off with it.
Hurliguerly, who paid particular attention to the master sealer and his comrades, seemed
more sanguine about their current frame of mind.
In any case, there was no time to lose in reaching a decision about the departure (if push
came to shove) of the men whom fate would select. In point of fact it was February 10. After
another month to six weeks, the fishing season would be over in the vicinity of the Antarctic
Circle. Now then, if our dinghy didn’t meet up with any whalers (assuming it had successfully

cleared the ice barrier and the polar circle), it couldn’t possibly contend with the Pacific all the
way to the coasts of Australia or New Zealand.
That evening Captain Guy called everybody together and announced we would address
this issue the next day, adding that if all were in favor, we would immediately draw straws.
This proposition met with no response, and I didn’t feel it would take much serious
discussion to decide whether or not the dinghy should set out.
It was late. Semidarkness reigned outside because by this date the sun was already scrap-
ing the edge of the horizon and soon would vanish beneath it.
Climbing into my berth fully dressed, I’d fallen asleep for several hours when I was awak-
ened by shouts a short way off.
I sprang to my feet and shot outside the cavern—along with Captain Guy and his first
officer, who’d likewise been roused from their sleep.
“The dinghy! The dinghy!” West exclaimed all at once.
The dinghy was no longer in its place—the spot Peters had been guarding.
Three men had put it to sea, then climbed in with kegs and crates, while ten others were
attempting to overpower the half-breed.
Hearne was there—and also Holt, who, it seemed to me, was trying to stay out of what
was going on.
So the scum meant to lay hold of the longboat and leave before we drew straws! They
meant to ditch us!
In essence they’d managed to catch Peters by surprise, and they would have killed him if
he hadn’t put up a fearsome struggle for his life.
Faced with this mutiny, knowing we were outnumbered, not sure we could count on all
the ship’s oldtimers, Captain Guy and his first officer headed back into the cavern to get weap-
ons, bent on putting Hearn and his armed cohorts out of action.
I was all set to do likewise when the following words suddenly froze me in place.
Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, the half-breed finally got knocked off his feet. But at
that instant Holt, grateful to Peters for saving his life, ran to help him—then Hearne shouted:
“Leave him be . . . and come with us!”
The master sailmaker seemed to hesitate . . .
“Aye, leave him!” Hearne went on. “Leave Peters be . . . he’s the man who murdered your
brother Ned!”
“Murdered my brother?” Holt exclaimed.
“Your brother was killed aboard the Grampus!”
“Killed . . . by Dirk Peters?”
“Aye, killed . . . and eaten . . . eaten . . . eaten!” Hearne repeated, howling the horrid
words rather than speaking them.
And at his signal two of his comrades grabbed Holt and pulled him into the longboat,
which was ready to cast off.
Hearne rushed after them, along with all the men who’d joined him in this despicable
move.

Just then, as one of the Falklanders was climbing over the dinghy’s gunwale, Peters sprang
to his feet, swooped on the man, and lifted the fellow above his head—the rascal went whirling
through the air and cracked his skull against a rock.
A gunshot rang out. The half-breed took Hearne’s bullet in the shoulder and fell on the
sand, while the longboat shoved off with a vengeance.
At this point Len Guy and Jem West emerged from the cavern—this whole scene had
taken barely forty seconds—and they dashed over the promontory along with the bosun, Har-
die, and seamen Francis and Stern.
The tide was ebbing fast, and the dinghy had already ridden the current 200 yards out.
West shouldered his rifle, squeezed off a shot, and a sailor tumbled to the bottom of
the longboat.
Captain Guy fired a second shot and barely missed hitting the master sealer in the chest,
his bullet going into a slab of ice just as the dinghy vanished behind the iceberg.
All we could do was move to the other side of the promontory, which the current would
surely take those scoundrels near before hauling them in a northward direction. If they went
past within range of our firearms, if a second shot hit the master sealer and killed or injured
him, might his companions decide to come back?
A quarter of an hour went by.
When the longboat showed up on the other side of the promontory, it was too far out
for our weapons to reach.
Hearne had already hoisted sail, both the current and breeze drove the dinghy along, and
soon it was nothing more than a white speck that quickly vanished.

29. Dirk Peters Goes to Sea
T
hat settled the issue of how we would spend the winter. Out of thirty-three
men who’d left the Falklands aboard the Halbrane, twenty-three had arrived on
these shores, and out of those, thirteen had just taken off for the whaling waters
beyond the ice barrier . . . and fate hadn’t done the selecting! Not at all! To avoid
the horrors of wintering down here, they’d shamefully deserted us!1
Unfortunately, Hearne hadn’t taken just his comrades along. Two of our original crew
had joined him, seaman Burry and Martin Holt, our master sailmaker—and maybe Holt
wasn’t responsible for his actions while reeling from the frightful impact of what the master
sealer had revealed to him!
By and large things hadn’t changed for the ones doomed to stay behind. We were only
nine in number—Captain Len Guy, First Officer Jem West, Hurliguerly the bosun, Hardie the
master caulker, Endicott the cook, the two seamen Francis and Stern, Dirk Peters, and myself.
What ordeals were in store for us that winter as the horrid polar weather came on! What fright-
ful temperatures we would have to face—more severe than anywhere else on the planet earth,
shrouded in permanent night for six long months! Conditions down here are beyond human
endurance, and it’s appalling to think how much strength of mind and body it would take to
withstand them!
And yet, all things considered, were the chances of those who’d set out any better? Would
they find open sea as far as the ice barrier? Would they succeed in reaching the Antarctic Circle?
And beyond it would they find any ships left over from fishing season? Would they run short
of provisions during the course of their thousand-mile trip? How much could the dinghy carry,
given that it was already overloaded with thirteen people? All right, were they in greater danger
or were we? Answer: time would tell.
When the longboat was out of sight, Captain Guy and his companions climbed back up
the promontory, returning to the cavern. There, surrounded by perpetual night, we were going
to spend all winter, during which he would forbid us to set foot outdoors!

Right off I thought about Peters—left behind after that shot fired by Hearne, while the
rest of us rushed to the other side of the promontory.
Coming back to the cavern, I didn’t see the half-breed. Was he severely injured? Would
we have to grieve the death of this man who’d been as loyal to us as he was to his poor Pym?
I hoped—we all hoped—that his injury wasn’t anything serious. Even so, we needed to
take care of Peters, and he wasn’t anywhere to be found.
“Time to start looking for him, Mr. Jeorling!” the bosun exclaimed.
“Come on!” I replied.
“We’ll search together,” Captain Guy said. “Peters was on our side—he would never have
deserted us, and we won’t desert him!”
“Will the poor fellow show his face,” I pointed out, “now that everybody knows what I
thought just he and I knew?”
I told my companions why Pym had changed Ned Holt’s name to Parker in his narrative,
plus the circumstances in which the half-breed told me about it. What’s more, I emphasized
everything that could be said in his defense.
“Hearne,” I asserted, “said that Peters killed Ned Holt! Yes, it’s true! Ned Holt had
sailed on the Grampus, and his brother Martin figured he’d perished during the mutiny or when
the ship overturned. Well, not so! Ned Holt had survived along with Augustus Barnard, Pym,
and the half-breed, and soon all four were suffering the agonies of starvation. One of them had
to lay down his life . . . the man fate selected . . . the one who drew the short straw . . . Ned
Holt was the unlucky one, and the half-breed’s knife struck him down. But if Peters himself
had been fate’s selection, the others would have slain him instead!”
Then Len Guy made this comment:
“Peters confided this secret only to you, Mr. Jeorling . . .”
“Only to me, captain.”
“And you kept it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I can’t account for how Hearne came to learn about it.”
“At first,” I replied, “I thought Peters could have been talking in his sleep, and the master
sealer must have found out his secret by chance.2 After thinking it over, I recalled the following
circumstance: when the half-breed was describing that drama on the Grampus, when he told
me Parker was none other than Ned Holt, he was in my cabin and its side window was raised.
Now then, I have reason to believe that the man at the helm caught some words of our conver-
sation . . . and sure enough, that man was Hearne, who, in order to hear better, undoubtedly
deserted the wheel—to such good effect that the Halbrane nearly tipped over.”
“I remember,” West said. “I gave the rascal a talking to and put him down in the hold.”
“Well, captain,” I continued, “from that day forward Hearne started getting friendly with
Martin Holt—as Hurliguerly pointed out to me.”
“Good thing I did,” the bosun replied, “because Hearne planned to make off with the
dinghy but couldn’t steer it, so he needed a master mariner like Holt.”
“Accordingly,” I went on, “he kept provoking Holt to question the half-breed about what
happened to his brother Ned, and you know the circumstances in which Holt learned the awful

truth. He seemed to come unhinged at the revelation. The others dragged him off . . . and now
he’s with them!”
Everybody was convinced that something of the sort must have happened. And now that
the dust had settled and the truth was known, were we right to fear that Peters, in his current
frame of mind, would rather stay out of sight? Would he agree to resume his place among us?
Immediately we all left the cavern, and an hour later we’d caught up with the half-breed.
The instant he saw us, his first impulse was to run off. Finally Hurliguerly and Francis
managed to pull alongside him, and he didn’t put up any resistance. I talked to him . . . the
others followed suit . . . Captain Guy held out his hand . . . at first Peters hesitated to take it.
Then, without speaking a single word, he made his way back to the beach.
After that, what happened aboard the Grampus, as far as the rest of us were concerned,
was out of the picture for good.
As for Peters’s injury, it wasn’t anything to worry about. The bullet had entered just the
top layer of flesh on his left arm, and he’d managed to extract it simply by squeezing the skin
around it. As soon as the next day, a piece of sailcloth binding his wound, he got into his jersey
and resumed his usual activities without any noticeable fuss or bother.
We organized our residence with a view to spending a long winter there. The cold season
was looming, and for the past few days the sun was barely visible through the fog. The tem-
perature dropped to 36° and wasn’t scheduled to go back up.3 The solar rays cast outrageously
long shadows on the ground but had run out of steam, you might say. Captain Guy made us
put on our warm woolens before the cold got nastier.
Meanwhile greater numbers of ice mountains, packs, streams, and drifts came out of the
south. Though a few still got tossed up on the beach, which was already clogged with ice, most
of them vanished in a northeasterly direction.
“All those pieces,” the bosun told me, “are just so much material for beefing up the ice
barrier. If the dinghy and Hearne’s henchmen aren’t far enough along, I expect he and his boys
will find the door closed, and since they haven’t got any key to open it—”
“So, Hurliguerly,” I asked, “you think we’re running fewer risks wintering on this coast
than if we were riding in the longboat?”
“I do and always have, Mr. Jeorling,” the bosun replied. “And you know something?” he
added, resorting to his standard formula.
“Let’s have it, Hurliguerly.”
“Here goes: the ones who boarded the dinghy will be in bigger trouble than the ones who
didn’t—and I’ll say again that if fate had picked me, I would have swapped with somebody else!
You see, when you’ve got solid ground under you, it’s already a step up! Anyhow I don’t wish ill
on any man, even ones who desert us shamefully . . . but if Hearne and the rest don’t manage
to get past the ice barrier, if they’re stuck with spending winter in the middle of the ice, and if
they’re down to just a few weeks of provisions, you know the fate waiting for ’em!”
“Yes . . . a worse one than ours!” I replied.
“And I’ll add,” the bosun said, “that it isn’t enough just to make it to the Antarctic
Circle—if there’s no whaler left in the fishing grounds, they aren’t going to stay afloat all the
way to the Australian coast in a crowded, overloaded longboat!”

My thoughts exactly, likewise Captain Guy’s and West’s. If the dinghy enjoyed easy sail-
ing conditions, carried only as much as it was meant to, could count on several months’ worth
of food, and in short had all the odds in its favor, maybe it would be in a position to pull such
a journey off . . . but was it? Absolutely not.
Over the following days of February 14, 15, 16, and 17, we wrapped up arrangements
for both men and materials.
We made a few excursions inland. The soil was parched everywhere and yielded
nothing more than prickly pears, which grew in the sand and were plentiful along these
beaches.
If Len Guy held out any last hopes for his brother and the Jane’s sailors, if he told himself
they’d managed to leave Tsalal Island in a boat that currents carried to this coast, he had to
admit there wasn’t a trace of anybody coming ashore hereabouts.
One of our excursions took us about four miles to the foot of a mountain that stood
1,200 to 1,400 yards high; its gradually sloping gradients weren’t hard to climb.
Captain Guy, his first officer, seaman Francis, and I made this excursion, but it didn’t lead
to any discoveries. To the north and west, the same sequences of barren hills with jagged peaks
unfolded, and after they’d vanished under the immense carpet of snow, it would be hard to tell
them from icebergs the cold had frozen in place on the surface of the sea.
As for what we’d thought was a semblance of land to the east, we verified that a coast did
lie in that direction, its mountains lit by the afternoon sun and showing up pretty clearly in the
objective lens of a nautical spyglass.
Did a continent border that side of the strait or just an island? In any event, whether it
was the one or the other, it must have ended up as barren as these lands to the west—and, like
them, was lifeless and unlivable.
But when I recalled Tsalal Island, whose soil had such amazingly robust vegetation, and
when I remembered Pym’s descriptions, I didn’t know what to think. Obviously this desolation
afflicting our eyes jibed better with the image folks have of the polar regions. Even so, the Tsalal
group was located in nearly the same latitude, yet it had been fertile and densely populated
before the earthquake all but destroyed it.
That day Captain Guy proposed that we officially name this region where the iceberg had
dropped us off. We called the place Halbrane Land in memory of our schooner. Simultane-
ously, including it in the same memory, we gave the name Jane Sound to this strait that divvied
the polar continent into two parts.
Then we got busy hunting the penguins that swarmed over the rocks, also capturing a
number of marine animals romping along the beaches. We had a crying need for fresh meat.
Prepared by Endicott, the flesh of seals and walruses struck us as perfectly palatable. What’s
more, the fat from these creatures could be used in a pinch to warm the cavern and cook food.
Never forget that our most daunting foe was the cold, and we would need to employ every
means in our power to ward it off. As winter came on, it remained to be seen if these marine
animals would go looking for a milder climate in the lower latitudes.
Luckily there were still hundreds of other beasts that guaranteed our little community
wouldn’t go hungry—or thirsty, as the case may be. Over the beaches a number of Galapagos

tortoises were crawling, named after that Pacific island group near the equator. These were the
creatures, Pym says, that served as food for the islanders, the creatures he and Peters found
inside that native canoe when they left Tsalal Island.
These enormous reptiles from the order Chelonia had a slow, heavy, measured tread,
skinny necks two feet long, triangular snakelike heads, and systems that could go for years
without eating. Moreover, instead of celery, wild parsley, and purslane, down here they ate the
prickly pears sprouting among the stones on the beach.
Pym toys with comparing antarctic tortoises to dromedary camels, and it’s because they,
like those ruminants, have a bag at the root of the neck that holds two to three gallons of
limpid fresh water. According to his narrative, till that business of the short straw, the men left
on the Grampus would surely have died of hunger or thirst if it hadn’t been for one of these
tortoises. Terrestrial or marine, these reptiles weigh 1,200 to 1,500 pounds, if Pym is to be
believed. Though the ones on Halbrane Land didn’t exceed 700 to 800 pounds, at least their
meat was both tasty and nutritious.
Consequently we were bracing ourselves for a winter within five degrees of the pole, but
even though it was due to get bitterly cold, the nature of our circumstances didn’t cause my
stouthearted companions to despair. The only problem—whose seriousness I didn’t deny—lay
in our returning north as soon as the cold weather was over. Solving this problem called for:
1) our comrades in the dinghy successfully getting back to civilization; 2) their sending a ves-
sel to look for us first thing. And in this regard we could only hope that Martin Holt—if not
the others—wouldn’t forget us. But would he and his companions find a whaler to take them
to some Pacific shore? And after that, would the next summer season be a promising one for
sailing deep into the seas of Antarctica?
We spent most of the time gabbing about whether our odds were good or bad. More
than any of us, the bosun still put on a brave front, thanks to his upbeat personality and
hearty resilience. Endicott the cook emulated his chipper attitude, or at least didn’t worry his
head over things to come, presiding over his stove as if he were in the kitchen of the Green
Cormorant. Seamen Stern and Francis listened without saying a thing, and who knows, maybe
they were sorry they hadn’t gone with Hearne and his companions! As for Hardie, our master
caulker, he was guided by events, never trying to guess what turn they might take five or six
months down the road.
As usual Captain Guy and his first officer were united in thought and deed. They would
attempt anything that the general welfare demanded. Uneasy about the fate in store for the
dinghy, maybe they were tinkering with a plan to travel north by crossing the ice fields on foot,
and not one of us would have hesitated to go along. Anyhow the moment for attempting such
a thing hadn’t arrived as yet, and there would be time to decide once the sea froze over as far
as the Antarctic Circle.
So that’s how matters stood, and nothing seemed destined to change them, when some-
thing happened on the date of February 19—something providential, I would say, for the
benefit of those who believe Providence intercedes in the workings of human affairs.
It was eight o’clock in the morning. The weather was calm, the sky looked pretty clear,
our thermometer read 32° Fahrenheit.4

Except for the bosun, we were gathered in the cavern waiting for the breakfast Endicott
had just fixed, and we were about to sit down at table when a voice called us from outside.
It could only have been Hurliguerly’s voice, and since he called us again and again, we
rushed outdoors.
As soon as he saw us:
“Come here . . . come over here!” he hollered.
Beyond the promontory, at the foot of the bluff closing off Halbrane Land, he was
standing on a rock and pointing out to sea.
“What’s the matter?” Len Guy asked.
“A canoe.”
“A canoe?” I exclaimed.
“Is it the Halbrane’s dinghy coming back?” Captain Guy asked.
“No it’s not!” West answered.
In fact, given its size and shape, nobody could mistake it for our schooner’s longboat, and
it was drifting without oars or paddles.
It seemed to be completely at the mercy of the current . . .
We all had the same idea—to lay hold of that craft at any cost, because it might be our
ticket to safety. But how could we get to it? How could we bring it to this promontory on
Halbrane Land?
The canoe was still a mile away, and in less than twenty minutes it would pull abreast
of the bluff, go past it since no eddies reached that far, and in twenty more minutes be out of
sight.
We stood there looking at that craft, which kept drifting along without coming any
closer to the beach. If anything, the current seemed to be taking it farther away.
Suddenly water sprayed at the foot of the bluff, as if somebody had plunged into the sea.
It was Peters, who had just stripped off his clothes and dived in from a tall rock—and by
the time we spotted him swimming toward the canoe, he was already sixty feet out.
A cheer burst from our chests.
The half-breed looked back for a second, then with mighty strokes he leaped—that’s the
word—through the mildly choppy waves, displaying the power and speed of a porpoise. I’d
never seen anything like it—nothing was beyond that man’s strength!
Would Peters manage to reach the craft before the current carried it off to the northeast?
And if he did reach it, could he manage to bring it, without oars, to this shore it had
avoided as it had gone past most of the icebergs?
After encouraging the half-breed by cheering him on, we stood motionless, hearts pound-
ing fit to burst. Except, from time to time, the bosun yelled:
“Attaboy, Dirk!”
Cutting across at an angle, the half-breed swam several hundred yards closer to the canoe
in just a few minutes. His head was nothing more than a dark spot on top of the long billows.
There wasn’t a single hint that he was starting to tire. His two arms and two legs systemati-
cally thrust the water aside, and he kept his speed up with the steady movements of those four
powerful propulsion units.

Yes, it seemed like a sure thing! Peters would pull up to the craft. But then wouldn’t he
be carried off with it, unless—given his prodigious strength—he could tow it ashore while he
swam?
“After all, why couldn’t there be oars in that canoe?” the bosun pointed out.
We would know the answer once Peters was on board—where he surely would be after a
few more minutes, because the canoe was swiftly closing in.
“Anyhow,” West said at this juncture, “let’s move down current of him . . . if that craft
comes ashore, it’ll only happen well below the bluff.”
“He made it! Three cheers for Dirk!” yelled the bosun, now beside himself, while Endi-
cott echoed him noisily.
Sure enough, the half-breed had pulled up to the canoe and gotten halfway into it. At
the risk of flipping it over, he held on to it with his enormous hands, hauled himself across the
gunwale, swung his legs around, then sat and caught his breath.
Almost immediately we heard Peters let out a loud cry.
What had he found inside that craft? Paddles obviously, because we saw him get situated
in the bow and head toward shore, paddling with new energy to pull clear of the current.
“Come on!” Captain Guy said.
And as soon as we’d skirted the base of the bluff, we raced through the blackish stones
scattered around and got down to the water’s edge.
We went another third to a half of a mile, then the chief officer brought us to a stop.
In essence the canoe had reached the shelter of a little promontory poking out at that
spot, and clearly it would come ashore under its own steam.
Now then, the eddy was bringing it in, and it wasn’t more than 1,000 to 1,200 yards
away, when Peters dropped his paddle, bent down in the stern, then straightened up, support-
ing a motionless body.
What a heart-rending cry rang out!
“It’s my brother!”
Len Guy had just realized that the half-breed was lifting William Guy’s body.
“He’s alive!” Peters shouted.
A moment later the canoe was on the beach, and Captain Guy was clutching his brother
in his arms.
Three of his brother’s companions lay stock-still in the bottom of the craft.
These four men were all that remained of the Jane’s crew!

30. Eleven Years in a Few Pages
A
s the title given this chapter indicates, it will briefly describe the adventures of
William Guy and his companions after their English schooner was destroyed,
including the details of their lives on Tsalal Island following the departure of
Pym and Peters.
Transferring them to the cavern, we managed to bring William Guy and the other three
seamen—Trinkle, Roberts, and Covin—back to life. In reality it was hunger and nothing else
that had reduced these poor devils to a weakened state close to death.
Moderate portions of a little food, plus a few cups of hot tea spiked with whiskey,
restored their strength almost immediately.
I won’t dwell on the emotional moment, which touched us to the depths of our souls,
when William recognized his brother Len. Tears came to our eyes at the same instant that
thanks to Providence came to our lips. We were so delighted just then, we didn’t give a thought
to what the future had in store for us—and who knows, maybe circumstances were about to
change, thanks to that craft’s arrival on the shores of Halbrane Land.
I need to mention that before William Guy launched into his story, we brought him up
to date on our own adventures. In a few words he learned what he was dying to learn—our
discovery of Patterson’s corpse, our schooner’s voyage to Tsalal Island, her setting sail for higher
latitudes, her capsizing at the foot of the iceberg, lastly the treachery of part of her crew, who’d
ditched us on these shores.
In addition, he found out what Peters knew concerning Pym, also the baseless theories
underlying the half-breed’s hopes for tracking down his companion, whose death William Guy
didn’t doubt any more than he did the deaths of the Jane’s other seamen, whose crushed bodies
lay under the hills by Klock-klock.
William Guy responded to this narrative with a summary of the eleven years he spent
on Tsalal Island.

As you remember, on February 8, 1828, the Jane’s crew had no grounds for suspecting
that the Tsalal populace and their chief, Too-wit, were acting in bad faith, so they went ashore
and proceeded to the village of Klock-klock, taking steps beforehand to protect their schooner
by leaving six men aboard her.
Including Captain William, the mate Patterson, Pym, and Peters, the crew added up to a
party of thirty-two men packing rifles, pistols, and knives. The dog Tiger tagged along.
With a number of Too-wit’s warriors both behind and in the lead, the little band reached
the narrow gorge heading to the village, then split up. Pym, Peters, and seaman Allen went and
investigated a crevice in the hillside. They were never to see their companions again.
In essence, a little while later there was an earth tremor. The entire hill on the other side
collapsed, entombing William Guy and his twenty-eight companions.
Twenty-two of those poor men were crushed on the spot, and their bodies would never
be found again beneath that mass of earth.
Seven survived inside a wide gap in the hill, saved by a miracle. They were William Guy,
Patterson, Roberts, Covin, and Trinkle, plus Forbes and Lexton, who died later. As for Tiger,
they didn’t know whether he’d perished in the landslide or had escaped.
Even so, William Guy and his six companions couldn’t stay in that dark, cramped place,
because they would soon run out of oxygen. Just as Pym initially believed, they thought they’d
gotten caught in an earthquake. But like him, they soon realized why the gorge was filled
with the chaotic rubble of over a million tons of earth and stone: this landslide had been
manufactured by Too-wit and the Tsalal islanders. Like Pym, they had to escape as quickly as
possible from that blackness of darkness, that lack of air, those stifling fumes from the damp
earth—because, in the words of his narrative, they were “beyond the remotest confines of
hope, and . . . such is the allotted portion of the dead.”
Just like the hill on the left, there were mazes inside the one on the right, and by crawl-
ing down those dark corridors, William Guy, Patterson, and the others reached a hollow where
daylight and air poured in.
From there these men saw—they too—sixty dugout canoes attack the Jane, the six men
left on board defend her, her swivel guns spew out chain shot and canister shot, savages overrun
the schooner, and finally the climactic explosion that caused the death of a thousand natives
along with the total destruction of the ship.
At first Too-wit and the Tsalal islanders were horrified by the results of this explosion,
but their disappointment may have been even greater. They couldn’t indulge their looting
impulses, because nothing was left of the hull, rigging, and cargo but worthless wreckage.
They inevitably assumed the crew had perished as well when the hillside caved in, so it
didn’t occur to them that a few had survived. Pym and Peters had looked on from one side,
William Guy and his men from the other, and it wouldn’t be a problem for them to stay down
in those Klock-klock mazes, where they could eat the meat of bitterns—which are easy to catch
with your bare hands—and nuts from the many hazel trees growing on the hillside. As for fire,
they generated it by rubbing pieces of soft wood against pieces of hard wood, and both kinds
were in good supply.

Finally, after seven days in captivity, Pym and the half-breed managed, as you know, to
leave their hideout, get down to the beach, lay hold of a canoe, and leave Tsalal Island—but so
far William Guy and his companions hadn’t gotten a chance to escape themselves.
Three weeks later, still shut up inside the maze, the Jane’s captain and his men saw the
time coming when they would run short of those birds they’d been living on. To keep from
going hungry—if not thirsty, since there was an underground spring supplying fresh water—
they had only one option: get down to the beach, then put to sea in one of the native canoes.
But where would the escapees go, and what would happen to them without provisions? Even
so, they wouldn’t have hesitated to run the risk if they’d had any nighttime hours to work with.
Now then, at that point the sun still wasn’t setting beneath the horizon of the 24th parallel.
So in all likelihood death would have put an end to their misery if the details of their
situation hadn’t changed as follows.
Early one day—it was the morning of February 22—William Guy and Patterson were
talking, consumed with worry, by the entrance to the hollow giving onto the countryside. They
no longer knew how to provide for the needs of seven people, who had sunk by that point to
eating nothing but filberts, which gave them severe headaches and intestinal pain. They spotted
some huge tortoises crawling along the shore. But they didn’t dare go after one, since hundreds
of Tsalal islanders were on the beaches, coming, going, attending to their chores, letting out
their eternal shrieks of Tekeli-li.
Suddenly the whole crowd grew amazingly agitated. Men, women, and children scattered
every which way. A few savages even took to their canoes, as if under threat from some dread-
ful danger.
What was going on?
William Guy and his companions soon saw what was causing the commotion along this
part of the island coastline.
A four-footed animal had just appeared and rushed into the midst of the islanders, biting
them ferociously, leaping at their throats, foaming at the mouth while letting out hoarse growls.
And yet this four-footed beast was alone, and they could have dispatched it with stones
or arrows. Then why were hundreds of savages looking so frightened, why were they taking to
their heels, why were they acting like they didn’t dare defend themselves against that animal
lunging at them?
The animal’s fur was white, and the sight of it had triggered that phenomenon already
noted, that mystifying horror of whiteness shared by all the natives on Tsalal Island. No,
you can’t imagine how terrified they were as they let out shouts of Tekeli-li, Anamoo-moo, and
Lama-Lama!
Then William Guy and his companions were startled to realize that the beast was the
dog Tiger!
Yes—Tiger, who’d run off when the hillside caved in, escaped inland, prowled the vicin-
ity of Klock-klock for a few days, and now was back again, spreading panic among those savages!
You recall how the poor animal had already shown signs of rabies down in the Grampus’s
hold? Well, now he’d turned into a mad dog . . . yes, a mad dog whose fangs threatened this
whole berserk populace . . .

That’s why most of the Tsalal islanders had taken to their heels, likewise Klock-klock’s
leading citizens, their chief Too-wit and the Wampoos! These were the amazing circumstances in
which they deserted not only their village but the whole island, where no human power could
have kept them, where they would never set foot again!
However, though there were enough canoes to take the majority to isles nearby, several
hundred had no way of leaving and were forced to stay on Tsalal Island. Bitten by Tiger, some
of them came down with rabies themselves after a brief incubation period. Then—a sight too
horrible to describe—they rushed at the others, savaged them with their snapping jaws . . . and
the bleached bones we found outside Klock-klock had belonged to these natives, had been lying
in that place for eleven years!
As for the poor dog, he went off and died in a corner of the beach—where Peters found
his skeleton, still wearing a collar engraved with the name Arthur Pym.
So it was this catastrophe—something Poe’s brilliant gifts were perfectly capable of
imagining—that led to the permanent desertion of Tsalal Island. Taking refuge in the island
group to the southwest, the natives had left this land forever, where “the white animal” had just
brought terror and death.
Then, after the last remaining islander had perished in this rabies epidemic, William Guy,
Patterson, Trinkle, Covin, Forbes, and Lexton ventured outside the maze, where they were close
to dying of hunger.
Over the years that followed, how did life treat the expedition’s seven survivors?
All in all, things weren’t as arduous as you might expect. They were safe from want,
thanks to the natural output of a tremendously fertile soil and the presence of a number of
domestic animals. All they lacked was a way to leave Tsalal Island, get back to the ice barrier,
and clear the Antarctic Circle, which the Jane had forced her way past at the cost of a thousand
dangers—the threat of furious squalls, colliding ice slabs, and storms of snow and hail!
As for building a canoe that could face such a hazardous journey, how could William
Guy and his companions manage this without the necessary tools, when all they had left were
their rifles, pistols, cutlasses, and other weapons?
So their only option was to take up residence to the best of their ability, meanwhile
watching for an opportunity to leave the place. And how could that come about, except from
one of those lucky breaks that only Providence provides?
And as the captain and his mate advised, right off they decided to make camp on the
northwest coast. They couldn’t look out to sea from the village of Klock-klock. Now then, it was
essential to watch the ocean continually—in the, alas, improbable event that some vessel made
an appearance in the waterways of Tsalal Island!
So Captain William Guy, Patterson, and their five companions went back down the
ravine—now half full of rubble from the hillside—and walked through crumbling slag plus
chunks of black granite and lead-colored shale, which boasted a shiny metallic grain. Its
appearance had put Pym in mind of those dreary regions that marked, he said, “the site of
degraded Babylon.”
Before leaving that gorge, William Guy intended to explore the fault on the right that
Pym, Peters, and Allen had vanished into. The fault was closed up, so it was impossible to get

inside the hill. Accordingly he never learned about the existence of its natural or man-made
maze, which was the mate of the one he’d just left, maybe connecting with the other beneath
the dried-up streambed.
After they got past this chaotic barricade blocking the northbound path, the little band
quickly headed northwest.
There, on the beach about three miles from Klock-klock, they proceeded to take up perma-
nent residence inside a cave much like the one currently housing us on the coast of Halbrane
Land.
And as we ourselves were about to do, the Jane’s seven survivors lived in that place for many
desperate years—under better circumstances than ours, it’s true, since the fertile soil on Tsalal
Island offered resources that Halbrane Land lacked. The fact is, we were doomed to perish when
our food ran out, but they weren’t. They could have waited indefinitely . . . and they did.
There wasn’t any doubt in their minds that Pym, Peters, and Allen had perished in the
landslide—and this was only too accurate in the latter’s case. In fact, how could they ever have
imagined that Pym and the half-breed had laid hold of a canoe, then put to sea?
As William Guy told us, no incidents shattered the monotony of their eleven-year stay,
none at all—not even any appearances by the islanders, whose fears kept them from going near
Tsalal Island. No dangers threatened the Englishmen during this period of time. As the years
wore on, though, they had less and less hope of ever being rescued. At first, when the warm
weather returned and the sea was open again, they felt sure a ship would be sent to look for the
Jane. But after four or five years had gone by, they abandoned all hope.
Along with fruits of the earth (including spoonwort and brown celery, plants invaluable
for warding off scurvy and plentiful near the cavern), William Guy fetched a load of birds
from the village—excellent specimens of chicken and duck—and likewise a number of those
black hogs that thrive all over the island. Also there were bitterns with jet-black plumage that
were easy to bag without resorting to firearms. Adding to these varied culinary resources, alba-
trosses and Galapagos tortoises buried hundreds of eggs in the sand along the beaches, plus
the tortoises themselves would satisfy any winter visitor in Antarctica—their dimensions are
enormous, their meat is healthy and wholesome.
And they had the sea with its limitless stores, all sorts of fish swarming from Jane
Sound deep into the coves—salmon, cod, rays, blackfish, sole, goatfish, mullet, plaice, parrot-
fish . . . not to mention mollusks, namely those tasty sea cucumbers that the English schooner
had meant to pack up and sell in the marketplaces of the Celestial Empire.1
There’s no need to dwell on this period going from the year 1828 to the year 1839. Of
course the winters were quite harsh. In truth, though the summer was a beneficial presence all
over the Tsalal isles, the bad season didn’t skimp on its standard hardships, a procession of
snowfalls, showers, squalls, and blizzards. Its dreadful cold reigned supreme over the entire
realm of those antarctic lands. Clogged with floating ice, the sea stayed frozen for six to seven
months. Folks had to wait for the sun to reappear before any open water turned up—as Pym
saw, and as we’d found ever since the ice barrier.
In general, though, life was comparatively easy on Tsalal Island. Would it be the same
in our quarters on the barren coast of Halbrane Land? We had plenty of provisions, but ulti-

mately they would run out, and as winter came on, wouldn’t the tortoises head back to the
lower latitudes?
What’s certain is that seven months earlier, Captain William Guy still hadn’t lost a single
one of the men who’d come out safe and sound from that ambush by Klock-klock, a tribute to
their hardy constitutions, remarkable stamina, and great force of character. Unfortunately,
trouble was about to strike.
The month of May arrived—which, in these parts, corresponds to the month of
November in the northern hemisphere—and off Tsalal Island ice slabs were already starting to
drift by, the current carrying them northward.
One day, one of these seven men didn’t return to the cavern. They called for him, they
waited up for him, they sent out a search party . . . to no avail . . . he’d met with an accident,
had drowned probably, wasn’t anywhere to be found . . . and they would never find him.
It was Patterson, the Jane’s mate, William Guy’s loyal companion.
What grief all those gallant fellows felt at the loss of one of their ablest men! And wasn’t
it an omen of disasters to come?
Now then, the information William Guy lacked was what we told him at this point,
namely that Patterson—under circumstances nobody will ever know—had been carried off on
top of an ice slab and had starved to death. And that slab of ice, eroding in warmer waters and
more than half melted, had gotten as far as Prince Edward’s Island when the bosun found the
corpse of the Jane’s mate lying on it.
When Captain Len Guy described how, thanks to the notes found in poor Patterson’s
pocket, the Halbrane had headed for the antarctic seas, his brother couldn’t keep his eyes from
filling with tears.
In the wake of that first misfortune, others would follow.
The Jane’s seven survivors were now down to six and soon would be no more than four,
after they were reduced to running for their lives.
In essence Patterson had been gone only five months, when, in mid-October, an earth-
quake ravaged Tsalal Island from end to end, at the same time demolishing the islands to the
southwest almost completely.
This upheaval was an event of unimaginable violence. We’d gotten an idea of it when
our schooner’s dinghy pulled up to that rocky cliffside Pym describes. No question, William
Guy and his five companions would have perished in short order, if they hadn’t found a way to
escape from this island that no longer nurtured them.
Two days later, a thousand feet or so from their cavern, an empty canoe rode in on the
current, carried out to sea from the island group to the southwest.
Without waiting even twenty-four hours, William Guy, Roberts, Covin, Trinkle, Forbes,
and Lexton were determined to load this craft with all the provisions it could hold, climb
aboard, and leave this island that was now inhospitable.
Unfortunately, a terrifically strong breeze held sway just then, due to seismic phenomena
that had caused far-reaching disturbances in the air as well as in the ground. They couldn’t cope
with this breeze, and it tossed their craft back to the south, handing it off to the same current
that was in charge of our iceberg as it drifted to the shores of Halbrane Land.

For 2½ months the poor fellows crossed the open sea in this way, unable to change
direction. Finally, on January 2 in this present year of 1840, they sighted a coastline to the
east—and sure enough, it was a coastline washed by Jane Sound.
Now then, we’d already determined that this coastline didn’t lie more than fifty miles
from Halbrane Land. Yes, that was the comparatively short distance between us and these men
we’d been looking for all over the antarctic regions, men we’d lost hope of ever seeing again!
William Guy beached his vessel a good ways to the southeast of us. But there—what a
difference from Tsalal Island, or rather what a resemblance to Halbrane Land! Nothing could
grow in that soil, it was only sand and rock, there were no trees, bushes, or plants of any kind!
Accordingly, starting to run out of provisions, William Guy and his companions soon sank
into the most intense agony, and two of them, Forbes and Lexton, drew their last breaths.
The other four—William Guy, Roberts, Covin, and Trinkle—knew they were doomed
to die of hunger on those shores and refused to stay there one more day. Taking the small
amount of food they had left, they set out in the canoe and went with the current a second
time—not even able to fix their position, since they hadn’t any instruments.
Now then, after they’d sailed for twenty-five days under these conditions, their supplies
ran out—and they lay at death’s door, hadn’t eaten for forty-eight hours, and were stretched
out motionless in the bottom of the boat, when their craft came in sight of Halbrane Land.
It was at this instant that the bosun spotted it, then Peters plunged into the sea to inter-
cept it and take steps to bring it ashore.
The moment he set foot inside the canoe, the half-breed recognized the Jane’s captain and
seamen Roberts, Trinkle, and Covin. After making sure they were still breathing, he grabbed
a paddle, pulled for shore, and when he was no more than 200 yards away, he raised William
Guy’s head:
“He’s alive!” he shouted in a voice that was so powerful, it carried all the way to where
we stood.
And now the two brothers were together again at last, in that remote corner of Halbrane
Land.

31. The Sphinx of the Ice Realm
T
wo days later not a single survivor of the two lost schooners still remained on
that part of the antarctic coastline.1
On February 21 at six o’clock in the morning, the craft carrying us—we
were thirteen in number—exited the little cove and doubled the promontory
overlooking Halbrane Land.
For the past two days, we’d been debating the issue of leaving the place. If we were to
decide this in the affirmative, it wouldn’t do to procrastinate a single day before setting out.
For one more month—one month at the outside—it would be possible to navigate this sec-
tion of sea lying between the 86th and 70th parallels, in other words, up to those latitudes
normally closed off by the ice barrier. Then, assuming we got through, might we have a chance
beyond it of finding some whaler finishing out the fishing season—or, who knows, maybe an
English, French, or American vessel completing an exploratory cruise on the outskirts of the
polar ocean? After mid-March we would have to abandon any hope of being picked up, because
those waterways would be as devoid of mariners as fishermen.
First we asked ourselves if we wouldn’t be better off holing up where we were, as we had
to do before William Guy arrived—staying put for the seven or eight months of winter in this
region, soon to be invaded by a long period of darkness and stupendous cold. Early next sum-
mer, once the sea was open again, the canoe could set out for the Pacific Ocean, and we would
have more time to cover the thousand miles we needed to go. Wouldn’t this be a shrewd and
sensible move?
However, as accepting as we were, who wouldn’t shudder at the thought of wintering
on this coast—though the cavern offered us ample protection, though life’s necessities were
guaranteed us, at least with regard to food? Yes, we accepted our lot—so long as acceptance was
what circumstances called for! But now an opportunity to leave had come up, and who wouldn’t
make a last-ditch effort to get back to civilization, who wouldn’t attempt what Hearne and his
companions had attempted, and under vastly more promising conditions?

We carefully weighed the pros and cons of the business. After asking for everybody’s
views, we concluded that if some obstacle brought the trip to a halt, in a pinch the craft could
always get back to this part of the coast because we knew its exact coordinates. The Jane’s cap-
tain was strongly in favor of leaving immediately, and Len Guy and Jem West were comfortable
with what this involved. I promptly sided with their views, and so did our companions.
Only Hurliguerly put up a fight. He felt it was foolish to swap something certain for
something uncertain. Just three or four weeks to cover the distance between Halbrane Land
and the Antarctic Circle—would that be enough? And if we had to backtrack, how could we
manage it against a current bearing north? In short, the bosun advanced some arguments that
were worth considering. Even so, I must admit that only Endicott took his side, automatically
seeing things from the same viewpoint. But once everything had been hashed and rehashed,
Hurliguerly announced he was all set to go, since the rest of us were of a mind to.
We were ready in no time, and by seven o’clock in the morning on the 21st, thanks to
the dual action of the wind and the current, we’d left the promontory on Halbrane Land five
miles behind us. During the afternoon the mountains above that part of the shore gradually
faded away, the tallest having allowed us to spot that coastline on the west side of Jane Sound.
Our canoe was one of those vessels used in the Tsalal group for commuting between
islands. Thanks to Pym’s narrative, we knew that some of these canoes were like rafts or flat-
boats, others were like outriggers—heavy-duty ones for the most part. The craft we rode in
belonged to the latter category, was about forty feet long, six wide, the bow and stern elevated
in the same way (helping it clear sharp bends), and had several pairs of paddles for propulsion.2
I especially need to point out that this canoe had been built without using a single piece
of iron—this metal was completely unknown to the Tsalal islanders, and from stem to stern
there weren’t any nails, bolts, or sole pieces. The fastenings were a type of vine as tough as
copper wire, which guaranteed that the planking would be as solid as if secured by the tightest
rivets. Oakum was replaced by moss smeared with a gummy resin, which took on a metallic
hardness in contact with the water.
This was our craft, which we gave the name Barracuda—a fish of those waterways whose
likeness had been rather crudely carved on the gunwale.3
We loaded the Barracuda with as much stuff as she could hold without seriously inconve-
niencing the passengers who had to sit inside: clothes, including blankets, shirts, jerseys, long
johns, heavy woolen trousers, and oilskin tops; a few sails and yards; oars, boathooks, and a
grapnel; instruments for getting our bearings; weapons and ammunition we might have occa-
sion to use, including shotguns, pistols, rifles, gunpowder, bullets, and lead shot. The cargo
consisted of several barrels of drinking water, whiskey, and gin; crates of flour, lightly salted
meat, dried vegetables, and a decent supply of coffee and tea. We tossed in a little stove and
several bags of coal for feeding it over a number of weeks. True, if we didn’t manage to get
past the ice barrier, if we had to winter in the midst of the ice fields, these resources would
soon run out and we would need to make every effort to get back to Halbrane Land, where our
schooner’s cargo was sure to keep us alive during the long months remaining.
Well, even if we didn’t pull it off, would that be any reason to lose hope? No, because it’s
in human nature to cling to its tiniest gleams. I remembered what Poe said about his Angel of
the Odd, that “he was the genius who presided over the contretemps of mankind, and whose

business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic”
but which take place through the logic of events. Why wouldn’t we see this angel appear at the
crowning moment?
Needless to say, we left the bulk of the Halbrane’s cargo in the cavern, safe from the vile
winter weather and at the disposal of castaways, if any ever showed up on that coast. The
bosun also left a marker for them by standing a spare mast on the bluff, which couldn’t fail to
catch their attention. Even so, after what happened to our two schooners, what ship would dare
advance to these latitudes?
Here’s who the passengers were aboard the Barracuda: Captain Len Guy, First Officer Jem
West, Hurliguerly the bosun, Hardie the master caulker, seamen Francis and Stern, Endicott
the cook, the half-breed Dirk Peters, and yours truly, all from the Halbrane—then Captain Wil-
liam Guy and seamen Roberts, Covin, and Trinkle from the Jane. Total: the ominous number
thirteen.
Before leaving, West and the bosun took pains to put up a mast about a third of the
way back from the vessel’s prow. Secured by a stay and shrouds, this mast could carry a wide
foresheet that had been cut out of our schooner’s topsail. Since the Barracuda was six feet across
at her main beam, they did a fair job of squaring this spanker sail.
Of course this setup wouldn’t let us run close into the wind. But since the breeze was
behind us on our quarter, this sail would give us enough speed (an average of thirty miles every
twenty-four hours) to travel the thousand miles to the ice barrier in five weeks. It wasn’t at all
unrealistic to count on this speed, assuming the current and the breeze kept the Barracuda head-
ing northeast. Besides, our paddles would be a help whenever the wind pooped out, and four
pairs in the hands of eight men would guarantee that the craft kept her speed up.
I have nothing in particular to report about the week that followed our departure. The
breeze blew continually from the south. No ornery countercurrents showed up between the
banks of Jane Sound.
To keep the shores of Halbrane Land from retreating too far to the west, the two cap-
tains wanted to hug it, wherever possible, from 200 to 400 yards out. It could offer us refuge
in case an accident put our canoe out of commission. But what would our outlook be on that
barren land in early winter? Better than the alternative, I suspect.
During that first week, thanks to our paddling the instant the breeze died down, the Bar-
racuda never dropped below that average speed essential for reaching the Pacific Ocean in the
little time we had.
The shore’s appearance didn’t change—always the same fallow soil, blackish rocks, sandy
beaches littered with prickly pears, and bald, steep mountains in the background. As for the
strait, it was already carting a few slabs along, drift ice, packs 150 to 200 feet in length, some
like thin strips, others circular—and also icebergs that our craft easily overtook. The worri-
some thing about these masses was that they were heading toward the ice barrier, and wouldn’t
they close up those passageways that were still supposed to be open at this point?
It goes without saying that the Barracuda’s thirteen passengers lived in perfect harmony.
We didn’t have to worry about Hearne organizing mutinies anymore. And speaking of the
master sealer, we wondered if fortune had been kind to those poor devils he’d roped in. They
were aboard an overloaded dinghy that the first heavy wave would put in peril, so how could

they pull off such a dangerous trip? Yet who knows, couldn’t Hearne succeed while we ourselves
failed, just because we’d left ten days after him?
I’ll mention in passing that as Peters got farther from these locales where he hadn’t found
a trace of his poor Pym, he grew (if at all possible) more tight-lipped than ever, and he no
longer said anything back when I had a word with him.
That year of 1840 being a leap year, I had to enter the date February 29 in my notes.
Now then, it so happened that this date was Hurliguerly’s birthday, so the bosun insisted that
this event be celebrated aboard the canoe with a little pomp and circumstance.
“It’s the least you can do,” he said with a chuckle, “since you only throw a bash for me
one year out of four!”
And we drank to the gallant fellow’s health—he could run off at the mouth, but he was
the toughest, trustiest man on board, and he bucked us up with his never-say-die good humor.
That day our position fix gave us latitude 79° 17' and longitude 118° 37'.
We could see that the two banks of Jane Sound ran between the 118th and 119th merid-
ians, and the Barracuda had only a dozen degrees to go till the Antarctic Circle.
After taking their sights (quite a tricky task because the sun hung so low over the hori-
zon), the two brothers had spread out our map of the antarctic on a thwart—a map far from
complete at that point in time. I studied it along with them, and we tried to determine what
already-charted territories lay more or less in the direction we were heading.
Don’t forget, since our iceberg had gone past the South Pole, we’d been in the zone of
longitude east, reckoning from 0° at Greenwich to 180°.4 So we had to abandon any hope
of putting into the Falklands or finding whalers in the waterways of the Sandwich group, the
South Orkneys, or South Georgia Island.
Here, by and large, is what we could infer from our current bearings.
Needless to say, Captain William Guy had no way of knowing about those antarctic
voyages undertaken after the Jane had set out. He was familiar only with those by Cook, Kru-
senstern, Weddell, Bellinghausen, and Morrell, but he wasn’t aware of the subsequent cruises
(Morrell’s second one and the one by Kemp) that took the science of geography a tad farther
into these remote territories. From what his brother told him of our own discoveries, he knew
it could be taken as gospel that a wide channel—Jane Sound—divided this southern region
into two huge continents.
That day Captain Len Guy commented that if the strait kept on between the 118th and
119th meridians, the Barracuda would pass near the coordinates ascribed to the magnetic pole.
As you’re aware, this is the locale where all the magnetic meridians come together, the locale
almost diametrically opposite to the one in the arctic waterways, the locale where your compass
needle points straight down. At that time, I should mention, the position of this pole hadn’t
been fixed with the accuracy explorers brought to it later.*
*Hansteen’s calculations put the southern magnetic pole in longitude 128° 30' and latitude 69° 17'. Following
the efforts of Vincendon Dumoulin and Coupvent-Desbois at the time of Dumont d’Urville’s voyage with the
Astrolabe and the Zealous, Duperrey came up with longitude 136° 15' and latitude 76° 30'. Quite recently, however,
new calculations have insisted that this spot ought to lie in longitude 106° 16' east and latitude 72° 20' south. As
you can see, marine mapmakers still haven’t reached agreement on this issue, just as they haven’t with regard to the
northern magnetic pole. J.V.

Which isn’t all that crucial for mariners, so this geographic verifying wasn’t a prior-
ity where we were concerned. What we needed to focus on was the fact that Jane Sound was
noticeably narrowing, shrinking by then to just ten or twelve miles wide. Thanks to the strait’s
layout, you could clearly see land on both sides.
“Uh oh, let’s hope it stays wide enough for our boat!” the bosun pointed out. “If this
strait winds up turning into a dead end—”
“No need to worry,” Captain Len Guy replied. “The current is running this direction
because it has a way out to the north—so all we have to do, it seems to me, is follow it.”
This proved correct. The Barracuda couldn’t have had a better trail guide than this current.
If, by some quirk of fate, we’d had it running against us, it would have been impossible to go
forward without the help of a very strong wind.
But a few degrees farther on, might this current curve to the east or west, given the shape
of the coastlines? Even so, north of the ice barrier everything led us to believe that this part
of the Pacific washed the shores of Australia, Tasmania, or New Zealand. But you’ll agree that
when it’s an issue of getting back to civilization, it doesn’t much matter which civilization it is.
We continued to navigate under these conditions for some ten days. Sailing with the
wind on her quarter, our craft made good time. West and the two captains were more than
appreciative of the sturdy way she’d been built—though, I repeat, it didn’t entail a scrap of
iron. Not once did we have to repair her seams, which were absolutely watertight. True, we had
a smooth sea, its mild choppiness barely rippling the surface of the long swells.
On March 10 our sights gave us latitude 76° 13', same longitude as before.5
Since the Barracuda had covered about 600 miles after leaving Halbrane Land, and since
she’d done this distance in twenty days, she was managing a speed of thirty miles every twenty-
four hours.
If this average didn’t slacken over the next three weeks, all the odds would be in our favor
that the passageways hadn’t closed up or that the ice barrier could be bypassed—and also that
ships still remained in the fishing grounds.
Currently the sun was close to scraping the edge of the horizon, and the time was coming
when this whole antarctic realm would be wrapped in the darkness of a polar night. Fortunately,
in heading up north, we were reaching waterways where daylight still hadn’t been sent packing.
Then we witnessed a phenomenon as amazing as the ones filling up Pym’s narrative. For
three or four hours our fingers, hair, and whiskers gave off brief sparks that made high-pitched
sounds. It was an electric snowstorm with huge fluffy flakes that shot out tufts of light when
they touched you. The sea surged so furiously, several times the Barracuda came close to capsiz-
ing, but we got through safe and sound.6
Yet visibility overhead was already far from perfect. Frequent fogs shrank our maximum
viewing range to barely 500 yards. Consequently we had to maintain regular watches to keep
from colliding with floating ice slabs, which were moving more slowly than the Barracuda. It’s
also worth noting that over the southern coastline, the skies were often lit up by a wide glow
radiating from some polar aurora.
The temperature dropped pretty noticeably and no longer went above 23° Fahrenheit.7
This drop didn’t fail to seriously worry us. Though it couldn’t affect the current, whose
direction stayed in our favor, changes were likely in the atmospheric conditions. Unfortunately,

if the wind died down as the cold increased, our canoe’s speed would be cut in half. Now then,
a two-week delay would be enough to jeopardize our flight to safety and force us to winter at
the foot of the ice barrier. In that case, as I’ve said, we would be better off trying to return to
our campsite in Halbrane Land. Would Jane Sound still be open so the Barracuda could get back
successfully? With their ten-day head start on us, hadn’t Hearne and his companions enjoyed
better luck and already gotten past the ice barrier?
Forty-eight hours later the fog faded from the sky and made it possible to take sights, so
Captain Len Guy and his brother tried to find our bearings. True, the sun barely poked above
the southern horizon and the operation presented real difficulties. Even so, the brothers man-
aged to get a rough reading of the sun’s elevation, then worked up the following results:

Longitude 118° 3' east.
Therefore, on this date of March 12, the Barracuda was no farther than 400 miles from
the waterways of the Antarctic Circle.
We noted at this juncture that the strait—quite narrow level with the 77th parallel—was
widening as it headed north. Even with a telescope you couldn’t see land to the east anymore.
This was an inconvenient state of affairs, because the current might spread out between the two
shores, quickly lose speed, and cease to be a factor.
During the night of March 12–13, there was a lull in the wind, then a pretty heavy fog
came up. We had grounds for complaint, because this heightened the danger of colliding with
floating ice. True, we weren’t surprised to see these waterways mist over. But the thing that did
surprise us was that our canoe, far from slowing down, was gradually accelerating, even though
the wind had lulled. Certainly it wasn’t the current that made us speed up, because the waves
rippling against our prow proved we were going faster than it was.
This state of things lasted till morning without our figuring out what was going on,
then, at about ten o’clock, the fog started to break up in the lower zones. The seacoast to the
west reappeared (a rocky seacoast with no mountains in the background), and the Barracuda
hugged it.
And then, a quarter of a mile off, a mass of stone stood out, towering 100 yards above
the plain and measuring 400 to 600 yards around. The strange shape of that rock formation
made it instantly resemble an enormous sphinx, deep chested, paws out in front, squatting in
the posture of that winged monster stationed on the road to Thebes in Greek myth.
Was it a live animal, a gigantic monster, some mastodon a thousand times bigger than
those enormous elephants whose remains are still found in the polar regions? In our frame of
mind, we could well believe this—and also believe that this mastodon was ready to rush at our
vessel, get her in its clutches, and crush her . . .
This unreasoning, unreasonable fear was our initial reaction, then the fog lifted from the
thing, and we verified that it was a rock formation of unusual shape.
Yes, a sphinx! And I’d just remembered! During that night when the iceberg somersaulted
and carried off the Halbrane, I’d been dreaming that a fantastic animal of this kind was sitting

at the axis of the world, and only Edgar Allan Poe with his intuitive brilliance could wrest its
secrets from it!
But stranger phenomena were about to catch our attention, provoke our surprise, even
terrify us!
As I’ve mentioned, for some hours the Barracuda’s speed had gradually been increasing. At
present it was tremendous, the current’s less. Now then, all at once the iron grapnel lying in the
bow—and originally coming from the Halbrane—flew over our prow as if yanked overboard by
some irresistible force, the line tied to it stretched to the breaking point. The grapnel seemed
to skim over the surface of the waves, towing us toward shore.
“What’s going on?” William Guy exclaimed.
“Cut the line, bosun, cut it!” West ordered. “Or we’ll go to pieces on the rocks!”
Hurliguerly leaped into the Barracuda’s bow to cut the line. Suddenly the knife he held
was torn from his hand, the line snapped, and the grapnel whizzed toward that rock formation
like a projectile.
And at the same time, out went every iron object loaded in the boat—kitchen utensils,
weapons, Endicott’s stove, and our pocketknives all took off in the same direction, while the
canoe coasted up to the beach and ran aground!
What was going on? How could we explain these baffling things? Did they mean we’d
reached the region of those oddities I’d blamed on Pym’s hallucinations?
No! What we’d just witnessed were concrete happenings, not imaginary phenomena!
Anyhow we had no time to think it over, because the instant we stepped ashore, we were
sidetracked by the sight of a longboat beached on the sand.
“The Halbrane’s dinghy!” Hurliguerly exclaimed.
Yes, it was the dinghy Hearne had stolen. It lay at that spot, planks split apart, timbers
torn from the keel, completely in pieces. Nothing but shapeless rubble—in short, what nor-
mally remains of a longboat the instant a heavy wave smashes it against rocks!
The thing we noticed immediately was that the dinghy’s ironwork was gone . . . yes, every
scrap of it . . . nails from the planking, sole piece from the keel, packing from both stem and
stern, hinges from the rudder . . .
What did it all mean?
West called to us, and we joined him on a little patch of sand to the longboat’s right.
Three corpses lay on the ground—belonging to Hearne, Martin Holt the master sail-
maker, and one of the Falklanders. Out of the thirteen involved in the master sealer’s scheme,
only these three were left, and death must have claimed them a few days ago.
What had happened to the ten missing men? Had they been swept out to sea?
We searched for them down the coastline, at the far ends of coves, among the reefs. We
didn’t find a thing—no traces of a campsite, not even signs of their unloading.
“Some drifting iceberg must have struck their dinghy at sea,” William Guy said. “Most
of Hearne’s companions would have drowned . . . and these three bodies washed ashore, no
longer alive.”
“But,” the bosun asked, “can you figure out how the longboat got in this shape—”
“—and especially,” West added, “how it lost all its iron fittings?”

“In fact,” I went on, “it looks like they were violently torn away.”
Leaving two men in charge of the Barracuda, we proceeded inland to continue our search
over a wider radius.
As we neared the rock formation, its shape now emerged from the mists and stood out
more clearly. It looked quite a bit like a sphinx, as I’ve said—a soot-colored sphinx, as if the
matter composing it had been oxidized by years of vile weather in this polar climate.
And then an explanation popped into my head, an explanation that made sense of these
astounding phenomena.8
“Aha!” I exclaimed. “A lodestone . . . it’s a lodestone . . . with prodigious attracting
power!”
They understood, and in an instant we had a frighteningly clear picture of this latest
disaster that had claimed Hearne and his cohorts as victims.
The Sphinx of the Ice Realm.

That rock formation was simply a colossal lodestone.9 Under its magnetic influence, the
iron fastenings in the Halbrane’s dinghy had ripped loose and flown off as if launched by the
spring of a catapult. This was the irresistible force that had just snatched up every iron object
aboard the Barracuda! And our canoe would have gone to its doom like the other if it had been
built using a single piece of that metal!
Did our being so near the magnetic pole bring about these goings on?
That was our first thought. Then, after considering it, we had to discard the idea.
Besides, at those two related spots on the planet earth where the magnetic meridians
intersect, here’s the only phenomenon you’ll witness: your compass needle points straight
down. This phenomenon has already been verified in the arctic regions by readings taken on
the spot, and it’s got to be the same in the regions of Antarctica.
Hence a lodestone of prodigious intensity existed in this zone of attraction we’d just
entered. Before our very eyes it had caused these startling goings on, which, in the past, we
would have relegated to the realm of fairy tales. Who ever would have believed that vessels
could be irresistibly drawn by some magnetic force, their iron fastenings flying every which
way, their hulls bursting open, the sea swallowing them up in its depths? And yet there it was!
Here, I think, is the overall explanation that can be given for this phenomenon:
On a constant basis, trade winds bound for the poles bring clouds or fogs storing
immense amounts of electricity not completely drained off by thunderstorms. Ergo the fear-
some accumulation of this elastic fluid at the tips of the earth’s axis, where it continually
gravitates toward land.
This is what causes the magnificent radiance of those northern lights and southern lights
that shine above the horizon (especially during the long polar night) and at their culminating
point are visible as far as the temperate zones. It’s even widely believed—though, I realize, not
yet proven—that whenever there’s a strong discharge of positive electricity in the arctic regions,
the antarctic regions experience electrical discharges of the opposite variety.
Well, these continual currents to the poles—which drive compasses berserk—inevitably
have an amazing magnetic influence, which, if it acts on a mass of iron, is enough to change the
metal into a lodestone whose power is proportional to the current’s intensity, to the number
of coils in the electrical helix, and to the square root of the diameter of the iron entity being
magnetized.
As for this sphinx towering over this part of the polar regions, you could realistically
reckon its volume in the thousands of cubic yards.
Now then, for the current to circulate around it and magnetize it by induction, what’s
the prerequisite? Nothing except a seam of metal winding through the bowels of the earth with
countless twists and turns—and connecting underground with the base of the aforementioned
rock formation.
I also think this rock formation must have been stationed—like a sort of giant attracting
device—on the magnetic axis, which releases the evanescent fluid while its currents set up limit-
less storage batteries at the ends of the earth. As for determining if the formation lay exactly at
the southern magnetic pole, our compass couldn’t help because it wasn’t built for that purpose.
I can only report that its skittish needle went berserk and didn’t point in any one direction.

