Page:An Antarctic Mystery.pdf/127

Rh "but if such a continent exists, we must conclude that there is a great gap in its coast, and that Weddell and my brother each got in by that gap at six years' interval. That our great navigator had not the luck to discover this passage is easy to explain; he stopped at the seventy-first parallel! But others found it after Captain Cook, and others will find it again."

"And we shall be of the number, captain."

"Yes—with the help of God! Cook did not hesitate to assert that no one would ever venture farther than he had gone, and that the Antarctic lands, if any such existed, would never be seen, but the future will prove that he was mistaken. They have been seen so far as the eighty-fourth degree of latitude—"

"And who knows," said I, "perhaps beyond that, by Arthur Pym."

"Perhaps, Mr. Jeorling. It is true that we have not to trouble ourselves about Arthur Pym, since he, at least, and Dirk Peters also, returned to America."

"But—supposing he did not return?"

"I consider that we have not to face that eventuality," replied Captain Lea Guy.