An Antarctic Mystery, Jules Verne [ereader that reads to you TXT] 📗

met the vessels of the American expedition.

In fact, on the 1st of February, by 95° 50′ longitude and 64° 17′ latitude, Lieutenant Wilkes was still exploring these seas in one of his ships, the Vincennes, after having discovered a long extent of coast stretching from east to west. On the approach of the bad season, he returned to Hobart Town, in Tasmania. The same year, the expedition of the French captain Dumont d’Urville, which started in 1838, discovered Adélie Land in 66° 30′ latitude and 38° 21′ east longitude, and Clarie Coast in 64° 30′ and 129° 54′. Their campaign having ended with these important discoveries, the Astrolabe and the Zélée left the Antarctic Ocean and returned to Hobart Town.

None of these ships, then, were in those waters; so that, when our nutshell Paracuta was “alone on a lone, lone sea” beyond the ice-barrier, we were bound to believe that it was no longer possible we could be saved.

We were fifteen hundred miles away from the nearest land, and winter was a month old!

Hurliguerly himself was obliged to acknowledge the last fortunate chance upon which he had counted failed us.

On the 6th of April we were at the end of our resources; the sea began to threaten, the boat seemed likely to be swallowed up in the angry waves.

“A ship!” cried the boatswain, and on the instant we made out a vessel about four miles to the northeast, beneath the mist which had suddenly risen.

Signals were made, signals were perceived; the ship lowered her largest boat and sent it to our rescue.

This ship was the Tasman, an American three-master, from Charlestown, where we were received with eager welcome and cordiality. The captain treated my companions as though they had been his own countrymen.

The Tasman had come from the Falkland Islands where the captain had learned that seven months previously the American schooner Halbrane had gone to the southern seas in search of the shipwrecked people of the Jane. But as the season advanced, the schooner not having reappeared, she was given up for lost in the Antarctic regions.

Fifteen days after our rescue the Tasman disembarked the survivors of the crew of the two schooners at Melbourne, and it was there that our men were paid the sums they had so hardly earned, and so well deserved.

We then learned from maps that the Paracuta had debouched into the Pacific from the land called Clarie by Dumont d’Urville, and the land called Fabricia, which was discovered in 1838 by Bellenny.

Thus terminated this adventurous and extraordinary expedition, which cost, alas, too many victims. Our final word is that although the chances and the necessities of our voyage carried us farther towards the south pole than those who preceded us, although we actually did pass beyond the axial point of the terrestrial globe, discoveries of great value still remain to be made in those waters!

Arthur Pym, the hero whom Edgar Poe has made so famous, has shown the way. It is for others to follow him, and to wrest the last Antarctic Mystery from the Sphinx of the Ice-realm.

Thomas D’Arcy McGee. ↩

The American “lion” is only a small species of pumas and not formidable enough to terrify a Nantucket youth. ↩

The French word is banquise, which means the vast stretch of icebergs farther south than the barrière or ice wall. ↩

The legendary etymology of this piscatorial designation is Janitore, the “doorkeeper,” in allusion to St. Peter, who brought a fish said to be of that species, to our Lord at His command. ↩

Colophon

An Antarctic Mystery
was published in 1897 by
Jules Verne.
It was translated from French by
Frances Cashel Hoey.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Samuel Laws,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2003 by
Norman M. Wolcott and Al Haines for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
HathiTrust Digital Library.

The cover page is adapted from
Off Greenland⁠—Whaler Seeking Open Water,
a painting by William Bradford.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
July 10, 2021, 5:41 p.m.
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