But this had no bearing on the makeup of this synthetic lodestone, or on the way in which the
clouds and the seam of metal contributed to its attracting power.
All my instincts led me to explain the phenomenon in this perfectly plausible way. No
doubt about it, we were in the presence of a lodestone whose power created these effects that
were both unnerving and understandable.
I shared my theory with my companions, and given the concrete happenings we’d just
witnessed, they felt it was a convincing explanation.10
“I assume it isn’t dangerous to go up to the foot of the formation?” Len Guy asked.
“No,” I replied.
“There . . . aye . . . there!”
I can’t describe the impression made on us by these three words, hurled like three cries
from the depths of another world, as Edgar Allan Poe might have put it.
Peters had spoken them, and the half-breed’s body was leaning toward the sphinx, as if
he’d changed into iron and the lodestone was pulling him as well.
And there he was, dashing toward it while his companions followed him over the surface
of a soil piled with blackish stones, crumbling glacial deposits, all sorts of volcanic rubble.
The monster grew bigger as we got closer, yet it still looked like a creature of myth. I
can’t describe the effect it created, alone on the surface of that immense plain. There are sensa-
tions no written or spoken words can convey. And—here our faculties must have been playing
tricks on us—it seemed to be pulling us toward it with the power of its magnetic attraction . . .
Reaching its base, we found the various iron objects that had fallen under its spell. The
Barracuda’s weapons, utensils, and grapnel were clinging to its sides. Also in view were similar
items belonging to the Halbrane’s dinghy, plus nails, bolts, oarlocks, sole pieces from her keel,
and fittings from her rudder.
We knew beyond any possible doubt what had destroyed the dinghy carrying Hearne and
his companions. Savagely battered, it had come to grief on the rocks, and the Barracuda would
have gone to the same doom, if she hadn’t escaped that irresistible magnetic force due to the
very way she’d been built.
As for reclaiming the objects clinging to the sides of the rock formation (rifles, pistols,
utensils), they clung so tightly, we had to give them up as a bad job. Hurliguerly’s pocketknife
was glued to the formation some fifty feet above the ground, and when he couldn’t retrieve it,
he blew his stack, shook his fist, and hollered at the uncooperative monster:
“You thieving sphinx!”
It won’t surprise you to hear that there weren’t any objects around besides those from the
Barracuda or the Halbrane’s dinghy. Certainly no ships had ever advanced to this latitude in the
antarctic seas. Hearne and his accomplices came first, Len Guy and his companions followed,
and we were the only ones to set foot on this part of the polar continent. In a nutshell, any craft
that came near this colossal lodestone would be courting certain disaster, and our schooner
would have gone to the same doom as her dinghy, which now lay in shapeless ruins.
Meanwhile, Jem West reminded us that it wasn’t wise to lay over too long in this Sphinx
Country—a name we figure will stick. Time was running out, and even a couple days’ delay
could force us to winter at the foot of the ice barrier.

We’d just gotten orders to return to the beach when the half-breed’s voice rang out once
more, Peters again hurling three words, or rather three shrieks:
“There . . . ! There . . . ! There . . . !”
Going around to the far side of the monster’s right paw, we saw Dirk Peters kneeling,
hands stretching toward a human body—or rather a skeleton covered with skin, which the
polar cold had kept intact and which preserved a corpselike rigidity. The head was bowed, a
white beard fell to the waist, hands and feet had nails as long as claws . . .
How had that body gotten clamped to the side of the rock formation twelve feet off the
ground?
Across the torso, held there by its leather sling, we saw the twisted barrel of a rifle half
eaten by rust . . .
“Pym . . . poor Pym!” Peters said over and over in a heartrending voice.
Then he tried to get up and go closer . . . to kiss the petrified remains of his poor Pym . . .
His knees buckled under him . . . a sob caught in his throat . . . with a spasm his heart
burst . . . and he fell backward . . . dead . . .
Hence, once they’d gotten separated, the canoe had carried Pym through these regions
of Antarctica! After going past the South Pole, he’d blundered—as we did—into the monster’s
zone of attraction! And there, while his craft went with the northerly current, the magnetic
fluid seized him—and before he could tear off the shoulder strap holding his weapon, he’d
slammed into the rock formation . . .
Today the loyal half-breed rests in Sphinx Country—next to Arthur Gordon Pym, the
hero whose strange adventures found in our great American author a storyteller just as strange!

32. Twelve out of Seventy!
T
he afternoon of that same day, the Barracuda left the shores of Sphinx Country
behind, shores we’d continually had to our west since February 21.
There were about 400 miles to go till the edge of the Antarctic Circle.
After we arrived in the waterways of the Pacific Ocean, would we have the good
luck, I repeat, to get picked up by a whaler still at work in the last days of the fishing season,
or even by some ship on a polar expedition?
This second possibility had something to be said for it. In essence, while our schooner
lay over in the Falklands, wasn’t America’s Lieutenant Wilkes in the picture with his naval expe-
dition? Hadn’t his squadron—consisting of four vessels, the Vincennes, Peacock, Porpoise, and Flying
Fish—left Tierra del Fuego in February 1839 and gone off with several consorts on a cruise
through the polar seas?
As for what had happened since, we didn’t have a clue. But after Wilkes attempted to sail
southward in the western longitudes, wouldn’t he look for a way to do the same in the eastern
longitudes?* If so, it might be possible for the Barracuda to meet up with one of his vessels.
By and large our hardest task would be getting out of these regions before winter took
over, making the most of the sea being open, because it soon would be impossible to sail at all.
When Dirk Peters died, the Barracuda’s passengers shrank to a total of twelve. This is
what remained from both crews of the two schooners, the first consisting of thirty-eight men,
the second thirty-two—seventy in all! But don’t forget, the Halbrane’s expedition had been
undertaken as a humanitarian responsibility, and the Jane’s four survivors owed their lives to it.
And now let’s pick up the pace. There’s no point in dwelling on our return trip, which was
blessed with steady winds and currents. Incidentally, these notes that would serve as the basis
for my narrative weren’t stuck inside a bottle, tossed overboard, and fished up by chance from
the seas of Antarctica. I’ve brought them back in person, and though we didn’t accomplish the
*Sure enough, that’s what he did: after being forced to backtrack thirteen times, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes1 man-
aged to take the Vincennes as far as latitude 65° 57' 2 and longitude 105° 20' east. J.V.

last leg of the voyage without great hardship, great suffering, great danger, and above all dread-
ful anxiety, this cruise did end with our rescue.
Most importantly, a few days after we’d left Sphinx Country, the sun finally set beneath
the western horizon and wasn’t due to reappear the rest of the winter.
So the Barracuda plied her monotonous course through the semidarkness of the antarctic
night. True, polar auroras were often visible—those wondrous lightshows that Cook and Fos-
ter saw for the first time in 1773. How magnificently their luminous arcs unfolded, how whim-
sically their rays shot out or snapped back, how dazzlingly their plush draperies expanded or
contracted, converging with marvelous suddenness on the spot in the sky that compass needles
point to when they’re vertical! And their beams folded and refolded into the most luxurious
variety of shapes, going from bright red to emerald green in color!
Right, but it wasn’t the sun, it wasn’t the irreplaceable heavenly body that continually
lights up our horizons during the months of antarctic summer! That long polar night exerts a
mental and physical influence that nobody can escape, gloomy and oppressive feelings that are
quite hard to throw off.
Out of the Barracuda’s passengers, only the bosun and Endicott kept their usual good humor,
immune to both the dullness and dangers of our trip. The emotionless West was another excep-
tion, ready for any possible eventuality, a man who never let his guard down. As for the brothers
Guy, they were so glad to reconnect, they tended to shrug off their worries of the future.
As a matter of fact, I can’t sing Hurliguerly’s praises too highly, and nothing lifted your
spirits better than hearing the gallant fellow repeat in his encouraging voice:
“We’ll make it to a decent port, my hearties, we’ll make it! And if you total everything
up, you’ll see we’ve had more good luck than bad during this voyage! Sure, I know—we lost
our schooner! Poor old Halbrane, swept into the air like a gas balloon, then dumped into the
depths like an avalanche! But in exchange we got the iceberg that dropped us ashore, and the
Tsalal canoe that linked us up with Captain William Guy and his three chums! And the current
and breeze that brought us to this point are bound to take us farther still! I’d say we’ve come
out ahead! With so many trump cards in our hand, there’s no way we’ll lose the game! My only
regret is going back to civilization by way of Australia or New Zealand, instead of anchoring
off Christmas Harbor in Kerguelen’s Land, by the pier in front of the Green Cormorant . . . !”
Which, in essence, was where Mr. Atkins’s pal felt seriously let down, but it was a nui-
sance we would take in our stride!
For a week we stayed on course without veering east or west, and it wasn’t till the date of
March 21 that the Barracuda lost sight of Halbrane Land on her port side.
I always call that territory by this name because its coastline continued without interrup-
tion as far as this latitude, and there wasn’t any doubt in our minds that it made up one of the
huge continents of Antarctica.
The fact that the Barracuda quit following it was due, needless to say, to its curving away
to the northwest while the current kept heading north.3
Though the waters in this portion of sea stayed open, they were nevertheless hauling an
honest-to-goodness flotilla of icebergs and ice fields—the former either shallow expanses or
formations that already stood tall, the latter looking like shards from an immense shattered
windowpane. Which meant hard going plus constant danger when sailing though the gloomy

fog, especially while jockeying between those moving masses to look for a passageway or to
keep our canoe from being crushed like grain beneath a millstone.
At the moment, moreover, Len Guy couldn’t get his bearings, neither his latitude nor his
longitude. Since the sun was gone and working from the positions of the stars was too com-
plicated, it wasn’t possible to take any sights. So the Barracuda surrendered to the action of that
current, which, according to our compass readings, invariably bore to the north. By keeping
track of our average speed, however, we could reasonably estimate that our canoe lay, on the
date of March 27, between the 68th and 69th parallels, in other words, only seventy miles or
so from the Antarctic Circle.
Oh, if only this hazardous trip had no more obstacles, if only there was a surefire path
between this polar inland sea and the waterways of the Pacific Ocean, the Barracuda could reach
the far edge of the polar zone in a matter of days. But another few hundred miles off, the ice
barrier would unfurl its immovable frozen rampart, and unless some passageway opened up, we
would have to sidestep it to the east or west. Once past it, though . . .
Well, once past it, we would be riding in a puny open boat over the terrifying Pacific
Ocean, at a time of year when it has twice as many storms, when even ships can’t face its heavy
seas with impunity . . .
We put it out of our minds. Heaven would come to our aid. We would be picked
up . . . yes . . . picked up by some vessel! The bosun said so and the bosun wouldn’t kid us!
Meanwhile the surface of the sea started to congeal, and several times we had to break
through ice fields to open up a passageway. The thermometer never read higher than 4° Fahr-
enheit.4 Aboard that uncovered boat we suffered plenty from the cold and the gusts, though we
had a supply of heavy blankets.
Luckily, there were enough of these to go around, plus a couple weeks’ worth of canned
meat, three bags of biscuits, and two full kegs of gin. As for drinking water, we could get it by
melting ice.
In short, for six days till April 2, the Barracuda had to maneuver among the lofty walls of
the ice barrier, their summits outlined some 700 to 800 feet above sea level.5 Both its western
and eastern ends were out of sight, and if our canoe didn’t turn up an open passageway, we
wouldn’t succeed in getting past.
We found one on that date, thanks to the luckiest of breaks, and we went down it in the
face of a thousand dangers. Yes, to pull the business off, we needed all the zeal, courage, and
skill our men and their leaders could muster! To the bosun, to First Officer West, and to the
two captains, Len and William Guy, we owe our eternal thanks.
Finally we plied the waves of the south Pacific. But during that long and arduous crossing,
our craft took a serious beating. Her caulking was the worse for wear, her planks were threatening
to pop open, and she was taking on water through several seams. We were constantly at work bail-
ing her out, and if that wasn’t enough, we were already shipping too many seas over the gunwale.
True, the breeze had died down, and the ocean was calmer than we could have hoped, but
the real danger we faced wasn’t any navigational risk.
No, it came from the fact that there wasn’t a ship to be seen in these waterways, no whal-
ers were out in the fishing grounds! By early April these waters are already deserted, and we were
too late by a couple of weeks . . .

Now then, to meet up with the vessels of the American expedition, as we were to find
out, we should have arrived two months earlier.
In fact, on February 21, in longitude 95° 50' and latitude 64° 17', Lieutenant Wilkes
was exploring these seas in one of his ships, the Vincennes, after scouting out an expanse of coast
spreading east to west over latitude 66°.6 Then, once the bad season was at hand, he put about
and went back to Hobart in Tasmania.
That same year an expedition under France’s Captain Dumont d’Urville (his second
attempt at the pole, which set out in 1838) discovered the Adélie Coast on January 21 in lati-
tude 66° 30' and longitude 38° 21' east, then the Clarie Coast on January 29 in 64° 30' and
129° 54'. Wrapping up their cruise after these major discoveries, the Astrolabe and the Zealous
exited the Antarctic Ocean and headed for Hobart.
So none of these vessels were in these waterways. Past the ice barrier, therefore, our
nutshell of a Barracuda was by herself on an empty sea, and we had to conclude that we were
beyond rescuing.
By then we were 1,500 miles from the nearest land, and winter was already a month
under way!
Hurliguerly had been counting on one last lucky break, and he himself admitted that it
just wasn’t materializing.
By April 6 we were at the end of our rope, the wind started to blow harder, the canoe
shook violently, and every passing wave threatened to swallow us up.
“Ship!”
This word burst from the bosun’s mouth, and that same instant we made out a vessel four
miles to the northeast, beneath some fog that had just lifted.
Immediately we signaled them and they signaled back. After heaving to, the ship lowered
her biggest longboat to pick us up.
She was the Tasman, an American three-master from Charleston that promptly and heart-
ily welcomed us aboard. Her captain treated my companions like they were his own countrymen.
The Tasman had come from the Falkland Islands, where she’d learned that the English
schooner Halbrane had made for the southern seas seven months earlier, in search of castaways
from the Jane.7 But since the weather had turned cold and the schooner hadn’t reappeared,
people were bound to think she’d gone down with all hands in the antarctic regions.
This last leg of the trip went quickly and pleasantly. Two weeks later the Tasman put into
Melbourne in the Australian state of Victoria, dropping off the surviving crew members from
the two schooners—and that’s where our men were paid their well-deserved bonuses!
There some charts showed us that the Barracuda had emerged into the Pacific between
Dumont d’Urville’s Clarie Coast and the Sabrina Coast, which Balleny discovered in 1838.8
That’s how this adventurous and amazing cruise came to an end, a cruise costing too
many lives, unfortunately! And to sum up, though the risks and requirements of this trip took
us closer to the South Pole than anybody before us, though we went past the very tip of the
planet earth’s axis, discoveries of great value are still to be made in those waterways!
Arthur Gordon Pym, the hero Edgar Allan Poe honored so magnificently, has shown the
way. Others must travel it again, others must visit the Sphinx of the Ice Realm and wrest from
it the final secrets of mysterious Antarctica!

Edgar Allan Poe
(1809–1849)
Appendix 1
The Narrative of
Arthur
Gordon Pym
of Nantucket
Edgar Allan Poe
Comprising the details of a mutiny and atrocious butchery

on board the American brig Grampus, on her way to
the south seas in the month of June 1827.
With an account of the recapture of the vessel by the

survivors; their shipwreck and subsequent horrible
sufferings from famine; their deliverance by
means of the British schooner Jane Guy; the
brief cruise of the latter vessel in the
Antarctic Ocean; her capture and the
massacre of her crew among the
group of islands in the
eighty-fourth parallel of southern latitude;
together with the incredible adventures and

discoveries
still farther south
to which that distressing calamity gave rise.

Preface
U
pon my return to the United States a few months ago, after the extraordinary se-
ries of adventures in the South Seas and elsewhere, of which an account is given
in the following pages, accident threw me into the society of several gentlemen
in Richmond, Va., who felt deep interest in all matters relating to the regions I
had visited, and who were constantly urging it upon me, as a duty, to give my narrative to the
public. I had several reasons, however, for declining to do so, some of which were of a nature
altogether private and concern no person but myself; others not so much so. One consideration
which deterred me was that, having kept no journal during a greater portion of the time in
which I was absent, I feared I should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so
minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess, barring only
the natural and unavoidable exaggeration to which all of us are prone when detailing events
which have had powerful influence in exciting the imaginative faculties. Another reason was that
the incidents to be narrated were of a nature so positively marvelous that, unsupported as my
assertions must necessarily be (except by the evidence of a single individual, and he a half-breed
Indian), I could only hope for belief among my family and those of my friends who have had
reason, through life, to put faith in my veracity—the probability being that the public at large
would regard what I should put forth as merely an impudent and ingenious fiction. A distrust
in my own abilities as a writer was, nevertheless, one of the principal causes which prevented
me from complying with the suggestions of my advisers.
Among those gentlemen in Virginia who expressed the greatest interest in my statement,
more particularly in regard to that portion of it which related to the Antarctic Ocean, was Mr.
Poe, lately editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, a monthly magazine published by Mr. Thomas
W. White in the city of Richmond. He strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once
a full account of what I had seen and undergone, and trust to the shrewdness and common
sense of the public—insisting, with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards mere
authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all
the better chance of being received as truth.
the narrative of arthur gordon pym / 263

Notwithstanding this representation, I did not make up my mind to do as he suggested.
He afterward proposed (finding that I would not stir in the matter) that I should allow him
to draw up, in his own words, a narrative of the earlier portion of my adventures from facts
afforded by myself, publishing it in the Southern Messenger under the garb of fiction. To this, per-
ceiving no objection, I consented, stipulating only that my real name should be retained. Two
numbers of the pretended fiction appeared, consequently, in the Messenger for January and Feb-
ruary (1837), and in order that it might certainly be regarded as fiction, the name of Mr. Poe
was affixed to the articles in the table of contents of the magazine.
The manner in which this ruse was received has induced me at length to undertake a reg-
ular compilation and publication of the adventures in question; for I found that, in spite of the
air of fable which had been so ingeniously thrown around that portion of my statement which
appeared in the Messenger (without altering or distorting a single fact), the public were still not
at all disposed to receive it as fable, and several letters were sent to Mr. P.’s address distinctly
expressing a conviction to the contrary. I thence concluded that the facts of my narrative would
prove of such a nature as to carry with them sufficient evidence of their own authenticity, and
that I had consequently little to fear on the score of popular incredulity.
This exposé being made, it will be seen at once how much of what follows I claim to be
my own writing; and it will also be understood that no fact is misrepresented in the first few
pages which were written by Mr. Poe. Even to those readers who have not seen the Messenger, it
will be unnecessary to point out where his portion ends and my own commences; the difference
in point of style will be readily perceived.
A. G. PYM.
New York, July 1838.
264 / the narrative of arthur gordon pym

1
MY name is Arthur Gordon Pym. My father was a respectable trader in sea stores at Nantucket,
where I was born. My maternal grandfather was an attorney in good practice. He was fortunate
in everything and had speculated very successfully in stocks of the Edgarton New Bank, as it
was formerly called. By these and other means he had managed to lay by a tolerable sum of
money. He was more attached to myself, I believe, than to any other person in the world, and
I expected to inherit the most of his property at his death. He sent me, at six years of age, to
the school of old Mr. Ricketts, a gentleman with only one arm and of eccentric manners—he
is well known to almost every person who has visited New Bedford. I stayed at his school until
I was sixteen, when I left him for Mr. E. Ronald’s academy on the hill. Here I became intimate
with the son of Mr. Barnard, a sea captain who generally sailed in the employ of Lloyd and
Vredenburgh—Mr. Barnard is also very well known in New Bedford and has many relations, I
am certain, in Edgarton. His son was named Augustus, and he was nearly two years older than
myself. He had been on a whaling voyage with his father in the John Donaldson and was always
talking to me of his adventures in the south Pacific Ocean. I used frequently to go home with
him and remain all day, and sometimes all night. We occupied the same bed, and he would
be sure to keep me awake until almost light, telling me stories of the natives of the Island of
Tinian and other places he had visited in his travels. At last I could not help being interested in
what he said, and by degrees I felt the greatest desire to go to sea. I owned a sailboat called the
Ariel and worth about seventy-five dollars. She had a half-deck, or cuddy, and was rigged sloop
fashion—I forget her tonnage, but she would hold ten persons without much crowding. In this
boat we were in the habit of going on some of the maddest freaks in the world; and when I now
think of them, it appears to me a thousand wonders that I am alive today.
I will relate one of these adventures by way of introduction to a longer and more mo-
mentous narrative. One night there was a party at Mr. Barnard’s, and both Augustus and myself
were not a little intoxicated toward the close of it. As usual, in such cases, I took part of his
bed in preference to going home. He went to sleep, as I thought, very quietly (it being near

one when the party broke up) and without saying a word on his favorite topic. It might have
been half an hour from the time of our getting in bed, and I was just about falling into a doze,
when he suddenly started up and swore with a terrible oath that he would not go to sleep for
any Arthur Pym in Christendom, when there was so glorious a breeze from the southwest. I
never was so astonished in my life, not knowing what he intended and thinking that the wines
and liquors he had drunk had set him entirely beside himself. He proceeded to talk very coolly,
however, saying he knew that I supposed him intoxicated but that he was never more sober in
his life. He was only tired, he added, of lying in bed on such a fine night like a dog, and was
determined to get up and dress, and go out on a frolic with the boat. I can hardly tell what
possessed me, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth than I felt a thrill of the greatest
excitement and pleasure, and thought his mad idea one of the most delightful and most reason-
able things in the world. It was blowing almost a gale, and the weather was very cold—it being
late in October. I sprang out of bed, nevertheless, in a kind of ecstasy and told him I was quite
as brave as himself, and quite as tired as he was of lying in bed like a dog, and quite as ready
for any fun or frolic as any Augustus Barnard in Nantucket.
We lost no time in getting on our clothes and hurrying down to the boat. She was lying
at the old decayed wharf by the lumber yard of Pankey & Co., and almost thumping her sides
out against the rough logs. Augustus got into her and bailed her, for she was nearly half full
of water. This being done, we hoisted jib and mainsail, kept full, and started boldly out to sea.
The wind, as I before said, blew freshly from the southwest. The night was very clear
and cold. Augustus had taken the helm, and I stationed myself by the mast on the deck of
the cuddy. We flew along at a great rate—neither of us having said a word since casting loose
from the wharf. I now asked my companion what course he intended to steer and what time he
thought it probable we should get back. He whistled for a few minutes and then said crustily,
“I am going to sea—you may go home if you think proper.” Turning my eyes upon him, I per-
ceived at once that, in spite of his assumed nonchalance, he was greatly agitated. I could see him
distinctly by the light of the moon—his face was paler than any marble, and his hand shook
so excessively that he could scarcely retain hold of the tiller. I found that something had gone
wrong and became seriously alarmed. At this period I knew little about the management of a
boat and was now depending entirely upon the nautical skill of my friend. The wind, too, had
suddenly increased, as we were fast getting out of the lee of the land—still I was ashamed to
betray any trepidation and for almost half an hour maintained a resolute silence. I could stand
it no longer, however, and spoke to Augustus about the propriety of turning back. As before, it
was nearly a minute before he made answer or took any notice of my suggestion. “By and by,”
said he at length. “Time enough—home by and by.”
I had expected a similar reply, but there was something in the tone of these words which
filled me with an indescribable feeling of dread. I again looked at the speaker attentively. His
lips were perfectly livid, and his knees shook so violently together that he seemed scarcely able
to stand. “For God’s sake, Augustus,” I screamed, now heartily frightened, “what ails you?—
what is the matter?—what are you going to do?”
“Matter!” he stammered, in the greatest apparent surprise, letting go the tiller at the
same moment and falling forward into the bottom of the boat. “Matter!—why, nothing is

the—matter—going home—d-d-don’t you see?” The whole truth now flashed upon me. I flew
to him and raised him up. He was drunk—beastly drunk—he could no longer either stand,
speak, or see. His eyes were perfectly glazed; and as I let him go in the extremity of my despair,
he rolled like a mere log into the bilge water from which I had lifted him. It was evident that,
during the evening, he had drunk far more than I suspected, and that his conduct in bed had
been the result of a highly concentrated state of intoxication—a state which, like madness,
frequently enables the victim to imitate the outward demeanor of one in perfect possession of
his senses. The coolness of the night air, however, had had its usual effect—the mental energy
began to yield before its influence—and the confused perception which he no doubt then had
of his perilous situation had assisted in hastening the catastrophe. He was now thoroughly
insensible, and there was no probability that he would be otherwise for many hours.1
It is hardly possible to conceive the extremity of my terror. The fumes of the wine lately
taken had evaporated, leaving me doubly timid and irresolute. I knew that I was altogether
incapable of managing the boat and that a fierce wind and strong ebb tide were hurrying us
to destruction. A storm was evidently gathering behind us; we had neither compass nor provi-
sions; and it was clear that, if we held our present course, we should be out of sight of land
before daybreak. These thoughts, with a crowd of others equally fearful, flashed through my
mind with a bewildering rapidity and for some moments paralyzed me beyond the possibility
of making any exertion. The boat was going through the water at a terrible rate—full before
the wind, no reef in either jib or mainsail—running her bows completely under the foam. It
was a thousand wonders she did not broach to—Augustus having let go the tiller, as I said
before, and I being too much agitated to think of taking it myself. By good luck, however, she
kept steady, and gradually I recovered some degree of presence of mind. Still the wind was
increasing fearfully; and whenever we rose from a plunge forward, the sea behind fell combing
over our counter and deluged us with water. I was so utterly benumbed, too, in every limb as
to be nearly unconscious of sensation. At length I summoned up the resolution of despair,
and rushing to the mainsail, let it go by the run. As might have been expected, it flew over the
bows and, getting drenched with water, carried away the mast short off by the board. This
latter accident alone saved me from instant destruction. Under the jib only, I now boomed
along before the wind, shipping heavy seas occasionally over the counter but relieved from the
terror of immediate death. I took the helm and breathed with greater freedom as I found that
there yet remained to us a chance of ultimate escape. Augustus still lay senseless in the bottom
of the boat; and as there was imminent danger of his drowning (the water being nearly a foot
deep just where he fell), I contrived to raise him partially up and keep him in a sitting posi-
tion, by passing a rope round his waist and lashing it to a ringbolt in the deck of the cuddy.
Having thus arranged everything as well as I could in my chilled and agitated condition, I
recommended myself to God and made up my mind to bear whatever might happen with all
the fortitude in my power.
Hardly had I come to this resolution, when, suddenly, a loud and long scream or yell, as
if from the throats of a thousand demons, seemed to pervade the whole atmosphere around
and above the boat. Never while I live shall I forget the intense agony of terror I experienced at
that moment. My hair stood erect on my head—I felt the blood congealing in my veins—my

heart ceased utterly to beat, and without having once raised my eyes to learn the source of my
alarm, I tumbled headlong and insensible upon the body of my fallen companion.
I found myself, upon reviving, in the cabin of a large whaling ship (the Penguin) bound to
Nantucket. Several persons were standing over me, and Augustus, paler than death, was busily
occupied in chafing my hands. Upon seeing me open my eyes, his exclamations of gratitude and
joy excited alternate laughter and tears from the rough-looking personages who were present.
The mystery of our being in existence was now soon explained. We had been run down by the
whaling ship, which was close hauled, beating up to Nantucket with every sail she could venture
to set, and consequently running almost at right angles to our own course. Several men were
on the lookout forward, but did not perceive our boat until it was an impossibility to avoid
coming in contact—their shouts of warning upon seeing us were what so terribly alarmed me.
The huge ship, I was told, rode immediately over us with as much ease as our own little vessel
would have passed over a feather, and without the least perceptible impediment to her progress.
Not a scream arose from the deck of the victim—there was a slight grating sound to be heard
mingling with the roar of wind and water, as the frail bark which was swallowed up rubbed for
a moment along the keel of her destroyer—but this was all. Thinking our boat (which it will
be remembered was dismasted) some mere shell cut adrift as useless, the captain (Captain E. T.
V. Block of New London) was for proceeding on his course without troubling himself further
about the matter. Luckily, there were two of the lookout who swore positively to having seen
some person at our helm and represented the possibility of yet saving him. A discussion en-
sued, when Block grew angry and, after a while, said that “it was no business of his to be eter-
nally watching for eggshells; that the ship should not put about for any such nonsense; and if
there was a man run down, it was nobody’s fault but his own—he might drown and be d–––d,”
or some language to that effect. Henderson, the first mate, now took the matter up, being justly
indignant, as well as the whole ship’s crew, at a speech evincing so base a degree of heartless
atrocity. He spoke plainly, seeing himself upheld by the men, told the captain he considered
him a fit subject for the gallows, and that he would disobey his orders if he were hanged for it
the moment he set his foot on shore. He strode aft, jostling Block (who turned very pale and
made no answer) on one side, and seizing the helm, gave the word, in a firm voice, Hard-a-lee!
The men flew to their posts, and the ship went cleverly about. All this had occupied nearly five
minutes, and it was supposed to be hardly within the bounds of possibility that any individual
could be saved—allowing any to have been on board the boat. Yet, as the reader has seen, both
Augustus and myself were rescued; and our deliverance seemed to have been brought about by
two of those almost inconceivable pieces of good fortune which are attributed by the wise and
pious to the special interference of Providence.
While the ship was yet in stays, the mate lowered the jolly boat and jumped into her with
the very two men, I believe, who spoke up as having seen me at the helm. They had just left
the lee of the vessel (the moon still shining brightly) when she made a long and heavy roll to
windward, and Henderson, at the same moment, starting up in his seat, bawled out to his crew
to back water. He would say nothing else—repeating his cry impatiently, back water! back water! The
men put back as speedily as possible; but by this time the ship had gone round, and gotten
fully under headway, although all hands on board were making great exertions to take in sail.

The huge ship . . . rode immediately over us.
In spite of the danger of the attempt, the mate clung to the main chains as soon as they came
within his reach. Another huge lurch now brought the starboard side of the vessel out of water
nearly as far as her keel, when the cause of his anxiety was rendered obvious enough. The body
of a man was seen to be affixed in the most singular manner to the smooth and shining bot-
tom (the Penguin was coppered and copper-fastened), and beating violently against it with every

ovement of the hull. After several ineffectual efforts, made during the lurches of the ship, and
m
at the imminent risk of swamping the boat, I was finally disengaged from my perilous situation
and taken on board—for the body proved to be my own. It appeared that one of the timber
bolts having started and broken a passage through the copper, it had arrested my progress as I
passed under the ship, and fastened me in so extraordinary a manner to her bottom. The head
of the bolt had made its way through the collar of the green baize jacket I had on and through
the back part of my neck, forcing itself out between two sinews and just below the right ear. I
was immediately put to bed—although life seemed to be totally extinct. There was no surgeon
on board. The captain, however, treated me with every attention—to make amends, I presume,
in the eyes of his crew, for his atrocious behavior in the previous portion of the adventure.
In the meantime, Henderson had again put off from the ship, although the wind was
now blowing almost a hurricane. He had not been gone many minutes when he fell in with
some fragments of our boat, and shortly afterward one of the men with him asserted that he
could distinguish a cry for help at intervals amid the roaring of the tempest. This induced the
hardy seamen to persevere in their search for more than half an hour, although repeated signals
to return were made them by Captain Block, and although every moment on the water in so
frail a boat was fraught to them with the most imminent and deadly peril. Indeed, it is nearly
impossible to conceive how the small jolly they were in could have escaped destruction for a
single instant. She was built, however, for the whaling service and was fitted, as I have since had
reason to believe, with air boxes in the manner of some lifeboats used on the coast of Wales.
After searching in vain for about the period of time just mentioned, it was determined
to get back to the ship. They had scarcely made this resolve when a feeble cry arose from a dark
object which floated rapidly by. They pursued and soon overtook it. It proved to be the entire
deck of the Ariel ’s cuddy. Augustus was struggling near it, apparently in the last agonies. Upon
getting hold of him it was found that he was attached by a rope to the floating timber. This
rope, it will be remembered, I had myself tied round his waist, and made fast to a ringbolt, for
the purpose of keeping him in an upright position, and my so doing, it appeared, had been
ultimately the means of preserving his life. The Ariel was slightly put together, and in going
down her frame naturally went to pieces; the deck of the cuddy, as might be expected, was
lifted, by the force of the water rushing in, entirely from the main timbers and floated (with
other fragments, no doubt) to the surface—Augustus was buoyed up with it and thus escaped
a terrible death.
It was more than an hour after being taken on board the Penguin before he could give any
account of himself, or be made to comprehend the nature of the accident which had befallen
our boat. At length he became thoroughly aroused and spoke much of his sensations while
in the water. Upon his first attaining any degree of consciousness, he found himself beneath
the surface, whirling round and round with inconceivable rapidity and with a rope wrapped
in three or four folds tightly about his neck. In an instant afterward he felt himself going
rapidly upward, when, his head striking violently against a hard substance, he again relapsed
into insensibility. Upon once more reviving he was in fuller possession of his reason—this was
still, however, in the greatest degree clouded and confused. He now knew that some accident
had occurred and that he was in the water, although his mouth was above the surface and he

could breathe with some freedom. Possibly, at this period, the deck was drifting rapidly before
the wind and drawing him after it as he floated upon his back. Of course, as long as he could
have retained this position, it would have been nearly impossible that he should be drowned.
Presently a surge threw him directly athwart the deck; and this post he endeavored to maintain,
screaming at intervals for help. Just before he was discovered by Mr. Henderson, he had been
obliged to relax his hold through exhaustion, and, falling into the sea, had given himself up for
lost. During the whole period of his struggles he had not the faintest recollection of the Ariel,
nor of the matters in connection with the source of his disaster. A vague feeling of terror and
despair had taken entire possession of his faculties. When he was finally picked up, every power
of his mind had failed him; and, as before said, it was nearly an hour after getting on board the
Penguin before he became fully aware of his condition. In regard to myself—I was resuscitated
from a state bordering very nearly upon death (and after every other means had been tried in
vain for three hours and a half ) by vigorous friction with flannels bathed in hot oil—a proceed-
ing suggested by Augustus. The wound in my neck, although of an ugly appearance, proved of
little real consequence, and I soon recovered from its effects.
The Penguin got into port about nine o’clock in the morning, after encountering one
of the severest gales ever experienced off Nantucket. Both Augustus and myself managed to
appear at Mr. Barnard’s in time for breakfast—which, luckily, was somewhat late, owing to
the party overnight. I suppose all at the table were too much fatigued themselves to notice
our jaded appearance—of course, it would not have borne a very rigid scrutiny. Schoolboys,
however, can accomplish wonders in the way of deception, and I verily believe not one of our
friends in Nantucket had the slightest suspicion that the terrible story told by some sailors in
town of their having run down a vessel at sea and drowned some thirty or forty poor devils, had
reference either to the Ariel, my companion, or myself. We two have since very frequently talked
the matter over—but never without a shudder. In one of our conversations Augustus frankly
confessed to me that in his whole life, he had at no time experienced so excruciating a sense of
dismay as, when on board our little boat, he first discovered the extent of his intoxication and
felt himself sinking beneath its influence.
In no affairs of mere prejudice, pro or con, do we deduce inferences with entire certainty even
from the most simple data. It might be supposed that a catastrophe such as I have just related
would have effectually cooled my incipient passion for the sea. On the contrary, I never expe-
rienced a more ardent longing for the wild adventures incident to the life of a navigator than
within a week after our miraculous deliverance. This short period proved amply long enough
to erase from my memory the shadows and bring out in vivid light all the pleasurably exciting
points of color, all the picturesqueness of the late perilous accident. My conversations with
Augustus grew daily more frequent and more intensely full of interest. He had a manner of
relating his stories of the ocean (more than one half of which I now suspect to have been sheer
fabrications) well adapted to have weight with one of my enthusiastic temperament and some-
what gloomy, although glowing, imagination. It is strange, too, that he most strongly enlisted

my feelings on behalf of the life of a seaman, when he depicted his more terrible moments of
suffering and despair. For the bright side of the painting I had a limited sympathy. My visions
were of shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime
dragged out in sorrow and tears upon some gray and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable
and unknown. Such visions or desires—for they amounted to desires—are common, I have
since been assured, to the whole numerous race of the melancholy among men—at the time of
which I speak I regarded them only as prophetic glimpses of a destiny which I felt myself in a
measure bound to fulfill. Augustus thoroughly entered into my state of mind. It is probable,
indeed, that our intimate communion had resulted in a partial interchange of character.
About eighteen months after the period of the Ariel ’s disaster, the firm of Lloyd and
Vredenburgh (a house connected in some manner with the Messrs. Enderby, I believe, of Liv-
erpool) were engaged in repairing and fitting out the brig Grampus for a whaling voyage. She was
an old hulk and scarcely seaworthy when all was done to her that could be done. I hardly know
why she was chosen in preference to other good vessels belonging to the same owners—but so
it was. Mr. Barnard was appointed to command her, and Augustus was going with him. While
the brig was getting ready, he frequently urged upon me the excellence of the opportunity now
offered for indulging my desire of travel. He found me by no means an unwilling listener—yet
the matter could not be so easily arranged. My father made no direct opposition; but my moth-
er went into hysterics at the bare mention of the design; and, more than all, my grandfather,
from whom I expected much, vowed to cut me off without a shilling if I should ever broach
the subject to him again.2 These difficulties, however, so far from abating my desire, only added
fuel to the flame. I determined to go at all hazards; and, having made known my intention to
Augustus, we set about arranging a plan by which it might be accomplished. In the meantime
I forbore speaking to any of my relations in regard to the voyage, and, as I busied myself os-
tensibly with my usual studies, it was supposed that I had abandoned the design. I have since
frequently examined my conduct on this occasion with sentiments of displeasure as well as of
surprise. The intense hypocrisy I made use of for the furtherance of my project—a hypocrisy
pervading every word and action of my life for so long a period of time—could only have been
rendered tolerable to myself by the wild and burning expectation with which I looked forward
to the fulfillment of my long-cherished visions of travel.
In pursuance of my scheme of deception, I was necessarily obliged to leave much to the
management of Augustus, who was employed for the greater part of every day on board the
Grampus, attending to some arrangements for his father in the cabin and cabin hold. At night,
however, we were sure to have a conference and talk over our hopes. After nearly a month passed
in this manner, without our hitting upon any plan we thought likely to succeed, he told me at
last that he had determined upon everything necessary. I had a relation living in New Bedford,
a Mr. Ross, at whose house I was in the habit of spending occasionally two or three weeks at a
time. The brig was to sail about the middle of June (June 1827), and it was agreed that, a day
or two before her putting to sea, my father was to receive a note, as usual, from Mr. Ross, asking
me to come over and spend a fortnight with Robert and Emmet (his sons). Augustus charged
himself with the inditing of this note and getting it delivered. Having set out, as supposed,
for New Bedford, I was then to report myself to my companion, who would contrive a hiding

place for me in the Grampus. This hiding place, he assured me, would be rendered sufficiently
comfortable for a residence of many days, during which I was not to make my appearance.
When the brig had proceeded so far on her course as to make any turning back a matter out
of question, I should then, he said, be formally installed in all the comforts of the cabin; and
as to his father, he would only laugh heartily at the joke. Vessels enough would be met with by
which a letter might be sent home explaining the adventure to my parents.
The middle of June at length arrived, and everything had been matured. The note was
written and delivered, and on a Monday morning I left the house for the New Bedford packet,
as supposed. I went, however, straight to Augustus, who was waiting for me at the corner of a
street. It had been our original plan that I should keep out of the way until dark and then slip
on board the brig; but, as there was now a thick fog in our favor, it was agreed to lose no time
in secreting me. Augustus led the way to the wharf, and I followed at a little distance, enveloped
in a thick seaman’s cloak, which he had brought with him, so that my person might not be easily
recognized. Just as we turned the second corner, after passing Mr. Edmund’s well, who should
appear, standing right in front of me, and looking me full in the face, but old Mr. Peterson,
my grandfather. “Why, bless my soul, Gordon,” said he, after a long pause, “why, why—whose
dirty cloak is that you have on?”
“Sir!” I replied, assuming, as well as I could, in the exigency of the moment, an air of
offended surprise and talking in the gruffest of all imaginable tones. “Sir! you are a sum’mat
mistaken—my name, in the first place, bee’nt nothing at all like Goddin, and I’d want you for
to know better, you blackguard, than to call my new obercoat a darty one!”
For my life I could hardly refrain from screaming with laughter at the odd manner in
which the old gentleman received this handsome rebuke. He started back two or three steps,
turned first pale and then excessively red, threw up his spectacles, then, putting them down, ran
full tilt at me, with his umbrella uplifted. He stopped short, however, in his career as if struck
with a sudden recollection; and presently, turning round, hobbled off down the street, shaking
all the while with rage and muttering between his teeth, “Won’t do—new glasses—thought it
was Gordon—d–––d good-for-nothing saltwater Long Tom.”3
After this narrow escape we proceeded with greater caution and arrived at our point of
destination in safety. There were only one or two of the hands on board, and these were busy
forward, doing something to the forecastle combings. Captain Barnard, we knew very well, was
engaged at Lloyd and Vredenburgh’s and would remain there until late in the evening, so we had
little to apprehend on his account. Augustus went first up the vessel’s side, and in a short while
I followed him, without being noticed by the men at work. We proceeded at once into the cabin
and found no person there. It was fitted up in the most comfortable style—a thing somewhat
unusual in a whaling vessel. There were four very excellent staterooms with wide and convenient
berths. There was also a large stove, I took notice, and a remarkably thick and valuable carpet
covering the floor of both the cabin and staterooms. The ceiling was full seven feet high, and,
in short, everything appeared of a more roomy and agreeable nature than I had anticipated.
Augustus, however, would allow me but little time for observation, insisting upon the necessity
of my concealing myself as soon as possible. He led the way into his own stateroom, which
was on the starboard side of the brig and next to the bulkheads. Upon entering, he closed the

door and bolted it. I thought I had never seen a nicer little room than the one in which I now
found myself. It was about ten feet long and had only one berth, which, as I said before, was
wide and convenient. In that portion of the closet nearest the bulkheads there was a space of
four feet square, containing a table, a chair, and a set of hanging shelves full of books, chiefly
books of voyages and travels. There were many other little comforts in the room, among which
I ought not to forget a kind of safe or refrigerator, in which Augustus pointed out to me a host
of delicacies both in the eating and drinking department.
He now pressed with his knuckles upon a certain spot of the carpet in one corner of
the space just mentioned, letting me know that a portion of the flooring, about sixteen inches
square, had been neatly cut out and again adjusted. As he pressed, this portion rose up at one
end sufficiently to allow the passage of his finger beneath. In this manner he raised the mouth
of the trap (to which the carpet was still fastened by tacks), and I found that it led into the
after hold. He next lit a small taper by means of a phosphorous match and, placing the light
in a dark lantern, descended with it through the opening, bidding me follow. I did so, and he
then pulled the cover upon the hole, by means of a nail driven into the underside—the carpet,
of course, resuming its original position on the floor of the stateroom, and all traces of the
aperture being concealed.
The taper gave out so feeble a ray that it was with the greatest difficulty I could grope
my way through the confused mass of lumber among which I now found myself. By degrees,
however, my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, and I proceeded with less trouble, hold-
ing onto the skirts of my friend’s coat. He brought me at length, after creeping and winding
through innumerable narrow passages, to an iron-bound box, such as is used sometimes for
packing fine earthenware. It was nearly four feet high, and full six long, but very narrow. Two
large empty oil casks lay on the top of it and above these, again, a vast quantity of straw mat-
ting, piled up as high as the floor of the cabin. In every other direction around was wedged
as closely as possible, even up to the ceiling, a complete chaos of almost every species of ship
furniture, together with a heterogeneous medley of crates, hampers, barrels, and bales, so that
it seemed a matter no less than miraculous that we had discovered any passage at all to the box.
I afterward found that Augustus had purposely arranged the stowage in this hold with a view
to affording me a thorough concealment, having had only one assistant in the labor, a man not
going out in the brig.
My companion now showed me that one of the ends of the box could be removed at
pleasure. He slipped it aside and displayed the interior, at which I was excessively amused. A
mattress from one of the cabin berths covered the whole of its bottom, and it contained almost
every article of mere comfort which could be crowded into so small a space, allowing me, at the
same time, sufficient room for my accommodation, either in a sitting position or lying at full
length. Among other things there were some books, pen, ink, and paper, three blankets, a large
jug full of water, a keg of sea biscuit, three or four immense Bologna sausages, an enormous
ham, a cold leg of roast mutton, and half a dozen bottles of cordials and liqueurs. I proceeded
immediately to take possession of my little apartment, and this with feelings of higher satis-
faction, I am sure, than any monarch ever experienced upon entering a new palace. Augustus
now pointed out to me the method of fastening the open end of the box and then, holding

the taper close to the deck, showed me a piece of dark whipcord lying along it. This, he said,
extended from my hiding place throughout all the necessary windings among the lumber to a
nail which was driven into the deck of the hold, immediately beneath the trapdoor leading into
his stateroom. By means of this cord I should be enabled readily to trace my way out without
his guidance, provided any unlooked-for accident should render such a step necessary. He now
took his departure, leaving with me the lantern, together with a copious supply of tapers and
phosphorous, and promising to pay me a visit as often as he could contrive to do so without
observation. This was on the seventeenth of June.
I remained three days and nights (as nearly as I could guess) in my hiding place without
getting out of it at all, except twice for the purpose of stretching my limbs by standing erect
between two crates just opposite the opening. During the whole period I saw nothing of Au-
gustus; but this occasioned me little uneasiness, as I knew the brig was expected to put to sea
every hour, and in the bustle he would not easily find opportunities of coming down to me. At
length I heard the trap open and shut, and presently he called in a low voice, asking if all was
well and if there was anything I wanted. “Nothing,” I replied, “I am as comfortable as can be;
when will the brig sail?”
“She will be under way in less than half an hour,” he answered. “I came to let you know,
and for fear you should be uneasy at my absence. I shall not have a chance of coming down
again for some time—perhaps for three or four days more. All is going on right aboveboard.
After I go up and close the trap, do you creep along by the whipcord to where the nail is driven
in. You will find my watch there—it may be useful to you, as you have no daylight to keep
time by. I suppose you can’t tell how long you have been buried—only three days—this is the
twentieth. I would bring the watch to your box but am afraid of being missed.” With this he
went up.4
In about an hour after he had gone I distinctly felt the brig in motion and congratulated
myself upon having at length fairly commenced a voyage. Satisfied with this idea, I determined
to make my mind as easy as possible and await the course of events until I should be permitted
to exchange the box for the more roomy, although hardly more comfortable, accommodations
of the cabin. My first care was to get the watch. Leaving the taper burning, I groped along in
the dark, following the cord through windings innumerable, in some of which I discovered
that, after toiling a long distance, I was brought back within a foot or two of a former posi-
tion. At length I reached the nail and, securing the object of my journey, returned with it in
safety. I now looked over the books which had been so thoughtfully provided and selected the
expedition of Lewis and Clarke to the mouth of the Columbia. With this I amused myself for
some time, when, growing sleepy, I extinguished the light with great care and soon fell into a
sound slumber.
Upon awakening I felt strangely confused in mind, and some time elapsed before I could
bring to recollection all the various circumstances of my situation. By degrees, however, I
remembered all. Striking a light, I looked at the watch; but it had run down, and there were,
consequently, no means of determining how long I had slept. My limbs were greatly cramped,
and I was forced to relieve them by standing between the crates. Presently, feeling an almost rav-
enous appetite, I bethought myself of the cold mutton, some of which I had eaten just before

going to sleep and found excellent. What was my astonishment at discovering it to be in a state
of absolute putrefaction! This circumstance occasioned me great disquietude; for, connecting
it with the disorder of mind I experienced upon awakening, I began to suppose that I must
have slept for an inordinately long period of time. The close atmosphere of the hold might
have had something to do with this and might, in the end, be productive of the most serious
results. My head ached excessively; I fancied that I drew every breath with difficulty; and, in
short, I was oppressed with a multitude of gloomy feelings. Still I could not venture to make
any disturbance by opening the trap or otherwise and, having wound up the watch, contented
myself as well as possible.
Throughout the whole of the next tedious twenty-four hours no person came to my
relief, and I could not help accusing Augustus of the grossest inattention. What alarmed me
chiefly was that the water in my jug was reduced to about half a pint, and I was suffering much
from thirst, having eaten freely of the Bologna sausages after the loss of my mutton. I became
very uneasy and could no longer take any interest in my books. I was overpowered, too, with a
desire to sleep, yet trembled at the thought of indulging it lest there might exist some pernicious
influence, like that of burning charcoal, in the confined air of the hold. In the meantime the
roll of the brig told me that we were far in the main ocean, and a dull humming sound, which
reached my ears as if from an immense distance, convinced me no ordinary gale was blowing.
I could not imagine a reason for the absence of Augustus. We were surely far enough advanced
on our voyage to allow of my going up. Some accident might have happened to him—but I
could think of none which would account for his suffering me to remain so long a prisoner, ex-
cept, indeed, his having suddenly died or fallen overboard, and upon this idea I could not dwell
with any degree of patience. It was possible that we had been baffled by headwinds and were
still in the near vicinity of Nantucket. This notion, however, I was forced to abandon; for, such
being the case, the brig must have frequently gone about; and I was entirely satisfied, from her
continual inclination to the larboard, that she had been sailing all along with a steady breeze
on her starboard quarter. Besides, granting that we were still in the neighborhood of the island,
why should not Augustus have visited me and informed me of the circumstance? Pondering in
this manner upon the difficulties of my solitary and cheerless condition, I resolved to wait yet
another twenty-four hours, when, if no relief were obtained, I would make my way to the trap
and endeavor either to hold a parley with my friend or get at least a little fresh air through the
opening and a further supply of water from his stateroom. While occupied with this thought,
however, I fell in spite of every exertion to the contrary, into a state of profound sleep, or
rather stupor. My dreams were of the most terrific description. Every species of calamity and
horror befell me. Among other miseries, I was smothered to death between huge pillows, by
demons of the most ghastly and ferocious aspect. Immense serpents held me in their embrace
and looked earnestly in my face with their fearfully shining eyes. Then deserts, limitless and
of the most forlorn and awe-inspiring character, spread themselves out before me. Immensely
tall trunks of trees, gray and leafless, rose up in endless succession as far as the eye could reach.
Their roots were concealed in wide-spreading morasses, whose dreary water lay intensely black,
still, and altogether terrible beneath. And the strange trees seemed endowed with a human
vitality and, waving to and fro their skeleton arms, were crying to the silent waters for mercy,

in the shrill and piercing accents of the most acute agony and despair. The scene changed; and
I stood, naked and alone, amid the burning sand plains of the Sahara. At my feet lay crouched
a fierce lion of the tropics. Suddenly his wild eyes opened and fell upon me. With a conclusive
bound he sprang to his feet and laid bare his horrible teeth. In another instant there burst from
his red throat a roar like the thunder of the firmament, and I fell impetuously to the earth.
Stifling in a paroxysm of terror, I at last found myself partially awake. My dream, then, was not
all a dream. Now, at least, I was in possession of my senses. The paws of some huge and real
monster were pressing heavily upon my bosom—his hot breath was in my ear—and his white
and ghastly fangs were gleaming upon me through the gloom.
Had a thousand lives hung upon the movement of a limb or the utterance of a syllable, I
could have neither stirred nor spoken. The beast, whatever it was, retained his position without
attempting any immediate violence, while I lay in an utterly helpless and, I fancied, a dying con-
dition beneath him. I felt that my powers of body and mind were fast leaving me—in a word,
that I was perishing, and perishing of sheer fright. My brain swam—I grew deadly sick—my
vision failed—even the glaring eyeballs above me grew dim. Making a last strong effort, I at
length breathed a faint ejaculation to God and resigned myself to die. The sound of my voice
seemed to arouse all the latent fury of the animal. He precipitated himself at full length upon
my body; but what was my astonishment, when, with a long and low whine, he commenced
licking my face and hands with the greatest eagerness and with the most extravagant demon-
stration of affection and joy! I was bewildered, utterly lost in amazement—but I could not
forget the peculiar whine of my Newfoundland dog Tiger, and the odd manner of his caresses
I well knew. It was he. I experienced a sudden rush of blood to my temples—a giddy and over-
powering sense of deliverance and reanimation. I rose hurriedly from the mattress upon which I
had been lying and, throwing myself upon the neck of my faithful follower and friend, relieved
the long oppression of my bosom in a flood of the most passionate tears.
As upon a former occasion, my conceptions were in a state of the greatest indistinctness
and confusion after leaving the mattress. For a long time I found it nearly impossible to con-
nect any ideas—but, by very slow degrees, my thinking faculties returned, and I again called
to memory the several incidents of my condition. For the presence of Tiger I tried in vain to
account, and after busying myself with a thousand different conjectures respecting him, was
forced to content myself with rejoicing that he was with me to share my dreary solitude and
render me comfort by his caresses. Most people love their dogs—but for Tiger I had an affec-
tion far more ardent than common; and never, certainly, did any creature more truly deserve it.
For seven years he had been my inseparable companion, and in a multitude of instances had
given evidence of all the noble qualities for which we value the animal. I had rescued him, when
a puppy, from the clutches of a malignant little villain in Nantucket, who was leading him, with
a rope around his neck, to the water; and the grown dog repaid the obligation, about three years
afterward, by saving me from the bludgeon of a street robber.
Getting now hold of the watch, I found, upon applying it to my ear, that it had again
run down; but at this I was not at all surprised, being convinced from the peculiar state of my
feelings that I had slept, as before, for a very long period of time; how long, it was of course
impossible to say. I was burning up with fever, and my thirst was almost intolerable. I felt about

the box for my little remaining supply of water; for I had no light, the taper having burnt to the
socket of the lantern, and the phosphorus box not coming readily to hand. Upon finding the
jug, however, I discovered it to be empty—Tiger, no doubt, having been tempted to drink it,
as well as to devour the remnant of mutton, the bone of which lay, well picked, by the opening
of the box. The spoiled meat I could well spare, but my heart sank as I thought of the water.
I was feeble in the extreme—so much so that I shook all over, as with an ague, at the slightest
movement or exertion. To add to my troubles, the brig was pitching and rolling with great vio-
lence, and the oil casks which lay upon my box were in momentary danger of falling down so
as to block up the only way of ingress or egress. I felt, also, terrible sufferings from seasickness.
These considerations determined me to make my way, at all hazards, to the trap and obtain im-
mediate relief before I should be incapacitated from doing so altogether. Having come to this
resolve, I again felt about for the phosphorus box and tapers. The former I found after some
little trouble; but, not discovering the tapers as soon as I had expected (for I remembered very
nearly the spot in which I had placed them), I gave up the search for the present, and bidding
Tiger lie quiet, began at once my journey toward the trap.
In this attempt my great feebleness became more than ever apparent. It was with the
utmost difficulty I could crawl along at all, and very frequently my limbs sank suddenly from
beneath me, when, falling prostrate on my face, I would remain for some minutes in a state bor-
dering on insensibility. Still I struggled forward by slow degrees, dreading every moment that
I should swoon amid the narrow and intricate windings of the lumber, in which event I had
nothing but death to expect as the result. At length, upon making a push forward with all the
energy I could command, I struck my forehead violently against the sharp corner of an iron-
bound crate. The accident only stunned me for a few moments; but I found, to my inexpress-
ible grief, that the quick and violent roll of the vessel had thrown the crate entirely across my
path so as effectually to block up the passage. With my utmost exertions I could not move it a
single inch from its position, it being closely wedged in among the surrounding boxes and ship
furniture. It became necessary, therefore, enfeebled as I was, either to leave the guidance of the
whipcord and seek out a new passage, or to climb over the obstacle and resume the path on the
other side. The former alternative presented too many difficulties and dangers to be thought
of without a shudder. In my present weak state of both mind and body, I should infallibly lose
my way if I attempted it and perish miserably amid the dismal and disgusting labyrinths of the
hold. I proceeded, therefore, without hesitation, to summon up all my remaining strength and
fortitude and endeavor, as I best might, to clamber over the crate.
Upon standing erect with this end in view, I found the undertaking even a more serious
task than my fears had led me to imagine. On each side of the narrow passage arose a com-
plete wall of various heavy lumber, which the least blunder on my part might be the means of
bringing down upon my head; or, if this accident did not occur, the path might be effectually
blocked up against my return by the descending mass, as it was in front by the obstacle there.
The crate itself was a long and unwieldy box, upon which no foothold could be obtained. In
vain I attempted by every means in my power to reach the top, with the hope of being thus
enabled to draw myself up. Had I succeeded in reaching it, it is certain that my strength would
have proven utterly inadequate to the task of getting over, and it was better in every respect

that I failed. At length, in a desperate effort to force the crate from its ground, I felt a strong
vibration in the side next to me.5 I thrust my hand eagerly to the edge of the planks and found
that a very large one was loose. With my pocketknife, which luckily I had with me, I succeeded
after great labor in prying it entirely off, and getting it through the aperture, discovered to
my exceeding joy that there were no boards on the opposite side—in other words, that the
top was wanting, it being the bottom through which I had forced my way. I now met with no
important difficulty in proceeding along the line until I finally reached the nail. With a beating
heart I stood erect and with a gentle touch pressed against the cover of the trap. It did not rise
as soon as I had expected, and I pressed it with somewhat more determination, still dreading
lest some other person than Augustus might be in his stateroom. The door, however, to my
astonishment, remained steady, and I became somewhat uneasy, for I knew that it had formerly
required little or no effort to remove it. I pushed it strongly—it was nevertheless firm: with all
my strength—it still did not give way: with rage, with fury, with despair—it set at defiance my
utmost efforts; and it was evident, from the unyielding nature of the resistance, that the hole
had either been discovered and effectually nailed up, or that some immense weight had been
placed upon it, which it was useless to think of removing.
My sensations were those of extreme horror and dismay. In vain I attempted to reason
on the probable cause of my being thus entombed. I could summon up no connected chain
of reflection and, sinking on the floor, gave way unresistingly to the most gloomy imaginings,
in which the dreadful deaths of thirst, famine, suffocation, and premature interment crowded
upon me as the prominent disasters to be encountered. At length there returned to me some
portion of presence of mind. I arose and felt with my fingers for the seams or cracks of the
aperture. Having found them, I examined them closely to ascertain if they emitted any light
from the stateroom; but none was visible. I then forced the pen blade of my knife through them
until I met with some hard obstacle. Scraping against it, I discovered it to be a solid mass of
iron, which, from its peculiar wavy feel as I passed the blade along it, I concluded to be a chain
cable. The only course now left me was to retrace my way to the box and there either yield to
my sad fate, or try so to tranquilize my mind as to admit of my arranging some plan of escape.
I immediately set about the attempt and succeeded, after innumerable difficulties, in getting
back. As I sank utterly exhausted upon the mattress, Tiger threw himself at full length by my
side and seemed as if desirous, by his caresses, of consoling me in my troubles and urging me
to bear them with fortitude.
The singularity of his behavior at length forcibly arrested my attention. After licking my
face and hands for some minutes, he would suddenly cease doing so and utter a low whine.
Upon reaching out my hand toward him, I then invariably found him lying on his back with
his paws uplifted. This conduct, so frequently repeated, appeared strange, and I could in no
manner account for it. As the dog seemed distressed, I concluded that he had received some
injury; and, taking his paws in my hands, I examined them one by one but found no sign of
any hurt. I then supposed him hungry and gave him a large piece of ham, which he devoured
with avidity—afterward, however, resuming his extraordinary maneuvers. I now imagined that
he was suffering, like myself, the torments of thirst and was about adopting this conclusion as
the true one, when the idea occurred to me that I had as yet only examined his paws and that

