Page:An Antarctic Mystery.pdf/59

Rh the gulf of the cataract just at the moment when a veiled human form rises. Then there is nothing more; nothing but two blank lines—"

"Decidedly, sir, it is much to be regretted that I could not lay my hand on Dirk Peters! It would have been interesting to learn what was the outcome of these adventures. But, to my mind, it would have been still more interesting to have ascertained the fate of the others."

"The others?" I exclaimed almost involuntarily. "Of whom do you speak?"

"Of the captain and crew of the English schooner which picked up Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters after the frightful shipwreck of the Grampus, and brought them across the Polar Sea to Tsalal Island—"

"Captain," said I, just as though I entertained no doubt of the authenticity of Edgar Poe's romance, "is it not the case that all these men perished, some in the attack on the schooner, the others by the infernal device of the natives of Tsalal?"

"Who can tell?" replied the captain in a voice hoarse from emotion. "Who can say but that some of the unfortunate creatures survived, and contrived to escape from the natives?"

"In any case," I replied, " it would be difficult to admit that those who had survived could still be living."

"And why?"

"Because the facts we are discussing are eleven years old."

"Sir," replied the captain, "since Arthur Pym and Dirk Peters were able to advance beyond Tsalal Island farther than the eighty-third parallel, since they found means of living in the midst of those Antarctic lands, why should