The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Hatteras/Chapter 2.XIV

Les Aventures du capitaine Hatteras - Seconde partie - 14

The prisoners were set free; they expressed their joy by the warmth of their thanks to the doctor. Johnson regretted somewhat the skins, which were burned and useless; but his regret did not sour his temper.

They spent the day in repairing the house, which was somewhat injured by the explosion. They took away the blocks heaped up by the animals, and the walls were made secure. They worked briskly, encouraged by the cheery songs of the boatswain.

The next day the weather was much milder; the wind changed suddenly, and the thermometer rose to +15°. So great a difference was soon felt by both man and nature. The southerly wind brought with it the first signs of the polar spring.

This comparative warmth lasted for many days; the thermometer, sheltered from the wind, even rose as high as +31°, and there were signs of a thaw.

The ice began to crack; a few spirits of salt-water arose here and there, like jets in an English park; a few days later it rained hard.

A dense vapor arose from the snow; this was a good sign, and the melting of the immense masses appeared to be near at hand. The pale disk of the sun grew brighter and drew longer spirals above the horizon; the night lasted scarcely three hours. Another similar symptom was the reappearance of some ptarmigans, arctic geese, plover, and flocks of quail; the air was soon filled with the deafening cries which they remembered from the previous summer. A few hares, which they were able to shoot, appeared on the shores of the bay, as well as the arctic mice, the burrows of which were like a honeycomb.

The doctor called the attention of his friends to the fact that these animals began to lose their white winter plumage, or hair, to put on their summer dress; they were evidently getting ready for summer, while their sustenance appeared in the form of moss, poppy, saxifrage, and thin grass. A new life was peering through the melting snows.

But with the harmless animals returned the famished foes; foxes and wolves arrived in search of their prey; mournful howling sounded during the brief darkness of the nights.

The wolf of these countries is near of kin to the dog; like him, it barks, and often in such a way as to deceive the sharpest ears, those of the dogs themselves, for instance; it is even said that they employ this device to attract dogs, and then eat them. This has been observed on the shores of Hudson's Bay, and the doctor could confirm it at New America; Johnson took care not to let loose the dogs of the sledge, who might have been destroyed in that way. As for Duke, he had seen too many of them, and he was too wise to be caught in any such way.

During a fortnight they hunted a great deal; fresh food was abundant; they shot partridges, ptarmigans, and snow-birds, which were delicious eating. The hunters did not go far from Fort Providence. In fact, small game could almost be killed with a stick; and it gave much animation to the silent shores of Victoria Bay,—an unaccustomed sight which delighted their eyes.

The fortnight succeeding the great defeat of the boars was taken up with different occupations. The thaw advanced steadily; the thermometer rose to 32°, and torrents began to roar in the ravines, and thousands of cataracts fell down the declivities. The doctor cleared an area of ground and sowed in it cresses, sorrel, and cochlearia, which are excellent remedies for the scurvy; the little greenish leaves were peeping above the ground when, with incredible rapidity, the cold again seized everything.

In a single night, with a violent north-wind, the thermometer fell forty degrees, to -8°. Everything was frozen; birds, quadrupeds, and seals disappeared as if by magic; the holes for the seals were closed, the crevasses disappeared, the ice became as hard as granite, and the waterfalls hung like long crystal pendants.

It was a total change to the eye; it took place in the night of May 11–12. And when Bell the next morning put his nose out of doors into this sharp frost, he nearly left it there.

“0, this polar climate!” cried the doctor, a little disappointed; “that's the way it goes! Well, I shall have to begin sowing again.”

Hatteras took things philosophically, so eager was he to renew his explorations. But he had to resign himself.

“Will this cold weather last long?” asked Johnson.

“No, my friend, no,” answered Clawbonny; “it's the last touch of winter we shall have! You know it's at home here, and we can't drive it away against its will.”

“It defends itself well,” said Bell, rubbing his face.

“Yes, but I ought to have expected it,” said the doctor; “and I should not have thrown the seed away so stupidly, especially since I might have started them near the kitchen stove.”

“What!” asked Altamont, “could you have foreseen this change of weather?”

“Certainly, and without resorting to magic. I ought to have put the seed under the protection of Saints Mamert, Panera, and Servais, whose days are the 11th, 12th, and 13th of this month.”

“Well, Doctor,” said Altamont, “will you tell me what influence these three saints have on the weather?”

“A very great influence, to believe gardeners, who call them the three saints of ice.”

“And why so, pray?”

“Because generally there is a periodic frost in the month of May, and the greatest fall of temperature takes place from the 11th to the 13th of this month. It is a fact, that is all.”

“It is curious, but what is the explanation?” asked the American.

“There are two: either by the interposition of a greater number of asteroids between the earth and the sun at this season, or simply by the melting of the snow, which thereby absorbs a great quantity of heat. Both explanations are plausible; must they be received? I don't know; but if I'm uncertain of the truth of the explanation, I ought not to have been of the fact, and so lose my crop.”

The doctor was right; for one reason or another the cold was very intense during the rest of the month of May; their hunting was interrupted, not so much by the severity of the weather as by the absence of game; fortunately, the supply of fresh meat was not yet quite exhausted.