there might possibly be a wound upon some portion of his body or head. The latter I felt care-
fully over but found nothing. On passing my hand, however, along his back, I perceived a slight
erection of the hair extending completely across it. Probing this with my finger, I discovered a
string and, tracing it up, found that it encircled the whole body. Upon a closer scrutiny, I came
across a small slip of what had the feeling of letter paper, through which the string had been
fastened in such a manner as to bring it immediately beneath the left shoulder of the animal.
The thought instantly occurred to me that the paper was a note from Augustus, and that some
unaccountable accident having happened to prevent his relieving me from my dungeon, he had
devised this method of acquainting me with the true state of affairs. Trembling with eagerness,
I now commenced another search for my phosphorus matches and tapers. I had a confused rec-
ollection of having put them carefully away just before falling asleep; and, indeed, previous to
my last journey to the trap, I had been able to remember the exact spot where I had deposited
them.6 But now I endeavored in vain to call it to mind and busied myself for a full hour in a
fruitless and vexatious search for the missing articles; never, surely, was there a more tantalizing
state of anxiety and suspense. At length, while groping about with my head close to the bal-
last, near the opening of the box and outside of it, I perceived a faint glimmering of light in
the direction of the steerage. Greatly surprised, I endeavored to make my way toward it, as it
appeared to be but a few feet from my position. Scarcely had I moved with this intention, when
I lost sight of the glimmer entirely and, before I could bring it into view again, was obliged to
feel along by the box until I had exactly resumed my original situation. Now, moving my head
with caution to and fro, I found that, by proceeding slowly, with great care, in an opposite
direction to that in which I had at first started, I was enabled to draw near the light, still keep-
ing it in view. Presently I came directly upon it (having squeezed my way through innumerable
narrow windings) and found that it proceeded from some fragments of my matches lying in
an empty barrel turned upon its side. I was wondering how they came in such a place, when
my hand fell upon two or three pieces of taper wax, which had been evidently mumbled by the
dog. I concluded at once that he had devoured the whole of my supply of candles, and I felt
hopeless of being ever able to read the note of Augustus. The small remnants of the wax were
so mashed up among other rubbish in the barrel, that I despaired of deriving any service from
them and left them as they were. The phosphorus, of which there was only a speck or two, I
gathered up as well as I could and returned with it, after much difficulty, to my box where Tiger
had all the while remained.
What to do next I could not tell. The hold was so intensely dark that I could not see
my hand, however close I would hold it to my face. The white slip of paper could barely be
discerned, and not even that when I looked at it directly; by turning the exterior portions of
the retina toward it, that is to say, by surveying it slightly askance, I found that it became in
some measure perceptible. Thus the gloom of my prison may be imagined, and the note of my
friend, if indeed it were a note from him, seemed only likely to throw me into further trouble
by disquieting to no purpose my already enfeebled and agitated mind. In vain I revolved in

my brain a multitude of absurd expedients for procuring light—such expedients precisely as a
man in the perturbed sleep occasioned by opium would be apt to fall upon for a similar pur-
pose—each and all of which appear by turns to the dreamer the most reasonable and the most
preposterous of conceptions, just as the reasoning or imaginative faculties flicker, alternately,
one above the other. At last an idea occurred to me which seemed rational and which gave me
cause to wonder, very justly, that I had not entertained it before. I placed the slip of paper
on the back of a book and, collecting the fragments of the phosphorus matches which I had
brought from the barrel, laid them together upon the paper. I then, with the palm of my hand,
rubbed the whole over quickly yet steadily. A clear light diffused itself immediately throughout
the whole surface, and had there been any writing upon it, I should not have experienced the
least difficulty, I am sure, in reading it. Not a syllable was there, however—nothing but a dreary
and unsatisfactory blank; the illumination died away in a few seconds, and my heart died away
within me as it went.
I have before stated more than once that my intellect, for some period prior to this, had
been in a condition nearly bordering on idiocy. There were, to be sure, momentary intervals of
perfect sanity and, now and then, even of energy; but these were few. It must be remembered
that I had been, for many days certainly, inhaling the almost pestilential atmosphere of a close
hold in a whaling vessel, and a long portion of that time but scantily supplied with water. For
the last fourteen or fifteen hours I had none—nor had I slept during that time. Salt provisions
of the most exciting kind had been my chief, and indeed since the loss of the mutton, my only
supply of food with the exception of the sea biscuit; and these latter were utterly useless to
me as they were too dry and hard to be swallowed in the swollen and parched condition of my
throat. I was now in a high state of fever and in every respect exceedingly ill. This will account
for the fact that many miserable hours of despondency elapsed after my last adventure with
the phosphorus, before the thought suggested itself that I had examined only one side of the
paper. I shall not attempt to describe my feelings of rage (for I believe I was more angry than
anything else) when the egregious oversight I had committed flashed suddenly upon my per-
ception. The blunder itself would have been unimportant had not my own folly and impetuos-
ity rendered it otherwise—in my disappointment at not finding some words upon the slip, I
had childishly torn it in pieces and thrown it away, it was impossible to say where.
From the worst part of this dilemma I was relieved by the sagacity of Tiger. Having got,
after a long search, a small piece of the note, I put it to the dog’s nose and endeavored to make
him understand that he must bring me the rest of it. To my astonishment (for I had taught him
none of the usual tricks for which his breed are famous), he seemed to enter at once into my
meaning and, rummaging about for a few moments, soon found another considerable portion.
Bringing me this, he paused a while and, rubbing his nose against my hand, appeared to be
waiting for my approval of what he had done. I patted him on the head, when he immediately
made off again. It was now some minutes before he came back—but when he did come, he
brought with him a large slip, which proved to be all the paper missing—it having been torn,
it seems, only into three pieces. Luckily, I had no trouble in finding what few fragments of the
phosphorus were left—being guided by the indistinct glow one or two of the particles still
emitted. My difficulties had taught me the necessity of caution, and I now took time to reflect

upon what I was about to do. It was very probable, I considered, that some words were written
upon that side of the paper which had not been examined—but which side was that? Fitting
the pieces together gave me no clue in this respect, although it assured me that the words (if
there were any) would be found all on one side and connected in a proper manner, as written.
There was the greater necessity of ascertaining the point in question beyond a doubt, as the
phosphorus remaining would be altogether insufficient for a third attempt should I fail in the
one I was now about to make. I placed the paper on a book as before and sat for some minutes
thoughtfully revolving the matter over in my mind. At last I thought it barely possible that the
written side might have some unevenness on its surface, which a delicate sense of feeling might
enable me to detect. I determined to make the experiment and passed my finger very carefully
over the side which first presented itself—nothing however, was perceptible, and I turned the
paper, adjusting it on the book. I now again carried my forefinger cautiously along, when I was
aware of an exceedingly slight but still discernable glow, which followed as it proceeded. This,
I knew, must arise from some very minute remaining particles of the phosphorus with which
I had covered the paper in my previous attempt. The other, or under side, then, was that on
which lay the writing, if writing there should finally prove to be. Again I turned the note and
went to work as I had previously done. Having rubbed in the phosphorus, a brilliancy ensued
as before—but this time several lines of MS in a large hand, and apparently in red ink, became
distinctly visible. The glimmer, although sufficiently bright, was but momentary. Still, had I not
been too greatly excited, there would have been ample time enough for me to peruse the whole
three sentences before me—for I saw there were three. In my anxiety, however, to read all at
once, I succeeded only in reading the seven concluding words, which thus appeared: “blood—
your life depends upon lying close.”
Had I been able to ascertain the entire contents of the note—the full meaning of the
admonition which my friend had thus attempted to convey, that admonition, even although
it should have revealed a story of disaster the most unspeakable, could not, I am firmly con-
vinced, have imbued my mind with one tithe of the harrowing and yet indefinable horror with
which I was inspired by the fragmentary warning thus received. And “blood” too, that word of
all words—so rife at all times with mystery and suffering and terror—how trebly full of import
did it now appear—how chillily and heavily (disjointed, as it thus was, from any foregoing
words to qualify or render it distinct) did its vague syllables fall, amid the deep gloom of my
prison, into the innermost recesses of my soul!
Augustus had, undoubtedly, good reasons for wishing me to remain concealed, and I
formed a thousand surmises as to what they could be—but I could think of nothing affording
a satisfactory solution of the mystery. Just after returning from my last journey to the trap, and
before my attention had been otherwise directed by the singular conduct of Tiger, I had come
to the resolution of making myself heard at all events by those on board, or, if I could not suc-
ceed in this directly, of trying to cut my way through the orlop deck. The half certainty which I
felt of being able to accomplish one of these two purposes in the last emergency, had given me
courage (which I should not otherwise have had) to endure the evils of my situation. The few
words I had been able to read, however, had cut me off from these final resources, and I now for
the first time felt all the misery of my fate. In a paroxysm of despair I threw myself again upon

the mattress, where, for about the period of a day and night, I lay in a kind of stupor, relieved
only by momentary intervals of reason and recollection.
At length I once more arose and busied myself in reflection upon the horrors which en-
compassed me. For another twenty-four hours it was barely possible that I might exist without
water—for a longer time I could not do so. During the first portion of my imprisonment I
had made free use of the cordials with which Augustus had supplied me, but they only served
to excite fever without in the least degree assuaging my thirst. I had now only about a gill left,
and this was of a species of strong peach liqueur at which my stomach revolted. The sausages
were entirely consumed; of the ham nothing remained but a small piece of the skin; and all the
biscuit, except a few fragments of one, had been eaten by Tiger. To add to my troubles, I found
that my headache was increasing momentarily and with it the species of delirium which had
distressed me more or less since my first falling asleep. For some hours past it had been with
the greatest difficulty I could breathe at all, and now each attempt at so doing was attended
with the most distressing spasmodic action of the chest. But there was still another and very
different source of disquietude, and one, indeed, whose harassing terrors had been the chief
means of arousing me to exertion from my stupor on the mattress. It arose from the demeanor
of the dog.
I first observed an alteration in his conduct while rubbing in the phosphorus on the pa-
per in my last attempt. As I rubbed, he ran his nose against my hand with a slight snarl; but I
was too greatly excited at the time to pay much attention to the circumstance. Soon afterward,
it will be remembered, I threw myself on the mattress and fell into a species of lethargy. Pres-
ently I became aware of a singular hissing sound close at my ears and discovered it to proceed
from Tiger, who was panting and wheezing in a state of the greatest apparent excitement, his
eyeballs flashing fiercely through the gloom. I spoke to him, when he replied with a low growl
and then remained quiet. Presently I relapsed into my stupor, from which I was again awakened
in a similar manner. This was repeated three or four times, until finally his behavior inspired
me with so great a degree of fear that I became fully aroused. He was now lying close by the
door of the box, snarling fearfully, although in a kind of undertone, and grinding his teeth
as if strongly convulsed. I had no doubt whatever that the want of water or the confined at-
mosphere of the hold had driven him mad, and I was at a loss what course to pursue. I could
not endure the thought of killing him, yet it seemed absolutely necessary for my own safety.
I could distinctly perceive his eyes fastened upon me with an expression of the most deadly
animosity, and I expected every instant that he would attack me. At last I could endure my
terrible situation no longer and determined to make my way from the box at all hazards and
dispatch him, if his opposition should render it necessary for me to do so. To get out, I had
to pass directly over his body, and he already seemed to anticipate my design—raising himself
upon his fore legs (as I perceived by the altered position of his eyes) and displaying the whole
of his white fangs, which were easily discernible. I took the remains of the ham skin and the
bottle containing the liqueur and secured them about my person, together with a large carving
knife which Augustus had left me—then, folding my cloak as closely around me as possible, I
made a movement toward the mouth of the box. No sooner did I do this than the dog sprang
with a loud growl toward my throat. The whole weight of his body struck me on the right

shoulder, and I fell violently to the left while the enraged animal passed entirely over me. I had
fallen upon my knees with my head buried among the blankets, and these protected me from a
second furious assault, during which I felt the sharp teeth pressing vigorously upon the woolen
which enveloped my neck—yet, luckily, without being able to penetrate all the folds. I was now
beneath the dog, and a few moments would place me completely in his power. Despair gave me
strength, and I rose bodily up, shaking him from me by main force and dragging with me the
blankets from the mattress. These I now threw over him, and before he could extricate himself
I had got through the door and closed it effectually against his pursuit. In this struggle, how-
ever, I had been forced to drop the morsel of ham skin, and I now found my whole stock of
provisions reduced to a single gill of liqueur. As this reflection crossed my mind, I felt myself
actuated by one of those fits of perverseness which might be supposed to influence a spoiled
child in similar circumstances, and, raising the bottle to my lips, I drained it to the last drop
and dashed it furiously upon the floor.
Scarcely had the echo of the crash died away, when I heard my name pronounced in an
eager but subdued voice, issuing from the direction of the steerage. So unexpected was anything
of the kind, and so intense was the emotion excited within me by the sound, that I endeavored
in vain to reply. My powers of speech totally failed, and in an agony of terror lest my friend
should conclude me dead and return without attempting to reach me, I stood up between the
crates near the door of the box, trembling convulsively and gasping and struggling for utter-
ance. Had a thousand worlds depended upon a syllable, I could not have spoken it. There was a
slight movement now audible among the lumber somewhere forward of my station. The sound
presently grew less distinct, then again less so, and still less. Shall I ever forget my feelings at
this moment? He was going—my friend—my companion from whom I had a right to expect
so much—he was going—he would abandon me—he was gone! He would leave me to perish
miserably, to expire in the most horrible and loathsome of dungeons—and one word—one
little syllable would save me—yet that single syllable I could not utter! I felt, I am sure, more
than ten thousand times the agonies of death itself. My brain reeled, and I fell, deadly sick,
against the end of the box.
As I fell, the carving knife was shaken out from the waistband of my pantaloons and
dropped with a rattling sound to the floor. Never did any strain of the richest melody come
so sweetly to my ears! With the intensest anxiety I listened to ascertain the effect of the noise
upon Augustus—for I knew that the person who called my name could be no one but himself.
All was silent for some moments. At length I again heard the word “Arthur!” repeated in a low
tone and one full of hesitation.7
Reviving hope loosened at once my powers of speech, and I now screamed at the top of
my voice, “Augustus! Oh Augustus!”
“Hush—for God’s sake be silent!” he replied in a voice trembling with agitation. “I will
be with you immediately—as soon as I can make my way through the hold.” For a long time I
heard him moving among the lumber, and every moment seemed to me an age. At length I felt
his hand upon my shoulder, and he placed at the same moment a bottle of water to my lips.
Those only who have been suddenly redeemed from the jaws of the tomb, or who have known
the insufferable torments of thirst under circumstances as aggravated as those which encom-

passed me in my dreary prison, can form any idea of the unutterable transports which that one
long draft of the richest of all physical luxuries afforded.8
When I had in some degree satisfied my thirst, Augustus produced from his pocket three
or four cold boiled potatoes, which I devoured with the greatest avidity. He had brought with
him a light in a dark lantern, and the grateful rays afforded me scarcely less comfort than the
food and drink. But I was impatient to learn the cause of his protracted absence, and he pro-
ceeded to recount what had happened on board during my incarceration.
The brig put to sea, as I had supposed, in about an hour after he had left the watch. This was
on the twentieth of June. It will be remembered that I had then been in the hold for three days;
and, during this period, there was so constant a bustle on board, and so much running to and
fro, especially in the cabin and staterooms, that he had had no chance of visiting me without
the risk of having the secret of the trap discovered. When at length he did come, I had assured
him that I was doing as well as possible; and, therefore, for the two next days he felt but little
uneasiness on my account—still, however, watching an opportunity of going down. It was not
until the fourth day that he found one. Several times during this interval he had made up his mind
to let his father know of the adventure and have me come up at once; but we were still within
reaching distance of Nantucket, and it was doubtful, from some expressions which had escaped
Captain Barnard, whether he would not immediately put back if he discovered me to be on
board. Besides, upon thinking the matter over, Augustus, so he told me, could not imagine
that I was in immediate want, or that I would hesitate in such case to make myself heard at
the trap. When, therefore, he considered everything, he concluded to let me stay until he could
meet with an opportunity of visiting me unobserved. This, as I said before, did not occur until
the fourth day after his bringing me the watch, and the seventh since I had first entered the
hold. He then went down without taking with him any water or provisions, intending in the
first place merely to call my attention and get me to come from the box to the trap—when
he would go up to the stateroom and thence hand me down a supply. When he descended for
this purpose he found that I was asleep, for it seems that I was snoring very loudly. From all
the calculations I can make on the subject, this must have been the slumber into which I fell
just after my return from the trap with the watch and which, consequently, must have lasted for
more than three entire days and nights at the very least. Latterly, I have had reason, both from my own
experience and the assurance of others, to be acquainted with the strong soporific effects of the
stench arising from old fish oil when closely confined; and when I think of the condition of
the hold in which I was imprisoned, and the long period during which the brig had been used
as a whaling vessel, I am more inclined to wonder that I awoke at all, after once falling asleep,
than that I should have slept uninterruptedly for the period specified above.
Augustus called to me at first in a low voice and without closing the trap—but I made
him no reply. He then shut the trap, and spoke to me in a louder, and finally in a very loud
tone—still I continued to snore. He was now at a loss what to do. It would take him some
time to make his way through the lumber to my box, and in the meanwhile his absence would

be noticed by Captain Barnard, who had occasion for his services every minute in arranging
and copying papers connected with the business of the voyage. He determined, therefore, upon
reflection, to ascend and await another opportunity of visiting me. He was the more easily in-
duced to this resolve, as my slumber appeared to be of the most tranquil nature, and he could
not suppose that I had undergone any inconvenience from my incarceration. He had just made
up his mind on these points when his attention was arrested by an unusual bustle, the sound of
which proceeded apparently from the cabin. He sprang through the trap as quickly as possible,
closed it, and threw open the door of his stateroom. No sooner had he put his foot over the
threshold than a pistol flashed in his face, and he was knocked down at the same moment by a
blow from a handspike.
A strong hand held him on the cabin floor, with a tight grasp upon his throat—still he
was able to see what was going on around him. His father was tied hand and foot and lying
along the steps of the companionway, with his head down and a deep wound in the forehead
from which the blood was flowing in a continued stream. He spoke not a word and was appar-
ently dying. Over him stood the first mate, eyeing him with an expression of fiendish derision
and deliberately searching his pockets, from which he presently drew forth a large wallet and a
chronometer. Seven of the crew (among whom was the cook, a Negro) were rummaging the
staterooms on the larboard for arms, where they soon equipped themselves with muskets and
ammunition. Besides Augustus and Captain Barnard, there were nine men altogether in the
cabin and these among the most ruffianly of the brig’s company. The villains now went upon
deck, taking my friend with them after having secured his arms behind his back. They proceed-
ed straight to the forecastle, which was fastened down—two of the mutineers standing by it
with axes—two also at the main hatch. The mate called out in a loud voice, “Do you hear there
below? Tumble up with you—one by one, now, mark that—and no grumbling.” It was some
minutes before any one appeared: at last an Englishman, who had shipped as a raw hand, came
up, weeping piteously and entreating the mate in the most humble manner to spare his life. The
only reply was a blow on the forehead from an axe. The poor fellow fell to the deck without a
groan, and the black cook lifted him up in his arms as he would a child and tossed him delib-
erately into the sea. Hearing the blow and the plunge of the body, the men below could now
be induced to venture on deck neither by threats nor promises, until a proposition was made
to smoke them out. A general rush then ensued, and for a moment it seemed possible that the
brig might be retaken. The mutineers, however, succeeded at last in closing the forecastle ef-
fectually before more than six of their opponents could get up. These six, finding themselves so
greatly outnumbered and without arms, submitted after a brief struggle. The mate gave them
fair words—no doubt with a view of inducing those below to yield, for they had no difficulty
in hearing all that was said on deck. The result proved his sagacity no less than his diabolical
villainy. All in the forecastle presently signified their intention of submitting and, ascending
one by one, were pinioned and thrown on their backs together with the first six—there being
in all, of the crew who were not concerned in the mutiny, twenty-seven.
A scene of the most horrible butchery ensued. The bound seamen were dragged to the
gangway. Here the cook stood with an axe, striking each victim on the head as he was forced
over the side of the vessel by the other mutineers. In this manner twenty-two perished, and

Augustus had given himself up for lost, expecting every moment his own turn to come next.
But it seemed that the villains were now either weary, or in some measure disgusted with their
bloody labor; for the four remaining prisoners together with my friend, who had been thrown
on the deck with the rest, were respited while the mate sent below for rum, and the whole mur-
derous party held a drunken carouse which lasted until sunset. They now fell to disputing in
regard to the fate of the survivors, who lay not more than four paces off and could distinguish
every word said. Upon some of the mutineers the liquor appeared to have a softening effect, for
several voices were heard in favor of releasing the captives altogether, on condition of joining
the mutiny and sharing the profits. The black cook, however (who in all respects was a perfect
demon and who seemed to exert as much influence, if not more, than the mate himself ), would
listen to no proposition of the kind and rose repeatedly for the purpose of resuming his work
at the gangway. Fortunately, he was so far overcome by intoxication as to be easily restrained
by the less bloodthirsty of the party, among whom was a line manager who went by the name
of Dirk Peters. This man was the son of an Indian squaw of the tribe of Upsarokas, who live
among the fastnesses of the Black Hills near the source of the Missouri. His father was a fur
trader, I believe, or at least connected in some manner with the Indian trading posts on Lewis
River. Peters himself was one of the most purely ferocious-looking men I ever beheld. He
was short in stature—not more than four feet eight inches high—but his limbs were of the
most Herculean mold. His hands, especially, were so enormously thick and broad as hardly to
retain a human shape. His arms, as well as legs, were bowed in the most singular manner and
appeared to possess no flexibility whatever. His head was equally deformed, being of immense
size, with an indentation on the crown (like that on the head of most Negroes), and entirely
bald. To conceal this latter deficiency, which did not proceed from old age, he usually wore a
wig formed of any hairlike material which presented itself—occasionally the skin of a Span-
ish dog or American grizzly bear. At the time spoken of he had on a portion of one of these
bearskins, and it added no little to the natural ferocity of his countenance, which betook of
the Upsaroka character. The mouth extended nearly from ear to ear; the lips were thin and
seemed, like some other portions of his frame, to be devoid of natural pliancy, so that the rul-
ing expression never varied under the influence of any emotion whatever. This ruling expression
may be conceived when it is considered that the teeth were exceedingly long and protruding and
never even partially covered, in any instance, by the lips. To pass this man with a casual glance,
one might imagine him to be convulsed with laughter—but a second look would induce a
shuddering acknowledgment that if such an expression were indicative of merriment, the mer-
riment must be that of a demon. Of this singular being many anecdotes were prevalent among
the seafaring men of Nantucket. These anecdotes went to prove his prodigious strength when
under excitement, and some of them had given rise to a doubt of his sanity. But on board the
Grampus, it seems, he was regarded at the time of the mutiny with feelings more of derision than
of anything else. I have been thus particular in speaking of Dirk Peters, because, ferocious as
he appeared, he proved the main instrument in preserving the life of Augustus, and because I
shall have frequent occasion to mention him hereafter in the course of my narrative—a narra-
tive, let me here say, which, in its latter portions, will be found to include incidents of a nature
so entirely out of the range of human experience and for this reason so far beyond the limits

of human credulity, that I proceed in utter hopelessness of obtaining credence for all that I
shall tell, yet confidently trusting in time and progressing science to verify some of the most
important and most improbable of my statements.
After much indecision and two or three violent quarrels, it was determined at last that
all the prisoners (with the exception of Augustus, whom Peters insisted in a jocular manner
upon keeping as his clerk) should be set adrift in one of the smallest whaleboats. The mate
went down into the cabin to see if Captain Barnard was still living—for, it will be remembered,
he was left below when the mutineers came up. Presently the two made their appearance, the
captain pale as death but somewhat recovered from the effects of his wound. He spoke to the
men in a voice hardly articulate, entreated them not to set him adrift, but to return to their
duty, and promising to land them wherever they chose, and to take no steps for bringing them
to justice. He might as well have spoken to the winds. Two of the ruffians seized him by the
arms and hurled him over the brig’s side into the boat, which had been lowered while the mate
went below. The four men who were lying on the deck were then untied and ordered to fol-
low, which they did without attempting any resistance—Augustus being still left in his painful
position, although he struggled and prayed only for the poor satisfaction of being permitted
to bid his father farewell. A handful of sea biscuit and a jug of water were now handed down;
but neither mast, sail, oar, nor compass. The boat was towed astern for a few minutes, during
which the mutineers held another consultation—it was then finally cut adrift. By this time
night had come on—there were neither moon nor stars visible—and a short and ugly sea was
running, although there was no great deal of wind. The boat was instantly out of sight, and
little hope could be entertained for the unfortunate sufferers who were in it. This event hap-
pened, however, in latitude 35° 30' north, longitude 61° 20' west, and consequently at no very
great distance from the Bermuda Islands. Augustus therefore endeavored to console himself
with the idea that the boat might either succeed in reaching the land, or come sufficiently near
to be fallen in with by vessels off the coast.
All sail was now put upon the brig, and she continued her original course to the south-
west—the mutineers being bent upon some piratical expedition in which, from all that could
be understood, a ship was to be intercepted on her way from the Cape Verde Islands to Puerto
Rico. No attention was paid to Augustus, who was untied and suffered to go about anywhere
forward of the cabin companionway. Dirk Peters treated him with some degree of kindness
and on one occasion saved him from the brutality of the cook. His situation was still one of
the most precarious, as the men were continually intoxicated, and there was no relying upon
their continued good humor or carelessness in regard to himself. His anxiety on my account he
represented, however, as the most distressing result of his condition; and, indeed, I had never
reason to doubt the sincerity of his friendship. More than once he had resolved to acquaint
the mutineers with the secret of my being on board but was restrained from so doing, partly
through recollection of the atrocities he had already beheld, and partly through a hope of be-
ing able soon to bring me relief. For the latter purpose he was constantly on the watch; but, in
spite of the most constant vigilance, three days elapsed after the boat was cut adrift before any
chance occurred. At length, on the night of the third day, there came on a heavy blow from
the eastward, and all hands were called up to take in sail. During the confusion which ensued,

he made his way below unobserved and into the stateroom. What was his grief and horror in
discovering that the latter had been rendered a place of deposit for a variety of sea stores and
ship furniture and that several fathoms of old chain cable, which had been stowed away beneath
the companion ladder, had been dragged thence to make room for a chest and were now lying
immediately upon the trap! To remove it without discovery was impossible, and he returned on
deck as quickly as he could. As he came up the mate seized him by the throat and, demanding
what he had been doing in the cabin, was about flinging him over the larboard bulwark, when
his life was again preserved through the interference of Dirk Peters. Augustus was now put in
handcuffs (of which there were several pairs on board) and his feet lashed tightly together. He
was then taken into the steerage and thrown into a lower berth next to the forecastle bulkheads,
with the assurance that he should never put his foot on deck again “until the brig was no longer
a brig.” This was the expression of the cook, who threw him into the berth—it is hardly pos-
sible to say what precise meaning was intended by the phrase. The whole affair, however, proved
the ultimate means of my relief, as will presently appear.
For some minutes after the cook had left the forecastle, Augustus abandoned himself to de-
spair, never hoping to leave the berth alive. He now came to the resolution of acquainting the
first of the men who should come down with my situation, thinking it better to let me take my
chance with the mutineers than perish of thirst in the hold—for it had been ten days since I
was first imprisoned, and my jug of water was not a plentiful supply even for four. As he was
thinking on this subject, the idea came all at once into his head that it might be possible to
communicate with me by the way of the main hold. In any other circumstances, the difficulty
and hazard of the undertaking would have prevented him from attempting it; but now he had,
at all events, little prospect of life and consequently little to lose—he bent his whole mind,
therefore, upon the task.
His handcuffs were the first consideration. At first he saw no method of removing
them and feared that he should thus be baffled at the very outset; but, upon a closer scrutiny,
he discovered that the irons could be slipped off and on at pleasure with very little effort or
inconvenience, merely by squeezing his hands through them—this species of manacle being
altogether ineffectual in confining young persons, in whom the smaller bones readily yield to
pressure. He now untied his feet and, leaving the cord in such a manner that it could easily
be readjusted in the event of any person’s coming down, proceeded to examine the bulkhead
where it joined the berth. The partition here was of soft pine board, an inch thick, and he saw
that he should have little trouble in cutting his way through. A voice was now heard at the
forecastle companionway, and he had just time to put his right hand into its handcuff (the
left had not been removed) and to draw the rope in a slipknot around his ankle, when Dirk
Peters came below, followed by Tiger who immediately leaped into the berth and lay down.
The dog had been brought on board by Augustus, who knew my attachment to the animal
and thought it would give me pleasure to have him with me during the voyage. He went up
to our house for him immediately after first taking me into the hold but did not think of

mentioning the circumstance upon his bringing the watch. Since the mutiny, Augustus had
not seen him before his appearance with Dirk Peters and had given him up for lost, suppos-
ing him to have been thrown overboard by some of the malignant villains belonging to the
mate’s gang. It appeared afterward that he had crawled into a hole beneath a whaleboat, from
which, not having room to turn round, he could not extricate himself. Peters at last let him
out and, with a species of good feeling which my friend knew well how to appreciate, had
now brought him to him in the forecastle as a companion, leaving at the same time some salt
junk and potatoes with a can of water; he then went on deck, promising to come down with
something more to eat on the next day.
When he had gone, Augustus freed both hands from the manacles and unfastened his
feet. He then turned down the head of the mattress on which he had been lying and with his
penknife (for the ruffians had not thought it worth while to search him) commenced cutting
vigorously across one of the partition planks, as closely as possible to the floor of the berth.
He chose to cut here, because, if suddenly interrupted, he would be able to conceal what had
been done by letting the head of the mattress fall into its proper position. For the remainder
of the day, however, no disturbance occurred, and by night he had completely divided the
plank. It should here be observed that none of the crew occupied the forecastle as a sleeping
place, living altogether in the cabin since the mutiny, drinking the wines and feasting on the
sea stores of Captain Barnard, and giving no more heed than was absolutely necessary to the
navigation of the brig. These circumstances proved fortunate both for myself and Augustus;
for, had matters been otherwise, he would have found it impossible to reach me. As it was, he
proceeded with confidence in his design. It was near daybreak, however, before he completed
the second division of the board (which was about a foot above the first cut), thus making an
aperture quite large enough to admit his passage through with facility to the main orlop deck.
Having got here, he made his way with but little trouble to the lower main hatch, although in
so doing he had to scramble over tiers of oil casks piled nearly as high as the upper deck, there
being barely room enough left for his body. Upon reaching the hatch, he found that Tiger had
followed him below, squeezing between two rows of the casks. It was now too late, however,
to attempt getting to me before dawn, as the chief difficulty lay in passing through the close
stowage in the lower hold. He therefore resolved to return and wait till the next night. With
this design he proceeded to loosen the hatch, so that he might have as little detention as pos-
sible when he should come again. No sooner had he loosened it than Tiger sprang eagerly to
the small opening produced, snuffed for a moment, and then uttered a long whine, scratching
at the same time as if anxious to remove the covering with his paws. There could be no doubt
from his behavior that he was aware of my being in the hold, and Augustus thought it possible
that he would be able to get to me if he put him down. He now hit upon the expedient of
sending the note, as it was especially desirable that I should make no attempt at forcing my way
out, at least under existing circumstances, and there could be no certainty of his getting to me
himself on the morrow as he intended. After events proved how fortunate it was that the idea
occurred to him as it did; for, had it not been for the receipt of the note, I should undoubtedly
have fallen upon some plan, however desperate, of alarming the crew, and both our lives would
most probably have been sacrificed in consequence.

Having concluded to write, the difficulty was now to procure the materials for so doing.
An old toothpick was soon made into a pen, and this by means of feeling altogether, for the
between decks were as dark as pitch. Paper enough was obtained from the back of a letter—a
duplicate of the forged letter from Mr. Ross. This had been the original draft; but the hand-
writing not being sufficiently well imitated, Augustus had written another, thrusting the first by
good fortune into his coat pocket, where it was now most opportunely discovered. Ink alone
was thus wanting, and a substitute was immediately found for this by means of a slight incision
with the penknife on the back of a finger just above the nail—a copious flow of blood ensu-
ing, as usual, from wounds in that vicinity. The note was now written, as well as it could be in
the dark and under the circumstances. It briefly explained that a mutiny had taken place, that
Captain Barnard was set adrift, and that I might expect immediate relief as far as provisions
were concerned but must not venture upon making any disturbance. It concluded with these
words, “I have scrawled this with blood—your life depends upon lying close.”
This slip of paper being tied upon the dog, he was now put down the hatchway, and
Augustus made the best of his way back to the forecastle, where he found no reason to believe
that any of the crew had been in his absence. To conceal the hole in the partition, he drove his
knife in just above it and hung up a pea jacket which he found in the berth. His handcuffs were
then replaced and also the rope around his ankles.
These arrangements were scarcely completed when Dirk Peters came below, very drunk
but in excellent humor and bringing with him my friend’s provision allowance for the day. This
consisted of a dozen large Irish potatoes roasted and a pitcher of water. He sat for some time
on a chest by the berth and talked freely about the mate and the general concerns of the brig.
His demeanor was exceedingly capricious and even grotesque. At one time Augustus was much
alarmed by his odd conduct. At last, however, he went on deck, muttering a promise to bring
his prisoner a good dinner on the morrow. During the day two of the crew (harpooners) came
down accompanied by the cook, all three in nearly the last stage of intoxication. Like Peters,
they made no scruple of talking unreservedly about their plans. It appeared that they were
much divided among themselves as to their ultimate course, agreeing in no point except the
attack on the ship from the Cape Verde Islands, with which they were in hourly expectation of
meeting. As far as could be ascertained, the mutiny had not been brought about altogether for
the sake of booty; a private pique of the chief mate’s against Captain Barnard having been the
main instigation. There now seemed to be two principal factions among the crew—one headed
by the mate, the other by the cook. The former party were for seizing the first suitable vessel
which should present itself and equipping it at some of the West India Islands for a piratical
cruise. The latter division, however, which was the stronger and included Dirk Peters among
its partisans, were bent upon pursuing the course originally laid out for the brig into the south
Pacific, there either to take whale, or act otherwise as circumstances should suggest. The repre-
sentations of Peters, who had frequently visited these regions, had great weight apparently with
the mutineers, wavering as they were between half-engendered notions of profit and pleasure.
He dwelt on the world of novelty and amusement to be found among the innumerable islands
of the Pacific, on the perfect security and freedom from all restraint to be enjoyed, but, more
particularly, on the deliciousness of the climate, on the abundant means of good living, and on

the voluptuous beauty of the women. As yet, nothing had been absolutely determined upon,
but the pictures of the hybrid* line manager were taking strong hold upon the ardent imagina-
tions of the seamen, and there was every possibility that his intentions would be finally carried
into effect.
The three men went away in about an hour, and no one else entered the forecastle all
day. Augustus lay quiet until nearly night. He then freed himself from the rope and irons and
prepared for his attempt. A bottle was found in one of the berths, and this he filled with water
from the pitcher left by Peters, storing his pockets at the same time with cold potatoes. To his
great joy he also came across a lantern with a small piece of tallow candle in it. This he could
light at any moment, as he had in his possession a box of phosphorus matches. When it was
quite dark, he got through the hole in the bulkhead, having taken the precaution to arrange the
bedclothes in the berth so as to convey the idea of a person covered up. When through, he hung
up the pea jacket on his knife, as before, to conceal the aperture—this maneuver being easily
effected as he did not readjust the piece of plank taken out until afterward. He was now on the
main orlop deck and proceeded to make his way, as before, between the upper deck and the
oil casks to the main hatchway. Having reached this, he lit the piece of candle and descended,
groping with extreme difficulty among the compact stowage of the hold. In a few moments
he became alarmed at the insufferable stench and the closeness of the atmosphere. He could
not think it possible that I had survived my confinement for so long a period breathing so op-
pressive an air. He called my name repeatedly, but I made him no reply, and his apprehensions
seemed thus to be confirmed. The brig was rolling violently, and there was so much noise in
consequence that it was useless to listen for any weak sound, such as those of my breathing or
snoring. He threw open the lantern and held it as high as possible whenever an opportunity
occurred, in order that, by observing the light, I might, if alive, be aware that succor was ap-
proaching. Still nothing was heard from me, and the supposition of my death began to assume
the character of certainty. He determined, nevertheless, to force a passage, if possible, to the
box and at least ascertain beyond a doubt the truth of his surmises. He pushed on for some
time in a most pitiable state of anxiety, until, at length, he found the pathway utterly blocked
up, and that there was no possibility of making any farther way by the course in which he had
set out. Overcome now by his feelings, he threw himself among the lumber in despair and wept
like a child. It was at this period that he heard the crash occasioned by the bottle which I had
thrown down. Fortunate, indeed, was it that the incident occurred—for upon this incident,
trivial as it appears, the thread of my destiny depended. Many years elapsed, however, before I
was aware of this fact. A natural shame and regret for his weakness and indecision prevented
Augustus from confiding to me at once what a more intimate and unreserved communion
afterward induced him to reveal. Upon finding his further progress in the hold impeded by
obstacles which he could not overcome, he had resolved to abandon his attempt at reaching me
and return at once to the forecastle. Before condemning him entirely on this head, the harass-
ing circumstances which embarrassed him should be taken into consideration. The night was
fast wearing away, and his absence from the forecastle might be discovered; and, indeed, would
*Half-breed. FPW

necessarily be so if he should fail to get back to the berth by daybreak. His candle was expiring
in the socket, and there would be the greatest difficulty in retracing his way to the hatchway in
the dark. It must be allowed, too, that he had every good reason to believe me dead, in which
event no benefit could result to me from his reaching the box, and a world of danger would
be encountered to no purpose by himself. He had repeatedly called, and I had made him no
answer. I had been now eleven days and nights with no more water than that contained in the
jug which he had left with me, a supply which it was not at all probable I had hoarded in the
beginning of my confinement, as I had had every cause to expect a speedy release. The atmo-
sphere of the hold, too, must have appeared to him, coming from the comparatively open air of
the steerage, of a nature absolutely poisonous and by far more intolerable than it had seemed
to me upon my first taking up my quarters in the box—the hatchways at that time having been
constantly open for many months previous. Add to these considerations that of the scene of
bloodshed and terror so lately witnessed by my friend, his confinement, privations, and narrow
escapes from death together with the frail and equivocal tenure by which he still existed—cir-
cumstances all so well calculated to prostrate every energy of mind—and the reader will be
easily brought, as I have been, to regard his apparent falling off in friendship and in faith with
sentiments rather of sorrow than of anger.
The crash of the bottle was distinctly heard, yet Augustus was not sure that it proceeded
from the hold. The doubt, however, was sufficient inducement to persevere. He clambered up
nearly to the orlop deck by means of the stowage, and then watching for a lull in the pitchings
of the vessel, he called out to me in as loud a tone as he could command—regardless, for the
moment, of the danger of being overheard by the crew. It will be remembered that on this occa-
sion the voice reached me, but I was so entirely overcome by violent agitation as to be incapable
of reply. Confident, now, that his worst apprehensions were well founded, he descended with
a view of getting back to the forecastle without loss of time. In his haste some small boxes
were thrown down, the noise occasioned by which I heard, as will be recollected. He had made
considerable progress on his return when the fall of the knife again caused him to hesitate. He
retraced his steps immediately and, clambering up the stowage a second time, called out my
name loudly as before, having watched for a lull. This time I found voice to answer. Overjoyed
at discovering me to be still alive, he now resolved to brave every difficulty and danger in reach-
ing me. Having extricated himself as quickly as possible from the labyrinth of lumber by which
he was hemmed in, he at length struck into an opening which promised better and finally, after
a series of struggles, arrived at the box in a state of utter exhaustion.
The leading particulars of this narration were all that Augustus communicated to me while we
remained near the box. It was not until afterward that he entered fully into all the details. He
was apprehensive of being missed, and I was wild with impatience to leave my detested place
of confinement. We resolved to make our way at once to the hole in the bulkhead, near which
I was to remain for the present while he went through to reconnoiter. To leave Tiger in the box
was what neither of us could endure to think of; yet, how to act otherwise was the question. He

now seemed to be perfectly quiet, and we could not even distinguish the sound of his breathing
upon applying our ears closely to the box. I was convinced that he was dead and determined
to open the door. We found him lying at full length, apparently in a deep stupor yet still alive.
No time was to be lost, yet I could not bring myself to abandon an animal who had now been
twice instrumental in saving my life, without some attempt at preserving him. We therefore
dragged him along with us as well as we could, although with the greatest difficulty and fatigue,
Augustus during part of the time being forced to clamber over the impediments in our way
with the huge dog in his arms—a feat to which the feebleness of my frame rendered me totally
inadequate. At length we succeeded in reaching the hole, when Augustus got through, and Tiger
was pushed in afterward. All was found to be safe, and we did not fail to return sincere thanks
to God for our deliverance from the imminent danger we had escaped. For the present it was
agreed that I should remain near the opening, through which my companion could readily sup-
ply me with a part of his daily provisions, and where I could have the advantages of breathing
an atmosphere comparatively pure.
In explanation of some portions of this narrative wherein I have spoken of the stowage
of the brig, and which may appear ambiguous to some of my readers who may have seen a
proper or regular stowage, I must here state that the manner in which this most important duty
had been performed on board the Grampus was a most shameful piece of neglect on the part of
Captain Barnard, who was by no means as careful or as experienced a seaman as the hazardous
nature of the service on which he was employed would seem necessarily to demand. A proper
stowage cannot be accomplished in a careless manner, and many most disastrous accidents, even
within the limits of my own experience, have arisen from neglect or ignorance in this particular.
Coasting vessels, in the frequent hurry and bustle attendant upon taking in or discharging cargo,
are the most liable to mishap from the want of a proper attention to stowage. The great point is
to allow no possibility of the cargo or ballast’s shifting position even in the most violent rollings
of the vessel. With this end, great attention must be paid, not only to the bulk taken in but to the
nature of the bulk, and whether there be a full or only a partial cargo. In most kinds of freight
the stowage is accomplished by means of a screw. Thus, in a load of tobacco or flour, the whole
is screwed so tightly into the hold of the vessel that the barrels or hogsheads upon discharging
are found to be completely flattened, and take some time to regain their original shape. This
screwing, however, is resorted to principally with a view of obtaining more room in the hold; for
in a full load of any such commodities as flour or tobacco, there can be no danger of any shifting
whatever, at least none from which inconvenience can result. There have been instances, indeed,
where this method of screwing has resulted in the most lamentable consequences, arising from a
cause altogether distinct from the danger attendant upon a shifting of cargo. A load of cotton,
for example, tightly screwed while in certain conditions, has been known, through the expansion
of its bulk, to rend a vessel asunder at sea. There can be no doubt, either, that the same result
would ensue in the case of tobacco, while undergoing its usual course of fermentation, were it
not for the interstices consequent upon the rotundity of the hogsheads.
It is when a partial cargo is received that danger is chiefly to be apprehended from shift-
ing and that precautions should be always taken to guard against such misfortune. Only those
who have encountered a violent gale of wind, or, rather, who have experienced the rolling of a

vessel in a sudden calm after the gale, can form an idea of the tremendous force of the plunges
and of the consequent terrible impetus given to all loose articles in the vessel. It is then that
the necessity of a cautious stowage, when there is a partial cargo, becomes obvious. When ly-
ing to (especially with a small head sail), a vessel which is not properly modeled in the bows
is frequently thrown upon her beam-ends, this occurring even every fifteen or twenty minutes
upon an average yet without any serious consequences resulting, provided there be a proper stowage.
If this, however, has not been strictly attended to, in the first of these heavy lurches the whole
of the cargo tumbles over to the side of the vessel which lies upon the water, and being thus
prevented from regaining her equilibrium as she would otherwise necessarily do, she is certain
to fill in a few seconds and go down. It is not too much to say that at least one half of the
instances in which vessels have foundered in heavy gales at sea may be attributed to a shifting
of cargo or of ballast.
When a partial cargo of any kind is taken on board, the whole, after being first stowed as
compactly as may be, should be covered with a layer of stout shifting boards, extending com-
pletely across the vessel. Upon these boards strong temporary stanchions should be erected,
reaching to the timbers above and thus securing everything in its place. In cargoes consisting
of grain or any similar matter, additional precautions are requisite. A hold filled entirely with
grain upon leaving port will be found not more than three fourths full upon reaching its desti-
nation—this, too, although the freight, when measured bushel by bushel by the consignee, will
overrun by a vast deal (on account of the swelling of the grain) the quantity consigned. This
result is occasioned by settling during the voyage and is the more perceptible in proportion to the
roughness of the weather experienced. If grain loosely thrown in a vessel, then, is ever so well
secured by shifting-boards and stanchions, it will be liable to shift in a long passage so greatly
as to bring about the most distressing calamities. To prevent these, every method should be
employed before leaving port to settle the cargo as much as possible; and for this there are many
contrivances, among which may be mentioned the driving of wedges into the grain. Even after
all this is done and unusual pains taken to secure the shifting boards, no seaman who knows
what he is about will feel altogether secure in a gale of any violence with a cargo of grain on
board and, least of all, with a partial cargo. Yet there are hundreds of our coasting vessels, and,
it is likely, many more from the ports of Europe, which sail daily with partial cargoes, even of
the most dangerous species, and without any precautions whatever. The wonder is that no more
accidents occur than do actually happen. A lamentable instance of this heedlessness occurred
to my knowledge in the case of Captain Joel Rice of the schooner Firefly, which sailed from
Richmond, Virginia to Madeira with a cargo of corn in the year 1825. The captain had done
many voyages without serious accident, although he was in the habit of paying no attention
whatever to his stowage, more than to secure it in the ordinary manner. He had never before
sailed with a cargo of grain and on this occasion had the corn thrown on board loosely, when
it did not much more than half fill the vessel. For the first portion of the voyage he met with
nothing more than light breezes; but then within a day’s sail of Madeira there came on a strong
gale from the N.N.E. which forced him to lie to.9 He brought the schooner to the wind under
a double-reefed foresail alone, when she rode as well as any vessel could be expected to do
and shipped not a drop of water. Toward night the gale somewhat abated, and she rolled with

more unsteadiness than before but still did very well, until a heavy lurch threw her upon her
beam-ends to starboard. The corn was then heard to shift bodily, the force of the movement
bursting open the main hatchway. The vessel went down like a shot. This happened within hail
of a small sloop from Madeira, which picked up one of the crew (the only person saved) and
which rode out the gale in perfect security, as indeed a jollyboat might have done under proper
management.
The stowage on board the Grampus was most clumsily done, if stowage that could be
called which was little better than a promiscuous huddling together of oil casks* and ship fur-
niture. I have already spoken of the condition of articles in the hold. On the orlop deck there
was space enough for my body (as I have stated) between the oil casks and the upper deck; a
space was left open around the main hatchway; and several other large spaces were left in the
stowage. Near the hole cut through the bulkhead by Augustus there was room enough for an
entire cask, and in this space I found myself comfortably situated for the present.
By the time my friend had got safely into the berth and readjusted his handcuffs and the
rope, it was broad daylight. We had made a narrow escape indeed; for scarcely had he arranged
all matters, when the mate came below with Dirk Peters and the cook. They talked for some
time about the vessel from the Cape Verdes and seemed to be excessively anxious for her ap-
pearance. At length the cook came to the berth in which Augustus was lying and seated himself
in it near the head. I could see and hear everything from my hiding place, for the piece cut out
had not been put back and I was in momentary expectation that the Negro would fall against
the pea jacket, which was hung up to conceal the aperture, in which case all would have been
discovered and our lives would, no doubt, have been instantly sacrificed. Our good fortune
prevailed, however, and although he frequently touched it as the vessel rolled, he never pressed
against it sufficiently to bring about a discovery. The bottom of the jacket had been carefully
fastened to the bulkhead, so that the hole might not be seen by its swinging to one side. All this
time Tiger was lying in the foot of the berth and appeared to have recovered in some measure
his faculties, for I could see him occasionally open his eyes and draw a long breath.
After a few minutes the mate and cook went above, leaving Dirk Peters behind, who, as
soon as they were gone, came and sat himself down in the place just occupied by the mate.
He began to talk very sociably with Augustus, and we could now see that the greater part of
his apparent intoxication, while the two others were with him, was a feint. He answered all my
companion’s questions with perfect freedom; told him that he had no doubt of his father’s hav-
ing been picked up, as there were no less than five sails in sight just before sundown on the day
he was cut adrift; and used other language of a consolatory nature, which occasioned me no less
surprise than pleasure. Indeed, I began to entertain hopes that through the instrumentality of
Peters we might be finally enabled to regain possession of the brig, and this idea I mentioned
to Augustus as soon as I found an opportunity. He thought the matter possible but urged the
necessity of the greatest caution in making the attempt, as the conduct of the hybrid appeared
to be instigated by the most arbitrary caprice alone; and, indeed, it was difficult to say if he was
*Whaling vessels are usually fitted with iron oil tanks—why the Grampus was not I have never been able to ascertain.

at any moment of sound mind. Peters went upon deck in about an hour and did not return
again until noon, when he brought Augustus a plentiful supply of junk beef and pudding. Of
this, when we were left alone, I partook heartily without returning through the hole. No one
else came down into the forecastle during the day, and at night I got into Augustus’s berth,
where I slept soundly and sweetly until nearly daybreak, when he awakened me upon hearing a
stir up on deck, and I regained my hiding place as quickly as possible. When the day was fully
broke, we found that Tiger had recovered his strength almost entirely and gave no indications
of hydrophobia, drinking a little water that was offered him with great apparent eagerness.
During the day he regained all his former vigor and appetite. His strange conduct had been
brought on, no doubt, by the deleterious quality of the air of the hold and had no connection
with canine madness. I could not sufficiently rejoice that I had persisted in bringing him with
me from the box. This day was the thirtieth of June, and the thirteenth since the Grampus made
sail from Nantucket.
On the second of July the mate came below, drunk as usual and in an excessively good
humor. He came to Augustus’s berth and, giving him a slap on the back, asked him if he
thought he could behave himself if he let him loose and whether he would promise not to be
going into the cabin again. To this, of course, my friend answered in the affirmative, when the
ruffian set him at liberty, after making him drink from a flask of rum which he drew from his
coat pocket. Both now went on deck, and I did not see Augustus for about three hours. He then
came below with the good news that he had obtained permission to go about the brig as he
pleased anywhere forward of the mainmast and that he had been ordered to sleep, as usual, in
the forecastle. He brought me, too, a good dinner and a plentiful supply of water. The brig was
still cruising for the vessel from the Cape Verdes, and a sail was now in sight which was thought
to be the one in question. As the events of the ensuing eight days were of little importance and
had no direct bearing upon the main incidents of my narrative, I will here throw them into the
form of a journal, as I do not wish to omit them altogether.
July 3rd. Augustus furnished me with three blankets, with which I contrived a comfort-
able bed in my hiding place. No one came below, except my companion, during the day. Tiger
took his station in the berth just by the aperture and slept heavily, as if not yet entirely recov-
ered from the effects of his sickness. Toward night a flaw of wind struck the brig before sail
could be taken in and very nearly capsized her. The puff died away immediately, however, and
no damage was done beyond the splitting of the foretopsail. Dirk Peters treated Augustus all
this day with great kindness and entered into a long conversation with him respecting the Pa-
cific Ocean and the islands he had visited in that region. He asked him whether he would not
like to go with the mutineers on a kind of exploring and pleasure voyage in those quarters and
said that the men were gradually coming over to the mate’s views. To this Augustus thought it
best to reply that he would be glad to go on such an adventure, since nothing better could be
done, and that anything was preferable to a piratical life.
July 4th. The vessel in sight proved to be a small brig from Liverpool and was allowed
to pass unmolested. Augustus spent most of his time on deck with a view to obtaining all
the information in his power respecting the intentions of the mutineers. They had frequent

and violent quarrels among themselves, in one of which a harpooner, Jim Bonner, was thrown
overboard. The party of the mate was gaining ground. Jim Bonner belonged to the cook’s gang,
of which Peters was a partisan.
July 5th. About daybreak there came on a stiff breeze from the west, which at noon fresh-
ened into a gale so that the brig could carry nothing more than her trysail and foresail. In tak-
ing in the foretopsail, Simms, one of the common hands and belonging also to the cook’s gang,
fell overboard, being very much in liquor, and was drowned—no attempt being made to save
him. The whole number of persons on board was now thirteen, to wit: Dirk Peters; Seymour,
the black cook; —— Jones; —— Greely; Hartman Rogers; and William Allen, of the cook’s
party; the mate, whose name I never learned; Absalom Hicks; —— Wilson; John Hunt; and
Richard Parker, of the mate’s party—besides Augustus and myself.
July 6th. The gale lasted all this day, blowing in heavy squalls accompanied with rain. The
brig took in a good deal of water through her seams, and one of the pumps was kept continu-
ally going, Augustus being forced to take his turn. Just at twilight a large ship passed close by
us, without having been discovered until within hail. The ship was supposed to be the one for
which the mutineers were on the lookout. The mate hailed her, but the reply was drowned in
the roaring of the gale. At eleven, a sea was shipped amidships, which tore away a great por-
tion of the larboard bulwarks and did some other slight damage. Toward morning the weather
moderated, and at sunrise there was very little wind.
July 7th. There was a heavy swell running all this day, during which the brig, being light,
rolled excessively, and many articles broke loose in the hold, as I could hear distinctly from
my hiding place. I suffered a great deal from seasickness. Peters had a long conversation this
day with Augustus and told him that two of his gang, Greely and Allen, had gone over to the
mate and were resolved to turn pirates. He put several questions to Augustus which he did not
then exactly understand. During a part of this evening the leak gained upon the vessel, and
little could be done to remedy it, as it was occasioned by the brig’s straining and taking in the
water through her seams. A sail was thrummed and got under the bows, which aided us in some
measure so that we began to gain upon the leak.
July 8th. A light breeze sprang up at sunrise from the eastward, when the mate headed the
brig to the southwest, with the intention of making some of the West India Islands in pursu-
ance of his piratical designs. No opposition was made by Peters or the cook, at least none in
the hearing of Augustus. All idea of taking the vessel from the Cape Verdes was abandoned.
The leak was now easily kept under by one pump going every three-quarters of an hour. The
sail was drawn from beneath the bows. Spoke two small schooners during the day.
July 9th. Fine weather. All hands employed in repairing bulwarks. Peters had again a long
conversation with Augustus and spoke more plainly than he had done heretofore. He said
nothing should induce him to come into the mate’s views and even hinted his intention of tak-
ing the brig out of his hands. He asked my friend if he could depend upon his aid in such case,
to which Augustus said, “Yes,” without hesitation. Peters then said he would sound the others
of his party upon the subject and went away. During the remainder of the day Augustus had
no opportunity of speaking with him privately.

