Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 2.djvu/271

 same place from time immemorial, and had become firmly fixed below; as, for every foot above water, an iceberg has nearly two below, which reckoning would give this a depth of about eighty fathoms. No thaw seemed to have affected it, or touched its strange outlines. It was seen by Snow; by James Ross, in 1829, who made an exact drawing of it; and by Lieutenant Bellot, in 1851. The Doctor, of course, was anxious to carry away some souvenir of an ice mountain so celebrated, and succeeded in sketching it very successfully.

At last Cape Farewell came in sight, and the Forward arrived on the day fixed, amidst snow and fog, with the temperature at 12°. If the unknown captain should chance to turn up here, he certainly could not complain.

"Here we are, then," said the Doctor, "at this famous cape! Well named it is, for many have reached it like us who never saw it more. Do we, indeed, say farewell to our friends in Europe? Frobisher, Knight, Barlow, Vaughan, Scroggs, Barentz, Hudson, Blosseville, Franklin, Crozier, Bellot—all passed this way, never to return! For them it was indeed a Cape Farewell."

All the past history of Greenland rose up to memory, as the Doctor stood gazing dreamily over the side of the ship, watching the deep furrow she made in plowing the waves, and imagination peopled the icy, desolate shore with pale shadows of the many bold adventurers who had found a grave and winding sheet in the snow.

the day the Forward bored her way easily through the loose ice. The wind was favorable, but the temperature very low, owing to the passage of the air currents over the ice-fields.

The night was the most trying time, requiring the utmost vigilance. The icebergs so crowded the narrow strait that upwards of a hundred could often be counted on the horizon at one time. They were constantly being shed off by the glaciers on the coast, through the combined action of the waves and the April weather, and either melted