They found themselves accordingly condemned to new inactivity; for a fortnight, from the 11th to the 25th of May, only one incident broke the monotony of their lives; a serious illness, diphtheria, suddenly seized the carpenter; from the swollen tonsils and the false membrane in the throat, the doctor could not be ignorant of the nature of the disease; but he was in his element, and he soon drove it away, for evidently it had not counted on meeting him; his treatment was very simple, and the medicines were not hard to get; the doctor simply prescribed pieces of ice to be held in the mouth; in a few hours the swelling went down and the false membrane disappeared; twenty-four hours later Bell was up again.

When the others wondered at the doctor's prescriptions:

“This is tin; land of these complaints,” he answered; “the cure must be near the disease.”

“The cure, and especially the doctor,” added Johnson, in whose mind the doctor was assuming colossal proportions.

During this new leisure the latter resolved to have a serious talk with the captain; he wanted to induce Hatteras to give up his intention of going northward without carrying some sort of a boat; a piece of wood, something with which he could cross an arm of the sea, if they should meet one. The captain, who was fixed in his views, had formally vowed not to use a boat made of the fragments of the American ship. The doctor was uncertain how to broach the subject, and yet a speedy decision was important, for the month of June would be the time for distant excursions. At last, after long reflection, he took Hatteras aside one day, and with his usual air of kindness said to him,—

“Hatteras, you know I am your friend?”

“Certainly,” answered the captain, warmly, “my best friend; indeed, my only one.”

“If I give you a piece of advice,” resumed the doctor, “advice which you don't ask for, would you consider it disinterested?”

“Yes, for I know that selfish interest has never been your guide; but what do you want to say?”

“One moment, Hatteras; I have something else to ask of you: Do you consider me a true Englishman like yourself, and eager for the glory of my country?”

Hatteras looked at the doctor with surprise.

“Yes,” he answered, with his face expressing surprise at the question.

“You want to reach the North Pole,” resumed the doctor; “I understand your ambition, I share it, but to reach this end we need the means.”

“Well, have n't I so far sacrificed everything in order to succeed?”

“No, Hatteras, you have not sacrificed your personal prejudices, and at this moment. I see that you are ready to refuse the indispensable means of reaching the Pole.”

“Ah!” answered Hatteras, “you mean the launch; this man—”

“Come, Hatteras, let us argue coolly, without passion, and look at all sides of the question. The line of the coast on which we have wintered may be broken; there is no proof that it runs six degrees to the north; if the information which has brought you so far is right, we ought to find a vast extent of open sea during the summer months. Now, with the Arctic Ocean before us, free of ice and favorable for navigation, what shall we do if we lack the means of crossing it?”

Hatteras made no answer.

“Do you want to be within a few miles of the Pole without being able to reach it?”

Hatteras's head sank into his hands.

“And now,” continued the doctor, “let us look at the question from a moral point of view. I can understand that an Englishman should give up his life and his fortune for the honor of his country. But because a boat made of a few planks torn from a wrecked American ship first touches the coast or crosses the unknown ocean, can that diminish the honor of the discovery? If you found on this shore the hull of an abandoned ship, should you hesitate to make use of it? Does n't the glory of success belong to the head of the expedition? And I ask you if this launch built by four Englishmen, manned by four Englishmen, would not be English from keel to gunwale?”

Hatteras was still silent.

“No,” said Clawbonny, “let us talk frankly; it's not the boat you mind, it's the man.”

“Yes, Doctor, yes,” answered the captain, “that American; I hate him with real English hate, that man thrown in my way by chance—”

“To save you!”

“To ruin me! He seems to defy me, to act as master, to imagine he holds my fate in his hands, and to have guessed my plans. Did n't he show his character when we were giving names to the new lands I Has he ever said what he was doing here? You can't free me of the idea which is killing me, that this man is the head of an expedition sent out by the government of the United States.”

“And if he is, Hatteras, what is there to show that he is in search of the Pole? Can't America try to discover the Northwest Passage as well as England? At any rate, Altamont is perfectly ignorant of your plans; fur neither Johnson nor Bell nor you nor I has said a single word about them in his presence.”

“Well, I hope he'll never know them!”

“He will know them finally, of course, for we can't leave him alone here.”

“Why not?” asked the captain, with some violence; “can't he remain at Port Providence?”

“He would never give his consent, Hatteras; and then to leave him here, uncertain of finding him again, would be more than imprudent, it would be inhuman. Altamont will come with us; he must come! But since there is no need of suggesting new ideas to him, let us say nothing, and build a launch apparently for reconnoitring these new shores.”

Hatteras could not make up his mind to accede to the demands of his friend, who waited for an answer which did not come.

“And if he refused to let us tear his ship to pieces!” said the captain, finally.

“In that case, you would have the right on your side; you could build the boat in spite of him, and he could do nothing about it.”

“I hope he will refuse,” exclaimed Hatteras.

“Before he refuses,” answered the doctor, “he must be asked. I will undertake to do it.”

In fact, that evening, before supper, Clawbonny turned the conversation to certain proposed expeditions in the summer months for hydrographic observations.

“I suppose, Altamont,” he said, “that you will join us?”

“Certainly,” was the reply; “we must know how large New America is.”

Hatteras gazed earnestly at his rival while he made his answer.

“And for that,” continued Altamont, “we must make the best use we can of the fragments of the Porpoise; let us make a strong boat which can carry us far.”

“You hear, Bell,” said the doctor, quickly; “to-morrow we shall set to work.”