7
July 10th. Spoke a brig from Rio bound to Norfolk. Weather hazy with a light baffling wind
from the eastward. Today Hartman Rogers died, having been attacked on the eighth with
spasms after drinking a glass of grog. This man was of the cook’s party and one upon whom
Peters placed his main reliance. He told Augustus that he believed the mate had poisoned him
and that he expected, if he did not be on the lookout, his own turn would come shortly. There
were now only himself, Jones, and the cook belonging to his own gang—on the other side there
were five. He had spoken to Jones about taking the command from the mate; but the project
having been coolly received, he had been deterred from pressing the matter any further, or from
saying anything to the cook. It was well, as it happened, that he was so prudent, for in the af-
ternoon the cook expressed his determination of siding with the mate and went over formally
to that party, while Jones took an opportunity of quarreling with Peters and hinted that he
would let the mate know of the plan in agitation. There was now, evidently, no time to be lost,
and Peters expressed his determination of attempting to take the vessel at all hazards, provided
Augustus would lend him his aid. My friend at once assured him of his willingness to enter
into any plan for that purpose and, thinking the opportunity a favorable one, made known the
fact of my being on board. At this the hybrid was not more astonished than delighted, as he
had no reliance whatever upon Jones, whom he already considered as belonging to the party of
the mate. They went below immediately, when Augustus called to me by name, and Peters and
myself were soon made acquainted. It was agreed that we should attempt to retake the vessel
upon the first good opportunity, leaving Jones altogether out of our councils. In the event of
success we were to run the brig into the first port that offered and deliver her up. The desertion
of his party had frustrated Peters’s design of going into the Pacific—an adventure which could
not be accomplished without a crew, and he depended upon either getting acquitted upon trial
on the score of insanity (which he solemnly averred had actuated him in lending his aid to the
mutiny), or upon obtaining a pardon, if found guilty, through the representations of Augustus
and myself. Our deliberations were interrupted for the present by the cry of “All hands take in
sail,” and Peters and Augustus ran up on deck.
As usual, the crew were nearly all drunk; and, before sail could be properly taken in, a
violent squall laid the brig on her beam-ends. By keeping her away, however, she righted, having
shipped a good deal of water. Scarcely was everything secure, when another squall took the
vessel, and immediately afterward another—no damage being done. There was every appear-
ance of a gale of wind, which, indeed, shortly came on with great fury from the northward
and westward. All was made as snug as possible, and we laid to, as usual, under a close-reefed
foresail. As night drew on, the wind increased in violence with a remarkably heavy sea. Peters
now came into the forecastle with Augustus, and we resumed our deliberations.
We agreed that no opportunity could be more favorable than the present for carrying
our designs into effect, as an attempt at such a moment would never be anticipated. As the brig
was snugly laid to, there would be no necessity of maneuvering her until good weather, when,
if we succeeded in our attempt, we might liberate one, or perhaps two of the men, to aid us in

taking her into port. The main difficulty was the great disproportion in our forces. There were
only three of us, and in the cabin there were nine. All the arms on board, too, were in their
possession, with the exception of a pair of small pistols which Peters had concealed about his
person and the large seaman’s knife which he always wore in the waistband of his pantaloons.
From certain indications, too, such, for example, as there being no such thing as an axe or a
handspike lying in their customary places, we began to fear that the mate had his suspicions, at
least in regard to Peters, and that he would let slip no opportunity of getting rid of him. It was
clear, indeed, that what we should determine to do could not be done too soon. Still the odds
were too much against us to allow of our proceeding without the greatest caution.
Peters proposed that he should go up on deck and enter into conversation with the
watch (Allen), when he would be able to throw him into the sea without trouble, and without
making any disturbance, by seizing a good opportunity; that Augustus and myself should
then come up and endeavor to provide ourselves with some kind of weapons from the deck;
and that we should then make a rush together and secure the companionway before any op-
position could be offered. I objected to this, because I could not believe that the mate (who
was a cunning fellow in all matters which did not affect his superstitious prejudices) would
suffer himself to be so easily entrapped. The very fact of there being a watch on deck at all
was sufficient proof that he was upon the alert—it not being usual, except in vessels where
discipline is most rigidly enforced, to station a watch on deck when a vessel is lying to in a
gale of wind. As I address myself principally, if not altogether, to persons who have never
been to sea, it may be as well to state the exact condition of a vessel under such circumstances.
Lying to, or, in sea parlance, “laying to,” is a measure resorted to for various purposes and
effected in various manners. In moderate weather, it is frequently done with a view of merely
bringing the vessel to a stand-still, to wait for another vessel or any similar object. If the ves-
sel which lies to is under full sail, the maneuver is usually accomplished by throwing round
some portion of her sails so as to let the wind take them aback, when she becomes stationary.
But we are now speaking of lying to in a gale of wind. This is done when the wind is ahead
and too violent to admit of carrying sail without danger of capsizing, and sometimes even
when the wind is fair but the sea too heavy for the vessel to be put before it. If a vessel be
suffered to scud before the wind in a very heavy sea, much damage is usually done her by the
shipping of water over her stern, and sometimes by the violent plunges she makes forward.
This maneuver, then, is seldom resorted to in such case unless through necessity. When the
vessel is in a leaky condition, she is often put before the wind even in the heaviest seas; for,
when lying to, her seams are sure to be greatly opened by her violent straining, and it is not so
much the case when scudding. Often, too, it becomes necessary to scud a vessel, either when
the blast is so exceedingly furious as to tear in pieces the sail which is employed with a view
of bringing her head to the wind, or when, through the false modeling of the frame or other
causes, this main object cannot be effected.
Vessels in a gale of wind are laid to in different manners according to their peculiar con-
struction. Some lie to best under a foresail, and this, I believe, is the sail most usually employed.
Large square-rigged vessels have sails for the express purpose, called storm-staysails. But the jib
is occasionally employed by itself—sometimes the jib and foresail, or a double-reefed foresail,

and not infrequently the aftersails, are made use of. Foretopsails are very often found to answer
the purpose better than any other species of sail. The Grampus was generally laid to under a
close-reefed foresail.
When a vessel is to be laid to, her head is brought up to the wind just so nearly as to
fill the sail under which she lies when hauled flat aft, that is, when brought diagonally across
the vessel. This being done, the bows point within a few degrees of the direction from which
the wind issues, and the windward bow of course receives the shock of the waves. In this situ-
ation a good vessel will ride out a very heavy gale of wind without shipping a drop of water
and without any further attention being requisite on the part of the crew. The helm is usually
lashed down, but this is altogether unnecessary (except on account of the noise it makes when
loose), for the rudder has no effect upon the vessel when lying to. Indeed, the helm had far
better be left loose than lashed very fast, for the rudder is apt to be torn off by heavy seas if
there be no room for the helm to play. As long as the sail holds, a well-modeled vessel will
maintain her situation and ride every sea, as if instinct with life and reason. If the violence of
the wind, however, should tear the sail into pieces (a feat which it requires a perfect hurricane to
accomplish under ordinary circumstances), there is then imminent danger. The vessel falls off
from the wind and, coming broadside to the sea, is completely at its mercy: the only resource in
this case is to put her quickly before the wind, letting her scud until some other sail can be set.
Some vessels will lie to under no sail whatever, but such are not to be trusted at sea.
But to return from this digression. It had never been customary with the mate to have any
watch on deck when lying to in a gale of wind, and the fact that he had now one, coupled with
the circumstance of the missing axes and handspikes, fully convinced us that the crew were too
well on the watch to be taken by surprise in the manner Peters had suggested. Something, how-
ever, was to be done, and that with as little delay as practicable, for there could be no doubt that
a suspicion having been once entertained against Peters, he would be sacrificed upon the earli-
est occasion, and one would certainly be either found or made upon the breaking of the gale.
Augustus now suggested that if Peters could contrive to remove, under any pretext, the
piece of chain cable which lay over the trap in the stateroom, we might possibly be able to come
upon them unawares by means of the hold; but a little reflection convinced us that the vessel
rolled and pitched too violently for any attempt of that nature.
By good fortune I at length hit upon the idea of working upon the superstitious ter-
rors and guilty conscience of the mate. It will be remembered that one of the crew, Hartman
Rogers, had died during the morning, having been attacked two days before with spasms after
drinking some spirits and water. Peters had expressed to us his opinion that this man had been
poisoned by the mate, and for this belief he had reasons, so he said, which were incontrovert-
ible, but which he could not be prevailed upon to explain to us—this wayward refusal being
only in keeping with other points of his singular character. But whether or not he had any bet-
ter grounds for suspecting the mate than we had ourselves, we were easily led to fall in with his
suspicion, and determined to act accordingly.
Rogers had died about eleven in the forenoon in violent convulsions; and the corpse
presented in a few minutes after death one of the most horrid and loathsome spectacles I ever
remember to have seen. The stomach was swollen immensely, like that of a man who has been

drowned and lain underwater for many weeks. The hands were in the same condition, while the
face was shrunken, shriveled, and of a chalky whiteness, except where relieved by two or three
glaring red splotches, like those occasioned by the erysipelas: one of these splotches extended
diagonally across the face, completely covering up an eye as if with a band of red velvet. In
this disgusting condition the body had been brought up from the cabin at noon to be thrown
overboard, when the mate getting a glimpse of it (for he now saw it for the first time), and
being either touched with remorse for his crime or struck with terror at so horrible a sight,
ordered the men to sew the body up in its hammock and allow it the usual rites of sea burial.
Having given these directions, he went below, as if to avoid any further sight of his victim.
While preparations were making to obey his orders, the gale came on with great fury, and the
design was abandoned for the present. The corpse, left to itself, was washed into the larboard
scuppers, where it still lay at the time of which I speak, floundering about with the furious
lurches of the brig.
Having arranged our plan, we set about putting it in execution as speedily as possible.
Peters went upon deck and, as he had anticipated, was immediately accosted by Allen, who
appeared to be stationed more as a watch upon the forecastle than for any other purpose. The
fate of this villain, however, was speedily and silently decided; for Peters, approaching him in a
careless manner as if about to address him, seized him by the throat and, before he could utter a
single cry, tossed him over the bulwarks. He then called to us, and we came up. Our first precau-
tion was to look about for something with which to arm ourselves, and in doing this we had to
proceed with great care, for it was impossible to stand on deck an instant without holding fast,
and violent seas broke over the vessel at every plunge forward. It was indispensable, too, that we
should be quick in our operations, for every minute we expected the mate to be up to set the
pumps going, as it was evident the brig must be taking on water very fast. After searching about
for some time, we could find nothing more fit for our purpose than the two pump handles, one
of which Augustus took, and I the other. Having secured these, we stripped off the shirt of the
corpse and dropped the body overboard. Peters and myself then went below, leaving Augustus
to watch upon deck, where he took his station just where Allen had been placed and with his
back to the cabin companionway, so that, if any one of the mate’s gang should come up, he
might suppose it was the watch.
As soon as I got below I commenced disguising myself so as to represent the corpse
of Rogers. The shirt which we had taken from the body aided us very much, for it was of a
singular form and character and easily recognizable—a kind of smock which the deceased
wore over his other clothing. It was a blue stockinette with large white stripes running across.
Having put this on, I proceeded to equip myself with a false stomach, in imitation of the hor-
rible deformity of the swollen corpse. This was soon effected by means of stuffing with some
bedclothes. I then gave the same appearance to my hands by drawing on a pair of white woolen
mittens and filling them in with any kind of rags that offered themselves. Peters then arranged
my face, first rubbing it well over with white chalk and afterward blotching it with blood, which
he took from a cut in his finger. The streak across the eye was not forgotten and presented a
most shocking appearance.

8
As I viewed myself in a fragment of looking glass which hung up in the cabin, and by the dim
light of a kind of battle lantern, I was so impressed with a sense of vague awe at my appear-
ance, and at the recollection of the terrific reality which I was thus representing, that I was
seized with a violent tremor and could scarcely summon resolution to go on with my part. It
was necessary, however, to act with decision, and Peters and myself went up on deck.
We there found everything safe, and keeping close to the bulwarks, the three of us crept
to the cabin companionway. It was only partially closed, precautions having been taken to
prevent its being suddenly pushed to from without, by means of placing billets of wood on
the upper step so as to interfere with the shutting. We found no difficulty in getting a full view
of the interior of the cabin through the cracks where the hinges were placed. It now proved to
have been very fortunate for us that we had not attempted to take them by surprise, for they
were evidently on the alert. Only one was asleep, and he lying just at the foot of the companion
ladder with a musket by his side. The rest were seated on several mattresses, which had been
taken from the berths and thrown on the floor. They were engaged in earnest conversation; and
although they had been carousing, as appeared from two empty jugs with some tin tumblers
which lay about, they were not as much intoxicated as usual. All had knives, one or two of them
pistols, and a great many muskets were lying in a berth close at hand.
We listened to their conversation for some time before we could make up our minds how
to act, having as yet resolved on nothing determinate except that we would attempt to paralyze
their exertions, when we should attack them, by means of the apparition of Rogers. They were
discussing their piratical plans, in which all we could hear distinctly was that they would unite
with the crew of a schooner Hornet and, if possible, get the schooner herself into their posses-
sion preparatory to some attempt on a large scale, the particulars of which could not be made
out by either of us.
One of the men spoke of Peters, when the mate replied to him in a low voice which
could not be distinguished, and afterward added more loudly that “he could not understand
his being so much forward with the captain’s brat in the forecastle, and he thought the sooner
both of them were overboard the better.” To this no answer was made, but we could easily per-
ceive that the hint was well received by the whole party and more particularly by Jones. At this
period I was excessively agitated, the more so as I could see that neither Augustus nor Peters
could determine how to act. I made up my mind, however, to sell my life as dearly as possible
and not to suffer myself to be overcome by any feelings of trepidation.
The tremendous noise, made by the roaring of the wind in the rigging and the washing
of the sea over the deck, prevented us from hearing what was said except during momentary
lulls. In one of these we all distinctly heard the mate tell one of the men to “go forward, and
order the d–––d lubbers to come into the cabin where he could have an eye upon them, for
he wanted no such secret doings on board the brig.” It was well for us that the pitching of the
vessel at this moment was so violent as to prevent this order from being carried into instant
execution. The cook got up from his mattress to go for us, when a tremendous lurch, which

I thought would carry away the masts, threw him headlong against one of the larboard state-
room doors, bursting it open and creating a good deal of other confusion. Luckily, neither of
our party was thrown from his position, and we had time to make a precipitate retreat to the
forecastle and arrange a hurried plan of action before the messenger made his appearance, or
rather before he put his head out of the companion hatch, for he did not come on deck. From
this station he could not notice the absence of Allen, and he accordingly bawled out, as if to
him, repeating the orders of the mate. Peters cried out, “Aye, aye,” in a disguised voice, and the
cook immediately went below without entertaining a suspicion that all was not right.
My two companions now proceeded boldly aft and down into the cabin, Peters closing
the door after him in the same manner he had found it. The mate received them with feigned
cordiality and told Augustus that since he had behaved himself so well of late, he might take
up his quarters in the cabin and be one of them for the future. He then poured him out a
tumbler half full of rum and made him drink it. All this I saw and heard, for I followed my
friends to the cabin as soon as the door was shut and took up my old point of observation. I
had brought with me the two pump handles, one of which I secured near the companionway
to be ready for use when required.
I now steadied myself as well as possible, so as to have a good view of all that was pass-
ing within, and endeavored to nerve myself to the task of descending among the mutineers
when Peters should make a signal to me as agreed upon. Presently he contrived to turn the
conversation upon the bloody deeds of the mutiny and, by degrees, led the men to talk of the
thousand superstitions which are so universally current among seamen. I could not make out
all that was said, but I could plainly see the effects of the conversation in the countenances of
those present. The mate was evidently much agitated, and presently, when some one mentioned
the terrific appearance of Rogers’s corpse, I thought he was upon the point of swooning. Pe-
ters now asked him if he did not think it would be better to have the body thrown overboard
at once, as it was too horrible a sight to see it floundering about in the scuppers. At this the
villain absolutely gasped for breath and turned his head slowly round upon his companions,
as if imploring some one to go up and perform the task. No one, however, stirred, and it was
quite evident that the whole party were wound up to the highest pitch of nervous excitement.
Peters now made me the signal. I immediately threw open the door of the companionway and,
descending without uttering a syllable, stood erect in the midst of the party.
The intense effect produced by this sudden apparition is not at all to be wondered at
when the various circumstances are taken into consideration. Usually, in cases of a similar na-
ture, there is left in the mind of the spectator some glimmering of doubt as to the reality of
the vision before his eyes; a degree of hope, however feeble, that he is the victim of chicanery
and that the apparition is not actually a visitant from the world of shadows. It is not too much
to say that such remnants of doubt have been at the bottom of almost every such visitation,
and that the appalling horror which has sometimes been brought about is to be attributed,
even in the cases most in point and where most suffering has been experienced, more to a kind
of anticipative horror lest the apparition might possibly be real than to an unwavering belief in
its reality. But, in the present instance, it will be seen immediately that in the minds of the
mutineers, there was not even the shadow of a basis upon which to rest a doubt that the ap-

parition of Rogers was indeed a revivification of his disgusting corpse, or at least its spiritual
image. The isolated situation of the brig, with its entire inaccessibility on account of the gale,
confined the apparently possible means of deception within such narrow and definite limits,
that they must have thought themselves enabled to survey them all at a glance. They had now
been at sea twenty-four days without holding more than a speaking communication with any
vessel whatever. The whole of the crew, too, at least all whom they had the most remote reason
for suspecting to be on board, were assembled in the cabin with the exception of Allen, the
watch; and his gigantic stature (he was six feet six inches high) was too familiar in their eyes
to permit the notion that he was the apparition before them to enter their minds even for an
instant. Add to these considerations the awe-inspiring nature of the tempest and that of the
conversation brought about by Peters; the deep impression which the loathsomeness of the
actual corpse had made in the morning upon the imaginations of the men; the excellence of
the imitation in my person; and the uncertain and wavering light in which they beheld me, as
the glare of the cabin lantern, swinging violently to and fro, fell dubiously and fitfully upon
my figure, and there will be no reason to wonder that the deception had even more than the
entire effect which we had anticipated. The mate sprang up from the mattress on which he
was lying and, without uttering a syllable, fell back, stone dead, upon the cabin floor and was
hurled to the leeward like a log by a heavy roll of the brig. Of the remaining seven there were
but three who had at first any degree of presence of mind. The four others sat for some time
rooted apparently to the floor, the most pitiable objects of horror and utter despair my eyes
ever encountered. The only opposition we experienced at all was from the cook, John Hunt,
and Richard Parker; but they made but a feeble and irresolute defense. The two former were
shot instantly by Peters, and I felled Parker with a blow on the head from the pump handle
which I had brought with me. In the meantime Augustus seized one of the muskets lying on the
floor and shot another mutineer (—— Wilson) through the breast. There were now but three
remaining; but by this time they had become aroused from their lethargy and perhaps began to
see that a deception had been practiced upon them, for they fought with great resolution and
fury, and but for the immense muscular strength of Peters, might have ultimately got the better
of us. These three men were —— Jones, —— Greely, and Absalom Hicks. Jones had thrown
Augustus on the floor, stabbed him in several places along the right arm, and would no doubt
have soon dispatched him (as neither Peters nor myself could immediately get rid of our own
antagonists) had it not been for the timely aid of a friend upon whose assistance we surely had
never depended. This friend was no other than Tiger. With a low growl he bounded into the
cabin, at a most critical moment for Augustus, and throwing himself upon Jones, pinned him
to the floor in an instant. My friend, however, was now too much injured to render us any aid
whatever, and I was so encumbered with my disguise that I could do but little. The dog would
not leave his hold upon the throat of Jones—Peters, nevertheless, was far more than a match
for the two men who remained and would, no doubt, have dispatched them sooner had it not
been for the narrow space in which he had to act and the tremendous lurches of the vessel.
Presently he was enabled to get hold of a heavy stool, several of which lay about the floor. With
this he beat out the brains of Greely as he was in the act of discharging a musket at me, and
immediately afterward a roll of the brig throwing him in contact with Hicks, he seized him by

the throat and, by dint of sheer strength, strangled him instantaneously. Thus, in far less time
than I have taken to tell it, we found ourselves masters of the brig.
The only person of our opponents who was left alive was Richard Parker. This man, it
will be remembered, I had knocked down with a blow from the pump handle at the commence-
ment of the attack. He now lay motionless by the door of the shattered stateroom; but, upon
Peters touching him with his foot, he spoke and entreated for mercy. His head was only slightly
cut and otherwise he had received no injury, having been merely stunned by the blow. He now
got up, and for the present we secured his hands behind his back. The dog was still growl-
ing over Jones; but, upon examination, we found him completely dead, the blood issuing in a
stream from a deep wound in the throat, inflicted, no doubt, by the sharp teeth of the animal.
It was now about one o’clock in the morning, and the wind was still blowing tremen-
dously. The brig evidently labored much more than usual, and it became absolutely necessary
that something should be done with a view of easing her in some measure. At almost every roll
to leeward she shipped a sea, several of which came partially down into the cabin during our
scuffle, the hatchway having been left open by myself when I descended. The entire range of
bulwarks to larboard had been swept away, as well as the caboose, together with the jollyboat
from the counter. The creaking and working of the mainmast, too, gave indication that it was
nearly sprung. To make room for more stowage in the after hold, the heel of this mast had
been stepped between decks (a very reprehensible practice, occasionally resorted to by ignorant
shipbuilders), so that it was in imminent danger of working from its step. But, to crown all our
difficulties, we plumbed the well and found no less than seven feet of water.10
Leaving the bodies of the crew lying in the cabin, we got to work immediately at the
pumps—Parker, of course, being set at liberty to assist us in the labor. Augustus’s arm was
bound up as well as we could effect it, and he did what he could, but that was not much. How-
ever, we found that we could just manage to keep the leak from gaining upon us by having one
pump constantly going. As there were only four of us, this was severe labor; but we endeavored
to keep up our spirits and looked anxiously for daybreak, when we hoped to lighten the brig
by cutting away the mainmast.
In this manner we passed a night of terrible anxiety and fatigue, and, when the day at
length broke, the gale had neither abated in the least, nor were there any signs of its abating. We
now dragged the bodies on deck and threw them overboard. Our next care was to get rid of the
mainmast. The necessary preparations having been made, Peters cut away at the mast (having
found axes in the cabin), while the rest of us stood by the stays and lanyards. As the brig gave
a tremendous lee lurch, the word was given to cut away the weather lanyards, which being done,
the whole mass of wood and rigging plunged into the sea, clear of the brig and without doing
any material injury. We now found that the vessel did not labor quite as much as before, but
our situation was still exceedingly precarious, and in spite of the utmost exertions we could not
gain upon the leak without the aid of both pumps. The little assistance which Augustus could
render us was not really of any importance. To add to our distress, a heavy sea, striking the
brig to the windward, threw her off several points from the wind, and before she could regain
her position, another broke completely over her and hurled her full upon her beam-ends. The
ballast now shifted in a mass to leeward (the stowage had been knocking about perfectly at ran-

dom for some time), and for a few moments we thought nothing could save us from capsizing.
Presently, however, we partially righted; but the ballast still retaining its place to larboard, we
lay so much along that it was useless to think of working the pumps, which indeed we could
not have done much longer in any case, as our hands were entirely raw with the excessive labor
we had undergone and were bleeding in the most horrible manner.
Contrary to Parker’s advice, we now proceeded to cut away the foremast and at length
accomplished it after much difficulty, owing to the position in which we lay. In going overboard
the wreck took with it the bowsprit and left us a complete hulk.
So far we had had reason to rejoice in the escape of our longboat, which had received
no damage from any of the huge seas which had come on board. But we had not long to con-
gratulate ourselves; for the foremast having gone and, of course, the foresail with it, by which
the brig had been steadied, every sea now made a complete breach over us, and in five minutes
our deck was swept from stem to stern, the longboat and starboard bulwarks torn off and even
the windlass shattered into fragments. It was, indeed, hardly possible for us to be in a more
pitiable condition.
At noon there seemed to be some slight appearance of the gale’s abating, but in this
we were sadly disappointed, for it only lulled for a few minutes to blow with redoubled fury.
About four in the afternoon it was utterly impossible to stand up against the violence of the
blast; and, as the night closed in upon us, I had not a shadow of hope that the vessel would
hold together until morning.
By midnight we had settled very deep in the water, which was now up to the orlop deck.
The rudder went soon afterward, the sea which tore it away lifting the after portion of the
brig entirely from the water, against which she thumped in her descent with such a concussion
as would be occasioned by going ashore. We had all calculated that the rudder would hold its
own to the last, as it was unusually strong, being rigged as I have never seen one rigged either
before or since. Down its main timber there ran a succession of stout iron hooks, and oth-
ers in the same manner down the sternpost. Through these hooks there extended a very thick
wrought-iron rod, the rudder being thus held to the sternpost, and swinging freely on the rod.
The tremendous force of the sea which tore it off may be estimated by the fact that the hooks
in the sternpost, which ran entirely through it, being clinched on the inside, were drawn every
one of them completely out of the solid wood.
We had scarcely time to draw breath after the violence of this shock, when one of the
most tremendous waves I had then ever known broke right on board of us, sweeping the com-
panionway clear off, bursting in the hatchways, and filling every inch of the vessel with water.
Luckily, just before night, all four of us had lashed ourselves firmly to the fragments of the
windlass, lying in this manner as flat upon the deck as possible. This precaution alone saved us
from destruction. As it was, we were all more or less stunned by the immense weight of water
which tumbled upon us, and which did not roll from above us until we were nearly exhausted.
As soon as I could recover breath, I called aloud to my companions. Augustus alone replied,

saying, “It is all over with us, and may God have mercy upon our souls.” By and by both the
others were enabled to speak, when they exhorted us to take courage, as there was still hope; it
being impossible, from the nature of the cargo, that the brig could go down, and there being
every chance that the gale would blow over by the morning. These words inspired me with new
life; for, strange as it may seem, although it was obvious that a vessel with a cargo of empty
oil casks would not sink, I had been hitherto so confused in mind as to have overlooked this
consideration altogether, and the danger which I had for some time regarded as the most im-
minent was that of foundering. As hope revived within me, I made use of every opportunity to
strengthen the lashings which held me to the remains of the windlass, and in this occupation I
soon discovered that my companions were also busy. The night was as dark as it could possibly
be, and the horrible shrieking din and confusion which surrounded us it is useless to attempt
describing. Our deck lay level with the sea, or rather we were encircled with a towering ridge of
foam, a portion of which swept over us every instant. It is not too much to say that our heads
were not fairly out of the water more than one second in three. Although we lay close together,
no one of us could see the other, or, indeed, any portion of the brig itself, upon which we
were so tempestuously hurled about. At intervals we called one to the other, thus endeavoring
to keep alive hope, and render consolation and encouragement to such of us as stood most
in need of it. The feeble condition of Augustus made him an object of solicitude with us all;
and as, from the lacerated condition of his right arm, it must have been impossible for him to
secure his lashings with any degree of firmness, we were in momentary expectation of finding
that he had gone overboard—yet to render him aid was a thing altogether out of the question.
Fortunately, his station was more secure than that of any of the rest of us; for the upper part
of his body lying just beneath a portion of the shattered windlass, the seas, as they tumbled in
upon him, were greatly broken in their violence. In any other situation than this (into which
he had been accidentally thrown after having lashed himself in a very exposed spot) he must
inevitably have perished before morning. Owing to the brig’s lying so much along, we were all
less liable to be washed off than otherwise would have been the case. The heel, as I have before
stated, was to larboard, about one half of the deck being constantly underwater. The seas,
therefore, which struck us to starboard were much broken by the vessel’s side, only reaching us
in fragments as we lay flat on our faces; while those which came from larboard, being what are
called backwater seas, and obtaining little hold upon us on account of our posture, had not
sufficient force to drag us from our fastenings.
In this frightful situation we lay until the day broke so as to show us more fully the hor-
rors which surrounded us. The brig was a mere log, rolling about at the mercy of every wave;
the gale was upon the increase, if anything, blowing indeed a complete hurricane, and there
appeared to us no earthly prospect of deliverance. For several hours we held on in silence, ex-
pecting every moment that our lashings would either give way, that the remains of the windlass
would go by the board, or that some of the huge seas, which roared in every direction around us
and above us, would drive the hulk so far beneath the water that we should be drowned before
it could regain the surface. By the mercy of God, however, we were preserved from these immi-
nent dangers and about midday were cheered by the light of the blessed sun. Shortly afterward
we could perceive a sensible diminution in the force of the wind, when, now for the first time

since the latter part of the evening before, Augustus spoke, asking Peters, who lay closest to
him, if he thought there was any possibility of our being saved. As no reply was at first made to
this question, we all concluded that the hybrid had been drowned where he lay; but presently, to
our great joy, he spoke, although very feebly, saying that he was in great pain, being so cut by the
tightness of his lashings across the stomach, that he must either find means of loosening them
or perish, as it was impossible that he could endure his misery much longer. This occasioned
us great distress, as it was altogether useless to think of aiding him in any manner while the
sea continued washing over us as it did. We exhorted him to bear his sufferings with fortitude
and promised to seize the first opportunity which should offer itself to relieve him. He replied
that it would soon be too late; that it would be all over with him before we could help him;
and then, after moaning for some minutes, lay silent, when we concluded that he had perished.
As the evening drew on, the sea had fallen so much that scarcely more than one wave
broke over the hulk from windward in the course of five minutes, and the wind had abated a
great deal, although still blowing a severe gale. I had not heard any of my companions speak for
hours, and now called to Augustus. He replied, although very feebly, so that I could not distin-
guish what he said. I then spoke to Peters and to Parker, neither of whom returned any answer.
Shortly after this period I fell into a state of partial insensibility, during which the most
pleasing images floated in my imagination; such as green trees, waving meadows of ripe grain,
processions of dancing girls, troops of cavalry, and other fantasies. I now remember that, in all
which passed before my mind’s eye, motion was a predominant idea. Thus, I never fancied any sta-
tionary object, such as a house, a mountain, or anything of that kind; but windmills, ships, large
birds, balloons, people on horseback, carriages driving furiously, and similar moving objects pre-
sented themselves in endless succession. When I recovered from this state, the sun was, as near
as I could guess, an hour high. I had the greatest difficulty in bringing to recollection the various
circumstances connected with my situation, and for some time remained firmly convinced that
I was still in the hold of the brig, near the box, and that the body of Parker was that of Tiger.
When I at length completely came to my senses, I found that the wind blew no more
than a moderate breeze and that the sea was comparatively calm; so much so that it only washed
over the brig amidships. My left arm had broken loose from its lashings and was much cut
about the elbow; my right was entirely benumbed, and the hand and wrist swollen prodigiously
by the pressure of the rope, which had worked from the shoulder downward. I was also in
great pain from another rope which went about my waist and had been drawn to an insuffer-
able degree of tightness. Looking round upon my companions, I saw that Peters still lived,
although a thick line was pulled so forcibly around his loins as to give him the appearance of
being cut nearly in two; as I stirred, he made a feeble motion to me with his hand, pointing
to the rope. Augustus gave no indication of life whatever and was bent nearly double across a
splinter of the windlass. Parker spoke to me when he saw me moving and asked me if I had
not sufficient strength to release him from his situation, saying that if I would summon up
what spirits I could and contrive to untie him, we might yet save our lives, but that otherwise
we must all perish. I told him to take courage, and I would endeavor to free him. Feeling in my
pantaloons’ pocket, I got hold of my penknife and, after several ineffectual attempts, at length
succeeded in opening it. I then, with my left hand, managed to free my right from its fastenings

and afterward cut the other ropes which held me. Upon attempting, however, to move from my
position, I found that my legs failed me altogether and that I could not get up; neither could
I move my right arm in any direction. Upon mentioning this to Parker, he advised me to lie
quiet for a few minutes, holding onto the windlass with my left hand so as to allow time for
the blood to circulate. Doing this, the numbness presently began to die away so that I could
move first one of my legs and then the other; and shortly afterward I regained the partial use
of my right arm. I now crawled with great caution toward Parker, without getting on my legs,
and soon cut loose all the lashings about him, when, after a short delay, he also recovered the
partial use of his limbs. We now lost no time in getting loose the rope from Peters. It had cut a
deep gash through the waistband of his woolen pantaloons, and through two shirts, and made
its way into his groin, from which the blood flowed out copiously as we removed the cord-
age. No sooner had we removed it, however, than he spoke and seemed to experience instant
relief—being able to move with much greater ease than either Parker or myself—this was no
doubt owing to the discharge of blood.
We had little hope that Augustus would recover, as he evinced no signs of life; but, upon
getting to him, we discovered that he had merely swooned from the loss of blood, the bandages
we had placed around his wounded arm having been torn off by the water; none of the ropes
which held him to the windlass were drawn sufficiently tight to occasion his death. Having
relieved him from the fastenings and got him clear of the broken wood about the windlass,
we secured him in a dry place to windward, with his head somewhat lower than his body, and
all three of us busied ourselves in chafing his limbs. In about half an hour he came to himself,
although it was not until the next morning that he gave signs of recognizing any of us or had
sufficient strength to speak. By the time we had thus got clear of our lashings it was quite dark,
and it began to cloud up so that we were again in the greatest agony lest it should come on to
blow hard, in which event nothing could have saved us from perishing, exhausted as we were.
By good fortune it continued very moderate during the night, the sea subsiding every minute,
which gave us great hopes of ultimate preservation. A gentle breeze still blew from the N. W.,
but the weather was not at all cold. Augustus was lashed carefully to windward in such a manner
as to prevent him from slipping overboard with the rolls of the vessel, as he was still too weak
to hold on at all. For ourselves there was no such necessity. We sat close together, support-
ing each other with the aid of the broken ropes about the windlass and devising methods of
escape from our frightful situation. We derived much comfort from taking off our clothes and
wringing the water from them. When we put them on after this, they felt remarkably warm and
pleasant and served to invigorate us in no little degree. We helped Augustus off with his and
wrung them for him, when he experienced the same comfort.
Our chief sufferings were now those of hunger and thirst, and when we looked forward
to the means of relief in this respect, our hearts sunk within us, and we were induced to regret
that we had escaped the less dreadful perils of the sea. We endeavored, however, to console
ourselves with the hope of being speedily picked up by some vessel and encouraged each other
to bear with fortitude the evils that might happen.
The morning of the fourteenth at length dawned, and the weather still continued clear
and pleasant, with a steady but very light breeze from the N. W. The sea was now quite smooth,
and as, from some cause which we could not determine, the brig did not lie so much along as

she had done before, the deck was comparatively dry, and we could move about with freedom.
We had now been better than three entire days and nights without either food or drink, and it
became absolutely necessary that we should make an attempt to get up something from below.
As the brig was completely full of water, we went to this work despondingly and with but little
expectation of being able to obtain anything. We made a kind of drag by driving some nails
which we broke out from the remains of the companion hatch into two pieces of wood. Tying
these across each other and fastening them to the end of a rope, we threw them into the cabin
and dragged them to and fro, in the faint hope of being thus able to entangle some article
which might be of use to us for food, or which might at least render us assistance in getting it.
We spent the greater part of the morning in this labor without effect, fishing up nothing more
than a few bedclothes, which were readily caught by the nails. Indeed, our contrivance was so
very clumsy that any greater success was hardly to be anticipated.
We now tried the forecastle, but equally in vain and were upon the brink of despair, when
Peters proposed that we should fasten a rope to his body and let him make an attempt to get
up something by diving into the cabin. This proposition we hailed with all the delight which
reviving hope could inspire. He proceeded immediately to strip off his clothes with the excep-
tion of his pantaloons; and a strong rope was then carefully fastened around his middle, being
brought up over his shoulders in such a manner that there was no possibility of its slipping.
The undertaking was one of great difficulty and danger; for, as we could hardly expect to find
many, if any, provisions in the cabin itself, it was necessary that the diver, after letting himself
down, should make a turn to the right, and proceed underwater a distance of ten or twelve feet,
in a narrow passage, to the storeroom, and return, without drawing breath.
Everything being ready, Peters now descended into the cabin, going down the companion
ladder until the water reached his chin. He then plunged in, head first, turning to the right as
he plunged and endeavoring to make his way to the storeroom. In this first attempt, however,
he was altogether unsuccessful. In less than half a minute after his going down we felt the rope
jerked violently (the signal we had agreed upon when he desired to be drawn up). We accord-
ingly drew him up instantly but so incautiously as to bruise him badly against the ladder. He
had brought nothing with him and had been unable to penetrate more than a very little way
into the passage, owing to the constant exertions he found it necessary to make in order to keep
himself from floating up against the deck. Upon getting out he was very much exhausted and
had to rest full fifteen minutes before he could again venture to descend.
The second attempt met with even worse success; for he remained so long underwater
without giving the signal, that, becoming alarmed for his safety, we drew him out without it
and found that he was almost at the last gasp, having, as he said, repeatedly jerked at the rope
without our feeling it. This was probably owing to a portion of it having become entangled in
the balustrade at the foot of the ladder. This balustrade was, indeed, so much in the way that we
determined to remove it, if possible, before proceeding with our design. As we had no means
of getting it away except by main force, we all descended into the water as far as we could on
the ladder and, giving a pull against it with our united strength, succeeded in breaking it down.
The third attempt was equally unsuccessful with the two first, and it now became evident
that nothing could be done in this manner without the aid of some weight with which the diver
might steady himself and keep to the floor of the cabin while making his search. For a long

time we looked about in vain for something which might answer this purpose; but at length, to
our great joy, we discovered one of the weather forechains so loose that we had not the least dif-
ficulty in wrenching it off. Having fastened this securely to one of his ankles, Peters now made
his fourth descent into the cabin and this time succeeded in making his way to the door of the
steward’s room. To his inexpressible grief, however, he found it locked and was obliged to return
without effecting an entrance, as, with the greatest exertion, he could remain underwater not
more, at the utmost extent, than a single minute. Our affairs now looked gloomy indeed, and
neither Augustus nor myself could refrain from bursting into tears, as we thought of the host of
difficulties which encompassed us and the slight probability which existed of our finally mak-
ing an escape. But this weakness was not of long duration. Throwing ourselves on our knees to
God, we implored his aid in the many dangers which beset us and arose with renewed hope and
vigor to think what could yet be done by mortal means toward accomplishing our deliverance.
10
Shortly afterward an incident occurred which I am induced to look upon as more intensely
productive of emotion, as far more replete with the extremes first of delight and then of horror,
than even any of the thousand chances which afterward befell me in nine long years, crowded
with events of the most startling and, in many cases, of the most unconceived and inconceivable
character. We were lying on the deck near the companionway and debating the possibility of yet
making our way into the storeroom, when, looking toward Augustus who lay fronting myself, I
perceived that he had become all at once deadly pale and that his lips were quivering in the most
singular and unaccountable manner. Greatly alarmed, I spoke to him, but he made me no reply,
and I was beginning to think that he was suddenly taken ill, when I took notice of his eyes, which
were glaring apparently at some object behind me. I turned my head and shall never forget the
ecstatic joy which thrilled through every particle of my frame, when I perceived a large brig bear-
ing down upon us and not more than a couple of miles off. I sprang to my feet as if a musket
bullet had suddenly struck me to the heart and, stretching out my arms in the direction of the
vessel, stood in this manner, motionless and unable to articulate a syllable. Peters and Parker
were equally affected, although in different ways. The former danced about the deck like a mad-
man, uttering the most extravagant rodomontades intermingled with howls and imprecations,
while the latter burst into tears and continued for many minutes weeping like a child.
The vessel in sight was a large hermaphrodite brig, of a Dutch build and painted black
with a tawdry gilt figurehead. She had evidently seen a good deal of rough weather and, we
supposed, had suffered much in the gale which had proven so disastrous to ourselves, for her
foretopmast was gone and some of her starboard bulwarks. When we first saw her, she was, as
I have already said, about two miles off and to windward, bearing down upon us. The breeze
was very gentle, and what astonished us chiefly was that she had no other sails set than her fore-
sail and mainsail, with a flying jib—of course she came down but slowly, and our impatience
amounted nearly to frenzy. The awkward manner in which she steered, too, was remarked by all
of us, even excited as we were. She yawed about so considerably that once or twice we thought
it impossible she could see us, or imagined that, having seen us, and discovered no person on

board, she was about to tack and make off in another direction. Upon each of these occasions
we screamed and shouted at the top of our voices, when the stranger would appear to change
for a moment her intention and again hold on toward us—this singular conduct being repeated
two or three times, so that at last we could think of no other manner of accounting for it than
by supposing the helmsman to be in liquor.
No person was seen upon her decks until she arrived within about a quarter of a mile
of us. We then saw three seamen, whom by their dress we took to be Hollanders. Two of these
were lying on some old sails near the forecastle, and the third, who appeared to be looking at
us with great curiosity, was leaning over the starboard bow near the bowsprit. This last was a
stout and tall man with a very dark skin. He seemed by his manner to be encouraging us to have
patience, nodding to us in a cheerful although rather odd way and smiling constantly so as to
display a set of the most brilliantly white teeth. As his vessel drew nearer, we saw a red flannel
cap which he had on fall from his head into the water; but of this he took little or no notice,
continuing his odd smiles and gesticulations. I relate these things and circumstances minutely,
and I relate them, it must be understood, precisely as they appeared to us.
The brig came on slowly and now more steadily than before, and—I cannot speak calmly
of this event—our hearts leaped up wildly within us, and we poured out our whole souls in
shouts and thanksgiving to God for the complete, unexpected, and glorious deliverance that
was so palpably at hand. Of a sudden, and all at once, there came wafted over the ocean from
the strange vessel (which was now close upon us) a smell, a stench, such as the whole world has
no name for—no conception of—hellish—utterly suffocating—insufferable, inconceivable. I
gasped for breath, and turning to my companions, perceived that they were paler than marble.
But we had now no time left for question or surmise—the brig was within fifty feet of us, and
it seemed to be her intention to run under our counter that we might board her without her
putting out a boat. We rushed aft, when, suddenly, a wide yaw threw her off full five or six
points from the course she had been running, and as she passed under our stern at the distance
of about twenty feet, we had a full view of her decks. Shall I ever forget the triple horror of that
spectacle? Twenty-five or thirty human bodies, among whom were several females, lay scattered
about between the counter and the galley in the last and most loathsome state of putrefaction!
We plainly saw that not a soul lived in that fated vessel! Yet we could not help shouting to the
dead for help! Yes, long and loudly did we beg, in the agony of the moment, that those silent
and disgusting images would stay for us, would not abandon us to become like them, would
receive us among their goodly company! We were raving with horror and despair—thoroughly
mad through the anguish of our grievous disappointment.
As our first loud yell of terror broke forth, it was replied to by something, from near the
bowsprit of the stranger, so closely resembling the scream of a human voice that the nicest ear
might have been startled and deceived. At this instant another sudden yaw brought the region
of the forecastle for a moment into view, and we beheld at once the origin of the sound. We
saw the tall stout figure still leaning on the bulwark and still nodding his head to and fro, but
his face was now turned from us so that we could not behold it. His arms were extended over
the rail, and the palms of his hands fell outward. His knees were lodged upon a stout rope,
tightly stretched and reaching from the heel of the bowsprit to a cathead. On his back, from

which a portion of the shirt had been torn, leaving it bare, there sat a huge seagull, busily
gorging itself with the horrible flesh, its bill and talons deep buried and its white plumage
spattered all over with blood. As the brig moved further round so as to bring us close in view,
the bird, with much apparent difficulty, drew out its crimsoned head and, after eyeing us for a
moment as if stupefied, arose lazily from the body upon which it had been feasting and, flying
directly above our deck, hovered there a while with a portion of clotted and liverlike substance
in its beak. The horrid morsel dropped at length with a sullen splash immediately at the feet
of Parker. May God forgive me, but now, for the first time, there flashed through my mind a
thought, a thought which I will not mention, and I felt myself making a step toward the ensan-
guined spot. I looked upward, and the eyes of Augustus met my own with a degree of intense
and eager meaning which immediately brought me to my senses. I sprang forward quickly and,
with a deep shudder, threw the frightful thing into the sea.
The body from which it had been taken, resting as it did upon the rope, had been easily
swayed to and fro by the exertions of the carnivorous bird, and it was this motion which had at
first impressed us with the belief of its being alive. As the gull relieved it of its weight, it swung
round and fell partially over so that the face was fully discovered. Never, surely, was any object
so terribly full of awe! The eyes were gone and the whole flesh around the mouth, leaving the
teeth utterly naked. This, then, was the smile which had cheered us on to hope! this the—but
I forbear. The brig, as I have already told, passed under our stern and made its way slowly but
steadily to leeward. With her and with her terrible crew went all our gay visions of deliverance
and joy. Deliberately as she went by, we might possibly have found means of boarding her, had
not our sudden disappointment, and the appalling nature of the discovery which accompanied
it, laid entirely prostrate every active faculty of mind and body. We had seen and felt, but we
could neither think nor act, until, alas, too late. How much our intellects had been weakened
by this incident may be estimated by the fact, that, when the vessel had proceeded so far that
we could perceive no more than the half of her hull, the proposition was seriously entertained
of attempting to overtake her by swimming!
I have, since this period, vainly endeavored to obtain some clue to the hideous uncer-
tainty which enveloped the fate of the stranger. Her build and general appearance, as I have
before stated, led us to the belief that she was a Dutch trader, and the dresses of the crew also
sustained this opinion. We might have easily seen the name upon her stern and, indeed, taken
other observations which would have guided us in making out her character; but the intense
excitement of the moment blinded us to everything of that nature. From the saffronlike hue of
such of the corpses as were not entirely decayed, we concluded that the whole of her company
had perished by the yellow fever, or some other virulent disease of the same fearful kind. If
such were the case (and I know not what else to imagine), death, to judge from the positions
of the bodies, must have come upon them in a manner awfully sudden and overwhelming, in
a way totally distinct from that which generally characterizes even the most deadly pestilences
with which mankind are acquainted. It is possible, indeed, that poison, accidentally introduced
into some of their sea stores, may have brought about the disaster; or that the eating of some
unknown venomous species of fish, or other marine animal, or oceanic bird, might have in-

duced it—but it is utterly useless to form conjectures where all is involved, and will, no doubt,
remain forever involved, in the most appalling and unfathomable mystery.11
11
We spent the remainder of the day in a condition of stupid lethargy, gazing after the retreating
vessel until the darkness, hiding her from our sight, recalled us in some measure to our senses.
The pangs of hunger and thirst then returned, absorbing all other cares and considerations.
Nothing, however, could be done until the morning, and securing ourselves as well as possible,
we endeavored to snatch a little repose. In this I succeeded beyond my expectations, sleeping
until my companions, who had not been so fortunate, aroused me at daybreak to renew our
attempts at getting up provisions from the hull.
It was now a dead calm with the sea as smooth as I have ever known it—the weather
warm and pleasant. The brig was out of sight. We commenced our operations by wrenching
off, with some trouble, another of the forechains; and having fastened both to Peters’s feet, he
again made an endeavor to reach the door of the storeroom, thinking it possible that he might
be able to force it open, provided he could get at it in sufficient time; and this he hoped to do,
as the hulk lay much more steadily than before.
He succeeded very quickly in reaching the door, when, loosening one of the chains from
his ankle, he made every exertion to force a passage with it, but in vain, the framework of the
room being far stronger than was anticipated. He was quite exhausted with his long stay un-
derwater, and it became absolutely necessary that some other one of us should take his place.
For this service Parker immediately volunteered; but, after making three ineffectual efforts,
found that he could never even succeed in getting near the door. The condition of Augustus’s
wounded arm rendered it useless for him to attempt going down, as he would be unable to
force the room open should he reach it, and it accordingly now devolved upon me to exert
myself for our common deliverance.
Peters had left one of the chains in the passage, and I found upon plunging in that I had
not sufficient ballast to keep me firmly down. I determined, therefore, to attempt no more in
my first effort than merely to recover the other chain. In groping along the floor of the passage
for this I felt a hard substance, which I immediately grasped, not having time to ascertain what
it was but returning and ascending instantly to the surface. The prize proved to be a bottle, and
our joy may be conceived when I say that it was found to be full of port wine. Giving thanks
to God for this timely and cheering assistance, we immediately drew the cork with my penknife
and, each taking a moderate sup, felt the most indescribable comfort from the warmth, strength,
and spirits with which it inspired us. We then carefully recorked the bottle and, by means of a
handkerchief, swung it in such a manner that there was no possibility of its getting broken.
Having rested a while after this fortunate discovery, I again descended and now recovered
the chain, with which I instantly came up. I then fastened it on and went down for the third
time, when I became fully satisfied that no exertions whatever, in that situation, would enable
me to force open the door of the storeroom. I therefore returned in despair.

There seemed now to be no longer any room for hope, and I could perceive in the
countenances of my companions that they had made up their minds to perish. The wine had
evidently produced in them a species of delirium, which, perhaps, I had been prevented from
feeling by the immersion I had undergone since drinking it. They talked incoherently and
about matters unconnected with our condition, Peters repeatedly asking me questions about
Nantucket. Augustus, too, I remember, approached me with a serious air and requested me to
lend him a pocket comb, as his hair was full of fish scales and he wished to get them out before
going on shore. Parker appeared somewhat less affected and urged me to dive at random into
the cabin and bring up any article which might come to hand. To this I consented and, in the
first attempt after staying under a full minute, brought up a small leather trunk belonging to
Captain Barnard. This was immediately opened in the faint hope that it might contain some-
thing to eat or drink. We found nothing, however, except a box of razors and two linen shirts. I
now went down again and returned without any success. As my head came above water I heard a
crash on deck and, upon getting up, saw that my companions had ungratefully taken advantage
of my absence to drink the remainder of the wine, having let the bottle fall in the endeavor to
replace it before I saw them. I remonstrated with them on the heartlessness of their conduct,
when Augustus burst into tears. The other two endeavored to laugh the matter off as a joke,
but I hope never again to behold laughter of such a species: the distortion of countenance
was absolutely frightful. Indeed, it was apparent that the stimulus, in the empty state of their
stomachs, had taken instant and violent effect and that they were all exceedingly intoxicated.
With great difficulty I prevailed upon them to lie down, when they fell very soon into a heavy
slumber accompanied with loud stertorous breathing.
I now found myself, as it were, alone in the brig, and my reflections, to be sure, were of
the most fearful and gloomy nature. No prospect offered itself to my view but a lingering death
by famine, or, at the best, by being overwhelmed in the first gale which should spring up, for in
our present exhausted condition we could have no hope of living through another.
The gnawing hunger which I now experienced was nearly insupportable, and I felt myself
capable of going to any lengths in order to appease it. With my knife I cut off a small portion
of the leather trunk and endeavored to eat it, but found it utterly impossible to swallow a single
morsel, although I fancied that some little alleviation of my suffering was obtained by chewing
small pieces of it and spitting them out. Toward night my companions awoke, one by one, each
in an indescribable state of weakness and horror brought on by the wine, whose fumes had
now evaporated. They shook as if with a violent ague and uttered the most lamentable cries for
water. Their condition affected me in the most lively degree, at the same time causing me to
rejoice in the fortunate train of circumstances which had prevented me from indulging in the
wine, and consequently from sharing their melancholy and most distressing sensations. Their
conduct, however, gave me great uneasiness and alarm; for it was evident that unless some favor-
able change took place, they could afford me no assistance in providing for our common safety.
I had not yet abandoned all idea of being able to get up something from below; but the attempt
could not possibly be resumed until some one of them was sufficiently master of himself to aid
me by holding the end of the rope while I went down. Parker appeared to be somewhat more
in possession of his senses than the others, and I endeavored, by every means in my power, to

arouse him. Thinking that a plunge in the seawater might have a beneficial effect, I contrived
to fasten the end of a rope around his body, and then, leading him to the companionway (he
remaining quite passive all the while), pushed him in, and immediately drew him out. I had
good reason to congratulate myself upon having made this experiment; for he appeared much
revived and invigorated, and, upon getting out, asked me in a rational manner why I had so
served him. Having explained my object, he expressed himself indebted to me and said that he
felt greatly better from the immersion, afterward conversing sensibly upon our situation. We
then resolved to treat Augustus and Peters in the same way, which we immediately did, when
they both experienced much benefit from the shock. This idea of sudden immersion had been
suggested to me by reading in some medical work the good effect of the shower bath in a case
where the patient was suffering from mania a potu.*
Finding that I could now trust my companions to hold the end of the rope, I again made
three or four plunges into the cabin, although it was now quite dark and a gentle but long swell
from the northward rendered the hulk somewhat unsteady. In the course of these attempts I
succeeded in bringing up two case knives, a three-gallon jug, empty, and a blanket, but nothing
which could serve us for food. I continued my efforts, after getting these articles, until I was
completely exhausted, but brought up nothing else. During the night Parker and Peters oc-
cupied themselves by turns in the same manner; but nothing coming to hand, we now gave up
this attempt in despair, concluding that we were exhausting ourselves in vain.
We passed the remainder of this night in a state of the most intense mental and bodily
anguish that can possibly be imagined. The morning of the sixteenth at length dawned, and
we looked eagerly around the horizon for relief, but to no purpose. The sea was still smooth
with only a long swell from the northward, as on yesterday. This was the sixth day since we had
tasted either food or drink, with the exception of the bottle of port wine, and it was clear that
we could hold out but a very little while longer unless something could be obtained. I never saw
before, nor wish to see again, human beings so utterly emaciated as Peters and Augustus. Had I
met them on shore in their present condition I should not have had the slightest suspicion that
I had ever beheld them. Their countenances were totally changed in character, so that I could
not bring myself to believe them really the same individuals with whom I had been in company
but a few days before. Parker, although sadly reduced and so feeble that he could not raise his
head from his bosom, was not so far gone as the other two. He suffered with great patience,
making no complaint and endeavoring to inspire us with hope in every manner he could devise.
For myself, although at the commencement of the voyage I had been in bad health and was at
all times of a delicate constitution, I suffered less than any of us, being much less reduced in
frame and retaining my powers of mind in a surprising degree, while the rest were completely
prostrated in intellect and seemed to be brought to a species of second childhood, generally
simpering in their expressions, with idiotic smiles, and uttering the most absurd platitudes.
At intervals, however, they would appear to revive suddenly, as if inspired all at once with a
consciousness of their condition, when they would spring upon their feet in a momentary
flash of vigor and speak, for a short period, of their prospects in a manner altogether rational,
*Latin: “madness from drinking.” FPW

although full of the most intense despair. It is possible, however, that my companions may
have entertained the same opinion of their own condition as I did of mine, and that I may
have unwittingly been guilty of the same extravagances and imbecilities as themselves—this is
a matter which cannot be determined.
About noon Parker declared that he saw land off the larboard quarter, and it was with the
utmost difficulty I could restrain him from plunging into the sea with the view of swimming
toward it. Peters and Augustus took little notice of what he said, being apparently wrapped up
in moody contemplation. Upon looking in the direction pointed out, I could not perceive the
faintest appearance of the shore—indeed, I was too well aware that we were far from any land
to indulge in a hope of that nature. It was a long time, nevertheless, before I could convince
Parker of his mistake. He then burst into a flood of tears, weeping like a child with loud cries
and sobs for two or three hours, when, becoming exhausted, he fell asleep.
Peters and Augustus now made several ineffectual efforts to swallow portions of the
leather. I advised them to chew it and spit it out; but they were too excessively debilitated to be
able to follow my advice. I continued to chew pieces of it at intervals, and found some relief
from so doing; my chief distress was for water, and I was only prevented from taking a draft
from the sea by remembering the horrible consequences which thus have resulted to others who
were similarly situated with ourselves.
The day wore on in this manner, when I suddenly discovered a sail to the eastward and
on our larboard bow. She appeared to be a large ship and was coming nearly athwart us, being
probably twelve or fifteen miles distant. None of my companions had as yet discovered her, and
I forbore to tell them of her for the present, lest we might again be disappointed of relief. At
length, upon her getting nearer, I saw distinctly that she was heading immediately for us with
her light sails filled. I could now contain myself no longer and pointed her out to my fellow
sufferers. They immediately sprang to their feet, again indulging in the most extravagant dem-
onstrations of joy, weeping, laughing in an idiotic manner, jumping, stamping upon the deck,
tearing their hair, and praying and cursing by turns. I was so affected by their conduct, as well
as by what I considered a sure prospect of deliverance, that I could not refrain from joining in
with their madness and gave way to the impulses of my gratitude and ecstasy by lying and roll-
ing on the deck, clapping my hands, shouting, and other similar acts, until I was suddenly called
to my recollection, and once more to the extreme of human misery and despair, by perceiving
the ship all at once with her stern fully presented toward us and steering in a direction nearly
opposite to that in which I had at first perceived her.
It was some time before I could induce my poor companions to believe that this sad
reverse in our prospects had actually taken place. They replied to all my assertions with a stare
and a gesture implying that they were not to be deceived by such misrepresentations. The con-
duct of Augustus most sensibly affected me. In spite of all I could say or do to the contrary, he
persisted in saying that the ship was rapidly nearing us, and in making preparations to go on
board of her. Some seaweed floating by the brig, he maintained that it was the ship’s boat, and
endeavored to throw himself upon it, howling and shrieking in the most heartrending manner,
when I forcibly restrained him from thus casting himself into the sea.

Having become in some degree pacified, we continued to watch the ship until we finally
lost sight of her, the weather becoming hazy with a light breeze springing up. As soon as she
was entirely gone, Parker turned suddenly toward me with an expression of countenance which
made me shudder. There was about him an air of self-possession which I had not noticed in
him until now, and before he opened his lips my heart told me what he would say. He pro-
posed, in a few words, that one of us should die to preserve the existence of the others.
12
I had, for some time past, dwelt upon the prospect of our being reduced to this last horrible
extremity, and had secretly made up my mind to suffer death in any shape or under any circum-
stances rather than resort to such a course. Nor was this resolution in any degree weakened by
the present intensity of hunger under which I labored. The proposition had not been heard by
either Peters or Augustus. I therefore took Parker aside, and mentally praying to God for power
to dissuade him from the horrible purpose he entertained, I expostulated with him for a long
time and in the most supplicating manner, begging him in the name of everything which he
held sacred, and urging him by every species of argument which the extremity of the case sug-
gested, to abandon the idea and not to mention it to either of the other two.
He heard all I said without attempting to controvert any of my arguments, and I had
begun to hope that he would be prevailed upon to do as I desired. But when I had ceased
speaking, he said that he knew very well all I had said was true, and that to resort to such a
course was the most horrible alternative which could enter into the mind of man; but that he
had now held out as long as human nature could be sustained; that it was unnecessary for all
to perish, when, by the death of one, it was possible and even probable that the rest might be
finally preserved; adding that I might save myself the trouble of trying to turn him from his
purpose, his mind having been thoroughly made up on the subject even before the appearance
of the ship, and that only her heaving in sight had prevented him from mentioning his inten-
tion at an earlier period.
I now begged him, if he would not be prevailed upon to abandon his design, at least
to defer it for another day, when some vessel might come to our relief; again reiterating every
argument I could devise, and which I thought likely to have influence with one of his rough
nature. He said, in reply, that he had not spoken until the very last possible moment, that he
could exist no longer without sustenance of some kind, and that therefore in another day his
suggestion would be too late, as regarded himself at least.
Finding that he was not to be moved by anything I could say in a mild tone, I now as-
sumed a different demeanor and told him that he must be aware I had suffered less than any
of us from our calamities; that my health and strength, consequently, were at that moment far
better than his own, or than that either of Peters or Augustus; in short, that I was in a condi-
tion to have my own way by force if I found it necessary; and that, if he attempted in any
manner to acquaint the others with his bloody and cannibal designs, I would not hesitate to
throw him into the sea. Upon this he immediately seized me by the throat and, drawing a knife,

made several ineffectual efforts to stab me in the stomach, an atrocity which his excessive debil-
ity alone prevented him from accomplishing. In the meantime, being roused to a high pitch
of anger, I forced him to the vessel’s side with the full intention of throwing him overboard.
He was saved from his fate, however, by the interference of Peters, who now approached and
separated us, asking the cause of the disturbance. This Parker told before I could find means
in any manner to prevent him.
The effect of his words was even more terrible than what I had anticipated. Both Augus-
tus and Peters, who, it seems, had long secretly entertained the same fearful idea which Parker
had been merely the first to broach, joined with him in his design and insisted upon its being
immediately carried into effect. I had calculated that one at least of the two former would be
found still possessed of sufficient strength of mind to side with myself in resisting any attempt
to execute so dreadful a purpose; and, with the aid of either one of them, I had no fear of
being able to prevent its accomplishment. Being disappointed in this expectation, it became
absolutely necessary that I should attend to my own safety, as a further resistance on my part
might possibly be considered by men in their frightful condition a sufficient excuse for refusing
me fair play in the tragedy that I knew would speedily be enacted.
I now told them I was willing to submit to the proposal, merely requesting a delay of
about one hour in order that the fog which had gathered around us might have an opportunity
of lifting, when it was possible that the ship we had seen might be again in sight. After great
difficulty I obtained from them a promise to wait thus long; and, as I had anticipated (a breeze
rapidly coming in), the fog lifted before the hour had expired, when, no vessel appearing in
sight, we prepared to draw lots.
It is with extreme reluctance that I dwell upon the appalling scene which ensued; a scene
which, with its minutest details, no after events have been able to efface in the slightest degree
from my memory and whose stern recollection will embitter every future moment of my ex-
istence. Let me run over this portion of my narrative with as much haste as the nature of the
events to be spoken of will permit. The only method we could devise for the terrific lottery, in
which we were to take each a chance, was that of drawing straws. Small splinters of wood were
made to answer our purpose, and it was agreed that I should be the holder. I retired to one end
of the hulk, while my poor companions silently took up their station in the other with their
backs turned toward me. The bitterest anxiety which I endured at any period of this fearful
drama was while I occupied myself in the arrangement of the lots. There are few conditions
into which man can possibly fall where he will not feel a deep interest in the preservation of
his existence, an interest momentarily increasing with the frailness of the tenure by which that
existence may be held. But now that the silent, definite, and stern nature of the business in
which I was engaged (so different from the tumultuous dangers of the storm or the gradually
approaching horrors of famine) allowed me to reflect on the few chances I had of escaping the
most appalling of deaths—a death for the most appalling of purposes—every particle of that
energy which had so long buoyed me up departed like feathers before the wind, leaving me a
helpless prey to the most abject and pitiable terror. I could not, at first, even summon up suf-
ficient strength to tear and fit together the small splinters of wood, my fingers absolutely refus-
ing their office and my knees knocking violently against each other. My mind ran over rapidly

a thousand absurd projects by which to avoid becoming a partner in the awful speculation. I
thought of falling on my knees to my companions and entreating them to let me escape this
necessity; of suddenly rushing upon them and, by putting one of them to death, of rendering
the decision by lot useless—in short, of everything but of going through with the matter I had
in hand. At last, after wasting a long time in this imbecile conduct, I was recalled to my senses
by the voice of Parker, who urged me to relieve them at once from the terrible anxiety they
were enduring. Even then I could not bring myself to arrange the splinters upon the spot, but
thought over every species of finesse by which I could trick some one of my fellow sufferers
to draw the short straw, as it had been agreed that whoever drew the shortest of four splinters
from my hand was to die for the preservation of the rest. Before any one condemn me for this
apparent heartlessness, let him be placed in a situation precisely similar to my own.
At length delay was no longer possible, and with a heart almost bursting from my bosom,
I advanced to the region of the forecastle where my companions were awaiting me. I held out
my hand with the splinters, and Peters immediately drew. He was free—his, at least, was not the
shortest; and there was now another chance against my escape. I summoned up all my strength
and passed the lots to Augustus. He also drew immediately, and he also was free; and now,
whether I should live or die, the chances were no more than precisely even. At this moment
all the fierceness of the tiger possessed my bosom, and I felt toward my poor fellow creature,
Parker, the most intense, the most diabolical hatred. But the feeling did not last; and, at length,
with a convulsive shudder and closed eyes, I held out the two remaining splinters toward him.
It was full five minutes before he could summon resolution to draw, during which period of
heartrending suspense I never once opened my eyes. Presently one of the two lots was quickly
drawn from my hand. The decision was then over, yet I knew not whether it was for me or
against me. No one spoke and still I dared not satisfy myself by looking at the splinter I held.
Peters at length took me by the hand, and I forced myself to look up, when I immediately saw
by the countenance of Parker that I was safe and that he it was who had been doomed to suffer.
Gasping for breath, I fell senseless to the deck.
I recovered from my swoon in time to behold the consummation of the tragedy in the
death of him who had been chiefly instrumental in bringing it about. He made no resistance
whatever and was stabbed in the back by Peters, when he fell instantly dead. I must not dwell
upon the fearful repast which immediately ensued. Such things may be imagined, but words
have no power to impress the mind with the exquisite horror of their reality. Let it suffice to say
that, having in some measure appeased the raging thirst which consumed us by the blood of the
victim, and having by common consent taken off the hands, feet, and head, throwing them, to-
gether with the entrails, into the sea, we devoured the rest of the body, piecemeal, during the four
ever memorable days of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth of the month.
On the nineteenth, there coming on a smart shower which lasted fifteen or twenty min-
utes, we contrived to catch some water by means of a sheet which had been fished up from the
cabin by our drag just after the gale. The quantity we took in all did not amount to more than
half a gallon; but even this scanty allowance supplied us with comparative strength and hope.
On the twenty-first we were again reduced to the last necessity. The weather still re-
mained warm and pleasant with occasional fogs and light breezes, most usually from N. to W.

