Free An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne

routes
never were certain; he was always hoping that an opportunity for
venturing into the sea of ice might arise. Who could tell indeed,
whether he would not have sailed for the south at once without
putting in at Tristan d'Acunha, if he had not wanted water? After
what I had said before I went on board the
Halbrane
, I should have
had no right to insist on his proceeding to the island for the sole
purpose of putting me ashore. But a supply of water was
indispensable, and besides, it might be possible there to put the
schooner in a condition to contend with the icebergs and gain the
open sea—since open it was beyond the eighty-second parallel—in
fact to attempt what Lieutenant Wilkes of the American Navy was then
attempting.
    The navigators knew at this period, that from the middle of November
to the beginning of March was the limit during which some success
might be looked for. The temperature is more bearable then, storms
are less frequent, the icebergs break loose from the mass, the ice
wall has holes in it, and perpetual day reigns in that distant
region.
    Tristan d'Acunha lies to the south of the zone of the regular
south-west winds. Its climate is mild and moist. The prevailing
winds are west and north-west, and, during the winter—August and
September—south. The island was inhabited, from 1811, by American
whale fishers. After them, English soldiers were installed there to
watch the St. Helena seas, and these remained until after the death
of Napoleon, in 1821. Several years later the group of islands
populated by Americans and Dutchmen from the Cape acknowledged the
suzerainty of Great Britain, but this was not so in 1839. My
personal observation at that date convinced me that the possession
of Tristan d'Acunha was not worth disputing. In the sixteenth
century the islands were called the Land of Life.
    On the 5th of September, in the morning, the towering volcano of the
chief island was signalled; a huge snow-covered mass, whose crater
formed the basin of a small lake. Next day, on our approach, we
could distinguish a vast heaped-up lava field. At this distance the
surface of the water was striped with gigantic seaweeds, vegetable
ropes, varying in length from six hundred to twelve hundred feet,
and as thick as a wine barrel.
    Here I should mention that for three days subsequent to the finding
of the fragment of ice, Captain Len Guy came on deck for strictly
nautical purposes only, and I had no opportunities of seeing him
except at meals, when he maintained silence, that not even James
West could have enticed him to break. I made no attempt to do this,
being convinced that the hour would come when Len Guy would again
speak to me of his brother, and of the efforts which he intended to
make to save him and his companions. Now, I repeat, the season being
considered, that hour had not come, when the schooner cast anchor on
the 6th of September at Ansiedling, in Falmouth Bay, precisely in
the place indicated in Arthur Pym's narrative as the moorings of
the
Jane
.
    At the period of the arrival of the
Jane
, an ex-corporal of the
English artillery, named Glass, reigned over a little colony of
twenty-six individuals, who traded with the Cape, and whose only
vessel was a small schooner. At our arrival this Glass had more than
fifty subjects, and was, as Arthur Pym remarked, quite independent
of the British Government. Relations with the ex-corporal were
established on the arrival of the
Halbrane
, and he proved very
friendly and obliging. West, to whom the captain left the business
of refilling the water tanks and taking in supplies of fresh meat
and vegetables, had every reason to be satisfied with Glass, who, no
doubt, expected to be paid, and was paid, handsomely.
    The day after our arrival I met ex-corporal Glass, a vigorous,
well-preserved man, whose sixty years had not impaired his
intelligent vivacity. Independently of his trade with the Cape and
the Falklands, he did an important business in seal-skins and