On the twenty-second, as we were sitting close huddled together, gloomily revolving over
our lamentable condition, there flashed through my mind all at once an idea which inspired me
with a bright gleam of hope. I remembered that, when the foremast had been cut away, Peters,
being in the windward chains, passed one of the axes into my hand, requesting me to put it, if
possible, in a place of security, and that a few minutes before the last heavy sea struck the brig
and filled her I had taken this axe into the forecastle and laid it in one of the larboard berths.
I now thought it possible that, by getting at this axe, we might cut through the deck over the
storeroom, and thus readily supply ourselves with provisions.
When I communicated this object to my companions, they uttered a feeble shout of joy,
and we all proceeded forthwith to the forecastle. The difficulty of descending here was greater
than that of going down in the cabin, the opening being much smaller, for it will be remembered
that the whole framework about the cabin companion hatch had been carried away, whereas the
forecastle way, being a simple hatch of only about three feet square, had remained uninjured. I
did not hesitate, however, to attempt the descent; and a rope being fastened round my body as
before, I plunged boldly in feet foremost, made my way quickly to the berth, and at the very first
attempt brought up the axe. It was hailed with the most ecstatic joy and triumph, and the ease
with which it had been obtained was regarded as an omen of our ultimate preservation.
We now commenced cutting at the deck with all the energy of rekindled hope, Peters
and myself taking the axe by turns, Augustus’s wounded arm not permitting him to aid us in
any degree. As we were still so feeble as to be scarcely able to stand unsupported, and could
consequently work but a minute or two without resting, it soon became evident that many long
hours would be requisite to accomplish our task—that is, to cut an opening sufficiently large
to admit of a free access to the storeroom. This consideration, however, did not discourage
us, and working all night by the light of the moon, we succeeded in effecting our purpose by
daybreak on the morning of the twenty-third.
Peters now volunteered to go down, and having made all arrangements as before, he
descended and soon returned, bringing up with him a small jar, which, to our great joy,
proved to be full of olives. Having shared these among us, and devoured them with the great-
est avidity, we proceeded to let him down again. This time he succeeded beyond our utmost
expectations, returning instantly with a large ham and a bottle of Madeira wine. Of the latter
we each took a moderate sup, having learned by experience the pernicious consequences of
indulging too freely. The ham, except about two pounds near the bone, was not in a condi-
tion to be eaten, having been entirely spoiled by the salt water. The sound part was divided
among us. Peters and Augustus, not being able to restrain their appetite, swallowed theirs
upon the instant; but I was more cautious and ate but a small portion of mine, dreading the
thirst which I knew would ensue. We now rested a while from our labors, which had been
intolerably severe.
By noon, feeling somewhat strengthened and refreshed, we again renewed our attempt at
getting up provisions, Peters and myself going down alternately and always with more or less
success, until sundown. During this interval we had the good fortune to bring up, altogether,
four more small jars of olives, another ham, a carboy containing nearly three gallons of excel-
lent Cape Madeira wine, and, what gave us still more delight, a small tortoise of the Galapagos

breed, several of which had been taken on board by Captain Barnard, as the Grampus was leaving
port, from the schooner Mary Pitts, just returned from a sealing voyage in the Pacific.
In a subsequent portion of this narrative I shall have frequent occasion to mention this
species of tortoise. It is found principally, as most of my readers may know, in the group of
islands called the Galapagos, which, indeed, derive their name from the animal—the Spanish
word galapago meaning a freshwater terrapin. From the peculiarity of their shape and action
they have been sometimes called the elephant tortoise. They are frequently found of an
enormous size. I have myself seen several which would weigh from twelve to fifteen hundred
pounds, although I do not remember that any navigator speaks of having seen them weigh-
ing more than eight hundred. Their appearance is singular, and even disgusting. Their steps
are very slow, measured, and heavy, their bodies being carried about a foot from the ground.
Their neck is long and exceedingly slender; from eighteen inches to two feet is a very com-
mon length, and I killed one where the distance from the shoulder to the extremity of the
head was no less than three feet ten inches. The head has a striking resemblance to that of a
serpent. They can exist without food for an almost incredible length of time, instances having
been known where they have been thrown into the hold of a vessel and lain two years without
nourishment of any kind—being as fat and, in every respect, in as good order at the expira-
tion of the time as when they were first put in. In one particular these extraordinary animals
bear a resemblance to the dromedary, or camel of the desert. In a bag at the root of the neck
they carry with them a constant supply of water. In some instances, upon killing them after
a full year’s deprivation of all nourishment, as much as three gallons of perfectly sweet and
fresh water have been found in their bags. Their food is chiefly wild parsley and celery, with
purslane, sea kelp, and prickly pears, upon which latter vegetable they thrive wonderfully, a
great quantity of it being usually found on the hillsides near the shore wherever the animal
itself is discovered. They are excellent and highly nutritious food and have, no doubt, been
the means of preserving the lives of thousands of seamen employed in the whale fishery and
other pursuits in the Pacific.
The one which we had the good fortune to bring up from the storeroom was not of
a large size, weighing probably sixty-five or seventy pounds. It was a female and in excellent
condition, being exceedingly fat and having more than a quart of limpid and sweet water in its
bag. This was indeed a treasure, and falling on our knees with one accord, we returned fervent
thanks to God for so seasonable a relief.
We had great difficulty in getting the animal up through the opening, as its struggles
were fierce and its strength prodigious. It was upon the point of making its escape from Peters’s
grasp and slipping back into the water, when Augustus, throwing a rope with a slipknot around
its throat, held it up in this manner until I jumped into the hole by the side of Peters, and as-
sisted him in lifting it out.
The water we drew carefully from the bag into the jug, which, it will be remembered, had
been brought up before from the cabin. Having done this, we broke off the neck of a bottle
so as to form, with the cork, a kind of glass, holding not quite half a gill. We then each drank
one of these measures full and resolved to limit ourselves to this quantity per day as long as it
should hold out.

During the last two or three days, the weather having been dry and pleasant, the bedding
we had obtained from the cabin, as well as our clothing, had become thoroughly dry so that we
passed this night (that of the twenty-third) in comparative comfort, enjoying a tranquil repose
after having supped plentifully on olives and ham with a small allowance of the wine. Being
afraid of losing some of our stores overboard during the night, in the event of a breeze spring-
ing up, we secured them as well as possible with cordage to the fragments of the windlass. Our
tortoise, which we were anxious to preserve alive as long as we could, we threw on its back and
otherwise carefully fastened.
13
July 24th. This morning saw us wonderfully recruited in spirits and strength. Notwithstanding
the perilous situation in which we were still placed, ignorant of our position although certainly
at a great distance from land, without more food than would last us for a fortnight even with
great care, almost entirely without water, and floating about at the mercy of every wind and
wave on the merest wreck in the world, still the infinitely more terrible distresses and dangers
from which we had so lately and so providentially been delivered caused us to regard what we
now endured as but little more than an ordinary evil—so strictly comparative is either good
or ill.
At sunrise we were preparing to renew our attempts at getting up something from the
storeroom, when, a smart shower coming on with some lightning, we turned our attention
to the catching of water by means of the sheet we had used before for this purpose. We had
no other means of collecting the rain than by holding the sheet spread out with one of the
forechain plates in the middle of it. The water, thus conducted to the center, was drained
through into our jug. We had nearly filled it in this manner, when a heavy squall coming on
from the northward obliged us to desist, as the hulk began once more to roll so violently that
we could no longer keep our feet. We now went forward and, lashing ourselves securely to the
remnant of the windlass as before, awaited the event with far more calmness than could have
been anticipated, or would have been imagined possible under the circumstances. At noon
the wind had freshened into a two-reef breeze, and by night into a stiff gale accompanied
with a tremendously heavy swell. Experience having taught us, however, the best method
of arranging our lashings, we weathered this dreary night in tolerable security, although
thoroughly drenched at almost every instant by the sea and in momentary dread of being
washed off. Fortunately, the weather was so warm as to render the water rather grateful than
otherwise.
July 25th. This morning the gale had diminished to a mere ten-knot breeze, and the sea
had gone down with it so considerably that we were able to keep ourselves dry upon the deck.
To our great grief, however, we found that two jars of our olives, as well as the whole of our
ham, had been washed overboard, in spite of the careful manner in which they had been fas-
tened. We determined not to kill the tortoise as yet and contented ourselves, for the present,
with a breakfast on a few of the olives and a measure of water each, which latter we mixed, half

and half, with wine, finding great relief and strength from the mixture, without the distressing
intoxication which had ensued upon drinking the port. The sea was still far too rough for the
renewal of our efforts at getting up provisions from the storeroom. Several articles, of no im-
portance to us in our present situation, floated up through the opening during the day and were
immediately washed overboard. We also now observed that the hulk lay more along than ever,
so that we could not stand an instant without lashing ourselves. On this account we passed a
gloomy and uncomfortable day. At noon the sun appeared to be nearly vertical, and we had no
doubt that we had been driven down by the long succession of northward and northwesterly
winds into the near vicinity of the equator. Toward evening saw several sharks and were some-
what alarmed by the audacious manner in which an enormously large one approached us. At
one time, a lurch throwing the deck very far beneath the water, the monster actually swam in
upon us, floundering for some moments just over the companion hatch and striking Peters vio-
lently with his tail. A heavy sea at length hurled him overboard, much to our relief. In moderate
weather we might have easily captured him.
July 26th. This morning, the wind having greatly abated and the sea not being very rough,
we determined to renew our exertions in the storeroom. After a great deal of hard labor during
the whole day, we found that nothing further was to be expected from this quarter, the parti-
tions of the room having been stove during the night and its contents swept into the hold. This
discovery, as may be supposed, filled us with despair.
July 27th. The sea nearly smooth, with a light wind and still from the northward and
westward. The sun coming out hotly in the afternoon, we occupied ourselves in drying our
clothes. Found great relief from thirst, and much comfort otherwise, by bathing in the sea; in
this, however, we were forced to use great caution, being afraid of sharks, several of which were
seen swimming around the brig during the day.
July 28th. Good weather still. The brig now began to lie along so alarmingly that we feared
she would eventually roll bottom up. Prepared ourselves as well as we could for this emergency,
lashing our tortoise, water jug, and two remaining jars of olives as far as possible over to the
windward, placing them outside the hull below the main chains. The sea very smooth all day,
with little or no wind.
July 29th. A continuance of the same weather. Augustus’s wounded arm began to evince
symptoms of mortification. He complained of drowsiness and excessive thirst but no acute
pain. Nothing could be done for his relief beyond rubbing his wounds with a little of the
vinegar from the olives, and from this no benefit seemed to be experienced. We did everything
in our power for his comfort and trebled his allowance of water.
July 30th. An excessively hot day with no wind. An enormous shark kept close by the hulk
during the whole of the forenoon. We made several unsuccessful attempts to capture him by
means of a noose. Augustus much worse, and evidently sinking as much from want of proper
nourishment as from the effect of his wounds. He constantly prayed to be released from his
sufferings, wishing for nothing but death. This evening we ate the last of our olives and found
the water in our jug so putrid that we could not swallow it at all without the addition of wine.
Determined to kill our tortoise in the morning.

We sat motionless by the corpse during the whole day.
July 31st. After a night of excessive anxiety and fatigue, owing to the position of the hulk,
we set about killing and cutting up our tortoise. He proved to be much smaller than we had
supposed although in good condition—the whole meat about him not amounting to more
than ten pounds. With a view to preserving a portion of this as long as possible, we cut it into
fine pieces and filled with them our three remaining olive jars and the wine bottle (all of which
had been kept), pouring in afterward the vinegar from the olives. In this manner we put away
about three pounds of the tortoise, intending not to touch it until we had consumed the rest.
We concluded to restrict ourselves to about four ounces of the meat per day; the whole would
thus last us thirteen days. A brisk shower, with severe thunder and lightning, came on about
dusk but lasted so short a time that we only succeeded in catching about half a pint of water.
The whole of this, by common consent, was given to Augustus, who now appeared to be in the
last extremity. He drank the water from the sheet as we caught it (we holding it above him as
he lay so as to let it run into his mouth), for we had now nothing left capable of holding water,
unless we had chosen to empty out our wine from the carboy or the stale water from the jug.
Either of these expedients would have been resorted to had the shower lasted.
The sufferer seemed to derive but little benefit from the draft. His arm was completely
black from the wrist to the shoulder and his feet were like ice. We expected every moment to
see him breathe his last. He was frightfully emaciated; so much so that, although he weighed
a hundred and twenty-seven pounds upon his leaving Nantucket, he now did not weigh more

than forty or fifty at the farthest. His eyes were sunk far in his head, being scarcely perceptible, and
the skin of his cheeks hung so loosely as to prevent his masticating any food, or even swallow-
ing any liquid, without great difficulty.
August 1st. A continuance of the same calm weather with an oppressively hot sun. Suffered
exceedingly from thirst, the water in the jug being absolutely putrid and swarming with vermin.
We contrived, nevertheless, to swallow a portion of it by mixing it with wine—our thirst, how-
ever, was but little abated. We found more relief by bathing in the sea, but could not avail our-
selves of this expedient except at long intervals, on account of the continual presence of sharks.
We now saw clearly that Augustus could not be saved, that he was evidently dying. We could do
nothing to relieve his sufferings, which appeared to be great. About twelve o’clock he expired
in strong convulsions and without having spoken for several hours. His death filled us with the
most gloomy forebodings, and had so great an effect upon our spirits that we sat motionless
by the corpse during the whole day and never addressed each other except in a whisper. It was
not until some time after dark that we took courage to get up and throw the body overboard. It
was then loathsome beyond expression and so far decayed that, as Peters attempted to lift it, an
entire leg came off in his grasp. As the mass of putrefaction slipped over the vessel’s side into
the water, the glare of phosphoric light with which it was surrounded plainly discovered to us
seven or eight large sharks, the clashing of whose horrible teeth, as their prey was torn to pieces
among them, might have been heard at the distance of a mile. We shrunk within ourselves in
the extremity of horror at the sound.
August 2nd. The same fearfully calm and hot weather. The dawn found us in a state of
pitiable dejection as well as bodily exhaustion. The water in the jug was now absolutely use-
less, being a thick gelatinous mass; nothing but frightful-looking worms mingled with slime.
We threw it out, and washed the jug well in the sea, afterward pouring a little vinegar in it
from our bottles of pickled tortoise. Our thirst could now scarcely be endured, and we tried
in vain to relieve it by wine, which seemed only to add fuel to the flame and excited us to a
high degree of intoxication. We afterward endeavored to relieve our sufferings by mixing the
wine with seawater, but this instantly brought about the most violent retchings, so that we
never again attempted it. During the whole day we anxiously sought an opportunity of bath-
ing, but to no purpose; for the hulk was now entirely besieged on all sides with sharks—no
doubt the identical monsters who had devoured our poor companion on the evening before
and who were in momentary expectation of another similar feast. This circumstance occa-
sioned us the most bitter regret and filled us with the most depressing and melancholy fore-
bodings. We had experienced indescribable relief in bathing, and to have this resource cut off
in so frightful a manner was more than we could bear. Nor, indeed, were we altogether free
from the apprehension of immediate danger, for the least slip or false movement would have
thrown us at once within reach of these voracious fish, who frequently thrust themselves di-
rectly upon us, swimming up to leeward. No shouts or exertions on our part seemed to alarm
them. Even when one of the largest was struck with an axe by Peters and much wounded,
he persisted in his attempts to push in where we were. A cloud came up at dusk, but, to our
extreme anguish, passed over without discharging itself. It is quite impossible to conceive our

sufferings from thirst at this period. We passed a sleepless night, both on this account and
through dread of the sharks.
August 3rd. No prospect of relief and the brig lying still more and more along, so that
now we could not maintain a footing upon deck at all. Busied ourselves in securing our wine
and tortoise meat, so that we might not lose them in the event of our rolling over. Got out
two stout spikes from the fore chains and, by means of the axe, drove them into the hull to
windward within a couple of feet of the water, this not being very far from the keel as we were
nearly upon our beam-ends. To these spikes we now lashed our provisions, as being more se-
cure than their former position beneath the chains. Suffered great agony from thirst during the
whole day—no chance of bathing on account of the sharks, which never left us for a moment.
Found it impossible to sleep.
August 4th. A little before daybreak we perceived that the hulk was heeling over and
aroused ourselves to prevent being thrown off by the movement. At first the roll was slow and
gradual, and we contrived to clamber over to windward very well, having taken the precaution
to leave ropes hanging from the spikes we had driven in for the provisions. But we had not
calculated sufficiently upon the acceleration of the impetus, for presently the heel became too
violent to allow of our keeping pace with it; and before either of us knew what was to happen,
we found ourselves hurled furiously into the sea and struggling several fathoms beneath the
surface, with the huge hull immediately above us.
In going under the water I had been obliged to let go my hold upon the rope; and finding
that I was completely beneath the vessel and my strength utterly exhausted, I scarcely made a
struggle for life and resigned myself, in a few seconds, to die. But here again I was deceived, not
having taken into consideration the natural rebound of the hull to windward. The whirl of the
water upward, which the vessel occasioned in rolling partially back, brought me to the surface
still more violently than I had been plunged beneath. Upon coming up, I found myself about
twenty yards from the hulk, as near as I could judge. She was lying keel up, rocking furiously
from side to side, and the sea in all directions around was much agitated and full of strong
whirlpools. I could see nothing of Peters. An oil cask was floating within a few feet of me, and
various other articles from the brig were scattered about.
My principal terror was now on account of the sharks, which I knew to be in my vicinity.
In order to deter these, if possible, from approaching me, I splashed the water vigorously with
both hands and feet as I swam toward the hulk, creating a body of foam. I have no doubt that
to this expedient, simple as it was, I was indebted for my preservation; for the sea all around
the brig, just before her rolling over, was so crowded with these monsters that I must have been,
and really was, in actual contact with some of them during my progress. By great good fortune,
however, I reached the side of the vessel in safety, although so utterly weakened by the violent
exertion I had used that I should never have been able to get upon it but for the timely assis-
tance of Peters, who now, to my great joy, made his appearance (having scrambled up to the
keel from the opposite side of the hull) and threw me the end of a rope—one of those which
had been attached to the spikes.
Having barely escaped this danger, our attention was now directed to the dreadful im-
minence of another, that of absolute starvation. Our whole stock of provisions had been swept

overboard in spite of all our care in securing it; and seeing no longer the remotest possibility of
obtaining more, we gave way both of us to despair, weeping aloud like children and neither of
us attempting to offer consolation to the other. Such weakness can scarcely be conceived, and
to those who have never been similarly situated will, no doubt, appear unnatural; but it must be
remembered that our intellects were so entirely disordered by the long course of privation and
terror to which we had been subjected, that we could not justly be considered, at that period,
in the light of rational beings. In subsequent perils, nearly as great if not greater, I bore up
with fortitude against all the evils of my situation, and Peters, it will be seen, evinced a stoical
philosophy nearly as incredible as his present childlike supineness and imbecility—the mental
condition made the difference.
The overturning of the brig, even with the consequent loss of the wine and turtle, would
not, in fact, have rendered our situation more deplorable than before, except for the disappear-
ance of the bedclothes by which we had been hitherto enabled to catch rainwater, and of the
jug in which we had kept it when caught; for we found the whole bottom, from within two
or three feet of the bends as far as the keel, together with the keel itself, thickly covered with large
barnacles, which proved to be excellent and highly nutritious food. Thus, in two important respects, the ac-
cident we had so greatly dreaded proved a benefit rather than an injury; it had opened to us a
supply of provisions, which we could not have exhausted, using it moderately, in a month; and
it had greatly contributed to our comfort as regards position, we being much more at ease and
in infinitely less danger than before.
The difficulty, however, of now obtaining water blinded us to all the benefits of the
change in our condition. That we might be ready to avail ourselves, as far as possible, of any
shower which might fall, we took off our shirts to make use of them as we had of the sheets—
not hoping, of course, to get more in this way, even under the most favorable circumstances,
than half a gill at a time. No signs of a cloud appeared during the day, and the agonies of our
thirst were nearly intolerable. At night Peters obtained about an hour’s disturbed sleep, but my
intense sufferings would not permit me to close my eyes for a single moment.
August 5th. Today, a gentle breeze springing up carried us through a vast quantity of sea-
weed, among which we were so fortunate as to find eleven small crabs which afforded us several
delicious meals. Their shells being quite soft, we ate them entire and found that they irritated
our thirst far less than the barnacles. Seeing no trace of sharks among the seaweed, we also ven-
tured to bathe, and remained in the water for four or five hours, during which we experienced
a very sensible diminution of our thirst. Were greatly refreshed and spent the night somewhat
more comfortably than before, both of us snatching a little sleep.
August 6th. This day we were blessed by a brisk and continual rain, lasting from about
noon until after dark. Bitterly did we now regret the loss of our jug and carboy, for, in spite of
the little means we had of catching the water, we might have filled one, if not both of them. As
it was, we contrived to satisfy the cravings of thirst by suffering the shirts to become saturated
and then wringing them so as to let the grateful fluid trickle into our mouths. In this occupa-
tion we passed the entire day.
August 7th. Just at daybreak we both at the same instant descried a sail to the eastward
and evidently coming toward us! We hailed the glorious sight with a long, although feeble shout of

rapture and began instantly to make every signal in our power by flaring the shirts in the air,
leaping as high as our weak condition would permit, and even by hallooing with all the strength
of our lungs, although the vessel could not have been less than fifteen miles distant. However,
she still continued to near our hulk, and we felt that, if she but held her present course, she
must eventually come so close as to perceive us. In about an hour after we first discovered her,
we could clearly see the people on her decks. She was a long, low, and rakish-looking topsail
schooner, with a black ball in her foretopsail, and had, apparently, a full crew. We now became
alarmed, for we could hardly imagine it possible that she did not observe us, and were appre-
hensive that she meant to leave us to perish as we were—an act of fiendish barbarity, which,
however incredible it may appear, has been repeatedly perpetuated at sea, under circumstances
very nearly similar and by beings who were regarded as belonging to the human species.* In
this instance, however, by the mercy of God, we were destined to be most happily deceived; for,
presently we were aware of a sudden commotion on the deck of the stranger, who immediately
afterward ran up a British flag and, hauling her wind, bore up directly upon us. In half an hour
more we found ourselves in her cabin. She proved to be the Jane Guy of Liverpool, Captain Guy,
bound on a sealing and trading voyage to the South Seas and Pacific.
14
The Jane Guy was a fine-looking topsail schooner of a hundred and eighty tons burden. She was
unusually sharp in the bows and on a wind in moderate weather the fastest sailor I have ever
seen. Her qualities, however, as a rough-sea boat were not so good, and her draft of water was
by far too great for the trade to which she was destined. For this peculiar service a larger vessel,
and one of a light proportionate draft, is desirable—say a vessel of from three to three hun-
dred and fifty tons. She should be barque rigged and in other respects of a different construc-
*The case of the brig Polly of Boston is one so much in point, and her fate in many respects so remarkably similar
to our own, that I cannot forbear alluding to it here. This vessel, of one hundred and thirty tons burden, sailed
from Boston, with a cargo of lumber and provisions, for Santa Croix on the twelfth of December, 1811, under the
command of Captain Casneau. There were eight souls on board besides the captain—the mate, four seamen, and
the cook, together with a Mr. Hunt, and a Negro girl belonging to him. On the fifteenth, having cleared the shoal
of Georges, she sprang a leak in a gale of wind from the southeast and was finally capsized, but, the mast going
by the board, she afterward righted. They remained in this situation, without fire and with very little provisions,
for the period of one hundred and ninety-one days (from December the fifteenth to June the twentieth) when Captain
Casneau and Samuel Badger, the only survivors, were taken off the wreck by the Fame of Hull, Captain Feath-
erstone, bound home from Rio de Janeiro. When picked up they were in latitude 28 N., longitude 13 W., having
drifted above two thousand miles. On the ninth of July the Fame fell in with the brig Dromeo, Captain Perkins, who landed
the two sufferers in Kennebeck. The narrative from which we gather these details ends in the following words:
“It is natural to inquire how they could float such a vast distance, upon the most frequented part of the Atlantic, and
not be discovered all this time. They were passed by more than a dozen sail, one of which came so nigh them that they could distinctly
see the people on deck and on the rigging looking at them; but, to the inexpressible disappointment of the starving and freezing men, they stifled
the dictates of compassion, hoisted sail, and cruelly abandoned them to their fate.”

tion from the usual south sea ships. It is absolutely necessary that she should be well armed.
She should have, say, ten or twelve twelve-pound carronades and two or three long twelves, with
brass blunderbusses and watertight arm chests for each top. Her anchors and cables should be
of far greater strength than is required for any other species of trade, and above all, her crew
should be numerous and efficient—not less, for such a vessel as I have described, than fifty
or sixty able-bodied men. The Jane Guy had a crew of thirty-five, all able seamen, besides the
captain and mate, but she was not altogether as well armed or otherwise equipped as a navigator
acquainted with the difficulties and dangers of the trade could have desired.
Captain Guy was a gentleman of great urbanity of manner and of considerable ex-
perience in the southern traffic, to which he had devoted a great portion of his life. He was
deficient, however, in energy and, consequently, in that spirit of enterprise which is here so
absolutely requisite. He was part owner of the vessel in which he sailed and was invested with
discretionary powers to cruise in the South Seas for any cargo which might come most readily
to hand. He had on board, as usual in such voyages, beads, looking glasses, tinder works, axes,
hatchets, saws, adzes, planes, chisels, gouges, gimlets, files, spokeshaves, rasps, hammers, nails,
knives, scissors, razors, needles, thread, crockery ware, calico, trinkets, and other similar articles.
The schooner sailed from Liverpool on the tenth of July, crossed the Tropic of Cancer
on the twenty-fifth in longitude twenty degrees west, and reached Sal, one of the Cape Verde
Islands, on the twenty-ninth, where she took in salt and other necessaries for the voyage. On
the third of August, she left the Cape Verdes and steered southwest, stretching over toward the
coast of Brazil so as to cross the equator between the meridians of twenty-eight and thirty
degrees west longitude. This is the course usually taken by vessels bound from Europe to the
Cape of Good Hope, or by that route to the East Indies. By proceeding thus they avoid the
calms and strong contrary currents which continually prevail on the coast of Guinea, while,
in the end, it is found to be the shortest track as westerly winds are never wanting afterward
by which to reach the Cape. It was Captain Guy’s intention to make his first stoppage at Ker-
guelen’s Land—I hardly know for what reason. On the day we were picked up the schooner was
off Cape São Roque in longitude 31 W., so that, when found, we had drifted probably, from
north to south, not less than five-and-twenty degrees.
On board the Jane Guy we were treated with all the kindness our distressed situation de-
manded. In about a fortnight, during which time we continued steering to the southeast with
gentle breezes and fine weather, both Peters and myself recovered entirely from the effects of
our late privation and dreadful sufferings, and we began to remember what had passed rather
as a frightful dream from which we had been happily awakened, than as events which had taken
place in sober and naked reality. I have since found that this species of partial oblivion is usual-
ly brought about by sudden transition, whether from joy to sorrow or from sorrow to joy—the
degree of forgetfulness being proportional to the degree of difference in the exchange.12 Thus,
in my own case, I now feel it impossible to realize the full extent of the misery which I endured
during the days spent upon the hulk. The incidents are remembered, but not the feelings which
the incidents elicited at the time of their occurrence. I only know that when they did occur, I
then thought human nature could sustain nothing more of agony.

We continued our voyage for some weeks without any incidents of greater moment than
the occasional meeting with whaling ships and more frequently with the black or right whale,
so called in contradistinction to the spermaceti. These, however, were chiefly found south of
the twenty-fifth parallel. On the sixteenth of September, being in the vicinity of the Cape of
Good Hope, the schooner encountered her first gale of any violence since leaving Liverpool.
In this neighborhood, but more frequently to the south and east of the promontory (we were
to the westward), navigators have often to contend with storms from the northward which
rage with great fury. They always bring with them a heavy sea, and one of their most danger-
ous features is the instantaneous chopping round of the wind, an occurrence almost certain
to take place during the greatest force of the gale. A perfect hurricane will be blowing at one
moment from the northward or northeast, and in the next not a breath of wind will be felt
in that direction, while from the southwest it will come out all at once with a violence almost
inconceivable. A bright spot to the southward is the sure forerunner of the change, and vessels
are thus enabled to take the proper precautions.
It was about six in the morning when the blow came on with a white squall, and as usual
from the northward. By eight it had increased very much and brought down upon us one of the
most tremendous seas I had then ever beheld. Everything had been made as snug as possible,
but the schooner labored excessively and gave evidence of her bad qualities as a sea boat, pitch-
ing her forecastle under at every plunge and with the greatest difficulty struggling up from one
wave before she was buried in another. Just before sunset the bright spot for which we had been
on the lookout made its appearance in the southwest, and in an hour afterward we perceived
the little headsail we carried flapping listlessly against the mast. In two minutes more, in spite
of every preparation, we were hurled on our beam-ends as if by magic, and a perfect wilderness
of foam made a clear breach over us as we lay. The blow from the southwest, however, luck-
ily proved to be nothing more than a squall, and we had the good fortune to right the vessel
without the loss of a spar. A heavy cross sea gave us great trouble for a few hours after this, but
toward morning we found ourselves in nearly as good condition as before the gale. Captain Guy
considered that he had made an escape little less than miraculous.
On the thirteenth of October we came in sight of Prince Edward’s Island, in latitude
46° 53' S., longitude 37° 46' E. Two days afterward we found ourselves near Possession Island
and presently passed the islands of Crozet in latitude 42° 59' S., longitude 48° E. On the
eighteenth we made Kerguelen’s, or Desolation Island, in the southern Indian Ocean and came
to anchor in Christmas Harbor, having four fathoms of water.
This island, or rather group of islands, bears southeast from the Cape of Good Hope
and is distant therefrom nearly eight hundred leagues. It was first discovered in 1772 by the
Baron de Kergulen, or Kerguelen, a Frenchman who, thinking the land to form a portion of
an extensive southern continent, carried home information to that effect, which produced
much excitement at the time. The government, taking the matter up, sent the baron back the
following year for the purpose of giving his new discovery a critical examination, when the
mistake was discovered. In 1777 Captain Cook fell in with the same group and gave to the
principal one the name of Desolation Island, a title which it certainly well deserves. Upon

approaching the land, however, the navigator might be induced to suppose otherwise, as the
sides of most of the hills from September to March are clothed with very brilliant verdure.
This deceitful appearance is caused by a small plant resembling saxifrage, which is abundant,
growing in large patches on a species of crumbling moss. Besides this plant there is scarcely
a sign of vegetation on the island, if we except some coarse rank grass near the harbor, some
lichen, and a shrub which bears resemblance to a cabbage shooting into seed and which has a
bitter and acrid taste.
The face of the country is hilly, although none of the hills can be called lofty. Their tops
are perpetually covered with snow. There are several harbors, of which Christmas Harbor is the
most convenient. It is the first to be met with on the northeast side of the island after passing
Cape François, which forms the northern shore and, by its peculiar shape, serves to distinguish
the harbor. Its projecting point terminates in a high rock, through which is a large hole, form-
ing a natural arch. The entrance is in latitude 48° 40' S., longitude 69° 6' E. Passing in here,
good anchorage may be found under the shelter of several small islands, which form a sufficient
protection from all easterly winds. Proceeding on eastwardly from this anchorage, you come to
Wasp Bay at the head of the harbor. This is a small basin, completely landlocked, into which
you can go with four fathoms and find anchorage in from ten to three, hard clay bottom. A
ship might lie here with her best bower ahead all the year round without risk. To the westward,
at the head of Wasp Bay, is a small stream of excellent water, easily procured.
Some seal of the fur and hair species are still to be found on Kerguelen’s Island, and sea
elephants abound. The feathered tribes are discovered in great numbers. Penguins are very plenti-
ful, and of these there are four different kinds.13 The royal penguin, so called from its size and
beautiful plumage, is the largest. The upper part of the body is usually gray, sometimes of a lilac
tint; the under portion of the purest white imaginable. The head is of a glossy and most brilliant
black, the feet also. The chief beauty of the plumage, however, consists in two broad stripes of
a gold color, which pass along from the head to the breast. The bill is long and either pink or
bright scarlet. These birds walk erect with a stately carriage. They carry their heads high with their
wings drooping like two arms, and as their tails project from their body in a line with the legs, the
resemblance to a human figure is very striking and would be apt to deceive the spectator at a casual
glance or in the gloom of the evening. The royal penguins which we met with on Kerguelen’s Land
were rather larger than a goose. The other kinds are the macaroni, the jackass, and the rookery
penguin. These are much smaller, less beautiful in plumage, and different in other respects.
Besides the penguin many other birds are here to be found, among which may be men-
tioned sea hens, blue petrels, teal, ducks, Port Egmont hens, shags, cape pigeons, the nelly, sea
swallows, terns, seagulls, Mother Carey’s chickens, Mother Carey’s geese, or the great petrel,
and lastly the albatross.
The great petrel is as large as the common albatross and is carnivorous. It is frequently
called the break-bones or osprey petrel. They are not at all shy and, when properly cooked, are
palatable food. In flying they sometimes sail very close to the surface of the water with the
wings expanded, without appearing to move them in the least degree, or make any exertion
with them whatever.

The albatross is one of the largest and fiercest of the south sea birds. It is of the gull
species and takes its prey on the wing, never coming on land except for the purpose of breed-
ing. Between this bird and the penguin the most singular friendship exists. Their nests are
constructed with great uniformity, upon a plan concerted between the two species—that of
the albatross being placed in the center of a little square formed by the nests of four penguins.
Navigators have agreed in calling an assemblage of such encampments a rookery. These rookeries
have been often described, but as my readers may not all have seen these descriptions, and as I
shall have occasion hereafter to speak of the penguin and albatross, it will not be amiss to say
something here of their mode of building and living.
When the season for incubation arrives, the birds assemble in vast numbers and for
some days appear to be deliberating upon the proper course to be pursued. At length they
proceed to action. A level piece of ground is selected, of suitable extent, usually comprising
three or four acres, and situated as near the sea as possible, being still beyond its reach. The
spot is chosen with reference to its evenness of surface, and that is preferred which is the least
encumbered with stones. This matter being arranged, the birds proceed with one accord, and
actuated apparently by one mind, to trace out with mathematical accuracy either a square or
other parallelogram, as may best suit the nature of the ground, and of just sufficient size to ac-
commodate easily all the birds assembled and no more—in this particular seeming determined
upon preventing the access of future stragglers who have not participated in the labor of the
encampment. One side of the place thus marked out runs parallel with the water’s edge, and is
left open for ingress or egress.
Having defined the limits of the rookery, the colony now begin to clear it of every species
of rubbish, picking them up stone by stone and carrying them outside of the lines and close by
them, so as to form a wall on the three inland sides.14 Just within this wall a perfectly level and
smooth walk is formed, from six to eight feet wide and extending around the encampment—
thus serving the purpose of a general promenade.
The next process is to partition out the whole area into small squares exactly equal in
size. This is done by forming narrow paths, very smooth and crossing each other at right angles
throughout the entire extent of the rookery. At each intersection of these paths the nest of an
albatross is constructed, and a penguin’s nest in the center of each square—thus every penguin
is surrounded by four albatrosses and each albatross by a like number of penguins. The pen-
guin’s nest consists of a hole in the earth, very shallow, being only just of sufficient depth to
keep her single egg from rolling. The albatross is somewhat less simple in her arrangements,
erecting a hillock about a foot high and two in diameter. This is made of earth, seaweed, and
shells. On its summit she builds her nest.
The birds take especial care never to leave their nests unoccupied for an instant during
the period of incubation, or, indeed, until the young progeny are sufficiently strong to take care
of themselves. While the male is absent at sea in search of food, the female remains on duty,
and it is only upon the return of her partner that she ventures abroad. The eggs are never left
uncovered at all—while one bird leaves the nest, the other nestling in by its side. This precau-
tion is rendered necessary by the thievish propensities prevalent in the rookery, the inhabitants
making no scruple to purloin each other’s eggs at every good opportunity.

Although there are some rookeries in which the penguin and albatross are the sole
population, yet in most of them a variety of oceanic birds are to be met with, enjoying all
the privileges of citizenship and scattering their nests here and there wherever they can find
room, never interfering, however, with the stations of the larger species. The appearance of
such encampments, when seen from a distance, is exceedingly singular. The whole atmosphere
just above the settlement is darkened with the immense number of the albatross (mingled
with the smaller tribes) which are continually hovering over it, either going to the ocean or
returning home. At the same time a crowd of penguins are to be observed, some passing to
and fro in the narrow alleys and some marching, with the military strut so peculiar to them,
around the general promenade ground which encircles the rookery. In short, survey it as we
will, nothing can be more astonishing than the spirit of reflection evinced by these feathered
beings, and nothing surely can be better calculated to elicit reflection in every well-regulated
human intellect.
On the morning after our arrival in Christmas Harbor the chief mate, Mr. Patterson,
took the boats and (although it was somewhat early in the season) went in search of seal, leav-
ing the captain and a young relation of his on a point of barren land to the westward, they hav-
ing some business, whose nature I could not ascertain, to transact in the interior of the island.
Captain Guy took with him a bottle, in which was a sealed letter, and made his way from the
point on which he was set on shore toward one of the highest peaks in the place. It is probable
that his design was to leave the letter on that height for some vessel which he expected to come
after him. As soon as we lost sight of him we proceeded (Peters and myself being in the mate’s
boat) on our cruise around the coast, looking for seal. In this business we were occupied about
three weeks, examining with great care every nook and corner, not only of Kerguelen’s Land
but of the several small islands in the vicinity. Our labors, however, were not crowned with any
important success. We saw a great many fur seal, but they were exceedingly shy, and with the
greatest exertions, we could only procure three hundred and fifty skins in all. Sea elephants were
abundant, especially on the western coast of the main island, but of these we killed only twenty
and this with great difficulty. On the smaller islands we discovered a good many of the hair seal,
but did not molest them. We returned to the schooner on the eleventh, where we found Captain
Guy and his nephew, who gave a very bad account of the interior, representing it as one of
the most dreary and utterly barren countries in the world. They had remained two nights on
the island, owing to some misunderstanding, on the part of the second mate, in regard to the
sending of a jollyboat from the schooner to take them off.15
15
On the twelfth we made sail from Christmas Harbor, retracing our way to the westward and
leaving Marion Island, one of Crozet’s group, on the larboard. We afterward passed Prince
Edward’s Island, leaving it also on our left; then, steering more to the northward, made, in
fifteen days, the islands of Tristan da Cunha in latitude 37° 8' S., longitude 12° 8' W.
This group, now so well known and which consists of three circular islands, was first dis-
covered by the Portuguese and was visited afterward by the Dutch in 1643 and by the French

in 1767. The three islands together form a triangle and are distant from each other about ten
miles, there being fine open passages between. The land in all of them is very high, especially
in Tristan da Cunha, properly so called. This is the largest of the group, being fifteen miles in
circumference, and so elevated that it can be seen in clear weather at the distance of eighty or
ninety miles. A part of the land toward the north rises more than a thousand feet perpendicu-
larly from the sea. A tableland at this height extends back nearly to the center of the island,
and from this tableland arises a lofty cone like that of Tenerife. The lower half of this cone
is clothed with trees of good size, but the upper region is barren rock, usually hidden among
the clouds and covered with snow during the greater part of the year. There are no shoals or
other dangers about the island, the shores being remarkably bold and the water deep. On the
northwestern coast is a bay with a beach of black sand, where a landing with boats can be eas-
ily effected provided there be a southerly wind. Plenty of excellent water may here be readily
procured; also cod and other fish may be taken with hook and line.
The next island in point of size, and the most westwardly of the group, is that called
the Inaccessible. Its precise situation is 37° 17' S. latitude, longitude 12° 24' W. It is seven
or eight miles in circumference and on all sides presents a forbidding and precipitous aspect.
Its top is perfectly flat, and the whole region is sterile, nothing growing upon it except a few
stunted shrubs.
Nightingale Island, the smallest and most southerly, is in latitude 37° 26' S., longitude
12° 12' W. Off its southern extremity is a high ledge of rocky islets; a few also of a similar
appearance are seen to the northeast. The ground is irregular and sterile, and a deep valley
partially separates it.
The shores of these islands abound, in the proper season, with sea lions, sea elephants,
the hair and fur seal, together with a great variety of oceanic birds. Whales are also plentiful in
their vicinity.16 Owing to the ease with which these various animals were here formerly taken,
the group has been much visited since its discovery. The Dutch and French frequented it at a
very early period. In 1790 Captain Patten, of the ship Industry of Philadelphia, made Tristan
da Cunha, where he remained seven months (from August 1790 to April 1791) for the pur-
pose of collecting sealskins. In this time he gathered no less than five thousand six hundred
and says that he would have had no difficulty in loading a large ship with oil in three weeks.
Upon his arrival he found no quadrupeds with the exception of a few wild goats—the island
now abounds with all our most valuable domestic animals, which have been introduced by
subsequent navigators.
I believe it was not long after Captain Patten’s visit that Captain Colquhoun, of the
American brig Betsey, touched at the largest of the islands for the purpose of refreshment. He
planted onions, potatoes, cabbages, and a great many other vegetables, an abundance of all of
which is now to be met with.
In 1811 a Captain Heywood, in the Nereus, visited Tristan. He found there three Ameri-
cans who were residing upon the islands to prepare sealskins and oil. One of these men was
named Jonathan Lambert, and he called himself the sovereign of the country. He had cleared
and cultivated about sixty acres of land and turned his attention to raising the coffee plant

and sugar cane, with which he had been furnished by the American minister at Rio de Janeiro.
This settlement, however, was finally abandoned, and in 1817 the islands were taken posses-
sion of by the British government, who sent a detachment for that purpose from the Cape
of Good Hope. They did not, however, retain them long; but, upon the evacuation of the
country as a British possession, two or three English families took up their residence there
independently of the government. On the twenty-fifth of March, 1824, the Berwick, Captain
Jeffrey, from London to Van Diemen’s Land, arrived at the place, where they found an Eng-
lishman of the name of Glass, formerly a corporal in the British artillery. He claimed to be
supreme governor of the islands and had under his control twenty-one men and three women.
He gave a very favorable account of the salubrity of the climate and of the productiveness of
the soil. The population occupied themselves chiefly in collecting sealskins and sea elephant
oil, with which they traded to the Cape of Good Hope, Glass owning a small schooner. At
the period of our arrival the governor was still a resident, but his little community had mul-
tiplied, there being fifty-six persons upon Tristan, besides a smaller settlement of seven on
Nightingale Island. We had no difficulty in procuring almost every kind of refreshment which
we required—sheep, hogs, bullocks, rabbits, poultry, goats, fish in great variety, and vegetables
were abundant. Having come to anchor close in with the large island, in eighteen fathoms,
we took all we wanted on board very conveniently. Captain Guy also purchased of Glass five
hundred sealskins and some ivory. We remained here a week, during which the prevailing
winds were from the northward and westward and the weather somewhat hazy. On the fifth
of November we made sail to the southward and westward with the intention of having a
thorough search for a group of islands called the Auroras, respecting whose existence a great
diversity of opinion has existed.
These islands are said to have been discovered as early as 1762 by the commander of the
ship Aurora. In 1790 Captain Manuel de Oyarvido, in the ship Princess belonging to the Royal
Philippine Company, sailed, as he asserts, directly among them. In 1794 the Spanish corvette
Atrevida went with the determination of ascertaining their precise situation, and in a paper
published by the Royal Hydrographical Society of Madrid in the year 1809, the following
language is used respecting this expedition: “The corvette Atrevida practiced in their immediate
vicinity, from the twenty-first to the twenty-seventh of January, all the necessary observations
and measured by chronometers the difference of longitude between these islands and the port
of Soledad in the Malninas.* The islands are three; they are very nearly in the same meridian;
the center one is rather low, and the other two may be seen at nine leagues distance.” The ob-
servations made on board the Atrevida give the following results as the precise situation of each
island. The most northern is in latitude 52° 37' 24" S., longitude 47° 43' 15" W.; the middle
one in latitude 53° 2' 40" S., longitude 47° 55' 15" W.; and the most southern in latitude 53°
15' 22" S., longitude 47° 57' 15" W.
On the twenty-seventh of January, 1820, Captain James Weddell, of the British navy,
sailed from Staten Land also in search of the Auroras. He reports that, having made the most
*Falkland Islands. FPW

diligent search and passed not only immediately over the spots indicated by the commander of
the Atrevida, but in every direction throughout the vicinity of these spots, he could discover no
indication of land. These conflicting statements have induced other navigators to look out for
the islands; and, strange to say, while some have sailed through every inch of sea where they are
supposed to lie without finding them, there have been not a few who declare positively that they
have seen them and even been close in with their shores. It was Captain Guy’s intention to make
every exertion within his power to settle the question so oddly in dispute.*
We kept on our course between the south and west, with variable weather, until the
twentieth of the month, when we found ourselves on the debated ground, being in latitude 53°
15' S., longitude 47° 58' W.—that is to say, very nearly upon the spot indicated as the situa-
tion of the most southern of the group. Not perceiving any sign of land, we continued to the
westward in the parallel of fifty-three degrees south as far as the meridian of fifty degrees west.
We then stood to the north as far as the parallel of fifty-two degrees south, when we turned
to the eastward and kept our parallel by double altitudes, morning and evening, and meridian
altitudes of the planets and moon. Having thus gone eastwardly to the meridian of the western
coast of Georgia, we kept that meridian until we were in the latitude from which we set out.
We then took diagonal courses throughout the entire extent of sea circumscribed, keeping a
lookout constantly at the masthead and repeating our examination with the greatest care for a
period of three weeks, during which the weather was remarkably pleasant and fair with no haze
whatsoever. Of course we were thoroughly satisfied that, whatever islands might have existed
in this vicinity at any former period, no vestige of them remained at the present day. Since my
return home I find that the same ground was traced over with equal care in 1822 by Captain
Johnson, of the American schooner Henry, and by Captain Morrell, in the American schooner
Wasp—in both cases with the same result as in our own.
16
It had been Captain Guy’s original intention, after satisfying himself about the Auroras, to
proceed through the Strait of Magellan and up along the western coast of Patagonia; but
information received at Tristan da Cunha induced him to steer to the southward, in the hope
of falling in with some small islands said to lie about the parallel of 60° S., longitude 41°
20' W. In the event of his not discovering these lands, he designed, should the season prove
favorable, to push on toward the pole. Accordingly, on the twelfth of December, we made sail
in that direction. On the eighteenth we found ourselves about the station indicated by Glass
and cruised for three days in that neighborhood without finding any traces of the islands he
had mentioned. On the twenty-first, the weather being unusually pleasant, we again made sail
to the southward with the resolution of penetrating in that course as far as possible. Before
*Among the vessels which at various times have professed to meet with the Auroras may be mentioned the ship San
Miguel in 1769, the ship Aurora in 1774, the brig Pearl in 1779, and the ship Dolores in 1790. They all agree in giving
the mean latitude fifty-three degrees south.

entering upon this portion of my narrative, it may be as well, for the information of those
readers who have paid little attention to the progress of discovery in these regions, to give
some brief account of the very few attempts at reaching the southern pole which have hith-
erto been made.
That of Captain Cook was the first of which we have any distinct account. In 1772 he
sailed to the south in the Resolution, accompanied by Lieutenant Furneaux in the Adventure. In
December he found himself as far as the fifty-eighth parallel of south latitude and in longitude
26° 57' E. Here he met with narrow fields of ice, about eight or ten inches thick and running
northwest and southeast. This ice was in large cakes, and usually it was packed so closely that
the vessels had great difficulty in forcing a passage. At this period Captain Cook supposed,
from the vast number of birds to be seen and from other indications, that he was in the near
vicinity of land. He kept on to the southward, the weather being exceedingly cold, until he
reached the sixty-fourth parallel in longitude 38° 14' E. Here he had mild weather with gentle
breezes for five days, the thermometer being at thirty-six. In January 1773 the vessels crossed
the Antarctic Circle but did not succeed in penetrating much farther; for, upon reaching lati-
tude 67° 15', they found all farther progress impeded by an immense body of ice, extending
all along the southern horizon as far as the eye could reach. This ice was of every variety—and
some large floes of it, miles in extent, formed a compact mass rising eighteen or twenty feet
above the water. It being late in the season and no hope entertained of rounding these obstruc-
tions, Captain Cook now reluctantly turned to the northward.
In the November following he renewed his search in the antarctic. In latitude 59° 40'
he met with a strong current setting to the southward. In December, when the vessels were in
latitude 67° 31', longitude 142° 54' W., the cold was excessive with heavy gales and fog. Here
also birds were abundant, the albatross, the penguin, and the petrel especially. In latitude 70°
23' some large islands of ice were encountered, and shortly afterward the clouds to the south-
ward were observed to be of a snowy whiteness, indicating the vicinity of field ice. In latitude
71° 10', longitude 106° 54' W., the navigators were stopped, as before, by an immense frozen
expanse which filled the whole area of the southern horizon. The northern edge of this expanse
was ragged and broken, so firmly wedged together as to be utterly impassable and extending
about a mile to the southward. Behind it the frozen surface was comparatively smooth for some
distance, until terminated in the extreme background by gigantic ranges of ice mountains, the
one towering above the other. Captain Cook concluded that this vast field reached the southern
pole or was joined to a continent. Mr. J. N. Reynolds, whose great exertions and perseverance
have at length succeeded in getting set on foot a national expedition, partly for the purpose of
exploring these regions, thus speaks of the attempt of the Resolution: “We are not surprised that
Captain Cook was unable to go beyond 71° 10', but we are astonished that he did attain that
point on the meridian of 106° 54' west longitude. Palmer’s Land lies south of the Shetlands,
latitude sixty-four degrees, and tends to the southward and westward farther than any navigator
has yet penetrated. Cook was standing for this land when his progress was arrested by the ice;
which, we apprehend, must always be the case at that point, and so early in the season as the
sixth of January—and we should not be surprised if a portion of the icy mountains described

was attached to the main body of Palmer’s Land, or to some other portions of land lying
farther to the southward and westward.”
In 1803 Captains Krusenstern and Lisiansky were dispatched by Alexander of Russia for
the purpose of circumnavigating the globe.17 In endeavoring to get south, they made no farther
than 59° 58' in longitude 70° 15' W. They here met with strong currents setting eastwardly.
Whales were abundant, but they saw no ice. In regard to this voyage, Mr. Reynolds observes
that, if Krusenstern had arrived where he did earlier in the season, he must have encountered
ice—it was March when he reached the latitude specified. The winds prevailing, as they do,
from the southward and westward had carried the floes, aided by currents, into that icy region
bounded on the north by Georgia, east by Sandwich Land and the South Orkneys, and west
by the South Shetland Islands.
In 1822 Captain James Weddell, of the British navy, with two very small vessels penetrated
farther to the south than any previous navigator, and this too, without encountering extraordi-
nary difficulties. He states that although he was frequently hemmed in by ice before reaching the
seventy-second parallel, yet, upon attaining it, not a particle was to be discovered, and that, upon
arriving at the latitude of 74° 15', no fields and only three islands of ice were visible. It is some-
what remarkable that, although vast flocks of birds were seen and other usual indications of land,
and although, south of the Shetlands, unknown coasts were observed from the masthead tending
southwardly, Weddell discourages the idea of land existing in the polar regions of the south.
On the eleventh of January, 1823, Captain Benjamin Morrell, of the American schoo-
ner Wasp, sailed from Kerguelen’s Land with a view to penetrating as far south as possible.18
On the first of February he found himself in latitude 64° 52' S., longitude 118° 27' E. The
following passage is extracted from his journal of that date: “The wind soon freshened to an
eleven-knot breeze, and we embraced this opportunity of making to the west; being however
convinced that the farther we went south beyond latitude sixty-four degrees, the less ice was to
be apprehended, we steered a little to the southward, until we crossed the Antarctic Circle and
were in latitude 69° 15' S.19 In this latitude there was no field ice and very few ice islands in sight.”
Under the date of March fourteenth I find also this entry: “The sea was now entirely
free of field ice, and there were not more than a dozen ice islands in sight. At the same time
the temperature of the air and water was at least thirteen degrees higher (more mild) than we
had ever found it between the parallels of sixty and sixty-two south. We were now in latitude
70° 14' S., and the temperature of the air was forty-seven and that of the water forty-four. In
this situation I found the variation to be 14° 27' easterly, per azimuth. . . . I have several times
passed within the Antarctic Circle on different meridians and have uniformly found the tem-
perature, both of the air and the water, to become more and more mild the farther I advanced
beyond the sixty-fifth degree of south latitude, and that the variation decreases in the same
proportion. While north of this latitude, say between sixty and sixty-five south, we frequently
had great difficulty in finding a passage for the vessel between the immense and almost innu-
merable ice islands, some of which were from one to two miles in circumference and more than
five hundred feet above the surface of the water.”
Being nearly destitute of fuel and water and without proper instruments, it being also
late in the season, Captain Morrell was now obliged to put back without attempting any fur-
ther progress to the southward, although an entirely open sea lay before him. He expresses the

opinion that, had not these overruling considerations obliged him to retreat, he could have
penetrated, if not to the pole itself, at least to the eighty-fifth parallel. I have given his ideas
respecting these matters somewhat at length, that the reader may have an opportunity of seeing
how far they were borne out by my own subsequent experience.
In 1831 Captain Biscoe in the employ of the Messrs. Enderby, whale ship owners of
London, sailed in the brig Lively for the South Seas accompanied by the cutter Tula. On the
twenty-eighth of February, being in latitude 66° 30' S., longitude 47° 31' E., he descried land
and “clearly discovered through the snow the black peaks of a range of mountains running
E. S. E.” He remained in this neighborhood during the whole of the following month but was
unable to approach the coast nearer than within ten leagues, owing to the boisterous state of
the weather. Finding it impossible to make farther discovery during this season, he returned
northward to winter in Van Diemen’s Land.
In the beginning of 1832 he again proceeded southwardly, and on the fourth of Febru-
ary land was seen to the southeast in latitude 67° 15', longitude 69° 29' W. This was soon
found to be an island near the headland of the country he had first discovered. On the twenty-
first of the month he succeeded in landing on the latter and took possession of it in the name
of William IV, calling it Adelaide’s Island in honor of the English queen. These particulars
being made known to the Royal Geographical Society of London, the conclusion was drawn
by that body “that there is a continuous tract of land extending from 47° 30' E. to 69° 29'
W. longitude, running the parallel of from sixty-six to sixty-seven degrees south latitude.” In
respect to this conclusion Mr. Reynolds observes, “In the correctness of it we by no means
concur; nor do the discoveries of Biscoe warrant any such inference. It was within these limits
that Weddell proceeded south on a meridian to the east of Georgia, Sandwich Land, and the
South Orkney and Shetland Islands.” My own experience will be found to testify most directly
to the falsity of the conclusion arrived at by the society.
These are the principal attempts which have been made at penetrating to a high southern
latitude, and it will now be seen that there remained, previous to the voyage of the Jane, nearly
three hundred degrees of longitude in which the Antarctic Circle had not been crossed at all.
Of course a wide field lay before us for discovery, and it was with feelings of most intense
interest that I heard Captain Guy express his resolution of pushing boldly to the southward.
17
We kept our course southwardly for four days, after giving up the search for Glass’s islands,
without meeting with any ice at all. On the twenty-sixth, at noon, we were in latitude 63°
23' S., longitude 41° 25' W. We now saw several large ice islands and a floe of field ice, not,
however, of any great extent. The winds generally blew from the southeast, or the northeast,
but were very light. Whenever we had a westerly wind, which was seldom, it was invariably
attended with a rain squall. Every day we had more or less snow. The thermometer, on the
twenty-seventh, stood at thirty-five.
January 1, 1828. This day we found ourselves completely hemmed in by the ice, and our
prospects looked cheerless indeed. A strong gale blew, during the whole forenoon, from the
northeast and drove large cakes of the drift against the rudder and counter with such violence

that we all trembled for the consequences. Toward evening, the gale still blowing with fury, a
large field in front separated, and we were enabled, by carrying a press of sail, to force a passage
through the smaller flakes into some open water beyond. As we approached this space we took
in sail by degrees, and having at length got clear, lay to under a single reefed foresail.
January 2nd. We had now tolerably pleasant weather. At noon we found ourselves in lati-
tude 69° 10' S., longitude 42° 20' W., having crossed the Antarctic Circle. Very little ice was
to be seen to the southward, although large fields of it lay behind us. This day we rigged some
sounding gear, using a large iron pot capable of holding twenty gallons and a line of two hun-
dred fathoms. We found the current setting to the north, about a quarter of a mile per hour.
The temperature of the air was now about thirty-three. Here we found the variation to be 14°
28' easterly, per azimuth.
January 5th. We had still held on to the southward without any very great impediments.
On this morning, however, being in latitude 73° 15' S., longitude 42° 10' W., we were again
brought to a stand by an immense expanse of firm ice. We saw, nevertheless, much open wa-
ter to the southward and felt no doubt of being able to reach it eventually. Standing to the
eastward along the edge of the floe, we at length came to a passage of about a mile in width,
through which we warped our way by sundown. The sea in which we now were was thickly
covered with ice islands but had no field ice, and we pushed on boldly as before. The cold did
not seem to increase, although we had snow very frequently, and now and then hail squalls of
great violence. Immense flocks of the albatross flew over the schooner this day, going from
southeast to northwest.
January 7th. The sea still remained pretty well open so that we had no difficulty in holding
on our course. To the westward we saw some icebergs of incredible size and in the afternoon
passed very near one whose summit could not have been less than four hundred fathoms from
the surface of the ocean. Its girth was probably, at the base, three quarters of a league, and
several streams of water were running from crevices in its sides. We remained in sight of this
island two days and then only lost it in a fog.
January 10th. Early this morning we had the misfortune to lose a man overboard. He
was an American named Peter Vredenburgh, a native of New York, and was one of the most
valuable hands on board the schooner. In going over the bows his foot slipped, and he fell
between two cakes of ice, never rising again. At noon of this day we were in latitude 78° 30',
longitude 40° 15' W. The cold was now excessive, and we had hail squalls continually from
the northward and eastward. In this direction also we saw several more immense icebergs, and
the whole horizon to the eastward appeared to be blocked up with field ice, rising in tiers, one
mass above the other. Some driftwood floated by during the evening, and a great quantity of
birds flew over, among which were nellies, petrels, albatrosses, and a large bird of a brilliant blue
plumage. The variation here, per azimuth, was less than it had been previous to our passing the
Antarctic Circle.20
January 12th. Our passage to the south again looked doubtful, as nothing was to be seen
in the direction of the pole but one apparently limitless floe, backed by absolute mountains of
ragged ice, one precipice of which arose frowningly above the other. We stood to the westward
until the fourteenth, in the hope of finding an entrance.

January 14th. This morning we reached the western extremity of the field which had
impeded us, and weathering it, came to an open sea without a particle of ice. Upon sounding
with two hundred fathoms, we here found a current setting southwardly at the rate of half a
mile per hour. The temperature of the air was forty-seven, that of the water thirty-four. We
now sailed to the southward without meeting any interruption of moment until the sixteenth,
when, at noon, we were in latitude 81° 21', longitude 42° W. We here again sounded and
found a current setting still southwardly, and at the rate of three quarters of a mile per hour.
The variation per azimuth had diminished, and the temperature of the air was mild and pleas-
ant, the thermometer being as high as fifty-one. At this period not a particle of ice was to be
discovered. All hands on board now felt certain of attaining the pole.
January 17th. This day was full of incident. Innumerable flights of birds flew over us from
the southward, and several were shot from the deck; one of them, a species of pelican, proved
to be excellent eating. About midday a small floe of ice was seen from the masthead off the
larboard bow, and upon it there appeared to be some large animal. As the weather was good
and nearly calm, Captain Guy ordered out two of the boats to see what it was. Dirk Peters and
myself accompanied the mate in the larger boat. Upon coming up with the floe, we perceived
that it was in the possession of a gigantic creature of the race of the arctic bear, but far exceed-
ing in size the largest of these animals. Being well armed, we made no scruple of attacking it at
once. Several shots were fired in quick succession, the most of which took effect, apparently, in
the head and body. Nothing discouraged, however, the monster threw himself from the ice and
swam, with open jaws, to the boat in which were Peters and myself. Owing to the confusion
which ensued among us at this unexpected turn of the adventure, no person was ready immedi-
ately with a second shot, and the bear had actually succeeded in getting half his vast bulk across
our gunwale, and seizing one of the men by the small of his back, before any efficient means
were taken to repel him. In this extremity nothing but the promptness and agility of Peters
saved us from destruction. Leaping upon the back of the huge beast, he plunged the blade of
a knife behind the neck, reaching the spinal marrow at a blow. The brute tumbled into the sea
lifeless and without a struggle, rolling over Peters as he fell. The latter soon recovered himself,
and a rope being thrown him, he secured the carcass before entering the boat. We then returned
in triumph to the schooner, towing our trophy behind us. This bear, upon admeasurement,
proved to be full fifteen feet in his greatest length. His wool was perfectly white and very coarse,
curling tightly. The eyes were of a blood red and larger than those of the arctic bear—the snout
also more rounded, rather resembling the snout of the bulldog. The meat was tender but exces-
sively rank and fishy, although the men devoured it with avidity and declared it excellent eating.
Scarcely had we got our prize alongside, when the man at the masthead gave the joyful
shout of “land on the starboard bow!” All hands were now upon the alert, and a breeze springing
up very opportunely from the northward and eastward, we were soon close in with the coast.
It proved to be a low rocky islet of about a league in circumference and altogether destitute
of vegetation, if we except a species of prickly pear. In approaching it from the northward, a
singular ledge of rock is seen projecting into the sea and bearing a strong resemblance to corded
bales of cotton. Around this ledge to the westward is a small bay, at the bottom of which our
boats effected a convenient landing.

It did not take us long to explore every portion of the island, but, with one exception,
we found nothing worthy of observation. In the southern extremity, we picked up near the
shore, half buried in a pile of loose stones, a piece of wood which seemed to have formed the
prow of a canoe. There had been evidently some attempt at carving upon it, and Captain Guy
fancied that he made out the figure of a tortoise, but the resemblance did not strike me very
forcibly. Besides this prow, if such it were, we found no other token that any living creature
had ever been here before. Around the coast we discovered occasional small floes of ice—but
these were very few. The exact situation of the islet (to which Captain Guy gave the name of
Bennet’s Islet, in honor of his partner in the ownership of the schooner) is 82° 50' S. latitude,
42° 20' W. longitude.
We had now advanced to the southward more than eight degrees farther than any previ-
ous navigators, and the sea still lay perfectly open before us. We found, too, that the variation
uniformly decreased as we proceeded and, what was still more surprising, that the temperature
of the air, and latterly of the water, became milder. The weather might even be called pleasant,
and we had a steady but very gentle breeze always from some northern point of the compass.
The sky was usually clear with now and then a slight appearance of thin vapor in the south-
ern horizon—this, however, was invariably of brief duration. Two difficulties alone presented
themselves to our view; we were getting short of fuel, and symptoms of scurvy had occurred
among several of the crew. These considerations began to impress upon Captain Guy the
necessity of returning, and he spoke of it frequently. For my own part, confident as I was of
soon arriving at land of some description upon the course we were pursuing, and having every
reason to believe, from present appearances, that we should not find it the sterile soil met with
in the higher arctic latitudes, I warmly pressed upon him the expediency of persevering, at
least for a few days longer, in the direction we were now holding. So tempting an opportunity
of solving the great problem in regard to an antarctic continent had never yet been afforded
to man, and I confess that I felt myself bursting with indignation at the timid and ill-timed
suggestions of our commander. I believe, indeed, that what I could not refrain from saying to
him on this head had the effect of inducing him to push on. While, therefore, I cannot but
lament the most unfortunate and bloody events which immediately arose from my advice, I
must still be allowed to feel some degree of gratification at having been instrumental, however
remotely, in opening to the eye of science one of the most intensely exciting secrets which has
ever engrossed its attention.
18
January 18th. This morning* we continued to the southward with the same pleasant weather
as before. The sea was entirely smooth, the air tolerably warm and from the northeast, the
*The terms morning and evening, which I have made use of to avoid confusion in my narrative as far as possible,
must not, of course, be taken in their ordinary sense. For a long time past we had had no night at all, the daylight
being continual. The dates throughout are according to nautical time, and the bearings must be understood as per
compass. I would also remark in this place that I cannot, in the first portion of what is here written, pretend to
strict accuracy in respect to dates or latitudes and longitudes, having kept no regular journal until after the period
of which this first portion treats. In many instances I have relied altogether upon memory.

temperature of the water fifty-three. We now again got our sounding gear in order and, with
a hundred and fifty fathoms of line, found the current setting toward the pole at the rate of a
mile an hour. This constant tendency to the southward, both in the wind and current, caused
some degree of speculation, and even of alarm, in different quarters of the schooner, and I
saw distinctly that no little impression had been made upon the mind of Captain Guy. He
was exceedingly sensitive to ridicule, however, and I finally succeeded in laughing him out of
his apprehensions. The variation was now very trivial. In the course of the day we saw several
large whales of the right species, and innumerable flights of the albatross passed over the vessel.
We also picked up a bush, full of red berries like those of the hawthorn, and the carcass of a
singular-looking land animal. It was three feet in length and but six inches in height, with four
very short legs, the feet armed with long claws of a brilliant scarlet and resembling coral in
substance. The body was covered with a straight silky hair, perfectly white. The tail was peaked
like that of a rat and about a foot and a half long. The head resembled a cat’s with the excep-
tion of the ears—these were flapped like the ears of a dog. The teeth were of the same brilliant
scarlet as the claws.
January 19th. Today, being in latitude 83° 20', longitude 43° 5' W. (the sea being of an
extraordinarily dark color), we again saw land from the masthead and, upon a closer scrutiny,
found it to be one of a group of very large islands. The shore was precipitous, and the interior
seemed to be well wooded, a circumstance which occasioned us great joy. In about four hours
from our first discovering the land we came to anchor in ten fathoms, sandy bottom, a league
from the coast, as a high surf with strong ripples here and there rendered a nearer approach
of doubtful expediency. The two largest boats were now ordered out, and a party, well armed
(among whom were Peters and myself ), proceeded to look for an opening in the reef which
appeared to encircle the island. After searching about for some time, we discovered an inlet,
which we were entering when we saw four large canoes put off from the shore, filled with men
who seemed to be well armed. We waited for them to come up, and as they moved with great
rapidity, they were soon within hail. Captain Guy now held up a white handkerchief on the
blade of an oar, when the strangers made a full stop and commenced a loud jabbering all at
once, intermingled with occasional shouts in which we could distinguish the words Anamoo-moo!
and Lama-Lama! They continued this for at least half an hour, during which we had a good op-
portunity of observing their appearance.
In the four canoes, which might have been fifty feet long and five broad, there were a
hundred and ten savages in all. They were about the ordinary stature of Europeans but of a
more muscular and brawny frame. Their complexion a jet black, with thick and long woolly
hair. They were clothed in skins of an unknown black animal, shaggy and silky, and made to
fit the body with some degree of skill, the hair being inside except where turned out about the
neck, wrists, and ankles. Their arms consisted principally of clubs, of a dark and apparently
very heavy wood. Some spears, however, were observed among them, headed with flint, and a
few slings. The bottoms of the canoes were full of black stones about the size of a large egg.
When they had concluded their harangue (for it was clear they intended their jabbering
for such), one of them who seemed to be the chief stood up in the prow of his canoe and made
signs for us to bring our boats alongside of him. This hint we pretended not to understand,
thinking it the wiser plan to maintain, if possible, the interval between us as their number

more than quadrupled our own. Finding this to be the case, the chief ordered the three other
canoes to hold back, while he advanced toward us with his own. As soon as he came up with
us he leaped on board the largest of our boats and seated himself by the side of Captain Guy,
pointing at the same time to the schooner and repeating the words Anamoo-moo! and Lama-Lama!
We now put back to the vessel, the four canoes following at a little distance.
Upon getting alongside, the chief evinced symptoms of extreme surprise and delight,
clapping his hands, slapping his thighs and breast, and laughing obstreperously. His followers
behind joined in his merriment, and for some minutes the din was so excessive as to be abso-
lutely deafening. Quiet being at length restored, Captain Guy ordered the boats to be hoisted
up, as a necessary precaution, and gave the chief (whose name we soon found to be Too-wit) to
understand that we could admit no more than twenty of his men on deck at one time. With
this arrangement he appeared perfectly satisfied and gave some directions to the canoes when
one of them approached, the rest remaining about fifty yards off. Twenty of the savages now
got on board and proceeded to ramble over every part of the deck and scramble about among
the rigging, making themselves much at home and examining every article with great inquisi-
tiveness.
It was quite evident that they had never before seen any of the white race—from whose
complexion, indeed, they appeared to recoil. They believed the Jane to be a living creature and
seemed to be afraid of hurting it with the points of their spears, carefully turning them up.
Our crew were much amused with the conduct of Too-wit in one instance. The cook was
splitting some wood near the galley and by accident struck his axe into the deck, making a
gash of considerable depth. The chief immediately ran up and pushing the cook on one side
rather roughly, commenced a half whine, half howl, strongly indicative of sympathy in what he
considered the sufferings of the schooner, patting and smoothing the gash with his hand and
washing it from a bucket of seawater which stood by. This was a degree of ignorance for which
we were not prepared, and for my part I could not help thinking some of it affected.
When the visitors had satisfied, as well as they could, their curiosity in regard to our
upper works, they were admitted below, when their amazement exceeded all bounds. Their
astonishment now appeared to be far too deep for words, for they roamed about in silence,
broken only by low ejaculations. The arms afforded them much food for speculation, and they
were suffered to handle and examine them at leisure. I do not believe that they had the least
suspicion of their actual use but rather took them for idols, seeing the care we had of them and
the attention with which we watched their movements while handling them. At the great guns
their wonder was redoubled. They approached them with every mark of the profoundest rever-
ence and awe but forbore to examine them minutely. There were two large mirrors in the cabin,
and here was the acme of their amazement. Too-wit was the first to approach them, and he had
got in the middle of the cabin, with his face to one and his back to the other, before he fairly
perceived them. Upon raising his eyes and seeing his reflected self in the glass, I thought the
savage would go mad; but, upon turning short round to make a retreat and beholding himself a
second time in the opposite direction, I was afraid he would expire upon the spot. No persua-
sions could prevail upon him to take another look; but, throwing himself upon the floor with
his face buried in his hands, he remained thus until we were obliged to drag him upon deck.

The whole of the savages were admitted on board in this manner, twenty at a time, Too-
wit being suffered to remain during the entire period. We saw no disposition to thievery among
them, nor did we miss a single article after their departure. Throughout the whole of their visit
they evinced the most friendly manner. There were, however, some points in their demeanor
which we found it impossible to understand; for example, we could not get them to approach
several very harmless objects—such as the schooner’s sails, an egg, an open book, or a pan of
flour. We endeavored to ascertain if they had among them any articles which might be turned
to account in the way of traffic, but found great difficulty in being comprehended. We made
out, nevertheless, what greatly astonished us, that the islands abounded in the large tortoise of
the Galapagos, one of which we saw in the canoe of Too-wit. We saw also some biche de mer*
in the hands of one of the savages, who was greedily devouring it in its natural state. These
anomalies, for they were such when considered in regard to the latitude, induced Captain Guy
to wish for a thorough investigation of the country in the hope of making a profitable specu-
lation in his discovery. For my own part, anxious as I was to know something more of these
islands, I was still more earnestly bent on prosecuting the voyage to the southward without
delay. We had now fine weather, but there was no telling how long it would last; and being
already in the eighty-fourth parallel with an open sea before us, a current setting strongly to
the southward, and the wind fair, I could not listen with any patience to a proposition of stop-
ping longer than was absolutely necessary for the health of the crew and for taking on board a
proper supply of fuel and fresh provisions.21 I represented to the captain that we might easily
make this group on our return and winter here in the event of being blocked up by the ice. He
at length came into my views (for in some way, hardly known to myself, I had acquired much
influence over him), and it was finally resolved that, even in the event of our finding biche de mer,
we should only stay here a week to recruit and then push on to the southward while we might.
Accordingly we made every necessary preparation and, under the guidance of Too-wit, got the
Jane through the reef in safety, coming to anchor about a mile from the shore in an excellent
bay, completely landlocked, on the southeastern coast of the main island, and in ten fathoms
of water, black sandy bottom. At the head of this bay there were three fine springs (we were
told) of good water, and we saw abundance of wood in the vicinity. The four canoes followed
us in, keeping, however, at a respectful distance. Too-wit himself remained on board and, upon
our dropping anchor, invited us to accompany him on shore and visit his village in the interior.
To this Captain Guy consented; and ten savages being left on board as hostages, a party of us,
twelve in all, got in readiness to attend the chief. We took care to be well armed, yet without
evincing any distrust. The schooner had her guns run out, her boarding nettings up, and every
other proper precaution was taken to guard against surprise. Directions were left with the chief
mate to admit no person on board during our absence and, in the event of our not appearing
in twelve hours, to send the cutter, with a swivel, round the island in search of us.
At every step we took inland the conviction forced itself upon us that we were in a
country differing essentially from any hitherto visited by civilized men. We saw nothing with
which we had been formerly conversant. The trees resembled no growth of either the torrid, the
*Sea cucumber. FPW

temperate, or the northern frigid zones and were altogether unlike those of the lower southern
latitudes we had already traversed. The very rocks were novel in their mass, their color, and
their stratification; and the streams themselves, utterly incredible as it may appear, had so little
in common with those of other climates that we were scrupulous of tasting them and, indeed,
had difficulty in bringing ourselves to believe that their qualities were purely those of nature.
At a small brook which crossed our path (the first we had reached) Too-wit and his attendants
halted to drink. On account of the singular character of the water, we refused to taste it, sup-
posing it to be polluted; and it was not until some time afterward we came to understand that
such was the appearance of the streams throughout the whole group. I am at a loss to give a
distinct idea of the nature of this liquid and cannot do so without many words. Although it
flowed with rapidity in all declivities where common water would do so, yet never, except when
falling in a cascade, had it the customary appearance of limpidity. It was, nevertheless, in point
of fact, as perfectly limpid as any limestone water in existence, the difference being only in
appearance. At first sight, and especially in cases where little declivity was found, it bore resem-
blance, as regards consistency, to a thick infusion of gum Arabic in common water. But this was
only the least remarkable of its extraordinary qualities. It was not colorless, nor was it of any
one uniform color—presenting to the eye, as it flowed, every possible shade of purple, like the
hues of a changeable silk. This variation in shade was produced in a manner which excited as
profound astonishment in the minds of our party as the mirror had done in the case of Too-
wit. Upon collecting a basinful and allowing it to settle thoroughly, we perceived that the whole
mass of liquid was made up of a number of distinct veins, each of a distinct hue; that these
veins did not commingle; and that their cohesion was perfect in regard to their own particles
among themselves and imperfect in regard to neighboring veins. Upon passing the blade of a
knife athwart the veins, the water closed over it immediately, as with us, and also, in withdraw-
ing it, all traces of the passage of the knife were instantly obliterated. If, however, the blade was
passed down accurately between two veins, a perfect separation was effected, which the power
of cohesion did not immediately rectify. The phenomena of this water formed the first definite
link in that vast chain of apparent miracles with which I was destined to be at length encircled.
19
We were nearly three hours in reaching the village, it being more than nine miles in the interior
and the path lying through a rugged country. As we passed along, the party of Too-wit (the
whole hundred and ten savages of the canoes) was momentarily strengthened by smaller de-
tachments of from two to six or seven, which joined us, as if by accident, at different turns of
the road. There appeared so much of system in this that I could not help feeling distrust, and
I spoke to Captain Guy of my apprehensions. It was now too late, however, to recede, and we
concluded that our best security lay in evincing a perfect confidence in the good faith of Too-
wit. We accordingly went on, keeping a wary eye upon the maneuvers of the savages and not
permitting them to divide our numbers by pushing in between. In this way, passing through a
precipitous ravine, we at length reached what we were told was the only collection of habita-
tions upon the island. As we came in sight of them, the chief set up a shout and frequently

repeated the word Klock-klock, which we supposed to be the name of the village, or perhaps the
generic name for villages.
The dwellings were of the most miserable description imaginable and, unlike those of
even the lowest of the savage races with which mankind are acquainted, were of no uniform
plan. Some of them (and these we found belonged to the Wampoos or Yampoos, the great men
of the land) consisted of a tree cut down at about four feet from the root, with a large black
skin thrown over it and hanging in loose folds upon the ground. Under this the savage nestled.
Others were formed by means of rough limbs of trees, with the withered foliage upon them
made to recline, at an angle of forty-five degrees, against a bank of clay heaped up, without
regular form, to the height of five or six feet. Others, again, were mere holes dug in the earth
perpendicularly and covered over with similar branches, these being removed when the tenant
was about to enter and pulled on again when he had entered. A few were built among the forked
limbs of trees as they stood, the upper limbs being partially cut through so as to bend over
upon the lower, thus forming thicker shelter from the weather. The greater number, however,
consisted of small shallow caverns, apparently scratched in the face of a precipitous ledge of
dark stone, resembling fuller’s earth, with which three sides of the village were bounded.22 At
the door of each of these primitive caverns was a small rock, which the tenant carefully placed
before the entrance upon leaving his residence, for what purpose I could not ascertain as the
stone itself was never of sufficient size to close up more than a third of the opening.
This village, if it were worthy of the name, lay in a valley of some depth and could only
be approached from the southward, the precipitous ledge of which I have already spoken cut-
ting off all access in other directions. Through the middle of the valley ran a brawling stream
of the same magical-looking water which has been described. We saw several strange animals
about the dwellings, all appearing to be thoroughly domesticated. The largest of these crea-
tures resembled our common hog in the structure of the body and snout; the tail, however,
was bushy, and the legs slender as those of the antelope. Its motion was exceedingly awkward
and indecisive, and we never saw it attempt to run. We noticed also several animals very similar
in appearance but of a greater length of body and covered with a black wool. There were a
great variety of tame fowls running about, and these seemed to constitute the chief food of
the natives. To our astonishment we saw black albatross among these birds in a state of entire
domestication, going to sea periodically for food, but always returning to the village as a home
and using the southern shore in the vicinity as a place of incubation. There they were joined
by their friends the penguins as usual, but these latter never followed them to the dwellings of
the savages.23 Among the other kinds of tame fowls were ducks, differing very little from the
canvasback of our own country, black gannets, and a large bird not unlike the buzzard in ap-
pearance but not carnivorous. Of fish there seemed to be a great abundance. We saw during our
visit a quantity of dried salmon, rock cod, blue dolphins, mackerel, blackfish, skate, conger eels,
elephant fish, mullets, soles, parrotfish, leatherjackets, gurnards, hake, flounders, barracudas,
and innumerable other varieties. We noticed, too, that most of them were similar to the fish
about the group of the Lord Auckland Islands, in a latitude as low as fifty-one degrees south.
The Galapagos tortoise was also very plentiful. We saw but few wild animals and none of a
large size or of a species with which we were familiar. One or two serpents of a formidable

aspect crossed our path, but the natives paid them little attention, and we concluded that they
were not venomous.
As we approached the village with Too-wit and his party, a vast crowd of the people
rushed out to meet us with loud shouts, among which we could only distinguish the everlast-
ing Anamoo-moo! and Lama-Lama! We were much surprised at perceiving that, with one or two
exceptions, these newcomers were entirely naked, and skins being used only by the men of
the canoes. All the weapons of the country seemed also to be in the possession of the latter,
for there was no appearance of any among the villagers. There were a great many women and
children, the former not altogether wanting in what might be termed personal beauty. They
were straight, tall, and well formed, with a grace and freedom of carriage not to be found in
civilized society. Their lips, however, like those of the men, were thick and clumsy, so that even
when laughing the teeth were never disclosed. Their hair was of a finer texture than that of the
males. Among these naked villagers there might have been ten or twelve who were clothed, like
the party of Too-wit, in dresses of black skin, and armed with lances and heavy clubs. These
appeared to have great influence among the rest and were always addressed by the title Wampoo.
These, too, were the tenants of the black-skin palaces. That of Too-wit was situated in the
center of the village and was much larger and somewhat better constructed than others of its
kind. The tree which formed its support was cut off at a distance of twelve feet or thereabouts
from the root, and there were several branches left just below the cut, these serving to extend
the covering and in this way prevent its flapping about the trunk. The covering, too, which
consisted of four very large skins fastened together with wooden skewers, was secured at the
bottom with pegs driven through it and into the ground. The floor was strewn with a quantity
of dry leaves by way of carpet.
To this hut we were conducted with great solemnity, and as many of the natives crowded
in after us as possible. Too-wit seated himself on the leaves and made signs that we should
follow his example. This we did and presently found ourselves in a situation peculiarly uncom-
fortable, if not indeed critical. We were on the ground, twelve in number, with the savages, as
many as forty, sitting on their hams so closely around us that, if any disturbance had arisen, we
should have found it impossible to make use of our arms, or indeed to have risen on our feet.
The pressure was not only inside the tent but outside, where probably was every individual on
the whole island, the crowd being prevented from trampling us to death only by the incessant
exertions and vociferations of Too-wit. Our chief security lay, however, in the presence of Too-
wit himself among us, and we resolved to stick by him closely as the best chance of extricating
ourselves from the dilemma, sacrificing him immediately upon the first appearance of hostile
design.
After some trouble a certain degree of quiet was restored, when the chief addressed us
in a speech of great length and very nearly resembling the one delivered in the canoes, with
the exception that the Anamoo-moos! were now somewhat more strenuously insisted upon than
the Lama-Lamas! We listened in profound silence until the conclusion of his harangue, when
Captain Guy replied by assuring the chief of his eternal friendship and goodwill, concluding
what he had to say by a present of several strings of blue beads and a knife. At the former the
monarch, much to our surprise, turned up his nose with some expression of contempt; but the

knife gave him the most unlimited satisfaction, and he immediately ordered dinner. This was
handed into the tent over the heads of the attendants and consisted of the palpitating entrails
of a species of unknown animal, probably one of the slim-legged hogs which we had observed
in our approach to the village. Seeing us at a loss how to proceed, he began, by way of setting
us an example, to devour yard after yard of the enticing food, until we could positively stand it
no longer, and evinced such manifest symptoms of rebellion of stomach as inspired his majesty
with a degree of astonishment only inferior to that brought about by the looking glasses. We
declined, however, partaking of the delicacies before us and endeavored to make him under-
stand that we had no appetite whatever, having just finished a hearty déjeuner.
When the monarch had made an end of his meal, we commenced a series of cross-
questioning in every ingenious manner we could devise, with a view to discovering what were
the chief productions of the country and whether any of them might be turned to profit. At
length he seemed to have some idea of our meaning, and offered to accompany us to a part of
the coast where he assured us the biche de mer (pointing to a specimen of that animal) was to be
found in great abundance. We were glad at this early opportunity of escaping from the oppres-
sion of the crowd and signified our eagerness to proceed. We now left the tent and, accompa-
nied by the whole population of the village, followed the chief to the southeastern extremity
of the island, not far from the bay where our vessel lay at anchor. We waited here for about
an hour until the four canoes were brought round by some of the savages to our station. The
whole of our party then getting into one of them, we were paddled along the edge of the reef
before mentioned, and of another still farther out where we saw a far greater quantity of biche de
mer than the oldest seamen among us had ever seen in those groups of the lower latitudes most
celebrated for this article of commerce. We stayed near these reefs only long enough to satisfy
ourselves that we could easily load a dozen vessels with the animal if necessary, when we were
taken alongside the schooner and parted with Too-wit after obtaining from him a promise that
he would bring us, in the course of twenty-four hours, as many of the canvasback ducks and
Galapagos tortoises as his canoes would hold. In the whole of this adventure we saw nothing
in the demeanor of the natives calculated to create suspicion, with the single exception of the
systematic manner in which their party was strengthened during our route from the schooner
to the village.
20
The chief was as good as his word, and we were soon plentifully supplied with fresh provisions.
We found the tortoises as fine as we had ever seen, and the ducks surpassed our best species of
wild fowl, being exceedingly tender, juicy, and well flavored. Besides these, the savages brought
us, upon our making them comprehend our wishes, a vast quantity of brown celery and scurvy
grass, with a canoe load of fresh fish and some dried. The celery was a treat indeed, and the
scurvy grass proved of incalculable benefit in restoring those of our men who had shown
symptoms of disease. In a very short time we had not a single person on the sick list. We had
also plenty of other kinds of fresh provisions, among which may be mentioned a species of
shellfish resembling the mussel in shape but with the taste of an oyster. Shrimps, too, and

prawns were abundant, and albatross and other birds’ eggs with dark shells. We took in, too, a
plentiful stock of the flesh of the hog which I have mentioned before. Most of the men found
it a palatable food, but I thought it fishy and otherwise disagreeable. In return for these good
things we presented the natives with blue beads, brass trinkets, nails, knives, and pieces of red
cloth, they being fully delighted in the exchange. We established a regular market on shore, just
under the guns of the schooner, where our barterings were carried on with every appearance of
good faith and a degree of order which their conduct at the village of Klock-klock had not led
us to expect from the savages.
Matters went on thus very amicably for several days, during which parties of the natives
were frequently on board the schooner and parties of our men frequently on shore, making
long excursions into the interior and receiving no molestation whatever. Finding the ease with
which the vessel might be loaded with biche de mer, owing to the friendly disposition of the is-
landers and the readiness with which they would render us assistance in collecting it, Captain
Guy resolved to enter into negotiation with Too-wit for the erection of suitable houses in which
to cure the article and for the services of himself and tribe in gathering as much as possible,
while he himself took advantage of the fine weather to prosecute his voyage to the southward.
Upon mentioning this project to the chief he seemed very willing to enter into an agreement. A
bargain was accordingly struck, perfectly satisfactory to both parties, by which it was arranged
that after making the necessary preparations, such as laying off the proper grounds, erecting a
portion of the buildings, and doing some other work in which the whole of our crew would be
required, the schooner should proceed on her route, leaving three of her men on the island to
superintend the fulfillment of the project and instruct the natives in drying the biche de mer. In
regard to terms, these were made to depend upon the exertions of the savages in our absence.
They were to receive a stipulated quantity of blue beads, knives, red cloth, and so forth, for
every certain number of piculs of the biche de mer which should be ready on our return.
A description of the nature of this important article of commerce, and the method of
preparing it, may prove of some interest to my readers, and I can find no more suitable place
than this for introducing an account of it. The following comprehensive notice of the sub-
stance is taken from a modern history of a voyage to the South Seas.
“It is that mollusk from the Indian seas which is known in commerce by the French name
bouche de mer (a nice morsel from the sea). If I am not much mistaken, the celebrated Cuvier
calls it Gasteropoda pulmonifera.24 It is abundantly gathered on the coasts of the Pacific Islands and
gathered especially for the Chinese market, where it commands a great price, perhaps as much
as their much-talked-of edible bird’s nests, which are properly made up of the gelatinous mat-
ter picked up by a species of swallow from the body of these mollusks. They have no shell, no
legs, nor any prominent part except opposite organs, an absorbing and an excretory; 25 but by their
elastic wings, like caterpillars or worms, they creep in shallow waters, in which, when low, they
can be seen by a kind of swallow, the sharp bill of which, inserted in the soft animal, draws a
gummy and filamentous substance, which, by drying, can be wrought into the solid walls of
their nest. Hence the name of Gasteropoda pulmonifera.
“This mollusk is oblong and of different sizes, from three to eighteen inches in length;
and I have seen a few that were not less than two feet long. They are nearly round, a little flat-

tish on one side, which lies next to the bottom of the sea; and they are from one to eight inches
thick.26 They crawl up into shallow water at particular seasons of the year, probably for the
purpose of gendering, as we often find them in pairs. It is when the sun has the most power on
the water, rendering it tepid, that they approach the shore; and they often go up into places so
shallow, that, on the tide’s receding, they are left dry, exposed to the heat of the sun. But they
do not bring forth their young in shallow water, as we never see any of their progeny and the
full-grown ones are always observed coming in from deep water. They feed principally on that
class of zoophytes which produce the coral.
“The biche de mer is generally taken in three or four feet of water; after which they are
brought on shore and split at one end with a knife, the incision being one inch or more accord-
ing to the size of the mollusk.27 Through this opening the entrails are forced out by pressure,
and they are much like those of any other small tenant of the deep. The article is then washed,
and afterward boiled to a certain degree, which must not be too much or too little. They are
then buried in the ground for four hours, then boiled again for a short time, after which they
are dried, either by the fire or the sun. Those cured by the sun are worth the most; but where
one picul (133⅓ lbs.) can be cured that way, I can cure thirty piculs by the fire. When once
properly cured, they can be kept in a dry place for two or three years without any risk; but they
should be examined once in every few months, say four times a year, to see if any dampness is
likely to affect them.
“The Chinese, as before stated, consider biche de mer a very great luxury, believing that it
wonderfully strengthens and nourishes the system and renews the exhausted system of the im-
moderate voluptuary. The first quality commands a high price in Canton, being worth ninety
dollars a picul; the second quality, seventy-five dollars; the third, fifty dollars; the fourth, thirty
dollars; the fifth, twenty dollars; the sixth, twelve dollars; the seventh, eight dollars; and the
eighth, four dollars; small cargoes, however, will often bring more in Manila, Singapore, and
Batavia.”
An agreement having been thus entered into, we proceeded immediately to land every-
thing necessary for preparing the buildings and clearing the ground. A large flat space near the
eastern shore of the bay was selected, where there was plenty both of wood and water, and
within a convenient distance of the principal reefs on which the biche de mer was to be procured.
We now all set to work in good earnest, and soon, to the great astonishment of the savages,
had felled a sufficient number of trees for our purpose, getting them quickly in order for the
framework of the houses, which in two or three days were so far under way that we could safely
trust the rest of the work to the three men whom we intended to leave behind. These were John
Carson, Alfred Harris, and —— Peterson (all natives of London, I believe), who volunteered
their services in this respect.
By the last of the month we had everything in readiness for departure. We had agreed,
however, to pay a formal visit of leave-taking to the village, and Too-wit insisted so pertina-
ciously upon our keeping the promise, that we did not think it advisable to run the risk of
offending him by a final refusal. I believe that not one of us had at this time the slightest suspi-
cion of the good faith of the savages. They had uniformly behaved with the greatest decorum,
aiding us with alacrity in our work, offering us their commodities frequently without price, and

never, in any instance, pilfering a single article, although the high value they set upon the goods
we had with us was evident by the extravagant demonstrations of joy always manifested upon
our making them a present. The women especially were most obliging in every respect, and
upon the whole we should have been the most suspicious of human beings had we entertained
a single thought of perfidy on the part of a people who treated us so well. A very short while
sufficed to prove that this apparent kindness of disposition was only the result of a deeply
laid plan for our destruction, and that the islanders for whom we entertained such inordinate
feelings of esteem were among the most barbarous, subtle, and bloodthirsty wretches that ever
contaminated the face of the globe.
It was on the first of February that we went on shore for the purpose of visiting the vil-
lage. Although, as said before, we entertained not the slightest suspicion, still no proper precau-
tion was neglected. Six men were left in the schooner with instructions to permit none of the
savages to approach the vessel during our absence, under any pretence whatever, and to remain
constantly on deck. The boarding nettings were up, the guns double-shotted with grape and
canister, and the swivels loaded with canisters of musket balls. She lay with her anchor apeak
about a mile from the shore, and no canoe could approach her in any direction without being
distinctly seen and exposed to the full fire of our swivels immediately.
The six men being left on board, our shore party consisted of thirty-two persons in all.
We were armed to the teeth, having with us muskets, pistols, and cutlasses, besides each a long
kind of seaman’s knife, somewhat resembling the bowie knife now so much used throughout
our western and southern country. A hundred of the black-skin warriors met us at the land-
ing for the purpose of accompanying us on our way. We noticed, however, with some surprise,
that they were now entirely without arms; and, upon questioning Too-wit in relation to this
circumstance, he merely answered that Mattee non we pa pa si—meaning that there was no need of
arms where all were brothers. We took this in good part and proceeded.
We had passed the spring and rivulet of which I before spoke and were now entering
upon a narrow gorge leading through the chain of soapstone hills among which the village
was situated. This gorge was very rocky and uneven, so much so that it was with no little dif-
ficulty we scrambled through it on our first visit to Klock-klock. The whole length of the ravine
might have been a mile and a half, or probably two miles. It wound in every possible direction
through the hills (having apparently formed, at some remote period, the bed of a torrent), in
no instance proceeding more than twenty yards without an abrupt turn. The sides of this dell
would have averaged, I am sure, seventy or eighty feet in perpendicular altitude throughout the
whole of their extent, and in some portions they arose to an astonishing height, overshadowing
the pass so completely that but little of the light of day could penetrate. The general width
was about forty feet, and occasionally it diminished so as not to allow the passage of more than
five or six persons abreast. In short, there could be no place in the world better adapted for the
consummation of an ambuscade, and it was no more than natural that we should look carefully
to our arms as we entered upon it. When I now think of our egregious folly, the chief subject
of astonishment seems to be that we should have ever ventured, under any circumstances, so
completely into the power of unknown savages as to permit them to march both before and
behind us in our progress through this ravine. Yet such was the order we blindly took up, trust-

ing foolishly to the force of our party, the unarmed condition of Too-wit and his men, the
certain efficacy of our firearms (whose effect was yet a secret to the natives), and, more than
all, to the long-sustained pretension of friendship kept up by these infamous wretches. Five or
six of them went on before, as if to lead the way, ostentatiously busying themselves in remov-
ing the larger stones and rubbish from the path. Next came our own party. We walked closely
together, taking care only to prevent separation. Behind followed the main body of the savages,
observing unusual order and decorum.
Dirk Peters, a man named Wilson Allen, and myself were on the right of our compan-
ions, examining, as we went along, the singular stratification of the precipice which overhung
us. A fissure in the soft rock attracted our attention. It was about wide enough for one person
to enter without squeezing and extended back into the hill some eighteen or twenty feet in a
straight course, sloping afterward to the left. The height of the opening, as far as we could see
into it from the main gorge, was perhaps sixty or seventy feet. There were one or two stunted
shrubs growing from the crevices, bearing a species of filbert,* which I felt some curiosity to
examine, and pushed in briskly for that purpose, gathering five or six of the nuts at a grasp and
then hastily retreating. As I turned, I found that Peters and Allen had followed me. I desired
them to go back, as there was not room for two persons to pass, saying they should have some
of my nuts. They accordingly turned and were scrambling back, Allen being close to the mouth
of the fissure, when I was suddenly aware of a concussion** resembling nothing I had ever
before experienced, and which impressed me with a vague conception, if indeed I then thought
of anything, that the whole foundations of the solid globe were suddenly rent asunder and that
the day of universal dissolution was at hand.
21
As soon as I could collect my scattered senses, I found myself nearly suffocated and groveling
in utter darkness among a quantity of loose earth, which was also falling upon me heavily in
every direction, threatening to bury me entirely. Horribly alarmed at this idea, I struggled to
gain my feet and at last succeeded. I then remained motionless for some moments, endeavoring
to conceive what had happened to me and where I was. Presently I heard a deep groan just at
my ear and afterward the smothered voice of Peters calling to me for aid in the name of God.
I scrambled one or two paces forward, when I fell directly over the head and shoulders of my
companion, who, I soon discovered, was buried in a loose mass of earth as far as his middle and
struggling desperately to free himself from the pressure. I tore the dirt from around him with
all the energy I could command and at length succeeded in getting him out.
As soon as we sufficiently recovered from our fright and surprise to be capable of con-
versing rationally, we both came to the conclusion that the walls of the fissure in which we
had ventured had, by some convulsion of nature or probably from their own weight, caved in
overhead and that we were consequently lost forever, being thus entombed alive. For a long
*Hazelnut. FPW
**Tremor. FPW

time we gave up supinely to the most intense agony and despair, such as cannot be adequately
imagined by those who have never been in a similar situation. I firmly believe that no incident
ever occurring in the course of human events is more adapted to inspire the supremeness of
mental and bodily distress than a case like our own, of living inhumation. The blackness of
darkness which envelops the victim, the terrific oppression of lungs, the stifling fumes from the
damp earth, unite with the ghastly considerations that we are beyond the remotest confines of
hope, and that such is the allotted portion of the dead, to carry into the human heart a degree
of appalling awe and horror not to be tolerated—never to be conceived.
At length Peters proposed that we should endeavor to ascertain precisely the extent
of our calamity and grope about our prison, it being barely possible, he observed, that some
opening might be yet left us for escape. I caught eagerly at this hope and, arousing myself to
exertion, attempted to force my way through the loose earth. Hardly had I advanced a single
step before a glimmer of light became perceptible enough to convince me that, at all events,
we should not immediately perish for want of air. We now took some degree of heart and
encouraged each other to hope for the best. Having scrambled over a bank of rubbish which
impeded our farther progress in the direction of the light, we found less difficulty in advancing
and also experienced some relief from the excessive oppression of lungs which had tormented
us. Presently we were enabled to obtain a glimpse of the objects around and discovered that we
were near the extremity of the straight portion of the fissure, where it made a turn to the left.
A few struggles more and we reached the bend, when, to our inexpressible joy, there appeared
a long seam or crack extending upward a vast distance, generally at an angle of about forty-
five degrees, although sometimes much more precipitous. We could not see through the whole
extent of this opening; but, as a good deal of light came down it, we had little doubt of find-
ing at the top of it (if we could by any means reach the top) a clear passage into the open air.
I now called to mind that three of us had entered the fissure from the main gorge and
that our companion, Allen, was still missing; we determined at once to retrace our steps and
look for him. After a long search and much danger from the further caving in of the earth
above us, Peters at length cried out to me that he had hold of our companion’s foot and that his
whole body was deeply buried beneath the rubbish, beyond a possibility of extricating him. I
soon found that what he said was too true and that, of course, life had been long extinct. With
sorrowful hearts, therefore, we left the corpse to its fate and again made our way to the bend.
The breadth of the seam was barely sufficient to admit us, and after one or two inef-
fectual efforts at getting up, we began once more to despair. I have before said that the chain
of hills through which ran the main gorge was composed of a species of soft rock resembling
soapstone. The sides of the cleft we were now attempting to ascend were of the same material
and so excessively slippery, being wet, that we could get but little foothold upon them even in
their least precipitous parts; in some places where the ascent was nearly perpendicular, the dif-
ficulty was, of course, much aggravated; and, indeed, for some time we thought it insurmount-
able. We took courage, however, from despair; and by dint of cutting steps in the soft stone
with our bowie knives and swinging, at the risk of our lives, to small projecting points of a
harder species of slaty rock which now and then protruded from the general mass, we at length
reached a natural platform from which was perceptible a patch of blue sky, at the extremity of a

thickly wooded ravine.28 Looking back now with somewhat more leisure at the passage through
which we had thus far proceeded, we clearly saw from the appearance of its sides that it was of
late formation, and we concluded that the concussion, whatever it was, which had so unexpect-
edly overwhelmed us had also, at the same moment, laid open this path for escape. Being quite
exhausted with exertion and, indeed, so weak that we were scarcely able to stand or articulate,
Peters now proposed that we should endeavor to bring our companions to the rescue by firing
the pistols which still remained in our girdles—the muskets as well as cutlasses had been lost
among the loose earth at the bottom of the chasm. Subsequent events proved that had we fired,
we should have sorely repented it; but luckily, a half suspicion of foul play had by this time
arisen in my mind, and we forbore to let the savages know of our whereabouts.
After having reposed for about an hour, we pushed on slowly up the ravine and had gone
no great way before we heard a succession of tremendous yells. At length we reached what
might be called the surface of the ground; for our path hitherto, since leaving the platform,
had lain beneath an archway of high rock and foliage, at a vast distance overhead. With great
caution we stole to a narrow opening through which we had a clear sight of the surrounding
country, when the whole dreadful secret of the concussion broke upon us in one moment and
at one view.
The spot from which we looked was not far from the summit of the highest peak in the
range of the soapstone hills. The gorge in which our party of thirty-two had entered ran within
fifty feet to the left of us. But for at least one hundred yards, the channel or bed of this gorge
was entirely filled up with the chaotic ruins of more than a million tons of earth and stone that
had been artificially tumbled within it. The means by which the vast mass had been precipitated
were not more simple than evident, for sure traces of the murderous work were yet remaining.
In several spots along the top of the eastern side of the gorge (we were now on the western)
might be seen stakes of wood driven into the earth. In these spots the earth had not given way;
but throughout the whole extent of the face of the precipice from which the mass had fallen, it
was clear, from marks left in the soil resembling those made by the drill of the rock blaster, that
stakes similar to those we saw standing had been inserted, at not more than a yard apart, for
the length of perhaps three hundred feet and ranging at about ten feet back from the edge of
the gulf. Strong cords of grape vine were attached to the stakes still remaining on the hill, and
it was evident that such cords had also been attached to each of the other stakes. I have already
spoken of the singular stratification of these soapstone hills; and the description just given of
the narrow and deep fissure through which we effected our escape from inhumation will afford
a further conception of its nature. This was such that almost every natural convulsion would
be sure to split the soil into perpendicular layers or ridges running parallel with one another;
and a very moderate exertion of art would be sufficient for effecting the same purpose. Of this
stratification the savages had availed themselves to accomplish their treacherous ends. There
can be no doubt that, by the continuous line of stakes, a partial rupture of the soil had been
brought about, probably to the depth of one or two feet, when, by means of a savage pulling at
the end of each of the cords (these cords being attached to the tops of the stakes and extend-
ing back from the edge of the cliff ), a vast leverage power was obtained, capable of hurling
the whole face of the hill, upon a given signal, into the bosom of the abyss below. The fate of

our poor companions was no longer a matter of uncertainty. We alone had escaped from the
tempest of that overwhelming destruction. We were the only living white men upon the island.
22
Our situation, as it now appeared, was scarcely less dreadful than when we had conceived our-
selves entombed forever. We saw before us no prospect but that of being put to death by the
savages or of dragging out a miserable existence in captivity among them. We might, to be sure,
conceal ourselves for a time from their observation among the fastnesses of the hills and, as a
final resort, in the chasm from which we had just issued; but we must either perish in the long
polar winter through cold and famine, or be ultimately discovered in our efforts to obtain relief.
The whole country around us seemed to be swarming with savages, crowds of whom, we
now perceived, had come over from the islands to the southward on flat rafts, doubtless with a
view to lending their aid in the capture and plunder of the Jane.29 The vessel still lay calmly at
anchor in the bay, those on board being apparently quite unconscious of any danger awaiting
them. How we longed at that moment to be with them! Either to aid in effecting their escape
or to perish with them in attempting a defense. We saw no chance even of warning them of
their danger without bringing immediate destruction upon our own heads, with but a remote
hope of benefit to them. A pistol fired might suffice to apprise them that something wrong had
occurred; but the report could not possibly inform them that their only prospect of safety lay
in getting out of the harbor forthwith—it could not tell them that no principles of honor now
bound them to remain, that their companions were no longer among the living. Upon hear-
ing the discharge they could not be more thoroughly prepared to meet the foe, who were now
getting ready to attack, than they already were and always had been. No good, therefore, and
infinite harm would result from our firing, and, after mature deliberation we forbore.
Our next thought was to attempt to rush toward the vessel, to seize one of the four
canoes which lay at the head of the bay and endeavor to force a passage on board. But the ut-
ter impossibility of succeeding in this desperate task soon became evident. The country, as I
said before, was literally swarming with the natives, skulking among the bushes and recesses of
the hills so as not to be observed from the schooner. In our immediate vicinity especially, and
blockading the sole path by which we could hope to attain the shore at the proper point, were
stationed the whole party of the black-skin warriors, with Too-wit at their head and appar-
ently only waiting for some reinforcement to commence his onset upon the Jane. The canoes,
too, which lay at the head of the bay were manned with savages, unarmed it is true but who
undoubtedly had arms within reach. We were forced, therefore, however unwillingly, to remain
in our place of concealment, mere spectators of the conflict which presently ensued.
In about half an hour we saw some sixty or seventy rafts, or flatboats, with outriggers,
filled with savages and coming round the southern bight of the harbor. They appeared to
have no arms except short clubs and stones which lay in the bottom of the rafts. Immediately
afterward another detachment, still larger, approached in an opposite direction and with simi-
lar weapons. The four canoes, too, were now quickly filled with natives, starting up from the
bushes at the head of the bay, and put off swiftly to join the other parties. Thus, in less time

than I have taken to tell it and as if by magic, the Jane saw herself surrounded by an immense
multitude of desperadoes evidently bent upon capturing her at all hazards.
That they would succeed in so doing could not be doubted for an instant. The six men
left in the vessel, however resolutely they might engage in her defense, were altogether unequal
to the proper management of the guns or in any manner to sustain a contest at such odds. I
could hardly imagine that they would make resistance at all but in this was deceived; for pres-
ently I saw them get springs upon the cable and bring the vessel’s starboard broadside to bear
upon the canoes, which by this time were within pistol range, the rafts being nearly a quarter
of a mile to windward. Owing to some cause unknown, but most probably to the agitation
of our poor friends at seeing themselves in so hopeless a situation, the discharge was an entire
failure. Not a canoe was hit or a single savage injured, the shots striking short and ricocheting
over their heads. The only effect produced upon them was astonishment at the unexpected
report and smoke, which was so excessive that for some moments I almost thought they would
abandon their design entirely and return to the shore. And this they would most likely have
done had our men followed up their broadside by a discharge of small arms, in which, as the
canoes were now so near at hand, they could not have failed in doing some execution, sufficient
at least to deter this party from a farther advance, until they could have given the rafts also a
broadside. But, in place of this, they left the canoe party to recover from their panic and, by
looking about them, to see that no injury had been sustained, while they flew to the larboard
to get ready for the rafts.
The discharge to larboard produced the most terrible effect. The star and double-headed
shot of the large guns cut seven or eight of the rafts completely asunder and killed, perhaps,
thirty or forty of the savages outright, while a hundred of them, at least, were thrown into the
water, the most of them dreadfully wounded. The remainder, frightened out of their senses,
commenced at once a precipitate retreat, not even waiting to pick up their maimed compan-
ions, who were swimming about in every direction screaming and yelling for aid. This great
success, however, came too late for the salvation of our devoted people. The canoe party were
already on board the schooner to the number of more than a hundred and fifty, the most of
them having succeeded in scrambling up the chains and over the boarding nettings even before
the matches had been applied to the larboard guns. Nothing could now withstand their brute
rage. Our men were borne down at once, overwhelmed, trodden underfoot, and absolutely torn
to pieces in an instant.
Seeing this, the savages on the rafts got the better of their fears and came up in shoals
to the plunder. In five minutes the Jane was a pitiable scene indeed of havoc and tumultuous
outrage. The decks were split open and ripped up; the cordage, sails, and everything movable on
deck demolished as if by magic; while, by dint of pushing at the stern, towing with the canoes,
and hauling at the sides as they swam in thousands around the vessel, the wretches finally forced
her on shore (the cable having been slipped) and delivered her over to the good offices of Too-
wit, who, during the whole of the engagement, had maintained, like a skillful general, his post
of security and reconnaissance among the hills, but, now that the victory was completed to his
satisfaction, condescended to scamper down with his warriors of the black skin and become a
partaker in the spoils.

Too-wit’s descent left us at liberty to quit our hiding place and reconnoiter the hill in
the vicinity of the chasm. At about fifty yards from the mouth of it we saw a small spring of
water, at which we slaked the burning thirst that now consumed us. Not far from the spring
we discovered several of the filbert bushes which I mentioned before. Upon tasting the nuts
we found them palatable and very nearly resembling in flavor the common English filbert. We
collected our hats full immediately, deposited them within the ravine, and returned for more.
While we were busily employed in gathering these, a rustling in the bushes alarmed us, and
we were upon the point of stealing back to our covert, when a large black bird of the bittern
species strugglingly and slowly arose above the shrubs. I was so much startled that I could do
nothing, but Peters had sufficient presence of mind to run up to it before it could make its
escape and seize it by the neck. Its struggles and screams were tremendous, and we had thoughts
of letting it go, lest the noise should alarm some of the savages who might be still lurking in
the neighborhood. A stab with a bowie knife, however, at length brought it to the ground, and
we dragged it into the ravine, congratulating ourselves that, at all events, we had thus obtained
a supply of food enough to last us for a week.
We now went out again to look about us and ventured a considerable distance down the
southern declivity of the hill, but met with nothing else which could serve us for food. We
therefore collected a quantity of dry wood and returned, seeing one or two large parties of
the natives on their way to the village, laden with the plunder of the vessel, and who, we were
apprehensive, might discover us in passing beneath the hill.
Our next care was to render our place of concealment as secure as possible, and with this
object, we arranged some brushwood over the aperture which I have before spoken of as the
one through which we saw the patch of blue sky, on reaching the platform from the interior of
the chasm. We left only a very small opening, just wide enough to admit of our seeing the bay
without the risk of being discovered from below. Having done this, we congratulated ourselves
upon the security of the position; for we were now completely excluded from observation, as
long as we chose to remain within the ravine itself and not venture out upon the hill. We could
perceive no traces of the savages having ever been within this hollow; but, indeed, when we
came to reflect upon the probability that the fissure through which we attained it had been only
just now created by the fall of the cliff opposite, and that no other way of attaining it could
be perceived, we were not so much rejoiced at the thought of being secure from molestation
as fearful lest there should be absolutely no means left us for descent. We resolved to explore
the summit of the hill thoroughly, when a good opportunity should offer. In the meantime we
watched the motions of the savages through our loophole.
They had already made a complete wreck of the vessel and were now preparing to set her
on fire. In a little while we saw the smoke ascending in huge volumes from her main hatchway,
and shortly afterward a dense mass of flame burst up from the forecastle. The rigging, masts,
and what remained of the sails caught immediately, and the fire spread rapidly along the decks.
Still a great many of the savages retained their stations about her, hammering with large stones,
axes, and cannonballs at the bolts and other copper and iron work. On the beach and in canoes
and rafts, there were not less, altogether, in the immediate vicinity of the schooner, than ten
thousand natives, besides the shoals of them who, laden with booty, were making their way

inland and over to the neighboring islands. We now anticipated a catastrophe and were not
disappointed. First of all there came a smart shock (which we felt as distinctly where we were
as if we had been slightly galvanized), but unattended with any visible signs of an explosion.
The savages were evidently startled and paused for an instant from their labors and yellings.
They were upon the point of recommencing, when suddenly a mass of smoke puffed up from
the decks, resembling a black and heavy thundercloud—then, as if from its bowels, arose a tall
stream of vivid fire to the height, apparently, of a quarter of a mile—then there came a sud-
den circular expansion of the flame—then the whole atmosphere was magically crowded in a
single instant with a wild chaos of wood and metal and human limbs—and, lastly, came the
concussion in its fullest fury, which hurled us impetuously from our feet, while the hills echoed
and reechoed the tumult, and a dense shower of the minutest fragments of the ruins tumbled
headlong in every direction around us.
The havoc among the savages far exceeded our utmost expectation, and they had now,
indeed, reaped the full and perfect fruits of their treachery. Perhaps a thousand perished by the
explosion, while at least an equal number were desperately mangled. The whole surface of the
bay was literally strewn with the struggling and drowning wretches, and on shore matters were
even worse. They seemed utterly appalled by the suddenness and completeness of their dis-
comfiture and made no efforts at assisting one another. At length we observed a total change in
their demeanor. From absolute stupor, they appeared to be, all at once, aroused to the highest
pitch of excitement and rushed wildly about, going to and from a certain point on the beach
with the strangest expressions of mingled horror, rage, and intense curiosity depicted on their
countenances, and shouting at the top of their voices, Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
Presently we saw a large body go off into the hills, whence they returned in a short time,
carrying stakes of wood. These they brought to the station where the crowd was the thickest,
which now separated so as to afford us a view of the object of all this excitement. We perceived
something white lying on the ground but could not immediately make out what it was. At
length we saw that it was the carcass of the strange animal with the scarlet teeth and claws
which the schooner had picked up at sea on the eighteenth of January. Captain Guy had had
the body preserved for the purpose of stuffing the skin and taking it to England. I remember he
had given some directions about it just before our making the island, and it had been brought
into the cabin and stowed away in one of the lockers. It had now been thrown on shore by
the explosion; but why it had occasioned so much concern among the savages was more than
we could comprehend. Although they crowded around the carcass at a little distance, none of
them seemed willing to approach it closely. By and by the men with the stakes drove them in
a circle around it, and, no sooner was this arrangement completed, than the whole of the vast
assemblage rushed into the interior of the island with loud screams of Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!
23
During the six or seven days immediately following we remained in our hiding place upon the
hill, going out only occasionally, and then with the greatest precaution, for water and filberts.
We had made a kind of penthouse on the platform, furnishing it with a bed of dry leaves and

placing in it three large flat stones, which served us for both fireplace and table. We kindled
a fire without difficulty by rubbing two pieces of dry wood together, the one soft, the other
hard. The bird we had taken in such good season proved excellent eating, although somewhat
tough. It was not an oceanic fowl, but a species of bittern with jet black and grizzly plumage
and diminutive wings in proportion to its bulk. We afterward saw three of the same kind in
the vicinity of the ravine, apparently seeking for the one we had captured; but, as they never
alighted, we had no opportunity of catching them.
As long as this fowl lasted we suffered nothing from our situation; but it was now entirely
consumed, and it became absolutely necessary that we should look out for provisions. The
filberts would not satisfy the cravings of hunger, afflicting us, too, with severe gripings of the
bowels, and if freely indulged in, with violent headaches. We had seen several large tortoises
near the seashore to the eastward of the hill and perceived they might be easily taken, if we
could get at them without the observation of the natives. It was resolved, therefore, to make an
attempt at descending.
We commenced by going down the southern declivity, which seemed to offer the fewest
difficulties, but had not proceeded a hundred yards before (as we had anticipated from appear-
ances on the hilltop) our progress was entirely arrested by a branch of the gorge in which our
companions had perished. We now passed along the edge of this for about a quarter of a mile,
when we were again stopped by a precipice of immense depth, and not being able to make our
way along the brink of it, we were forced to retrace our steps by the main ravine.
We now pushed over to the eastward but with precisely similar fortune. After an hour’s
scramble at the risk of breaking our necks, we discovered that we had merely descended into a
vast pit of black granite, with fine dust at the bottom and whence the only egress was by the
rugged path in which we had come down. Toiling again up this path, we now tried the northern
edge of the hill. Here we were obliged to use the greatest possible caution in our maneuvers, as
the least indiscretion would expose us to the full view of the savages in the village. We crawled
along, therefore, on our hands and knees and, occasionally, were even forced to throw ourselves
at full length, dragging our bodies along by means of the shrubbery. In this careful manner we
had proceeded but a little way, when we arrived at a chasm far deeper than any we had yet seen
and leading directly into the main gorge. Thus our fears were fully confirmed, and we found
ourselves cut off entirely from access to the world below. Thoroughly exhausted by our exer-
tions, we made the best of our way back to the platform and, throwing ourselves upon the bed
of leaves, slept sweetly and soundly for some hours.
For several days after this fruitless search we were occupied in exploring every part of
the summit of the hill, in order to inform ourselves of its actual resources. We found that it
would afford us no food, with the exception of the unwholesome filberts and a rank species
of scurvy grass, which grew in a little patch of not more than four rods square and would be
soon exhausted. On the fifteenth of February, as near as I can remember, there was not a blade
of this left, and the nuts were growing scarce; our situation, therefore, could hardly be more
lamentable.* On the sixteenth we again went round the walls of our prison in hopes of finding
*This day was rendered remarkable by our observing in the south several huge wreaths of the grayish vapor I have
before spoken of.

some avenue of escape, but to no purpose. We also descended the chasm in which we had been
overwhelmed, with the faint expectation of discovering, through this channel, some opening
to the main ravine. Here, too, we were disappointed, although we found and brought up with
us a musket.
On the seventeenth we set out with the determination of examining more thoroughly
the chasm of black granite into which we had made our way in the first search. We remembered
that one of the fissures in the sides of this pit had been but partially looked into, and we were
anxious to explore it, although with no expectation of discovering here any opening.
We found no great difficulty in reaching the bottom of the hollow as before and were
now sufficiently calm to survey it with some attention. It was, indeed, one of the most singular-
looking places imaginable, and we could scarcely bring ourselves to believe it altogether the
work of nature. The pit, from its eastern to its western extremity, was about five hundred yards
in length when all its windings were threaded; the distance from east to west in a straight line
not being more (I should suppose, having no means of accurate examination) than forty or
fifty yards. Upon first descending into the chasm, that is to say, for a hundred feet downward
from the summit of the hill, the sides of the abyss bore little resemblance to each other and, ap-
parently, had at no time been connected, the one surface being of the soapstone and the other
of marl granulated with some metallic matter. The average breadth, or interval between the two
cliffs, was probably here sixty feet, but there seemed to be no regularity of formation. Passing
down, however, beyond the limit spoken of, the interval rapidly contracted and the sides began
to run parallel, although, for some distance farther, they were still dissimilar in their material
and form of surface. Upon arriving within fifty feet of the bottom, a perfect regularity com-
menced. The sides were now entirely uniform in substance, in color, and in lateral direction,
the material being a very black and shining granite and the distance between the two sides, at
all points facing each other, exactly twenty yards. The precise formation of the chasm will be
best understood by means of a delineation taken upon the spot; for I had luckily with me a
pocketbook and pencil, which I preserved with great care through a long series of subsequent
adventures, and to which I am indebted for memoranda of many subjects which would other-
wise have been crowded from my remembrance.
Figure 1.
This figure (see Figure 1) gives the general outlines of the chasm without the minor
cavities in the sides, of which there were several, each cavity having a corresponding protuber-
ance opposite. The bottom of the gulf was covered to the depth of three or four inches with
a powder almost impalpable, beneath which we found a continuation of the black granite. To
the right, at the lower extremity, will be noticed the appearance of a small opening; this is the
fissure alluded to above, and to examine which more minutely than before was the object of

our second visit. We now pushed into it with vigor, cutting away a quantity of brambles which
impeded us and removing a vast heap of sharp flints somewhat resembling arrowheads in shape.
We were encouraged to persevere, however, by perceiving some little light proceeding from the
farther end. We at length squeezed our way for about thirty feet and found that the aperture
was a low and regularly formed arch, having a bottom of the same impalpable powder as that
in the main chasm. A strong light now broke upon us, and turning a short bend, we found our-
selves in another lofty chamber, similar to the one we had left in every respect but longitudinal
form. Its general figure is here given. (See Figure 2)
Figure 2.
The total length of this chasm, commencing at the opening a and proceeding round the
curve b to the extremity d, is five hundred and fifty yards. At c we discovered a small aperture
similar to the one through which we had issued from the other chasm, and this was choked up
in the same manner with brambles and a quantity of the white arrowhead flints. We forced our
way through it, finding it about forty feet long, and emerged into a third chasm. This, too, was
precisely like the first, except in its longitudinal shape, which was thus. (See Figure 3)
Figure 3. Figure 5.

We found the entire length of the third chasm three hundred and twenty yards. At the
point a was an opening about six feet wide and extending fifteen feet into the rock, where it
terminated in a bed of marl, there being no other chasm beyond as we had expected. We were
about leaving this fissure, into which very little light was admitted, when Peters called my
attention to a range of singular-looking indentures in the surface of the marl forming the
termination of the cul-de-sac. With a very slight exertion of the imagination, the left, or most
northerly of these indentures might have been taken for the intentional, although rude, repre-
sentation of a human figure standing erect, with outstretched arm. The rest of them bore also
some little resemblance to alphabetical characters, and Peters was willing, at all events, to adopt
the idle opinion that they were really such. I convinced him of his error, finally, by directing
his attention to the floor of the fissure, where, among the powder, we picked up, piece by piece,
several large flakes of the marl, which had evidently been broken off by some convulsion from
the surface where the indentures were found and which had projecting points exactly fitting the
indentures, thus proving them to have been the work of nature. Figure 4 presents an accurate
copy of the whole.
Figure 4.
After satisfying ourselves that these singular caverns afforded us no means of escape from
our prison, we made our way back, dejected and dispirited, to the summit of the hill. Noth-
ing worth mentioning occurred during the next twenty-four hours, except that in examining
the ground to the eastward of the third chasm, we found two triangular holes of great depth
and also with black granite sides. Into these holes we did not think it worth while to attempt
descending, as they had the appearance of mere natural wells without outlet. They were each
about twenty yards in circumference, and their shape, as well as relative position in regard to
the third chasm, is shown in Figure 5.

24
On the twentieth of the month, finding it altogether impossible to subsist any longer upon the
filberts, the use of which occasioned us the most excruciating torment, we resolved to make a
desperate attempt at descending the southern declivity of the hill.30 The face of the precipice
was here of the softest species of soapstone, although nearly perpendicular throughout its
whole extent (a depth of a hundred and fifty feet at the least) and in many places even over-
arching. After a long search we discovered a narrow ledge about twenty feet below the brink of
the gulf; upon this Peters contrived to leap, with what assistance I could render him by means
of our pocket handkerchiefs tied together.31 With somewhat more difficulty I also got down;
and we then saw the possibility of descending the whole way by the process in which we had
clambered up from the chasm when we had been buried by the fall of the hill—that is, by
cutting steps in the face of the soapstone with our knives. The extreme hazard of the attempt
can scarcely be conceived; but, as there was no other resource, we determined to undertake it.
Upon the ledge where we stood there grew some filbert bushes; and to one of these we
made fast an end of our rope of handkerchiefs. The other end being tied round Peters’s waist,
I lowered him down over the edge of the precipice until the handkerchiefs were stretched tight.
He now proceeded to dig a deep hole in the soapstone (as far in as eight or ten inches), slop-
ing away the rock above to the height of a foot or thereabouts, so as to allow of his driving,
with the butt of a pistol, a tolerably strong peg into the leveled surface. I then drew him up for
about four feet, when he made a hole similar to the one below, driving in a peg as before and
having thus a resting place for both feet and hands. I now unfastened the handkerchiefs from
the bush, throwing him the end which he tied to the peg in the uppermost hole, letting himself
down gently to a station about three feet lower than he had yet been, that is, to the full extent
of the handkerchiefs. Here he dug another hole and drove another peg. He then drew himself
up so as to rest his feet in the hole just cut, taking hold with his hands upon the peg in the one
above. It was now necessary to untie the handkerchiefs from the topmost peg, with the view of
fastening them to the second; and here he found that an error had been committed in cutting
the holes at so great a distance apart. However, after one or two unsuccessful and dangerous
attempts at reaching the knot (having to hold on with his left hand while he labored to undo
the fastening with his right), he at length cut the string, leaving six inches of it affixed to the
peg. Tying the handkerchiefs now to the second peg, he descended to a station below the third,
taking care not to go too far down. By these means (means which I should never have conceived
of myself, and for which we were indebted altogether to Peters’s ingenuity and resolution) my
companion finally succeeded, with the occasional aid of projections in the cliff, in reaching the
bottom without accident.
It was some time before I could summon sufficient resolution to follow him; but I did
at length attempt it. Peters had taken off his shirt before descending, and this, with my own,
formed the rope necessary for the adventure. After throwing down the musket found in the
chasm, I fastened this rope to the bushes and let myself down rapidly, striving, by the vigor of
my movements, to banish the trepidation which I could overcome in no other manner. This

answered sufficiently well for the first four or five steps; but presently I found my imagination
growing terribly excited by thoughts of the vast depth yet to be descended and the precarious
nature of the pegs and soapstone holes which were my only support. It was in vain I endeavored
to banish these reflections and to keep my eyes steadily bent upon the flat surface of the cliff
before me. The more earnestly I struggled not to think, the more intensely vivid became my con-
ceptions and the more horribly distinct. At length arrived that crisis of fancy, so fearful in all
similar cases, the crisis in which we begin to anticipate the feelings with which we shall fall—to
picture to ourselves the sickness, and dizziness, and the last struggle, and the half swoon, and
the final bitterness of the rushing and headlong descent. And now I found these fancies creat-
ing their own realities and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact. I felt my knees strike
violently together, while my fingers were gradually yet certainly relaxing their grasp. There was a
ringing in my ears, and I said, “This is my knell of death!” And now I was consumed with the
irrepressible desire of looking below. I could not, I would not, confine my glances to the cliff;
and, with a wild, indefinable emotion half of horror, half of a relieved oppression, I threw my
vision far down into the abyss. For one moment my fingers clutched convulsively upon their
hold, while, with the movement, the faintest possible idea of ultimate escape wandered like a
shadow through my mind—in the next my whole soul was pervaded with a longing to fall; a desire,
a yearning, a passion utterly uncontrollable. I let go at once my grasp upon the peg, and, turn-
ing half round from the precipice, remained tottering for an instant against its naked face. But
now there came a spinning of the brain; a shrill-sounding and phantom voice screamed within
my ears; a dusky, fiendish, and filmy figure stood immediately beneath me; and, sighing, I sunk
down with a bursting heart and plunged within its arms.
I had swooned, and Peters had caught me as I fell. He had observed my proceedings from
his station at the bottom of the cliff and, perceiving my imminent danger, had endeavored
to inspire me with courage by every suggestion he could devise, although my confusion of
mind had been so great as to prevent my hearing what he said, or being conscious that he had
even spoken to me at all. At length, seeing me totter, he hastened to ascend to my rescue and
arrived just in time for my preservation. Had I fallen with my full weight, the rope of linen
would inevitably have snapped, and I should have been precipitated into the abyss; as it was,
he contrived to let me down gently, so as to remain suspended without danger until animation
returned. This was in about fifteen minutes. On recovery, my trepidation had entirely vanished;
I felt a new being and, with some little further aid from my companion, reached the bottom
also in safety.
We now found ourselves not far from the ravine which had proven the tomb of our
friends and to the southward of the spot where the hill had fallen. The place was one of
singular wildness, and its aspect brought to my mind the descriptions given by travelers of
those dreary regions marking the site of degraded Babylon. Not to speak of the ruins of the
disruptured cliff, which formed a chaotic barrier in the vista to the northward, the surface of
the ground in every other direction was strewn with huge tumuli,* apparently the wreck of
*Mounds. FPW

some gigantic structures of art, although, in detail, no semblance of art could be detected.
Scoria were abundant and large shapeless blocks of the black granite, intermingled with oth-
ers of marl* and both granulated with metal. Of vegetation there were no traces whatsoever
throughout the whole of the desolate area within sight. Several immense scorpions were seen
and various reptiles not elsewhere to be found in the high latitudes.
As food was our most immediate object, we resolved to make our way to the seacoast,
distant not more than half a mile, with a view to catching turtle, several of which we had
observed from our place of concealment on the hill. We had proceeded some hundred yards,
threading our route cautiously between the huge rocks and tumuli, when, upon turning a cor-
ner, five savages sprang upon us from a small cavern, felling Peters to the ground with a blow
from a club. As he fell the whole party rushed upon him to secure their victim, leaving me time
to recover from my astonishment. I still had the musket, but the barrel had received so much
injury in being thrown from the precipice that I cast it aside as useless, preferring to trust my
pistols, which had been carefully preserved in order. With these I advanced upon the assailants,
firing one after the other in quick succession. Two savages fell, and one, who was in the act of
thrusting a spear into Peters, sprang to his feet without accomplishing his purpose. My com-
panion being thus released, we had no further difficulty. He had his pistols also but prudently
declined using them, confiding in his great personal strength, which far exceeded that of any
person I have ever known. Seizing a club from one of the savages who had fallen, he dashed out
the brains of the three who remained, killing each instantaneously with a single blow of the
weapon and leaving us completely masters of the field.
So rapidly had these events passed that we could scarcely believe in their reality, and
were standing over the bodies of the dead in a species of stupid contemplation, when we were
brought to recollection by the sound of shouts in the distance. It was clear that the savages
had been alarmed by the firing and that we had little chance of avoiding discovery. To regain
the cliff, it would be necessary to proceed in the direction of the shouts; and even should we
succeed in arriving at its base, we should never be able to ascend it without being seen. Our
situation was one of the greatest peril, and we were hesitating in which path to commence a
flight, when one of the savages whom I had shot, and supposed dead, sprang briskly to his feet
and attempted to make his escape. We overtook him, however, before he had advanced many
paces and were about to put him to death, when Peters suggested that we might derive some
benefit from forcing him to accompany us in our attempt to escape. We therefore dragged him
with us, making him understand that we would shoot him if he offered resistance. In a few
minutes he was perfectly submissive and ran by our sides as we pushed in among the rocks,
making for the seashore.
So far, the irregularities of the ground we had been traversing hid the sea, except at inter-
vals, from our sight, and when we first had it fairly in view, it was, perhaps, two hundred yards
distant. As we emerged into the open beach we saw, to our great dismay, an immense crowd of
the natives pouring from the village and from all visible quarters of the island, making toward
*The marl was also black; indeed, we noticed no light-colored substances of any kind upon the island.

us with gesticulations of extreme fury and howling like wild beasts. We were upon the point
of turning upon our steps and trying to secure a retreat among the fastnesses of the rougher
ground, when I discovered the bows of two canoes projecting from behind a large rock which
ran out into the water. Toward these we now ran with all speed and, reaching them, found them
unguarded and without any other freight than three of the large Galapagos turtles and the usual
supply of paddles for sixty rowers. We instantly took possession of one of them and, forcing
our captive on board, pushed out to sea with all the strength we could command.
We had not made, however, more than fifty yards from the shore before we became suf-
ficiently calm to perceive the great oversight of which we had been guilty in leaving the other
canoe in the power of the savages, who, by this time, were not more than twice as far from the
beach as ourselves and were rapidly advancing to the pursuit. No time was now to be lost. Our
hope was, at best, a forlorn one, but we had none other. It was very doubtful whether, with
the utmost exertion, we could get back in time to anticipate them in taking possession of the
canoe; but yet there was a chance that we could. We might save ourselves if we succeeded, while
not to make the attempt was to resign ourselves to inevitable butchery.
The canoe was modeled with the bow and stern alike, and in place of turning it round,
we merely changed our position in paddling. As soon as the savages perceived this they redou-
bled their yells, as well as their speed, and approached with inconceivable rapidity. We pulled,
however, with all the energy of desperation and arrived at the contested point before more than
one of the natives had attained it. This man paid dearly for his superior agility, Peters shooting
him through the head with a pistol as he approached the shore. The foremost among the rest
of his party were probably some twenty or thirty paces distant as we seized upon the canoe. We
at first endeavored to pull her into the deep water, beyond the reach of the savages, but, finding
her too firmly aground and there being no time to spare, Peters, with one or two heavy strokes
from the butt of the musket, succeeded in dashing out a large portion of the bow and of one
side. We then pushed off. Two of the natives by this time had got hold of our boat, obstinately
refusing to let go, until we were forced to dispatch them with our knives. We were now clear
off and making great way out to sea. The main body of the savages, upon reaching the broken
canoe, set up the most tremendous yell of rage and disappointment conceivable. In truth, from
everything I could see of these wretches, they appeared to be the most wicked, hypocritical,
vindictive, bloodthirsty, and altogether fiendish race of men upon the face of the globe. It is
clear we should have had no mercy had we fallen into their hands. They made a mad attempt
at following us in the fractured canoe, but, finding it useless, again vented their rage in a series
of hideous vociferations and rushed up into the hills.
We were thus relieved from immediate danger, but our situation was still sufficiently
gloomy. We knew that four canoes of the kind we had were at one time in the possession of
the savages and were not aware of the fact (afterward ascertained from our captive) that two of
these had been blown to pieces in the explosion of the Jane Guy. We calculated, therefore, upon
being yet pursued as soon as our enemies could get round to the bay (distant about three miles)
where the boats were usually laid up. Fearing this, we made every exertion to leave the island
behind us and went rapidly through the water, forcing the prisoner to take a paddle. In about
half an hour, when we had gained, probably, five or six miles to the southward, a large fleet of

the flat-bottomed canoes or rafts were seen to emerge from the bay, evidently with the design
of pursuit. Presently they put back, despairing to overtake us.
25
We now found ourselves in the wide and desolate Antarctic Ocean, in a latitude exceeding
eighty-four degrees, in a frail canoe, and with no provisions but the three turtles.32 The long
polar winter, too, could not be considered as far distant, and it became necessary that we
should deliberate well upon the course to be pursued. There were six or seven islands in sight
belonging to the same group and distant from each other about five or six leagues; but upon
neither of these had we any intention to venture. In coming from the northward in the Jane Guy
we had been gradually leaving behind us the severest regions of ice—this, however little it may
be in accordance with the generally received notions respecting the antarctic, was a fact experi-
ence would not permit us to deny. To attempt getting back, therefore, would be folly—espe-
cially at so late a period of the season.33 Only one course seemed to be left open for hope. We
resolved to steer boldly to the southward, where there was at least a probability of discovering
other lands and more than a probability of finding a still milder climate.
So far we had found the antarctic, like the Arctic Ocean, peculiarly free from violent
storms or immoderately rough water; but our canoe was at best of frail structure, although
large, and we set busily to work with a view to rendering her as safe as the limited means in
our possession would admit.34 The body of the boat was of no better material than bark—the
bark of a tree unknown. The ribs were of a tough osier, well adapted to the purpose for which
it was used. We had fifty feet of room35 from stem to stern, from four to six in breadth, and
in depth throughout four feet and a half—the boats thus differing vastly in shape from those
of any other inhabitants of the southern ocean with whom civilized nations are acquainted.
We never did believe them the workmanship of the ignorant islanders who owned them, and
some days after this period discovered, by questioning our captive, that they were in fact made
by the natives of a group to the southwest of the country where we found them, having fallen
accidentally into the hands of our barbarians. What we could do for the security of our boat
was very little indeed. Several wide rents were discovered near both ends, and these we contrived
to patch up with pieces of woolen jacket. With the help of the superfluous paddles, of which
there were a great many, we erected a kind of framework about the bow, so as to break the force
of any seas which might threaten to fill us in that quarter. We also set up two paddle blades
for masts, placing them opposite each other, one by each gunwale, thus saving the necessity of
a yard. To these masts we attached a sail made of our shirts—doing this with some difficulty
as here we could get no assistance from our prisoner whatever, although he had been willing
enough to labor in all the other operations. The sight of the linen seemed to affect him in a
very singular manner. He could not be prevailed upon to touch it or go near it, shuddering
when we attempted to force him and shrieking out Tekeli-li.
Having completed our arrangements in regard to the security of the canoe, we now set
sail to the south-southeast for the present, with the view of weathering the most southerly of
the group in sight. This being done, we turned the bow full to the southward. The weather

could by no means be considered disagreeable. We had a prevailing and very gentle wind from
the northward, a smooth sea, and continual daylight. No ice whatever was to be seen; nor did I
ever see one particle of this after leaving the parallel of Bennet’s Islet. Indeed, the temperature of the water
was here far too warm for its existence in any quantity. Having killed the largest of our tor-
toises and obtained from him not only food but a copious supply of water, we continued on
our course, without any incident of moment, for perhaps seven or eight days, during which
period we must have proceeded a vast distance to the southward, as the wind blew constantly
with us and a very strong current set continually in the direction we were pursuing.
March 1st.* Many unusual phenomena now indicated that we were entering upon a region
of novelty and wonder. A high range of light gray vapor appeared constantly in the southern
horizon, flaring up occasionally in lofty streaks, now darting from east to west, now from west
to east, and again presenting a level and uniform summit—in short, having all the wild varia-
tions of the aurora borealis. The average height of this vapor, as apparent from our station, was
about twenty-five degrees. The temperature of the sea seemed to be increasing momentarily,
and there was a very perceptible alteration in its color.
March 2nd. Today, by repeated questioning of our captive, we came to the knowledge of
many particulars in regard to the island of the massacre, its inhabitants, and customs—but
with these how can I now detain the reader? I may say, however, that we learned there were eight
islands in the group—that they were governed by a common king, named Tsalemon or Psalemoun,
who resided in one of the smallest of the islands—that the black skins forming the dress of
the warriors came from an animal of huge size to be found only in a valley near the court of the
king—that the inhabitants of the group fabricated no other boats than the flat-bottomed rafts;
the four canoes being all of the kind in their possession and these having been obtained, by
mere accident, from some large island to the southwest—that his own name was Nu-Nu—that
he had no knowledge of Bennet’s Islet—and that the appellation of the island we had left was
Tsalal. The commencement of the words Tsalemon and Tsalal was given with a prolonged hissing
sound, which we found it impossible to imitate even after repeated endeavors, and which was
precisely the same with the note of the black bittern we had eaten upon the summit of the hill.
March 3rd. The heat of the water was now truly remarkable, and in color was undergo-
ing a rapid change, being no longer transparent but of a milky consistency and hue. In our
immediate vicinity it was usually smooth, never so rough as to endanger the canoe—but we
were frequently surprised at perceiving, to our right and left, at different distances, sudden and
extensive agitations of the surface—these, we at length noticed, were always preceded by wild
flickerings in the region of vapor to the southward.
March 4th. Today, with the view of widening our sail, the breeze from the northward
dying away perceptibly, I took from my coat pocket a white handkerchief. Nu-Nu was seated
at my elbow, and the linen accidentally flaring in his face, he became violently affected with
convulsions. These were succeeded by drowsiness and stupor, and low murmurings of Tekeli-li!
Tekeli-li!
*For obvious reasons I cannot pretend to strict accuracy in these dates. They are given principally with a view to
perspicuity of narration, and as set down in my pencil memoranda.

March 5th. The wind had entirely ceased, but it was evident that we were still hurrying on
to the southward under the influence of a powerful current. And now, indeed, it would seem
reasonable that we should experience some alarm at the turn events were taking—but we felt
none. The countenance of Peters indicated nothing of this nature, although it wore at times an
expression I could not fathom. The polar winter appeared to be coming on—but coming with-
out its terrors. I felt a numbness of body and mind—a dreaminess of sensation—but this was all.
March 6th. The gray vapor had now arisen many more degrees above the horizon and was
gradually losing its grayness of tint. The heat of the water was extreme, even unpleasant to the
touch, and its milky hue was more evident than ever. Today a violent agitation of the water oc-
curred very close to the canoe. It was attended, as usual, with a wild flaring up of the vapor at
its summit and a momentary division at its base. A fine white powder resembling ashes—but
certainly not such—fell over the canoe and over a large surface of the water, as the flickering
died away among the vapor and the commotion subsided in the sea. Nu-Nu now threw himself
on his face in the bottom of the boat, and no persuasions could induce him to arise.
March 7th. This day we questioned Nu-Nu concerning the motives of his countrymen
in destroying our companions; but he appeared to be too utterly overcome by terror to afford
us any rational reply. He still obstinately lay in the bottom of the boat; and, upon reiterating
the questions as to the motive, made use only of idiotic gesticulations, such as raising with his
forefinger the upper lip and displaying the teeth which lay beneath it. These were black. We had
never before seen the teeth of an inhabitant of Tsalal.
March 8th. Today there floated by us one of the white animals whose appearance upon the
beach at Tsalal had occasioned so wild a commotion among the savages. I would have picked
it up, but there came over me a sudden listlessness and I forbore. The heat of the water still
increased, and the hand could no longer be endured within it. Peters spoke little, and I knew
not what to think of his apathy. Nu-Nu breathed, and no more.
March 9th. The white ashy material fell now continually around us and in vast quantities.
The range of vapor to the southward had arisen prodigiously in the horizon and began to as-
sume more distinctness of form. I can liken it to nothing but a limitless cataract, rolling silently
into the sea from some immense and far-distant rampart in the heavens. The gigantic curtain
ranged along the whole extent of the southern horizon. It emitted no sound.
March 21st. A sullen darkness now hovered above us—but from out the milky depths of
the ocean a luminous glare arose and stole up along the bulwarks of the boat. We were nearly
overwhelmed by the white ashy shower, which settled upon us and upon the canoe but melted
into the water as it fell. The summit of the cataract was utterly lost in the dimness and the
distance. Yet we were evidently approaching it with a hideous velocity. At intervals there were
visible in it wide, yawning, but momentary rents, and from out these rents, within which was
a chaos of flitting and indistinct images, there came rushing and mighty but soundless winds,
tearing up the enkindled ocean in their course.
March 22nd. The darkness had materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water
thrown back from the white curtain before us. Many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew con-
tinuously now from beyond the veil, and their scream was the eternal Tekeli-li! as they retreated
from our vision. Hereupon Nu-Nu stirred in the bottom of the boat; but, upon touching him,

we found his spirit departed. And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a
chasm threw itself open to receive us. But there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure,
very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the hue of the skin of the
figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.
There arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure.

NOTE
The circumstances connected with the late sudden and distressing death of Mr. Pym are al-
ready well known to the public through the medium of the daily press. It is feared that the few
remaining chapters which were to have completed his narrative and which were retained by him,
while the above were in type, for the purpose of revision, have been irrecoverably lost through
the accident by which he perished himself. This, however, may prove not to be the case, and the
papers, if ultimately found, will be given to the public.
No means have been left untried to remedy the deficiency. The gentleman whose name is
mentioned in the preface, and who, from the statement there made, might be supposed able to
fill the vacuum, has declined the task—this for satisfactory reasons connected with the general
inaccuracy of the details afforded him, and his disbelief in the entire truth of the latter por-
tions of the narration. Peters, from whom some information might be expected, is still alive,
and a resident of Illinois, but cannot be met with at present. He may hereafter be found and
will, no doubt, afford material for a conclusion of Mr. Pym’s account.
The loss of the two or three final chapters (for there were but two or three) is the more
deeply to be regretted, as, it cannot be doubted, they contained matter relative to the pole itself,
or at least to regions in its very near proximity; and as, too, the statements of the author in
relation to these regions may shortly be verified or contradicted by means of the governmental
expedition now preparing for the southern ocean.
On one point in the narrative some remarks may be well offered; and it would afford the
writer of this appendix much pleasure if what he may here observe should have a tendency
to throw credit, in any degree, upon the very singular pages now published. We allude to the
chasms found in the island of Tsalal and to the whole of the figures upon pages 363 to 365.
Mr. Pym has given the figures of the chasms without comment and speaks decidedly of
the indentures found at the extremity of the most easterly of these chasms as having but a fanciful
resemblance to alphabetical characters and, in short, as being positively not such. This assertion
is made in a manner so simple, and sustained by a species of demonstration so conclusive (viz.,
the fitting of the projections of the fragments found among the dust into the indentures upon
the wall), that we are forced to believe the writer in earnest, and no reasonable reader should
suppose otherwise. But as the facts in relation to all the figures are most singular (especially
when taken in connection with statements made in the body of the narrative), it may be as well
to say a word or two concerning them all—this, too, the more especially as the facts in question
have, beyond doubt, escaped the attention of Mr. Poe.
Figure 1, then Figure 2, Figure 3, and Figure 5, when conjoined with one another in the
precise order which the chasms themselves presented, and when deprived of the small lateral
branches or arches (which, it will be remembered, served only as means of communication
between the main chambers, and were of totally distinct character), constitute an Ethiopian
verbal root—the root “To be shady”—whence all the inflections of shadow or
darkness.
In regard to the “left or most northwardly” of the indentures in Figure 4, it is more than
probable that the opinion of Peters was correct and that the hieroglyphical appearance was re-

ally the work of art and intended as the representation of a human form. The delineation is be-
fore the reader, and he may, or may not, perceive the resemblance suggested; but the rest of the
indentures afford strong confirmation of Peters’s idea. The upper range is evidently the Arabic
verbal root “To be white,” whence all the inflections of brilliancy and whiteness.
The lower range is not so immediately perspicuous. The characters are somewhat broken and
disjointed; nevertheless it cannot be doubted that, in their perfect state, they formed the full
Egyptian word , “The region of the south.” It should be observed that these
interpretations confirm the opinion of Peters in regard to the “most northwardly” of the fig-
ures. The arm is outstretched toward the south.
Conclusions such as these open a wide field for speculation and exciting conjecture.
They should be regarded, perhaps, in connection with some of the most faintly detailed in-
cidents of the narrative; although in no visible manner is this chain of connection complete.
Tekeli-li! was the cry of the affrighted natives of Tsalal upon discovering the carcass of the white
animal picked up at sea. This also was the shuddering exclamation of the captive Tsalalian
upon encountering the white materials in possession of Mr. Pym. This also was the shriek of
the swift-flying, white, and gigantic birds which issued from the vapory white curtain of the
south. Nothing white was to be found at Tsalal, and nothing otherwise in the subsequent voy-
age to the region beyond. It is not impossible that “Tsalal,” the appellation of the island of
the chasms, may be found, upon minute philological scrutiny, to betray either some alliance
with the chasms themselves, or some reference to the Ethiopian characters so mysteriously
written in their windings.
“I have graven it within the hills, and my vengeance upon the dust within the rock.”

Poe’s tales started to catch on in France during the last years of his life. In the mid
1840s translations of “Wilson Wilson” (1839), “The Black Cat” (1843), and
other choice titles began appearing in French periodicals, thanks to such transla-
tors as Isabelle Meunier, William L. Hughes, and especially Charles Baudelaire,
who poured out a steady stream of Poe favorites over the next two decades.
So the thirty-something Verne was well up on Poe’s output when, in April
1864, his article Edgar Poe et ses œuvres appeared in the magazine La Musée des familles.
The only piece of literary criticism Verne ever published, it’s a bird’s-eye view of
Poe for the general reader: a summary of his tragic life plus plot rundowns and
critiques of some of his stories.
Verne organizes his essay into four chapters: the first gives a quick bio, build-
ing to Poe’s hospitalization where “delirium tremens set in and he died the next day.”
Then Verne goes on to assess the analytical gifts Poe displays in his pioneering de-
tective story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841). Next, in Chapter 2, Verne
inspects two more detective yarns, “The Purloined Letter” (1844) and “The Gold
Bug” (1843), looking at length into the latter’s code-busting techniques. In Chap-
ter 3 Verne studies Poe’s accounts of fantastic journeys: he finds “The Unparal-
leled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall” (1835) scientifically shaky, touches quickly
on “M.S. Found in a Bottle” (1833), “A Descent into the Maelstrom” (1841),
and a few other celebrated tales, then ends with a longish paragraph on an uncel-
ebrated one, “Three Sundays in a Week” (1841)—which, years later, would influ-
ence Verne’s comic thriller Around the World in 80 Days (1872).
FinallyVerne turns to Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, which he
considers challenging enough for an entire chapter. My translation of this final chapter
follows. FPW

Appendix 2
Verne on Pym
chapter 4 from
Edgar Allan Poe and His Works
verne on pym / 377

4
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym—Augustus Barnard—the brig Grampus

the hiding place down in the hold—the mad dog—the note in blood—mutiny and slaughter
the ghost on board—the vessel of the dead—shipwreck—agonies of hunger
voyage to the South Pole—new men—amazing island—buried alive
the huge human figure—conclusion
To finish this study of Poe’s works, I come at last to his novel. It’s longer than his longest short
stories and has the title The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.1 Though it may be more human than
the tales of the grotesque and arabesque, it’s just as far off the beaten path.2 It features situ-
ations that aren’t found anywhere else and are basically dramatic in nature. You be the judge.
Poe begins right off by reprinting a note from the aforesaid Arthur Gordon Pym, all go-
ing to show that his adventures aren’t the least bit imaginary, as you would tend to believe from
their being signed with Mr. Poe’s name; he makes the case for their being the real thing; without
digging too deeply into this, we’ll see if they’re even possible, let alone probable.
Pym himself is our narrator.
From his boyhood he was obsessed with going to sea, and though he had an adventure
that nearly cost him his life, it didn’t cure him of his obsession, and one day he contemplated
(unbeknownst to his family, who wouldn’t have approved) setting sail on the brig Grampus,
bound for the whale fisheries.
Augustus Barnard, one of his friends and a crew member, was to help with this scheme
by fixing up a hiding place in the hold where Arthur would stay till departure time.3 Everything
went without a hitch, and soon our hero felt the brig get under way. But after three days in
captivity, he couldn’t think straight; he got cramps in his legs; what’s more, his food went bad;
time passed. Augustus didn’t show up; the prisoner started to seriously worry.
Using an evocative vocabulary and tremendously powerful imagery, Poe depicts the pe-
culiar hallucinations, dreams, and optical illusions that the poor man experienced, his physical
verne on pym / 379

suffering, his mental anguish. He lost his voice; his mind was in a fog; at this desperate juncture
he felt the paws of some enormous monster resting on his chest, with two glittering orbs beam-
ing on him; his head started to spin, and he was about to go insane, when the shadowy monster
started licking his face with love and delight, making him realize that his Newfoundland dog
Tiger had come along for the trip.
Tiger had been his friend and companion for seven years; then Arthur’s hopes revived,
and he tried to gather his wits again; he’d lost all sense of time; how many days had he been
sunk in this morbid apathy?
He was wildly feverish—plus, adding insult to injury, his water jug was empty; he was
determined to get back to the trapdoor at any cost; but the brig’s rolling movements knocked
over the poorly stowed parcels and shifted them around; any instant there was a danger the pas-
sageway would be blocked. However, after a thousand agonizing exertions, Arthur made it to
the trapdoor. He tried to force it open with his knife blade, but his efforts were in vain; it stayed
stubbornly shut. Crazy with despair, dragging himself along, in a state of shock, exhausted,
near death, he got back to his hiding place, stretched out, and collapsed. Tiger licked him, try-
ing to comfort him; but the animal ended up scaring his master; he let out low growls, and
when Arthur reached over to him, he always found him lying on his back, paws in the air.
You can see how Poe has set the reader up with this sequence of events; yes, we’ll believe
anything, we’ll expect the worst, and we’ll shiver when we read the title of the next chapter:
“Tiger Gone Mad!”4 There’s no way we won’t keep turning the pages.
But before undergoing this crowning terror, Arthur petted Tiger and felt a little slip of
paper attached by a string under the animal’s left shoulder; after twenty attempts to find some
matches, he gathered up a little phosphorous, rubbed it briskly, and got a quick, faint light; in
its glow he read the end of a line that featured these words: blood—your life depends upon lying close.
Blood! This word . . . in this situation! It was just then, in the phosphorescent glow, that
he noticed a singular change in Tiger’s behavior! The lack of water had driven him mad, Arthur
was positive of it! And now, if Pym showed any inclination to leave his hideout, it seemed like
the dog wanted to bar his way. Frightened, Arthur buttoned his coat up tightly to protect him-
self from being bitten, then embarked on a desperate struggle with the animal; but he emerged
victorious and managed to shut the dog in the box that served as his hideout; then he fainted
dead away; he was yanked out of his stupor by a noise, a muttering, his name spoken in a sub-
dued voice. Augustus was near him, lifting a water bottle to his lips.
What had happened on board? The crew had mutinied and slaughtered the captain plus
twenty-one men; they’d spared Augustus, thanks to the unexpected protection of one Peters,
a seaman of phenomenal strength. After this dreadful drama, the Grampus had continued on
her way, and the narrative of these adventures, the storyteller adds, “will be found to include
incidents of a nature so entirely out of the range of human experience and for this reason so
far beyond the limits of human credulity, that I proceed in utter hopelessness of obtaining
credence for all that I shall tell, yet confidently trusting in time and progressing science to verify
some of the most important and most improbable of my statements.”
We’ll see. I’ll speed things up. There were two leaders among the mutineers, the mate and
the cook, Peters; but they were competitors and enemies.5 Augustus Barnard made the most of
this rift by revealing Arthur’s presence on board to Peters, who was losing supporters by the
380 / verne on pym

day. They pondered taking over the ship. The death of a sailor soon offered them an opportu-
nity. Arthur would play the role of a ghost, and the conspirators would take advantage of the
panic caused by this apparition.
The stage was set; their foes were paralyzed with terror, the struggle started; with Tiger’s
help, Peters and his two companions prevailed; and they wound up alone on board along with
a seaman by the name of Parker, who hadn’t perished and had joined forces with them.
But then a horrible storm came up; the ship rolled, lay on her side, and due to her slant-
ing, the stowage shifted and kept her in that horrible position for a good while; however she
did straighten up a little.
Now we come to the strange scenes where they have no food and make many abortive
attempts to get to the storeroom; they’re described at a spanking pace.
At the height of their woes, a terrifying incident occurred, absolutely typical of Poe’s
genius.
A ship came in sight of the survivors, a large hermaphrodite brig of Dutch build, painted
black with a tawdry gilt figurehead; it came near by degrees, then drew off and came on again;
it didn’t seem to be following a definite course. Yawing one last time, it finally went past barely
twenty feet away from the Grampus; the survivors could see her deck. Horrors! It was covered
with corpses; there wasn’t a single living person left on board! Yes, only a raven was strolling
among all the dead carcasses; then the strange ship vanished, taking with her the horrible reek
of what she’d come to.6
Over the following days they suffer increasingly from hunger and thirst. Those agonies
felt on the Medusa’s raft will give only the most imperfect idea of what they experience aboard
their vessel; they coolly weigh the merits of cannibalism, and they draw straws; Parker’s the
unlucky one.
The poor fellows went on this way till August 4; Augustus Barnard had died of exhaus-
tion; gradually the ship overturned, building an irresistible impetus and ending up with her
keel in the air; the survivors hung onto her; but their pangs of hunger eased a bit, because they
found her keel covered with a heavy layer of large barnacles, which supplied them with a first-
rate food; but they were still short of water.
On April 6, after new miseries or new grounds for hope were both confirmed and denied,
they finally got picked up by the schooner Jane Guy of Liverpool, Captain Guy commanding.7
Then it emerged that the three unlucky men had drifted at least twenty-five degrees north to
south.8
The Jane Guy was on her way to hunt seal in the South Seas, and on October 10 she
dropped anchor off Christmas Harbor in the Desolation Isles.9
On November 12 she left Christmas Harbor and reached the Tristan da Cunha group
two weeks later; on December 12 Captain Guy decided to make an exploratory push in the
direction of the pole; the narrator details the intriguing record of discoveries in those seas,
citing the famous attempts by James Weddell whom our Captain Dumont d’Urville called out
during his voyages with the Astrolabe and the Zealous.
The Jane Guy crossed the 63rd parallel on December 26, midsummer in those parts, and
was surrounded by ice floes. On January 18 her crew fished up the body of a singular creature,
apparently a land animal:
verne on pym / 381

It was three feet in length and but six inches in height, with four very short legs, the feet
armed with long claws of a brilliant scarlet and resembling coral in substance. The body
was covered with a straight silky hair, perfectly white. The tail was peaked like that of a
rat and about a foot and a half long. The head resembled a cat’s with the exception of
the ears—these were flapped like the ears of a dog. The teeth were of the same brilliant
scarlet as the claws.
On January 19 they raised land at latitude 83°; jet-black savages, “new men,” came and
headed off the schooner, which they apparently mistook for a live creature. Encouraged by the
good behavior of these natives, Captain Guy decided to pay a visit inland; and backed by a
dozen well-armed seamen, he arrived in the village of Klock-klock after a three-hour hike. Arthur
was a member of this expedition.
“At every step we took inland,” he says, “the conviction forced itself upon us that we were
in a country differing essentially from any hitherto visited by civilized men.”
In fact the trees didn’t resemble anything growing in the torrid zones, the rocks were
novel in their mass and stratification, the water presented the strangest phenomena!
Though it was as limpid as any limestone water in existence, it didn’t have the customary
appearance of limpidity, “presenting to the eye . . . every possible shade of purple, like the hues of
a changeable silk.”
The animals in the region were fundamentally different from any known animals, at least
in their appearance.
The Jane Guy’s crew and the natives coexisted amicably. A second trip inland was ar-
ranged; six men stayed aboard the schooner while the rest took to the trail. The band crept
through the narrow winding valleys, escorted by the savages. A wall of rock rose straight up to
a great height, streaked with some fissures that caught Arthur’s attention.
As he was examining one of these with Peters and somebody named Wilson:
I was suddenly aware, he says, of a concussion* resembling nothing I had ever before experienced, and
which impressed me with a vague conception . . . that the whole foundations of the solid globe were suddenly
rent asunder and that the day of universal dissolution was at hand.
They were entombed alive; after taking stock, Peters and Arthur saw that Wilson had
been crushed to death; the two unlucky men were in the heart of a hill composed of some sort
of soapstone—buried by a cataclysm, but a manufactured cataclysm; the savages had pulled the
mountain down onto the Jane Guy’s crew, all of them perishing except for Peters and Arthur.
Digging their way through the soft rock, they made it to an opening, looked out, and
found the countryside swarming with natives; the latter attacked the schooner, which fought
back with cannon blasts; but finally they overwhelmed her, set her on fire, and soon after blew
her up in a dreadful explosion that killed several thousand people.
For many days Arthur and Peters lived in the maze, eating filberts; Arthur worked up
the exact layout of this maze, which culminated in three chasms; he even provides sketches of
*Tremor. FPW
382 / verne on pym

these three chasms in his narrative, likewise a copy of certain indentures that apparently had
been carved into the pumice stone.
With a superhuman effort Peters and Arthur managed to get back out on the plains;
chased by a howling horde of savages, they had the luck to lay hold of a canoe, in which a native
had taken refuge, and they successfully put to sea.
There they were, on the “wide and desolate Antarctic Ocean, in a latitude exceeding
eighty-four degrees, in a frail canoe, and with no provisions but . . . three turtles.”
They fixed up a species of sail with their shirts; the sight of the linen affected their pris-
oner in a singular manner, and he could never bring himself to touch it and seemed to have a
horror of whiteness; but they kept on going and entered a region of novelty and wonder . . .
A high range of light gray vapor appeared constantly in the southern horizon, flaring
up occasionally in lofty streaks, now darting from east to west . . . and again presenting
a level and uniform summit.
A phenomenon still stranger—the temperature of the sea seemed to be increasing and

soon was extremely high; its milky hue became more apparent than ever.
Arthur and Peters finally learned from their prisoner that his island, that stage for di-
saster, was called Tsalal; the poor devil fell into convulsions when they came near him with
anything white.
Soon a violent agitation occurred in the water. It was accompanied by a strange flaring
up of the vapor at its summit . . .
A fine white powder resembling ashes—but certainly not such—fell over the canoe . . . as
the flickering died away among the vapor and the commotion subsided in the sea.
And so it went for some days; apathy and a sudden listlessness overcame the three un-
lucky souls; their hands could no longer endure the heat of the water.
I’ll now quote the entire segment that ends this amazing narrative:
March 9th. The white ashy material fell now continually around us and in vast quantities. The range
of vapor to the southward had arisen prodigiously in the horizon and began to assume more distinctness
of form. I can liken it to nothing but a limitless cataract, rolling silently into the sea from some immense
and far-distant rampart in the heavens. The gigantic curtain ranged along the whole extent of the southern
horizon. It emitted no sound.
March 21st. A sullen darkness now hovered above us—but from out the milky depths of the ocean a
luminous glare arose and stole up along the bulwarks of the boat. We were nearly overwhelmed by the white
ashy shower, which settled upon us and upon the canoe but melted into the water as it fell. The summit of the
cataract was utterly lost in the dimness and the distance. Yet we were evidently approaching it with a hideous
velocity. At intervals there were visible in it wide, yawning, but momentary rents, and from out these rents,
within which was a chaos of flitting and indistinct images, there came rushing and mighty but soundless
winds, tearing up the enkindled ocean in their course.
verne on pym / 383

March 22nd. The darkness had materially increased, relieved only by the glare of the water thrown back
from the white curtain before us. Many gigantic and pallidly white birds flew continuously now from beyond
the veil. . . . And now we rushed into the embraces of the cataract, where a chasm threw itself open to receive
us. But there arose in our pathway a veiled human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any resident
of the earth. And the hue of the man’s skin was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.10
And that’s how the narrative breaks off. Who will ever take it up again? Somebody more
daring than I am, somebody bolder at pushing on into the realm of things impossible.
Even so, we have to believe that Arthur Gordon Pym made it back in one piece, since he
himself generated this strange publication; but he somehow died before finishing the job. Poe
seems to deeply regret this and turns down the task of filling in the gaps.
This, then, is a summary of the American storyteller’s chief works; did I go too far in
making them out as weird and uncanny? Didn’t he actually create a new form of literature, a
form coming from the sensitivity of his excessive mental processes, to use one of his words.
Setting aside the things that are beyond comprehension, what we have to wonder at in
Poe’s output are the newness of the situations, the discussion of obscure facts, the scrutiny of
man’s morbid traits, his choice of subject, his characters who always have strange personalities,
their nervous, morbid temperaments, their way of expressing themselves with peculiar exclama-
tions. And even so, in the midst of these impossible things, there’s sometimes a realism that
overwhelms the reader’s gullibility.
Now let me draw your attention to the materialist side of these tales; you never sense
any interceding by Providence; Poe doesn’t seem to accept its presence and insists on explaining
everything by physical laws, which, if need be, he even makes up; you don’t sense in him any of
the faith he should have developed by continually contemplating the supernatural. He creates
fantastic things in cold blood, if I can put it that way, and the poor fellow remains an apostle of
materialism; but I expect it’s less the fault of his temperament than the influence of America’s
strictly pragmatic industrial world; he wrote, thought, and dreamed as a U.S. citizen, a practical
man; recognizing this inclination, let’s marvel at his works.
These extraordinary tales can give you an idea of Edgar Allan Poe’s endlessly febrile life;
unfortunately it was too much for his system, and his excesses would lead him into the horrible
addiction to alcohol that he’d identified so clearly and that brought about his death.
384 / verne on pym

Textual Notes
This English rendering of Le Sphinx des glaces adheres to the paragraphing in the original French
texts and is complete down to the smallest substantive detail. I’ve used the Livre de Poche
red-cover reissue as a working edition, but since no edition seems entirely free of typos and
production slips, I’ve double-checked the LdP text against others, both electronic and print—
notably the original 1897 J. Hetzel et Cie. hardcover edition accessible at http://gallica.bnf.fr/
ark:/12148/bpt6k58069672/, and the 2005 Omnibus compilation, L’étrange histoire d’Arthur
Gordon Pym, edited by Claude Aziza. As an additional aid to resolving textual puzzles, I’ve regu-
larly consulted the full manuscript accessible at http://www.bm.nantes.fr.
Since the majority of its readers are likely to be American, I’ve targeted my transla-
tion to the U.S. public. I’ve tried to create a reader-friendly English text that’s both faithful
and communicative—faithful in mirroring the substance, effect, and apparent intent of the
original French, communicative in its overall wording, in its efforts to suggest Verne’s narra-
tive and comic styles, and in its presentation of period, cultural, and specialized detail. Where
the French refers to people, places, things, or concepts that may be obscure to a 21st-century
American, I’ve sometimes attached a footnote or inserted a quick gloss in the text proper. My
footnotes are signed FPW. All others are from the original.
As for proper names and names of historical figures, the translation favors spellings in
regular use today; it also favors modern usages for geographical designations, while coordi-
nating, however, with the usages in Poe’s novel. Americans will have no trouble with many of
Verne’s weights and measures, but when he resorts to metric figures, the translation converts
to feet, pounds, inches, and other U.S. equivalents. Similarly, centigrade readings are converted
to Fahrenheit, and where Verne gives both, I’ve moved the centigrade equivalents to these end-
notes. To insure accuracy I’ve used two conversion instruments: http://www.convertit.com/
Go/ConvertIt/Measurement/Converter.ASP, double-checked against http://www.science-
madesimple.com/conversions.html.
textual notes / 385

Where Verne alludes to the league, I take it as equal to four kilometers or 2.48 (2½) miles.
All miles given are the statute mile (5,280 feet); on the few occasions where the French specifies
nautical miles, I convert them.
A frequent peculiarity in French editions of Verne’s novels is their repetitive handling of
character names: the published texts of Sphinx (unlike the MS) usually give full names at each
reference—e.g., Captain Len Guy, Jem West, Martin Holt, etc. For the sake of naturalness
and variety, I often shorten these to last name only. On the other hand, Verne himself follows
French norms and shortens Poe’s and Pym’s full names, referring to them as “Edgar Poe” and
“Arthur Pym.” In my translation I favor either their last names alone or “Edgar Allan Poe” and
“Arthur Gordon Pym,” as is customary in the U.S.
Gallic editions of Sphinx quote repeatedly from Charles Baudelaire’s French translations
of Poe. As a rule Baudelaire’s renderings are both evocative and faithful, so my English text nor-
mally quotes from Poe’s originals, this rather than “translating back” from Baudelaire’s French.
Exceptions are specified in the notes below: idiosyncrasies in Baudelaire’s translating that had
an effect on what Verne came to write.
Appendix 1, the full text of Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, is based
on the 1838 Harper first edition. Scans of the Huntington Library copy can be accessed from
the Gale database Sabin Americana. A 1994 reissue of Burton R. Pollin’s critical edition, in
his compendium Imaginary Voyages, is available from Gordian Press. The present text makes ad-
justments for modern American readers, correcting typos, updating punctuation and spelling,
italicizing ship names, making occasional tweaks for readability, and renumbering the final
chapters. Specifics are given in the notes below.
Appendix 2, my translation of Chapter 4 from Verne’s early essay Edgar Allan Poe and his
Works, is based on the text in the 2005 Omnibus edition, L’étrange histoire d’Arthur Gordon Pym,
edited by Claude Aziza.
This volume has benefited immeasurably from the range and vitality of current Verne
scholarship, likewise from today’s electronic access to academic, institutional, and educational
resources around the world.
ABBREVIATIONS AND SHORTHAND ALLUSIONS IN THE NOTES:
MS . . . Along with over a hundred other Verne manuscripts, a full MS of Le Sphinx des glaces re-
sides in the public library at Verne’s birthplace, the Bibliothèque municipale de Nantes. A com-
plete scan can be accessed at http://www.bm.nantes.fr. User registration is free. NB: reaching
Part Two in his manuscript, Verne started over with p. 1, but the scans themselves continue the on-
going pagination. Accordingly the page numbers cited in the notes below are the scan numbers.
Generally Verne’s penmanship is calm, firm, shapely, and easy to read. This particular MS
seems well along in the creative process, much of it showing at least three stages in the writing:
a pencil draft, the entirety written over in ink, then the inked words frequently lined out and
revised. Often it closely resembles the published text, but it would have led to at least two ad-
ditional production phases: typesetting by Hetzel compositors (who sign off on the MS pages
themselves), then Verne’s correcting and tweaking of the galleys.
386 / textual notes

I’m deeply grateful to the pioneering example set by UK Vernian William Butcher, whose
trailblazing work on several such manuscripts is an invaluable feature of his Verne translations
for Oxford University Press and University of Nebraska Press.
French editions . . . No critical edition exists of Le Sphinx des glaces. As stated, a complete scan
of the 1897 Hetzel first edition can be accessed from the Bibliothèque nationale de France
at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k58069672/ It features a fair number of slips and
discrepancies that later editions I’ve seen normally replicate. These items often seem to be
typesetting errors and are cited in the notes below.
Possibly their presence can be explained by the likelihood that Verne had trouble proof-
reading at this point in his life. According to his grandson (Jules-Verne, 193–4), the aging
author checked the galleys for Sphinx in January 1997 while coping with a variety of health
issues: “His violent attacks of dizziness had returned and his doctors irrigated his stomach
several times . . . he had bronchitis now in addition to his rheumatism, and he could barely drag
himself around the room.” Plus his vision grew worse and worse during those years (Butcher,
291): “To the cataract in his left eye was added one in his right.”
Baudelaire . . . Charles Baudelaire published Aventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym, his French transla-
tion of Poe’s novel, in 1858. Complete scans of both the original Lèvy edition and the 1868
Nouvelle Édition are accessible at http://books.google.com/ under Aventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym.
Not being fluent in English, Verne relied on Baudelaire’s text, and luckily it’s vastly more
faithful, literate, and responsible than many of the English translations Verne himself received
in his lifetime. But there are occasional idiosyncrasies: Baudelaire supplies titles for all twenty-
five of Poe’s chapters, though Poe himself provides only numbers; also his rendering of the
narrative’s very close has long been controversial. Where they diverge from Poe and impact
Verne’s text, these idiosyncrasies are specified in the notes below.
Baudelaire also published two studies of Poe, Edgar Poe, sa vie et ses œuvres (1856) and Notes
nouvelles sur Edgar Poe (1857). He likewise translated many of Poe’s short stories, issuing them
in collections entitled Histoires extraordinaires (1856), Nouvelles histoires extraordinaires (1857), and
Histoires grotesques et sérieuses (1865). All are found at http://books.google.com/. Verne refers to
a number of these in Sphinx, though at times his quotations are approximate—maybe another
symptom of his waning eyesight.
Hoey . . . the only prior English translation of Le Sphinx des glaces is attributed to “Mrs. Cashel
Hoey.” Cutting over a third of Verne’s original, it was published in 1898 under the title An Ant-
arctic Mystery by the British firm Sampson Low. Its text is accessible at http://jv.gilead.org.il/
pg/10339-h.htm. Including chapter titles and footnotes, it totals 79,459 words. French edi-
tions total 122,331 words. Hence Hoey’s version is heavily abridged, chopping some 36% of
Verne’s original. In addition her text is strewn with figure errors, features a number of careless
mistranslations, retitles chapters, interpolates passages, fabricates notes, and reorganizes Part
Two by shoehorning sixteen chapters into ten. Because later editions subjected Hoey’s abridge-
textual notes / 387

ment to grotesque amounts of additional abridging, her original text seems to have gotten a
relatively clean bill of health from scholars. It’s undeserved.
Many of its errors are specified in the notes below.
Notes for THE SPHINX OF THE ICE REALM

First published as Le Sphinx des glaces in the Magasin d’éducation et de récréation, January–December 1897. Called
Le Sphynx antarctique in the MS. The following comments on the MS, French editions, Baudelaire, Hoey, and
related issues are pertinent to this new translation:
Chapter 1. KERGUELEN’S LAND (MS pp. 1–10)
1. sea lions. French editions give phoques à trompe, a synonym for the elephant seals mentioned right afterward.
Verne (or his sources) may not have been aware of the redundancy.
2. our old capital of Hartford. Three times the MS names Providence as Connecticut’s capital. Good save
by the author or his editor.
3. What would I do there. “There” is identified as Baltimore in the MS though not in the published French.
4. content with their lot. At this point in the MS (pp. 4-5), three paragraphs melodramatically foreshadow
the novel’s obsessions with Pym and the polar regions. Jeorling describes himself as “a sort of Edgar Allan Poe
character,” impressionable, sensitive, and of “an imaginative temperament”—not just the opposite of Atkins but
also the opposite of his own subsequent self-description (“I have a thoroughly practical mind, down-to-earth
personality, and unimaginative nature”). Not surprisingly, Verne deleted all three paragraphs later.
5. What with, a magnifying glass? The MS indicates that the quip was inserted later, a typical instance of
Verne adding humor to pep up his descriptions and expository details.
6. 35.6° Fahrenheit in the winter and 44.6° in the summer. French editions give only centigrade figures here,
respectively 2° and 7°. The novel’s usual procedure is to give Fahrenheit readings with centigrade equivalents in
parentheses. The MS doesn’t cite any temperatures at this point: they were added later in the process.
7. if I’m quoting from our great American author. In French editions this sequence is more paraphrase than quote:
car il est sage, comme l’a dit Edgar Poe, de toujours «calculer avec l’imprévu, l’inattendu, l’inconcevable, que
les faits collatéraux, contingents, fortuits, accidentels, méritent d’obtenir une très large part, et que le hasard
doit incessamment être la matière d’un calcul rigoureux.»
Essentially the French snatches and rearranges phrases higgledy-piggledy from a passage in Poe’s “The Mys-
tery of Marie Rogêt” (1842) as translated by Charles Baudelaire. Here’s the passage with snatchings in boldface:
C’est par l’esprit, si ce n’est précisément par la lettre de ce principe, que la science moderne est parvenue
à calculer sur l’imprévu. Mais peut-être ne me comprenez-vous pas? L’histoire de la science humaine nous
montre d’une manière si continue que c’est aux faits collatéraux, fortuits, accidentels, que nous devons
nos plus nombreuses et nos plus précieuses découvertes, qu’il est devenu finalement nécessaire, dans tout aperçu
des progrès à venir, de faire une part non-seulement très-large, mais la plus large possible aux inventions
qui naîtront du hasard, et qui sont tout à fait en dehors des prévisions ordinaires. Il n’est plus philosophique
désormais de baser sur ce qui a été une vision de ce qui doit être. L’accident doit être admis comme partie
de la fondation. Nous faisons du hasard la matière d’un calcul rigoureux. Nous soumettons l’inattendu
et l’inconcevable aux formules mathématiques des écoles.
And here’s Poe’s original:
It is through the spirit of this principle, if not precisely through its letter, that modern science has resolved to
calculate upon the unforeseen. But perhaps you do not comprehend me. The history of human knowledge
388 / textual notes

has so uninterruptedly shown that to collateral, or incidental, or accidental events we are indebted for
the most numerous and most valuable discoveries, that it has at length become necessary, in any prospective
view of improvement, to make not only large, but the largest allowances for inventions that shall arise
by chance, and quite out of the range of ordinary expectation. It is no longer philosophical to base, upon
what has been, a vision of what is to be. Accident is admitted as a portion of the substructure. We make
chance a matter of absolute calculation. We subject the unlooked for and unimagined, to the mathematical
formulae of the schools.
For some reason the MS supplies a slightly more careful citation:
Il est sage de toujours “calculer avec l’imprévu,” l’inattendu, l’inconcevable. Cet-ci qu’il n’a pas été reconnu
par Edgard Poe qui les faits collatéraux, contingents, fortuits, accidentels, méritent d’obtenir une part “non-
seulement très large, mais la plus large possible [”], qu’il convient de l’accorder à “tout ce qui est en dehors
des prévisions ordinaires,” et que “le hasard doit incessamment être la matière d’un calcul rigoureux.”
8. letting out its shrill call. Here the MS features an additional bit of in-your-face foreshadowing, also deleted
later: Jeorling fancies the albatross is calling “Pym! Pym!”
Chapter 2. THE SCHOONER HALBRANE (MS pp. 11–22)
1. Birkenhead. Baltimore in the MS, though Captain Guy still hails from Liverpool. Two MS pages later
the shipyards are properly relocated to Birkenhead.
2. August 7. For some reason Hoey says August 27.
Chapter 3. CAPTAIN LEN GUY (MS pp. 23–34)
1. “dreamed that I was dreaming.” Apparently a reference to Poe’s poem “A Dream Within a Dream” (1849).
2. the South Pole. Here Hoey interpolates the following, not found in French editions or the MS: “I might
have spoken of the ‘Hyperborean seas’ from whence an Irish poet has made Sebastian Cabot address some lovely
verses to his Lady.” Hoey then fabricates a footnote identifying the poet as Thomas D’Arcy McGee, and—still
more oddly—signs this footnote J.V.
3. Vincennes. French editions give Vancouver, apparently a typesetting error since the MS properly says
Vincennes. So do all later references in the French editions—see chapter 8 and the final chapter.
4. August 15. The MS gives August 13.
Chapter 4. FROM KERGUELEN’S LAND TO

PRINCE EDWARD’S ISLAND (MS pp. 35–47)
1. nine miles per hour. The MS paragraph that follows is cut in the published text. Featuring still another
piece of clunky foreshadowing, it announces that an “amazing incident” will mark the crossing to Tristan da
Cunha. As usual the final version reduces the number of “arrows” and tells the story straightforwardly.
2. a bottle with a letter. Verne added this whole passage in the right margin of the MS. By harking back to
this throwaway episode in Poe’s novel, he strengthens Len Guy’s case, raises doubts about the captain’s presumed
insanity, and finds new opportunities in the earlier storyline.
3. two lines of ellipses. Found in early editions of Baudelaire’s translation but not in Poe’s original.
Chapter 5. EDGAR ALLAN POE’S NOVEL (MS pp. 48–63)
1. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. French editions cite the title of Baudelaire’s translation: Aventures
d’Arthur Gordon Pym.
2. clawed by a lion. Here Hoey fabricates another footnote (on the topic of big cats) and again attributes
it to J.V.
textual notes / 389

3. if Augustus hadn’t brought him to the forecastle. A memory lapse on Verne’s part? Poe has Peters bring the
dog there.
4. the Auroras in latitude 53° 15' south and longitude 47° 58' west. Verne accurately reproduces Poe’s coordi-
nates from chapter 15 of Pym. However Hoey misstates them as “35° 15' of south latitude, and 37° 38' of
west longitude.” (In chapter 10, moreover, Hoey misstates them in a variety of fresh new ways: “30° 15' of
latitude and 47° 33' east longitude.”)
5. its air temperature reading 47° Fahrenheit and that of the water 34°. French editions give centigrade equivalents
in parentheses: respectively 8° 33 C. above zero and 1° 11 C. above zero.
6. “new men,” as the narrative says. Or, rather, as Baudelaire’s translation says. For Chapter 18 of Pym he
supplies the title Hommes nouveaux. In Poe’s original the chapters are numbered but not titled.
7. William Guy and his men. It’s “Len Guy” in the MS, the sort of slip that may have encouraged Verne
to write out names in full.
8. the Egyptian word . This is the form given in Poe’s original, and the MS shows that Verne
copied it accurately. But French editions give ΠΦUΓΡHC, most likely a typesetting error.
9. connections and similarities. Verne is quoting from the first chapter of Baudelaire’s Notes nouvelles sur Edgar Poe.
10. five savages sprang at them. Poe, Baudelaire, and Verne all say five. For some reason Hoey says six.
11. latitude 84° south. This is the bearing given by Poe, Baudelaire, and Verne’s MS, but French editions of
Sphinx give 83° here and also later in chapter 10.
12. the hue of the man’s skin. French editions of Sphinx quote Baudelaire’s translation verbatim. His rendering
reads la couleur de la peau de l’homme, and critics have scolded him for it, since Poe’s original reads “the hue of
the skin of the figure.” Marie Bonaparte, for one, objects because she sees the apparition as a “mother figure”
and not a “man” at all (Bonaparte, vol. 1, 440).
In the 2005 Omnibus text edited by Claude Aziza, Baudelaire’s controversial rendering gets a touchup: la
couleur de la peau de la silhouette.
Chapter 6. “LIKE A SHROUD FALLING OPEN” (MS pp. 64–74)
1. a seaman has no need for casters on his hull. Not in the MS. As noted, Verne often added jokes later to
liven things up.
2. the white giant. A detail in Baudelaire’s translation of Pym that doesn’t appear in Poe’s original. For the
novel’s last chapter, Baudelaire supplies the title “The White Giant.” Poe, as stated, supplies no chapter titles at all.
3. quite far off. A hundred miles, according to the MS.
4. the same man who had gone with the Jane’s captain when . . . he’d buried that bottle in Kerguelen’s Land. Chapter
14 of Pym disagrees, relating that Patterson “took the boats and . . . went in search of seal.” Meanwhile the
bottle was planted by “the captain and a young relation of his.”
Chapter 7. TRISTAN DA CUNHA (MS pp. 75–86)
1. Four days later. Three days in the MS.

2. a blood relative in these events. The reference to Holt was scribbled later in the margin of the MS. It
hints at a major revelation in Part Two (chapter 21) and is an instance of foreshadowing added rather than
subtracted. Unfortunately Hoey omits it.
3. So that’s why . . . into the polar seas. Not in the MS at all. Verne tied up this loose end at a later stage
in the writing.
4. below 25° Fahrenheit or above 68°. French editions give centigrade equivalents in parentheses: respectively
about 4° C. below zero and 20° C. above zero.
5. followed by collapse and stupor. Poe’s original reads “succeeded by drowsiness and stupor.” Baudelaire’s
translation speeds things up: suivie de prostration, de stupeur. Verne adopts his wording.
390 / textual notes

6. To the Falklands, for repair work. In the MS Jeorling dodges the question: “The captain will make up his
mind once he’s at sea.”
7. less than seven degrees from the pole. Eight degrees in the MS. French editions say seven, but for some
reason Hoey gives six.
Chapter 8. HEADING FOR THE FALKLANDS (MS pp. 87–97)
1. Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. Baudelaire published his translations of a baker’s dozen under the
title Histoires extraordinaires, the title given in French editions of Sphinx.
2. Powell scouted out the South Orkney Islands. The MS and French editions say “Botwell,” whoever that may
be. However the MS correctly attributes the Orkneys to British sealer George Powell in chapter 11.
3. the schooner Wasp. “Wash” in French editions. Verne’s handwriting is smeary at this point in the MS.
4. the air temperature 47° Fahrenheit, and that of the water 44°. French editions give centigrade equivalents in
parentheses: respectively 8° 33 C. above zero and 6° 67 C. above zero.
5. the Tula and the Lively. “Tuba” in French editions and the MS. Ditto at the start of chapter 10.
6. I thought about it constantly. Jeorling records many additional thoughts on pp. 91–2 of the MS, but
most were deleted later, leaving only a single paragraph behind. In the axed passages, Jeorling alludes to his
“imaginative temperament” as he did in a section of chapter 1 (also deleted), then launches into a swirl of
soul-searching that takes in Poe’s “Eureka” (1848), dreams vs. reality, fraternal love, antarctic challenges, whether
or not he should jump ship, and the unending mysteries of Pym’s endless ending. In the published text Jeorling
often hides his feelings from the reader.
7. my brother and six of his companions. French editions say five companions, a miscount because Patterson
didn’t die till years later. The MS gives six, and the translation follows it.
Chapter 9. GETTING THE HALBRANE IN SHAPE (MS pp. 98–110)
1. the date of October 16. French editions and the MS give the 16th. Hoey gives the 15th for reasons
unknown.
2. the charm of charms.” French editions give a loose quote of lines in Baudelaire’s translation of “The
Domain of Arnheim” (1847).
3. the mallets sang out. Humorous musical metaphors often turn up in Verne’s yarns. For instance he char-
acterizes the squabbling trio of geographers in The Mighty Orinoco as “a trio whose performers rarely played in
tune with each other.” In fact Verne had solid musical talent (Butcher, 113): “A good pianist, he on occasion
composed music and would display great musical passion throughout his life.”
4. After he’d finished working on the hull. Hoey omits Verne’s entire description of this work, even though it’s
the focus of the chapter title.
5. nineteen recruits in all. Hoey says nine.
6. St. Nicholas Bay. French editions and the MS call it la baie des Français—the old name for la baie Saint-
Nicolas, according to Verne himself in Part I, chapter 9 of Captain Grant’s Children. However neither seems to
show up on today’s maps.
Chapter 10. THE CRUISE EARLY ON (MS pp. 111–122)
1. Weddell’s Jane. French editions and the MS have an absent-minded flip-flop: “Biscoe’s Jane.”
2. Mr. Jeorling . . . couldn’t have known of these highly significant geographic events. Nor could he have known of the
“other attempts” Verne goes on to list in this footnote—which aren’t in the MS but were added later. While
contributing to the reader’s education, the author undercuts his own narrator.
3. Coming back out? . . . Keep going! One paragraph in the MS, two in the published French. The transla-
”
tion follows the MS.
textual notes / 391

4. longitude 47° 58' west. The MS slips and gives 47° 38' west. The published French compounds the
slip and gives 47° 33' west.
5. the Princess. Prinicus in French editions. Verne’s handwriting is tough going at this spot in the MS.
6. But what a noggin . . . meet our match. Much of this humorous banter isn’t in the MS. Verne added it later.
7. past latitude 84°. This is the bearing given by Poe, Baudelaire, and Verne’s MS, but French editions of
Sphinx give 83°, as they also do in chapter 5.
8. what if he didn’t get back? The MS (p. 114) introduces this doubt early in the chapter: Jeorling launches
another round of groping speculation, again thinks he’s being overimaginative, and leaves off. Verne deleted the
passage, then sowed this seed as the chapter tagline.
Chapter 11. FROM THE SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS

TO THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE (MS pp. 123–134)
1. rising sun. Both the MS and the published French give “setting sun.” But Cape Dundas points east.
2. the Englishman Powell. The MS correctly attributes the South Orkneys to British sealer George Powell.
But French editions revert to the mysterious “Botwell” cited in chapter 8.
3. Mt. Moberly. In French editions mont Stowerby. The MS is barely legible here, with Verne maybe doing
some misspelling of his own.
4. “hawk eyes flashing.” An image in Poe’s tale “The Man of the Crowd” (1840).
5. American by nationality. Hearne is called American again at the end of the chapter, but back in chapter
9 both the MS and French editions say otherwise: “these recruits included six men hailing from England, and
they in turn included a certain fellow named Hearne from Glasgow.” There doesn’t seem to be any easy way
to resolve the discrepancy.
Chapter 12. BETWEEN THE ANTARCTIC CIRCLE

AND THE ICE BARRIER (MS pp. 135–148)
1. that land of desolation and silence. French editions enclose the phrase in quotes: «cette contrée de la Désolation et
du Silence». The MS has no quotes here, and since the phrase doesn’t seem to be one of Baudelaire’s renderings,
the translation follows the MS.
2. the 70th parallel. Hoey revises this to “the sixty-sixth parallel,” maybe forgetting it was the punch line
for the previous chapter.
3. under the action of the swell. This clarifying prepositional phrase is found in the MS but not in the published
French. The translation follows the MS.
4. Our thermometer didn’t get above 36° Farenheit and the barometer barely topped 26.7 inches. French editions give
centigrade and metric equivalents in parentheses: respectively 2° 22 C. above zero and 721 millimeters.
CHAPTER 13. ALONGSIDE THE ICE BARRIER (MS pp. 149–161)
1. these frozen masses didn’t originate at the ice barrier. Hoey says the opposite.
2. The breeze picked up at times and we needed to take in sail. Some French editions end the sentence with a
question mark, but the MS uses a period. The translation follows the MS.
3. 74th parallel. For some unfathomable reason French editions give the 23rd parallel, which is gibberish
since it puts the Jane level with Rio de Janeiro. The MS gives the 74th, obviously correct.
4. 42° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 4° to 5° C. above zero.
5. 36° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 2° 22 C. above zero.
392 / textual notes

Chapter 14. A VOICE IN A DREAM (MS pp. 162–171)
1. northwest to southeast. Both the MS and the published French give “northwest to northeast,” a slip repeat-
edly contradicted in chapter 13.
2. latitude 73° 15'. Hoey gives 23° 15'. (But the Wildside Press edition of this early text omits the
coordinate altogether.)
3. Though she’d had an air temperature of 33° Fahrenheit, ours had risen to 49°. French editions give centigrade
equivalents in parentheses: respectively 0° 56 C. above zero and 9° 44 C. above zero.
4. some dolphinfish. Here Hoey fabricates another footnote (on the etymology of a colloquial name for this
fish). At least the note isn’t attributed to J.V.
5. wasn’t locked. Hoey says the opposite.
6. circumstances whose details nobody knew. Then the MS expands on chapter 10’s curtain line, speculating
that Pym was still “deep in these polar regions, beyond Tsalal Island,” and needed to be rescued as well. Verne
deleted these ruminations as he did many other bits of foreshadowing in the MS.
7. daily gazette. Not in the MS. Another joke added later in the process.
8. The temperature was 34° Fahrenheit and soon got up to 51°. French editions give centigrade equivalents in
parentheses: respectively 1° 11 C. above zero and 10° 56 C. above zero.
9. longitude 42°. French editions give 42° 5', but Poe’s original and Baudelaire’s rendering give just 42°
minus the extra five minutes. The MS has a longish vertical squiggle at this point: though it vaguely resembles
Verne’s other 5s, it might also be a slip of the pen. So the translation follows Poe and Baudelaire.
Chapter 15. BENNET’S ISLET (MS pp. 172–182)
1. nearly thirty-five miles off. French editions specify “thirty nautical miles.” The MS gives “about eighty
miles.”
2. thirty-five-mile crossing. Again the MS gives eighty miles.
3. latitude 83° 2'. The MS gives 82° 57', putting the Halbrane 20+ miles away.
Chapter 16. TSALAL ISLAND (MS pp. 183–194)
1. they viewed her as an enormous animal. Poe’s narrative suggests that this behavior was sham. As Pym com-
ments in chapter 18, “I could not help thinking some of it affected.”
2. Anas valisneria. Poe’s original doesn’t specify the bird’s scientific name. Baudelaire’s translation inserts
a gloss for Gallic readers: canvass-back ou anas valisneria de notre pays. Not being fluent in English, Verne follows
Baudelaire.
3. Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror. As Hoey translates this, it reads “we might find the Erebus and the Terror,”
which confuses the two volcanoes with Sir James Clark Ross’s famous ships bearing the same names.
4. Tiger . . . met his death in the catastrophe. The MS immediately takes exception to this reading of events,
wondering why Pym and Peters didn’t bring the dog along when they left the island prior to the quake. Verne
deleted the paragraph later, having other plans for Tiger near the end of the novel.
5. gigantic black birds in space. An odd discrepancy because Poe, Baudelaire, and Verne elsewhere (chapter 5)
respectively describe these birds as “pallidly white,” or blanc livide, or d’une blancheur livide. Verne may have mixed
them up with the sooty albatrosses figuring much more recently in chapters 11 and 14.
6. last look at Tsalal Island. This line replaces a paragraph of speculative foreshadowing in the MS: Would
the Halbrane push on to the pole itself ? Would her crew go along with this change in plans? Verne subsequently
transferred this material to the next chapter, using it to launch Part Two.
textual notes / 393

Chapter 17. WHAT ABOUT PYM? (MS pp. 195–207)
1. Part Two: Chapter numbering. French editions start over again with chapter 1.
2. eleven times now. Hoey gives “seven times” . . . and no explanation.
3. the half-breed didn’t find a single native. But the MS adds that Peters then found the Newfoundland dog
Tiger, alive, rabid, and menacing. Subsequently Verne relocated all descriptions of Tiger’s fate to a chapter near
the end, where they figure in clearing up the mystery of what happened to the Tsalal islanders.
4. All crewmen aft! Hoey sends them in the opposite direction.
Chapter 18. REACHING A DECISION (MS pp. 208–218)
1. I wasn’t the practical, logical fellow I used to be. Not in the MS but added later. Since Verne has pruned
Jeorling’s “oversensitivity” from the finished versions of his earlier chapters, he can now show his character
evolving by developing this trait.
2. I’m Dirk Peters. French editions enclose this in quotes, the MS doesn’t. The translation follows the MS.
3. No, that isn’t so. But it is so. In chapter 9 Jeorling tells us that the Falkland recruits “weren’t to be
taken beyond Tsalal Island.”
Chapter 19. THE LOST ISLANDS (MS pp. 219–230)
1. As for Peters . . . might someday be revealed to us. The whole paragraph was inserted after the MS stage. A
second instance of foreshadowing added rather than subtracted.
Chapter 20. FROM DECEMBER 29 TO JANUARY 9 (MS pp. 231–240)
1. chapter 25 of Pym’s narrative. Chapter 24 in Poe’s original, the result of a numbering mystification (two
consecutive chapter 23s) that some current editions still retain. Baudelaire’s translation renumbers the last two
chapters, as The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore also suggests these days.
3. 50° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 10° above zero.
4. for two days now . . . leaving Tsalal Island. Hoey gives “four days” and “leaving the Falklands.”
Chapter 21. TIPPING POINT (MS pp. 241–252)
1. 48° Fahrenheit and . . . 33° Fahrenheit. French editions give centigrade equivalents in parentheses: respec-
tively 8° 89 C. above zero and 0° 56 C. above zero.
2. $400 each man gets. French editions add “for each degree”—not true because this is the bonus earned
for six degrees, as Hurliguerly has just pointed out.
3. even if he performs only the duties of bosun on board. Oddly, French editions give “bosun on board the Jane,”
which Hoey understandably corrects to “on board the Halbrane.” However the MS doesn’t give any ship name
at all, and the translation follows suit.
4. less than 140 miles. French editions give “less than 120 nautical miles.”
5. orders to change direction. The MS hatches a new plot complication here: Jeorling is on the outs with
the captain and first officer, who avoid him on deck and snub him at mealtimes—the implication being that
Jeorling and his bonus are causing headaches. Verne soon dropped the idea.
6. he wouldn’t drag his feet in issuing those orders. Hoey says the opposite.
7. Ned Holt. James Holt in the MS, here and later on. Verne may have changed it because of West’s first
name, Jem.
394 / textual notes

Chapter 22. LAND? (MS pp. 253–266)
1. the 17th chapter. Hoey gives “the nineteenth chapter.”

2. the 22nd chapter of my own yarn. The 6th chapter in French editions—which, reaching Part Two, start
over with chapter 1. (NB: “Land!” is the chapter title Baudelaire supplies for Poe’s chapter 17. As noted, the
chapters are numbered but not titled in Poe’s original.)
3. where the ship itself will grow in bulk . . . like a living body. From a passage in Poe’s sea story “M.S. Found
in a Bottle.”
4. 32° Fahrenheit . . . 26° Fahrenheit. French editions give centigrade equivalents in parentheses: respectively
0° C. and 3° 33' C. below zero.
5. 70th parallel. Hoey changes this to the 67th parallel, giving no explanation. In chapter 12 Hoey had
revised it to “the sixty-sixth parallel.”
6. But sleep wouldn’t come . . . more of an influence on me than I’d realized. A paragraph not in the MS but added
later. Jeorling continues to evolve into an overimaginative, Poesque figure.
Chapter 23. ICEBERG SOMERSAULT (MS pp. 267–278)
1. 84th parallel. Clearly an allusion to chapter 18 where Jeorling offered a $2,000 bonus “for every degree
beyond the 84th parallel.” Yet both the MS and the published French get it wrong: the former gives the 88th
parallel, the latter gives the 24th—possibly a fumbled correction. Verne’s vision problems may have interfered
with his decently proofing the galleys, and apparently his publisher didn’t always take up the slack.
2. port davits. Per the MS. French editions mistakenly put them to starboard.
3. fifteen men, versus thirteen of us. Hoey gives fourteen and twelve, a case of faulty arithmetic. The party of
the faithful numbered fourteen, including Peters; Drap was lost during the iceberg somersault, leaving thirteen.
For correct figures on the rebel alliance, see the note following.
4. fourteen other Falkland sailors. This time Hoey reduces the figure to thirteen, additional faulty arithmetic.
Exactly twenty sailors were hired in the Falklands; Peters defected to the other side, leaving nineteen; four were
lost during the iceberg somersault, leaving fifteen—Hearne and “fourteen other Falkland sailors.”
Chapter 24. THE FINISHING STROKE (MS pp. 279–291)
1. 46° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 7° 78' C. above zero. Hoey
has another wrong number at this spot: 2° 78' C.
2. a foolhardy move for any mariner. In the MS at this point Jeorling, rabid about reaching the pole, contem-
plates other foolhardy moves: drifting to it on an iceberg, rowing there in the longboat, even swimming to the
spot . . . understandably, Verne redid the passage. In general his later revisions de-emphasize the pole seeking.
3. two or three of his men. For some reason Hoey gives “one or two.” The actual total according to Poe’s
original (and Verne’s summary in chapter 5) was four.
4. 53° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 11° 67' C. above zero.
Hoey is wrong again, giving 11° 67' C. below zero. (But the Wildside Press edition of this early text omits the
conversion altogether.)
Chapter 25. NOW WHAT? (MS pp. 292–302)
1. As for First Officer West . . . yes, he wept. This humanizing paragraph was added after the MS stage.
2. Peters wouldn’t let anybody relieve him. In the MS Jeorling wonders if it’s wise to trust the half-breed
with the dinghy. Obsessed with finding Pym, might he not make off with the longboat himself . . . and want
Jeorling to come along?
textual notes / 395

Chapter 26. HALLUCINATIONS (MS pp. 302–316)
1. whether the current went right to the pole. The MS (p. 308) predicts the iceberg will pass ten or fifteen miles
to one side of the pole. Verne reworked the passage to minimize the pole as a concern.
2. 400 miles away. Hoey gives four thousand miles.
3. the current had tossed us about twenty-four degrees back into the southeast. Compare the present reading of Lon-
gitude 67° 19' west with the captain’s previous one of Longitude 39° 12' west (end of chapter 23). French
editions and the MS give these figures unambiguously, yet Jeorling’s conclusion doesn’t follow at all: based on
these coordinates, the current had actually taken them twenty-eight degrees into the southwest. As commentators have
noted, Verne sometimes flip-flops his directions, but since both figures clearly say west, and since we’re repeat-
edly told the current flows southeast, there’s no quick fix for this blooper.
Chapter 27. FOGBOUND (MS pp. 317–328)
1. Fogbound. The MS features a different chapter title: Un Dernier Coup (“The Last Straw”).
2. nearly 1,400 miles. French editions give 1,200 nautical miles.
3. 30.2 inches. French editions give the metric equivalent in parentheses: 767 millimeters.
Chapter 28. MAKING CAMP (MS pp. 329–342)
1. this strait cuts the polar continent in half. The MS describes this fictitious channel as forty or fifty miles
across. Incidentally, some paleontologists believe a transantarctic strait did exist for much of the Tertiary Period.
2. 46°. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 7° 78 C. above zero.
3. as quickly as possible. At this point in the MS, Jeorling bids farewell to any dreams of reaching the South
Pole: he notes that the spot is now 240 miles in the wrong direction and that nobody besides Peters would
be deranged enough to go with him. Verne deleted the passage in line with his later policy of downplaying
the pole as a major issue in the novel.
Chapter 29. DIRK PETERS GOES TO SEA (MS pp. 343–354)
1. Dirk Peters Goes to Sea. The MS features a different chapter title: “Thirteen for Chapter Thirteen.” (In
French editions chapter 13 of Part Two is equivalent to this translation’s chapter 29.) It seems odd to name
a chapter after characters—the thirteen fleeing Falklanders—who no longer play an active role. Also the titles
for chapter 30 and chapter 32 feature a similar sort of wordplay. No doubt these are among the reasons why
Verne retitled this chapter.
2. I thought Peters could have been talking in his sleep, and the master sealer must have found out his secret by chance. Hoey
mangles this, saying Hearne was the one talking in his sleep, Holt the one who must have overheard.
3. dropped to 36°. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 2° 22' C. above zero.
4. 32° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 0° C.
Chapter 30. ELEVEN YEARS IN A FEW PAGES (MS pp. 355–366)
1. blackfish. French editions give des antoys, seriously faulty typesetting. The MS gives des tautogs, which are
popularly known in English as blackfish or black porgies.
Chapter 31. THE SPHINX OF THE ICE REALM (MS pp. 367–382)
1. The Sphinx of the Ice Realm. The MS chapter title is “The Antarctic Sphinx.”
2. The craft we rode in belonged to the latter category. Hoey says just the opposite: “Our boat was of the former kind.”
396 / textual notes

3. Barracuda. The MS and French editions use the 18th-century spelling Paracuta.
4. to 180°. Oddly, French editions give 190°, though the MS says “to the hundred and eightieth degree.”
5. latitude 76° 13. Hoey gives 7° 13.
6. Then we witnessed . . . safe and sound. Entire paragraph added after the MS stage. Verne continues to
supply his own “novelties and wonders” to update Poe’s.
7. 23° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 5° C. below zero.
8. these astounding phenomena. Verne’s published text reworks the way his MS reveals both the sphinx and
the ruined dinghy, and the effect is more gripping and impressive. The MS finds the dinghy first (despite its
being less visible than the sphinx), then its missing ironwork is introduced as merely a puzzle to be pondered.
The reworking is clearer and more dramatic: we see the sphinx first, an object of terror . . . we get an instant
demonstration of iron objects flying overboard . . . we go ashore and only then find the dinghy—which also
hasn’t a scrap of iron. Arthur C. Clarke called Verne “one of the best storytellers who ever lived,” and it’s
instructive to watch him fine-tune his stories.
9. lodestone. Verne gives aimant, these days normally translated as “magnet.” But 19th-century glossaries also
equated it with “lodestone” (see Abel Boyer and G. Harmonière’s Nouveau dictionnaire at http://books.google.
com). Nicknamed “earth magnets,” lodestones are a naturally magnetic mineral that attracts iron objects—obvi-
ously what Verne had in mind.
10. they felt it was a convincing explanation. “It was probably a lot more convincing to readers 100 years ago
than it is today,” says Dr. Barry S. Kues, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of New
Mexico. In April 2011 FPW invited comments from this leading geologist, and in his answering emails Kues
raises three concerns about the “colossal lodestone”:
a) IT WOULDN’T HAVE MUCH REACH. Initially Kues is intrigued by the novel’s inventiveness:
“Electric currents do generate a magnetic field,” he states, “but need to be concentrated, as in a
wire. Presumably Verne’s ‘seam of metal winding through the earth with countless twists and turns’
is meant to simulate a gigantic electric wire.” Unfortunately, Kues notes, it would have little reach:
“Away from their source, electromagnetic fields dwindle rapidly. Both the atmosphere and the rocks
around Verne’s ‘seam of metal’ are excellent insulators and would constrain any large-scale build-up
of magnetism. I think this would make it impossible for the iron sphinx to produce a magnetic
field enormous enough to rip the metal nails out of boats or send iron implements flying through
the air.” And in simultaneous emails to FPW , a prominent colleague echoes this: Dr. John Geiss-
man, professor of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, agrees that “field effects of a
magnetized body drop off very quickly with distance.”
b) IT’S IMPOSSIBLY BIG. “From a geologic perspective,” Geissman also writes, “I’m not aware of
any ‘lodestone’ so monstrous in size. In principle, if you had a sufficiently large volume of uniformly,
and I do mean uniformly, magnetized material, then maybe the magnetic components of an object, if
sufficiently close, could be affected . . . but this is a stretch.” And Kues seconds the motion: “I would
be hard-pressed to even postulate the geological conditions that might lead to such an enormous
mass of pure iron occurring isolated like a sphinx on the earth’s surface.”
c) IT DOESN’T HAVE A GOOD POWER SOURCE. “Verne visualizes clouds storing vast
amounts of electricity, which is partly drained off by thunderstorms,” Kues comments. “Actually,
electricity is developed within thunderstorms, which generate lightning bolts—but not as some sort
of draining of oversaturated clouds.” So where might any electricity come from? “There’s certainly
some available in the environment, but nothing of the magnitude to change the iron sphinx into a
lodestone.”
Yet like many scientists, both men enjoy Verne. “Like any good science-fiction writer,” Kues says, “Verne
took what was known about electricity and magnetism in his day, then extrapolated what probably seemed to
most readers like a plausible explanation for a phenomenon he invented himself.” And Geissman’s verdict? “A
good read, and I’m certain Verne thrilled his readers at the time!” he concludes.
textual notes / 397

Chapter 32. TWELVE OUT OF SEVENTY! (MS pp. 383–389)
1. Lieutenant Charles Wilkes. French editions and the MS give James as Wilkes’s first name here—odd, because
they get it right in chapter 3 and chapter 8.
2. 65° 57. Clearly given as such in the MS and Wilkes’s deepest penetration near the Sabrina Coast.
French editions flip-flop it to 56° 57, probably a typesetting error.
3. away to the northwest. French editions say northeast, a discrepancy since Halbrane Land lies off the vessel’s
port side. The MS properly gives “northwest,” so this may be yet another typesetting error.
4. 4° Fahrenheit. French editions give the centigrade equivalent in parentheses: 15° 56 C. below zero.
5. till April 2. Hoey says “until the end of April.”
6. February 21. Hoey says “the 1st of February.”
7. the English schooner Halbrane. Hoey calls her an “American schooner.”
8. Sabrina Coast. The MS clearly says Sabrina, but French editions give “Fabricia,” another typesetting
error not caught by Verne’s aging eyes—or anybody else’s back then.
Notes for THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM
First published as The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Harper & Brothers in July 1838. For
modern American readers the text makes adjustments to the original Harper edition, correcting typos, updating
punctuation and spelling, italicizing ship names, making occasional tweaks for readability, and renumbering the
final chapters. The following should be especially noted:
1. The wind, as I before said . . . otherwise for many hours. These three paragraphs are a single paragraph in
Harper.
2. without a shilling. Harper gives “with a shilling.”
3. The middle of June . . . saltwater Long Tom. These three paragraphs are a single paragraph in Harper.
4. I remained three days . . . he went up. These two paragraphs are a single paragraph in Harper.
5. the side next to me. Harper omits “to.”
6. previous to my last journey to the trap. Harper gives “previously to.”
7. the word “Arthur!” Harper doesn’t add quotes here but does so in the dialogue immediately following.
8. As I fell . . . physical luxuries afforded. These three paragraphs are a single paragraph in Harper.
9. but then. Harper gives “but when.”
10. seven feet of water. Harper omits “of.”
11. the eating of some unknown venomous species. Harper omits “of.”
12. the degree of forgetfulness being proportional. In Harper “being proportioned.”
13. Penguins are very plentiful. Harper gives “very plenty.”
14. picking them up stone by stone. Harper omits “them.”
15. the sending of a jollyboat. Harper omits “of.”
16. Whales are also plentiful. Harper gives “also plenty.”
17. Krusenstern and Lisiansky. “Kreutzenstern and Lisiausky” in Harper.
18. with a view to penetrating. Harper gives “a view of.”
19. latitude 69° 15' S. Harper gives latitude 69° 15' E.
20. previous to our passing the Antarctic Circle. Harper gives “previously to.”
21. and for taking on board a proper supply. Harper reads: “and the taking on board.”
22. three sides of the village were bounded. Harper gives “was bounded.”
398 / textual notes

23. their friends the penguins. Harper says “pelicans.”
24. Gasteropoda pulmonifera. Spelled gasteropeda pulmonifera in Harper.
25. except opposite organs, an absorbing and an excretory. Harper reads: “except an absorbing and an excretory,
opposite organs.”
26. lies next to the bottom of the sea. Harper reads: “lies next the bottom of the sea.”
27. three or four feet of water. Harper omits “of.”
28. and by dint of cutting steps. Harper reads: “and what, by dint of cutting steps.”
29. a view to lending their aid. Harper gives “a view of.”
30. Chapter 24. Chapter 23 in Harper, same as the preceding chapter.
31. After a long search. Harper omits “a.”
32. Chapter 25. Chapter 24 in Harper.
33. To attempt getting back, therefore, would be folly. Harper reads: “To attempt, therefore, getting back, would
be folly.”
34. a view to rendering her. Harper reads: “a view of.”
35. fifty feet of room. Harper omits “of.”
Notes for VERNE ON PYM
First published as Edgard Poe et ses œuvres in the Musée des familles, April 1864. The following comments are
pertinent to this new translation of Chapter 4:
1. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. In French editions Verne’s essay cites the title of Baudelaire’s transla-
tion, Aventures d’Arthur Gordon Pym.
2. the tales of the grotesque and arabesque. In French editions Verne calls them histoires extraordinaires after the
title of Baudelaire’s first Poe collection.
3. Arthur. In this early essay Verne regularly refers to Pym by his middle name, Gordon, unlike his later
practice in The Sphinx of the Ice Realm. In Poe’s original only Pym’s grandfather calls him by his middle name;
meanwhile Augustus calls him Arthur, and Tiger’s collar reads “Tiger—Arthur Pym.” For consistency’s sake
the translation sticks with Arthur.
4. “Tiger Gone Mad!” Chapter title supplied by Baudelaire. In Poe’s original, as noted elsewhere, the
chapters are numbered but not titled.
5. the mate and the cook, Peters. An odd slip. Peters wasn’t the cook, just a member of his faction. The elderly
Verne had no trouble sorting out Poe’s mutiny, unlike his younger self.
6. a raven. A seagull in Poe’s original and Baudelaire’s translation.
7. April 6. Poe and Baudelaire both give August 7.
8. three unlucky men. By this point there were only two, Pym and Peters. According to Poe and Baudelaire,
Augustus died six days earlier.
9. October 10. Poe and Baudelaire both give the 18th.
10. a veiled human figure . . . the hue of the man’s skin was of the perfect whiteness of the snow. As noted elsewhere,
Baudelaire’s rendering is arguably a mistranslation, so I’ve adjusted the quote from Poe’s original to better
represent the text Verne knew.
textual notes / 399

Afterword
Jules Verne, Ghostbuster
Pym’s narrative ends with two crazy-making sentences: “. . . there arose in our pathway a
shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions than any dweller among men. And the
hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.”
This phantom figure was a lifelong burr under Verne’s saddle. “And that’s how the nar-
rative breaks off,” he wrote in 1864, rolling his eyes. Then, three decades later when he sum-
marized Pym’s tale all over again, he was still exasperated: “This is how it ends . . . or rather
doesn’t end.”
“Obviously,” as a latter-day biographer notes (Lottman, 299), “his imagination had been
captured by the novel’s strange and abrupt ending.”
He wasn’t the only one. When Pym first appeared, an American reviewer promptly com-
plained about its frustrating conclusion (Harvey, 36), calling it “purely perplexing and vexa-
tious.” And down through the years, according to J. Gerald Kennedy (70), these last words of
Pym’s “have provoked more critical disagreement than any other brief passage in Poe’s writ-
ings.”
To say the least. Sifting through the reams of interpretations, Richard Kopley notes (2)
that “Pym’s antarctic apparition . . . has elicited a particularly broad range of explication: it is
death, a figure triumphing over death, knowledge, the limits of knowledge, goodness, perver-
sity, the imagination, the narrative itself, the white at the bottom of the page, a Titan, a divinity,
Christ, and Pym’s unrecognized white shadow—a self-projection.”
And wait, there’s more. Scanning other commentaries, Harvey (13) finds a passel of
additional theories: “. . . it is the archetypal mother, to which he has arrived ‘through a warm
cosmic milk bath.’ . . . Pym sees a great uroboros figure, symbol of totality, eternity and recon-
ciliation of all oppositions. . . . it is the image of Pym’s own imagination, which he embraces
instead of reality, and which saves him from destruction by its ‘creative power.’ . . . it is an angel,
by whose supernatural agency Pym is saved. . . . it is an illusion, for Pym has actually moved
jules verne, ghostbuster / 401

into the realm of ether. . . . [it is] the figurehead of the whaler Penguin, which he had encoun-
tered on his Ariel excursion, and which again saves his life.”
It is, in short, a puzzlement, as the King of Siam might put it.
But what’s going on here? Why the mystery making? Normally Poe’s denouements are
orderly and decisive.
Kennedy believes (68–9) that the Virginia storyteller had simply run out of steam, that
his final chapter had “reached a narrative impasse,” that “he could already see [his novel] falling
to pieces,” that in this chapter “Poe perceives the collapse of his own narrative structure,” that
the story “had become for Poe quite literally interminable.” And in this Kennedy recycles a
notion that Verne himself entertained a century earlier. In Chapter 5 of Sphinx, Jeorling bluntly
declares: “As I see it, Poe wasn’t able to devise a conclusion to these amazing adventures.”
Because of this, Kennedy feels (73), we’ll never decipher those notorious last sentences.
We’ll just have to live with them, because their ambiguity “can be neither explained nor avoided.”
FIGURING OUT A PHANTOM
In any case, what measures did Verne himself take?

According to UK scholar David Meakin (602), he saw himself as playing Mr. Fixit:
The Sphinx of the Ice Realm was “a journey resolutely directed toward the rewriting of Poe’s de-
nouement.” His aim, then, was to make Pym look good, and he does this, adds U.S. Vernian
Brian Taves (12–13), by supplying rational explanations: “Verne fundamentally transforms the
whole story, providing a scientific basis for all that Pym saw.” In short, as Lottman notes (301),
he lends a helping hand by attesting to “the essential soundness of Poe’s narrative.”
But pioneer Vernienne Marie-Hélène Huet (15–16) takes exactly the opposite view:
“nothing that Pym’s journal describes,” she insists, “is recognizable in this second voyage. . . . It
scrupulously follows the route set forth in Poe’s text, but at each stage it obliterates or refutes
his guidebook, his initial text.”* And her countryman Pascal-Emmanuel Gallet (459) goes even
farther, labeling Poe a romantic, Verne an anti-romantic who’s out to debunk his forerunner:
Jeorling “goes back over Pym’s southern journey in order to apply . . . the disillusioning power
of realism, sifting [Pym’s] accounts through the sieve of rational analysis and methodical ob-
servation. Thus Sphinx is a novel full of letdowns. At each leg of his trip, Jeorling finds only
desolate, ravaged, or barren landscapes where Pym described exotic phenomena and luxuriant
vegetation.”**
Is either camp correct? To find out, let’s see how Verne actually proceeds—how he ad-
dresses that mysterious phantom at the end, Baudelaire’s “white giant,” and how he accounts for
the other phenomena in Pym’s later pages: the brooks with different-colored veins . . . the white
mammal with both cat and dog features . . . the barricade of flickering vapor . . . the scalding
water temperatures . . . the milky waves . . . the white powder falling from the sky. How does
Verne tackle these things?
*My translation. FPW

**My translation. FPW
402 / jules verne, ghostbuster

The answer is startling: he doesn’t.
After the Halbrane reaches 84°, she revisits Pym’s coordinates as far as 86° 33' south. But
Jeorling relates that she “didn’t witness any of those astonishing marvels.” So Sphinx neither
affirms nor denies the oddities in Pym.
Yet it could have. Take those brooks full of multicolored water. A number of Verne’s
earlier novels—for instance Claudius Bombarnac (1892) and Propeller Island (1895)—touch on
petroleum exploration, so we know he could have explained away this phenomenon as oil
seepage. As for the white powder, agitated water, and rising temperatures, Verne might easily
have trotted out one of those volcanic eruptions that figure in The Mysterious Island and other
favorites, not to mention Chapter 10 of Sphinx itself. And as for the white waves, decades
earlier Verne had introduced a “milk sea” midway through 20,000 Leagues. Obviously he was
well equipped to provide the above-cited “scientific basis.” Yet, unexpectedly, he doesn’t try to.
As for debunking Poe’s landscapes, Verne doesn’t attempt that either. When the Halbrane
puts in at various stops on Pym’s itinerary, Verne’s descriptions harmonize with Poe’s, whether
they’re of Kerguelen’s Land, Tristan da Cunha, or Bennet’s Islet. Only Tsalal Island has changed:
as Gallet says, it’s now desolate, ravaged, and barren. But Verne promptly explains that a recent
earthquake is the cause . . . and besides, when William Guy and his lost crewmen turn up at
last, they immediately corroborate Poe’s scene painting.
Otherwise the only clarification Sphinx furnishes is to suggest repeatedly, as in Chapters
17, 18, and 20, that Pym “was delirious during his final hours,” that he “imagined he’d seen
those phenomenal things,” that those “phenomena were simply the fruits of a stupendously
overwrought imagination,” that he had “imagined those phenomena, that they were simply due
to some disturbance of his mental faculties.”
Does this apply to the phantom figure at the end of the narrative? Is Verne saying that
Pym imagined “the white giant” as well? The evidence points that way. For one thing, Peters
isn’t a corroborating witness—he never admits to seeing the figure. Early in Part Two, Peters
says he and Pym were separated when “a great big ice slab” struck their canoe and knocked
Peters overboard, while Pym and the canoe “kept going. . . . soon he was out of sight past the
curtain of vapor.” Meantime a countercurrent carried Peters and the ice slab back up north.
Peters also says he “had Pym’s diary in his pocket” when he was knocked overboard . . . a
diary, Peters claims, that he handed off to Poe. But since its last lines mention the huge “human
figure,” this means the following, if those lines are in good faith: 1) Pym saw—or thought he
saw—the huge figure before he wrote the diary entry; 2) Pym wrote it before Peters pocketed
the diary; 3) Peters pocketed it before the ice slab struck and separated them.
Ultimately, as we know, Pym’s corpse is found clamped to the side of a sphinxlike rock
formation—is this, then, Pym’s white phantom? Some Vernians think so. Taves writes (13):
“The giant, shrouded white figure of Poe’s conclusion is revealed by Verne to be a gigantic
magnetic edifice at the pole.” Another Verne buff, I. O. Evans, agrees (191): “Such certainly
seems to be the idea Verne had in mind.”
But was it? For one thing the travel distances are eyebrow-raising. Verne locates Tsalal
Island 400 miles north of the South Pole in longitude west, whereas the rock formation is 900
miles north of it in longitude east. To reach the latter, Pym and Peters would have to do an

open-boat journey of some 1,300 miles in a month’s time, then Peters and his ice slab would
have to return over that same distance in three weeks.
So once again: is Verne offering his magnetic sphinx as Pym’s apparition? Clearly not,
because there are four additional flies in the ointment. First, in narrating his Chapter 22 dream,
Jeorling presents the “sphinx” and the “figure of superhuman size” as separate entities.
Second, Pym describes his huge figure as having “the perfect whiteness of the snow,”
whereas Jeorling describes the rock formation as “soot-colored.”
Third, nowhere does Verne say that this rock formation is Pym’s “giant.”
Fourth, Chapter 20 in Sphinx declares that Peters and Pym were separated in longitude
west, well north of the pole. In that chapter Jeorling states that the Halbrane lay in “latitude 86°
33'. . . . It was in this locality, according to the half-breed’s recollections, that the two escapees
got separated after an ice slab hit their canoe.”
So whatever Pym saw, or thought he saw, it wasn’t anywhere near Verne’s rock formation.
NOVELTIES AND WONDERS
Then what, we can reasonably ask, is Verne after? If he’s not trying to justify or debunk or even
explain Poe, what’s he up to?
Let’s look at what his novel actually does.
Reworking some of Poe’s characters and mixing in his own, Verne develops new puzzles
and plotlines—a mass disappearance, a mysterious boneyard, a regionwide earthquake, a dou-
ble manhunt, and a climactic journey that literally crosses the bottom of the world.
The Sorbonne’s Daniel Compère (71–2) charts this trailblazing journey as a progres-
sion from the known to the unknown: it moves from true-life locales such as the Falklands
and South Georgia Island . . . to locales invented by Poe such as Bennet’s Islet and Tsalal Is-
land . . . to Verne’s own inventions such as Halbrane Land and Sphinx Country. In Part Two
of Sphinx, therefore, “we understand that we’re in a strictly Vernian universe. All references to
reality or to Edgar Allan Poe have vanished.”*
So during the second half of his book, Verne is his own man—it’s his own quest, his
own vision, his own newfangled “region of novelty and wonder.” Writing six decades after Poe,
he unveils a host of marvels not found in his forerunner’s narrative: sunken islands . . . rime
frost and hoarfrost . . . frozen drinking water . . . fleets of floating mountains . . . iceberg som-
ersaults . . . electric snowflakes . . . the southern lights . . . peasoupers so dense, they “push
back” . . . and, of course, a colossal lodestone.
Whatever it is that Verne’s after, he’s like any self-respecting artist who gets an idea from
somebody else. He’s like Shakespeare with Cinthio, or Brahms with Paganini, or Monty Python
with Thomas Mallory.
In short, he’s in it for himself.
Consequently he unfurls his wettest, grittiest sea story . . . plays out his old fascination
with polar exploration . . . exploits the latest waves of public curiosity . . . and for the ump-
*My translation. FPW

teenth time tries to recover something lost. Sphinx is much more than a continuation of Pym—
it’s Verne himself continuing on.
And it works out that he was right not to run to his predecessor’s rescue. Because, at
the end of the day, it seems that Poe did have realistic explanations up his sleeve for his exotic
phenomena.
Here we find a perspective sharply different from the metaphorical or metaphysical
ones summarized earlier. As made by Poe revisionist J. Lasley Dameron (34–5), it’s a two-
pronged case: a) “Poe intended a sequel to Pym” and “was devoting his creative efforts to the
serial narrative form during the late 1830s.” b) The phenomena in Chapter 25 can be
naturally explained (39–42), and Poe could easily have borrowed the specifics from a nonfic-
tion account well known to him—William Scoresby’s Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery
(1823).
“Pym’s final chapter,” Dameron insists (35), “cannot be considered supernatural when
one considers some of the actualities of polar exploration.” In essence there are factual details
in Scoresby’s journal that closely resemble the phenomena in Pym’s later pages: multicolored
water (caused by the presence of microscopic life forms) . . . gray, flickering vapor (caused by
polar auroras) . . . white powder (actually snowy crystals) . . . a colossal white human figure
(actually an ice floe). “In using Scoresby’s Journal as a primary source,” Dameron maintains,
“Poe could convey at once the bizarre effect of ‘novelty and wonder’ without violating the
demands of verisimilitude.”
At the end of Chapter 25, therefore, Poe was still in a position to write fresh install-
ments. As Dameron notes (43), “it is no surprise that Pym and Peters do survive and could, if
Poe so chose, continue their adventures in another day, another episode.”
Therefore the last lines of Chapter 25 can be viewed as a classic cliffhanger, the storyteller
hooking his reader into wanting to read more. It was a device Poe clearly understood—com-
pare this hook to the cliffhangers tagging earlier chapters in Pym:
Chapter 25: “. . . there arose in our pathway a shrouded human figure. And the hue of the skin of the
figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.”
Chapter 20: “I was suddenly aware of a concussion . . . which impressed me . . . that the whole founda-
tions of the solid globe were suddenly rent asunder and that the day of universal dissolution was at hand.”
Chapter 11: “He proposed, in a few words, that one of us should die to preserve the existence of the others.”
Chapter 8: “. . . one of the most tremendous waves I had then ever known broke right on board of
us . . . filling every inch of the vessel with water.”
As Dameron concludes (43), “several options were open to [Poe] and the final note
is not necessarily the final word.” And this jibes with what’s known of Pym’s compositional
process: as described in the Foreword to this volume, Pym went through several developmental
phases, the last one—the episode of the hieroglyphic chasms and the final note—being “a very
late interpolation” (Harvey, 107).

Did Poe add the hieroglyphics and leave the story dangling to stir up demand for a se-
quel? If so, the demand simply wasn’t there. As Harvey notes (32), Harper & Brothers reported
that “less than a hundred copies [of Pym] had been sold in America” by 1839.
So question marks remain, and Kennedy (75) is fatalistic: “We will never know the pre-
cise circumstances that caused Poe to halt his narrative in such an inconclusive way.”
VERNE AS EXORCIST
As often as not, both Verne and Poe are rationalists. But Vernians can sometimes overdo the
distinctions between the Frenchman and the American, seeing Poe’s fiction as dominated by
horror and magic, or composed (Jules-Verne, 63) “of one ‘miraculous’ event after another.”
No question about the horror, but relatively few of Poe’s tales actually feature magic, the
miraculous, or the supernatural. True, “M.S. Found in a Bottle” and “The Masque of the Red
Death” (1842) turn out to be ghost stories, but they’re comparative rarities in Poe’s output.
His crime narratives may deal with fatal obsessions, death wishes, and guilty consciences, but
there’s nothing magical about their tell-tale hearts, black cats, casks of amontillado, or imps of
the perverse. Nor is there anything supernatural in the buried-alive stories, or the five detec-
tive yarns, or suspense thrillers such as “The Pit and the Pendulum” (1842), or psychological
parables such as “William Wilson.” Verne himself called Poe “an apostle of materialism” in
his 1864 essay: “you never sense any interceding by Providence; Poe doesn’t seem to accept its
presence and insists on explaining everything by physical laws.”
And despite what some have said, Verne isn’t much different. His early biographers laid
stress on his Roman Catholicism—his grandson (Jules-Verne, 63) called him “deistic to the
core, thanks to his upbringing”—yet his novels rarely have any spiritual content other than a
few token appeals to the almighty. (“Thanks to Providence came to our lips,” Jeorling blandly
remarks in Sphinx.) In fact such conventional nods were house policy at J. Hetzel et Cie: the
publisher himself, Lottmann says (135), “was the one who usually added the pious touches to
Verne’s stories.”
Like Poe, Verne turned out a few atypical yarns with occult components, “Master Zacha-
rias” (1854) or The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz (1910). Otherwise the Frenchman goes even farther
as a rational clarifier. Though Sphinx doesn’t set out to clear up the oddities in Pym (other than
suggesting they’re figments), in other novels Verne exorcises quite a few ghosts. Again and again
his yarns begin with uncanny phenomena that later are sorted out with the help of science and
technology—20,000 Leagues, for instance, or The Underground City (1877), Robur the Conquerer
(1886), Master of the World (1904), and especially The Castle in Transylvania (1892). Even Verne’s
straight thrillers are hard-headed and empirical: his little-known detective novels feature now-
classic plots that are “both amusing and amazing” (Walter, 7)—a jewel heist in The Southern Star
(1884), an unbreakable code in The Giant Raft (1881), a death-row rescue in The Kip Brothers,
even a locked-room mystery in A Drama in Livonia (1904). Verne, like Poe, had the makings of
a major-league materialist.

But when they wrote about polar exploration, both men did some guessing.
In the 1820s America’s Captain Benjamin Morrell got as far south as latitude 70°, where
he found an absence of field ice plus air and water temperatures that hovered in the mid 40s.
Reading through his reports, his countryman Poe imagined balmy climates near the pole.
At the other end of the century, expeditions such as C. A. Larsen’s kept penetrating
deeper into the Weddell Sea. As Verne’s grandson points out (Jules-Verne, 194), “There was
good reason to believe the antarctic continent was split by a sound.” Which, accordingly, was
good reason for his granddad to imagine his heroes sailing across the bottom of the world.
Needless to say, both novelists were wrong. But their novels are right in plenty of other
ways. FPW

Recommended Reading
WORKS CONCERNING VERNE AND POE
Aziza, Claude, ed. 2005. L’étrange histoire d’Arthur Gordon Pym. Paris: Omnibus.
Handy compilation of Baudelaire’s translation, Verne’s sequel, and critical essays by both men.
Bonaparte, Marie. 1933. Edgar Poe. 2 vols. Paris: Denoël et Steele.

Classic Freudian investigation of both Poe and Pym.
Butcher, William. 2006. Jules Verne: The definitive biography. New York: Thunder’s Mouth.
Bio by a ranking Verne scholar, full of new detail on Verne’s private life.
Compère, Daniel. 1977. Approche de l’île chez Jules Verne. Paris: Lettres modernes Minard.
Forms and functions of islands in Verne, including the iceberg in Sphinx Pt. II.
Dameron, J. Lasley. 1992. “Pym’s polar episode: Conclusion or beginning?” In Poe’s Pym: Critical
explorations, ed. Richard Kopley. Durham: Duke.
Presents natural explanations for the phenomena in Pym’s later chapters.
Davies, Thomas D. 1989. Robert E. Peary at the North Pole. Rockville, MD: Navigation Foundation.
Finds that Peary’s hard evidence supports his claim to have reached the pole.
Evans, Arthur B. 2005. Jules Verne’s English translations. Science Fiction Studies 32 (March), 80-
104.
The editor of Science Fiction Studies lists, describes, and assesses English versions of Verne’s works.
Evans, I. O. 1960. Editorial postscript. In The mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe
and Jules Verne. London: Arco.
Gallimaufry that condenses and conflates the two novels; Evans provides closing remarks.
recommended reading / 409

Gallet, Pascal-Emmanuel. 1987. Postface. In Le Sphinx des glaces by Jules Verne. Paris: Livre de
Poche.
Casts Poe as a romantic, Verne as a debunking anti-romantic.
Harvey, Ronald C. 1998. The critical history of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym. New York: Garland.
Surveys Pym’s contentious reception from publication to the present.
Hayes, Kevin J. 2009. Edgar Allan Poe. London: Reaktion.

Concise bio and commentary targeted to the general reader.
Huet, Marie-Hélène. 1979. “Itinéraire du texte.” In Colloque de Cerisy: Jules Verne et les sciences hu-
maines. Paris: Union Générale.
Argues that Sphinx doesn’t clarify Pym but purges or disproves it.
Huntford, Roland. 1986. The last place on earth. New York: Atheneum.
Analyzes Amundsen’s victory over Scott in their race to the South Pole.
Jules-Verne, Jean. 1976. Jules Verne: A biography. Translated and adapted by Roger Greaves. New
York: Taplinger.
Indispensable biography by Verne’s grandson.
Kennedy, J. Gerald. 1995. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym and the abyss of interpretation.
New York: Twayne.
Concludes that the novel’s ambivalence is built in and must be accepted.
Kopley, Richard, ed. 1992. Poe’s Pym: Critical explorations. Durham: Duke.
Showcases the amazing range of contemporary takes on this novel.
Lottman, Herbert R. 1996. Jules Verne: An exploratory biography. New York: St. Martins.
Bio targeted to the general public, controversial but closely researched.
Meakin, David. 1993. “Like poles attracting: Intertextual magnetism in Poe, Verne, and Gracq.”
Modern Language Review, 88 (July), 600–611.
Believes Verne undertook a “corrective rewriting” of Pym.
Poe, Edgar Allan. 1994. The imaginary voyages, ed. by Burton R. Pollin. New York: Gordian
Press.
Critical edition of Pym, Hans Pfaall, and the fragment Julius Rodman.
Silverman, Kenneth. 1991. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and never-ending remembrance. New York: Harper.
Interpretative bio, scrutinizes themes of illusion and disorder in Pym.
410 / recommended reading

Taves, Brian, and Stephen Michaluk Jr. 1996. The Jules Verne encyclopedia. Lanham MD: Scarecrow.
Miscellany of essays on Vernian topics plus detailed descriptions of early English editions.
Walter, Frederick Paul. 2003. “Verne, Doyle, and vanishing diamonds.” Extraordinary Voyages 9
(June), 6–7.
Examines Verne’s ingeniously plotted detective fiction.
OTHER BOOKS BY VERNE IN MODERN TRANSLATIONS
Adventures of Captain Hatteras, The. 2005. Translated by William Butcher. New York: Oxford.
Conquest of the North Pole four decades before Peary.
Amazing journeys: Five visionary classics. 2010. Translated by Frederick Paul Walter. Albany: State
University of New York.
New translations of old favorites: Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Circling the
Moon, 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, and Around the World in 80 Days.
Backwards to Britain. 1992. Translated by Janice Valls-Russell. Edinburgh: Chambers.

Chatty but hard-hitting UK travelogue that took 130 years to reach print.
Begum’s millions, The. 2005. Translated by Stanford L. Luce. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan.
Grimly prophetic tale of German armament building and military aggression.
Castle in Transylvania, The. 2010. Translated by Charlotte Mandell. Brooklyn: Melville.

High-tech Gothic horror; aka The Castle in the Carpathians.
Family without a name. 1982. Translated by Edward Baxter. Toronto: NC Press.

Historical thriller about Quebec’s 1837 rebellion against England.
Fantasy of Dr. Ox, A. 2003. Translated by Andrew Brown. London: Hesperus.

Comic sf novella featuring behavior modification of an entire town.
Fur country, The. 1987. Translated by Edward Baxter. Toronto: NC Press.

Scientific thriller where a polar expedition goes badly astray.
Golden volcano, The. 2008. Translated by Edward Baxter. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska.

Adventure tale set in the Yukon during the gold rush era.
Green ray, The. 2009. Translated by Karen Loukes. Edinburgh: Luath.

Highland romance inspired by Verne’s own travels in the Hebrides.
Invasion of the sea. 2001. Translated by Edward Baxter. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan.
Techno thriller about creating an inland sea in the Sahara.
recommended reading / 411

Journey through the impossible. 2003. Translated by Edward Baxter. Amherst NY: Prometheus.
Three-act play on sf and fantasy themes drawn from Verne’s bestsellers.
Kip brothers, The. 2007. Translated by Stanford L. Luce. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan.
Scientific crime thriller about murder in the South Seas.
Lighthouse at the end of the world. 2007. Translated by William Butcher. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska.
Duel to the death on the lowermost crags of South America.
Meteor hunt, The. 2006. Translated by Frederick Paul Walter and Walter James Miller. Lincoln:
U. of Nebraska.
Comic sf novel in which U.S. astronomers feud over a shooting star.
Mighty Orinoco, The. 2002. Translated by Stanford L. Luce. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan.
Jungle adventure thriller about searching for the Orinoco’s headwaters.
Mysterious island, The. 2001. Translated by Jordan Stump. New York: Modern Library.
Masterful desert-island yarn complete with do-it-yourself science.
Paris in the twentieth century. 1996. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Random.
“Long lost” character novel featuring future developments in the City of Light.
Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, The. 2011. Translated by Peter Schulman. Lincoln: U. of Nebraska.
One-of-a-kind urban fantasy that juggles science and horror.
Underground city, The. 2005. Translated by Sarah Crozier. Edinburgh: Luath.

Spooky, mystical thriller set in a Scottish coal mine; aka The Black Indies.
ELECTRONIC RESOURCES
Bibliothèque municipale de Nantes. http://www.bm.nantes.fr

The public library website in Verne’s birthplace; offers many of his manuscripts plus related treasures.
The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore. http://www.eapoe.org/

E-texts of Poe’s collected works along with many biographical, historical, and scholarly resources.
The North American Jules Verne Society. http://www.najvs.org/objectives.shtml

Info on U.S. conferences and scholarship plus links to Vernian organizations worldwide.
Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection. http://jv.gilead.org.il/

Leading site with hundreds of full texts, discussion list, current scholarship, and other resources.
412 / recommended reading

J ULES V ERNE
Verne was born in 1828 into a French lawyering family in the Atlantic coastal city of Nantes.
Though his father sent him off to a Paris law school, young Jules had been writing on the side
since his early teens, and his pet topics were the theater, travel, and science. Predictably enough,
his legal studies led nowhere, and after getting married Verne took a day job with a stock bro-
kerage, in his off hours penning scripts for farces and musical comedies while also publishing
short stories and novelettes of scientific exploration and adventure.
His big breakthrough came when he combined his theatrical knack with his scientific
bent and in 1863 published an African adventure yarn, Five Weeks in a Balloon. After that and till
his death in 1905, Jules Verne remained one of the planet’s best-loved and best-selling novel-
ists, publishing over sixty books. Several Verne thrillers are household names; other imaginative
favorites by him include The Meteor Hunt, The Mysterious Island, Invasion of the Sea, The Underground
City, and The Adventures of Captain Hatteras. Verne ranks among the five most-translated authors in
history, along with Mark Twain and the Bible.
F REDERICK P AUL W ALTER

Scriptwriter, broadcaster, librarian, and amateur paleontologist, Walter is the translator of
SUNY Press’s popular omnibus Amazing Journeys: Five Visionary Classics—new texts of Jules
Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon, Circling the Moon, 20,000 Leagues
Under the Seas, and Around the World in 80 Days. He has produced many media programs, articles,
and papers on Verne, also collaborating on translations of The Meteor Hunt and The Mighty Orinoco
plus a special edition of 20,000 Leagues for the U.S. Naval Institute in Annapolis.
Walter served as Vice President of the North American Jules Verne Society from 2000
to 2008. He lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
413
Illustrations for The Sphinx of the Ice Realm by George Roux from the Le Sphinx des glaces, published
by J. Hetzel et Cie, 1897. Illustrations for chapter 1 and chapter 25 of The Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym by A. D. McCormick from Arthur Gordon Pym: A Romance, published by Downey &
Co., 1898; illustration for chapter 13 by Albert Sterner from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of
Adventure and Exploration, published by Stone & Kemble, 1895. Sphinx frontispiece: Verne photo-
graphed c. 1878. Pym frontispiece: Poe photographed in 1848.

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The Sphinx Of the Ice Realm

With the Full Text of

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Translations and critical materials © 2012 by Frederick Paul Walter

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Printed in the United States of America

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Production and book design, Laurie Searl

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Verne, Jules, 1828–1905.

model of patience, tolerance,

Foreword: Jules Verne, Manhunter

THE SPHINX OF THE ICE REALM

Afterword: Jules Verne, Ghostbuster

Jules Verne, Manhunter

jules verne, manhunter / ix

x / jules verne, manhunter

jules verne, manhunter / xi

xii / jules verne, manhunter

jules verne, manhunter / xiii

It will be a kind of counterpart to Captain Hatteras, although there is nothing in the

xiv / jules verne, manhunter

FREDERICK PAUL WALTER

jules verne, manhunter / xv

translating verne / xvii

xviii / translating verne

translating verne / xix

To the memory of Edgar Allan Poe

first published in 1897

the sphinx of the ice realm / 5

6 / the sphinx of the ice realm

The local innkeeper pulled alongside me.

the sphinx of the ice realm / 7

8 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 9

10 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 11

12 / the sphinx of the ice realm

*Largest and lowest sails on a ship’s masts. FPW

the sphinx of the ice realm / 13

14 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 15

16 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 17

18 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 19

20 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 21

22 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 23

*Wilkes’s expedition confirmed the existence of an antarctic continent. FPW

24 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 25

26 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 27

28 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 29

30 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 31

*Pedestal with a cowl on top housing the ship’s compass. FPW

32 / the sphinx of the ice realm

the sphinx of the ice realm / 33

*Italian: “in my heart of hearts.” FPW