Chapter 32 Chapter 32 Back to the Advance

At about six o'clock in the morning, the wind stopped and immediately turned to the north, driving away the clouds in the sky. The thermometer indicated minus thirty-seven degrees Celsius.The first rays of evening gilded the horizon with silver, and a few days later with gold. Hatteras approached his two exhausted companions, and said in a tone of tenderness and mournfulness: My friends, we are far from Edward.There were still more than sixty nautical miles to Sir Bilcher's appointed point, and we had not enough food until we got back to the ship.Going any further, we're sure to die, and it's not doing anybody any good.Let's go back.

That is a very good idea, Hatteras, answered the doctor, and I will follow you wherever you will; but our bodies grow weaker and weaker; In favor of the plan to go back. Is that what you mean too, Bell?asked Hatteras. Yes, Captain, replied the carpenter. Well, said Hatteras again, we're going to rest for two days, not too long.The sled needs a good repair.I think we should build a igloo in which we gather our strength. Having made this decision, the three of them began to work with enthusiasm; Bell tried his best to ensure the stability of the snow house, and soon built a pretty good shelter in the depths of the canyon, where they carried out Final rest.

Hatteras no doubt had a hard time deciding to call off his expedition.So much pain and exhaustion for nothing!A useless expedition at the cost of one man's life!Go back to the ship without a piece of coal!What about the crew?They are in Richard.What happened under Shandon's instigation?But Hatteras couldn't do mind wrestling anymore. All his strength was expended in preparing the return; the sled was repaired and its load reduced to less than two hundred pounds.They mended frayed, torn, snow-soaked, and frost-hard clothes, and replaced old, useless snowshoes and moccasins with new ones.These tasks took up the day of the twenty-ninth and the morning of the thirtieth; after all, the three travelers tried to rest as much as possible to recharge their batteries for the future.

During the thirty-six hours spent in the igloos and on the icebergs of the canyon, the doctor observed Duck, whose strange behavior seemed unnatural; There was a common center; it was a higher place, a bulge in the ground, caused by the accumulation of various ice formations; around this point Duck was howling cautiously, wagging his tail impatiently, watching His master seemed to have something to ask. The doctor thought for a moment and attributed this state of anxiety to the presence of Simpson's body, which his companions had not yet had time to bury. He decided to preside over that sad ceremony that very day.As soon as the twilight light appeared tomorrow morning, they set out.

Bear and the doctor walked towards the bottom of the canyon with pickaxes, and Dak found a good place to put the body with his clever nature; it must be buried deep so that the bears would not dig it out. The doctor and Bell began to shake off the top layer of soft snow, then they tapped on the hard ice; the third pick went down, and the doctor hit something hard, which broke; Fragment of a glass bottle. Bell's side finds a hard bag containing perfectly preserved cookie sheets. Um?The doctor said. How is this going?Bell stopped what he was doing and asked. The doctor called Hatteras, and he came shortly.

Dak screamed desperately, trying to dig deeper into the ice with its claws. Maybe we've hit a food stash?The doctor said. Possibly, Bell replied. Go on, Hatteras said. A few more scraps of food were picked up, a quarter of dried meatloaf in a box. If it's a food hiding place, Hatteras said, the bears must have been there before us.Look, these foods are not complete. That's the worry, the doctor replied, because He hadn't finished speaking; he was interrupted by a cry from Bell; the latter removed a mass of ice and found a stiff, frozen leg protruding from a crevice in the iceberg.

A corpse!shouted the doctor. This is not a place to hide food, this is a grave. The body was uncovered, a sailor in his thirties, in fairly good condition; he was wearing an arctic sailing suit; the doctor could not say when he died. But next to this corpse, Bell found another corpse, a man in his fifties with a painful expression on his face. These bodies were not buried!These unfortunates, cried the doctor, died suddenly, as we have seen! You have a point, Mr. Crawburn, Bell replied. then!then!Hatteras said. Bell almost didn't dare, who knows how many corpses will be buried in this ice mound?

These people are the victims of accidents that almost fell on us, the doctor said: their igloo collapsed.See if any of them are still breathing! The place was quickly cleared, and Bell dragged out a third body, a man of forty years old; he appeared to have no cadaveric features; the doctor bent down, feeling that he caught some living symptoms. he is alive!he is alive!he shouted. Bell and he carried the man into the igloo while Hatteras stood motionless observing the collapsed structure. The doctor undressed the poor buried man; he found no wound on the man; he rubbed him, with the help of Bell, with the rubbish of the rubbish, and he felt that he was coming to life, but this The unfortunate man was in a state of utter exhaustion, and could not utter a word; his tongue was frozen against the palate.The doctor searched in his pockets.The pockets were empty, and there appeared to be no papers, and he asked Bell to rub for him, and went to Hatteras himself.

The latter came to the hole in the igloo, dug the ground carefully, and came up with a fragment of a half-burned letter in his hand.You can also see words like this: tamon Alboise W approx. Altamon!cried the doctor, of the Perboise!From New York! an American!Hatteras said coldly. I just saved him!I promise, said the doctor, that we shall know the answer to this dreadful riddle. He returned to Altamon, where Hatteras was brooding.After some effort, the doctors brought the unfortunate man back to life, but without regaining consciousness; he couldn't see, hear, or speak, but he came alive anyway!

The next morning Hatteras said to the doctor: We still have to go. Let's go, Hatteras!The sledge was not yet loaded, and we lifted the unfortunate man on it, and we took him to the ship. That's all, said Hatteras, and bury the bodies before then. The two strange sailors were returned to the fragments of the igloo; Simpson's body replaced Altamon's. The three travelers put their last memories of their companions in prayer.At seven o'clock in the morning, they headed towards the ship. The two dogs that pulled the sled were dead, and Dak volunteered to pull the sled, and he did it with a Greenlandic conscience and tenacity.

Within twenty days, that is, from January 31 to February 19, the return route was roughly the same as the return route.Only in February, the coldest month of winter, was hard ice everywhere; travelers suffered from low temperatures, but there were no snowballs and no wind. For the first time since January 31st the sun appeared; every day its part above the horizon grew larger.Bell and the doctor were exhausted, nearly blind and with half a broken leg; the carpenter couldn't walk without a cane. Alpemond was alive, but in a state of total insensibility; sometimes they despaired of him, but careful care brought him back to life.And the honest doctor has to look after himself, for his health is failing with fatigue. Hatteras thought of the March, of his ship.What does it look like?What happened on board again?Can Johnson stand against Sandon and his cohorts?It was very cold.Will they burn the unfortunate ship?Are its masts and underwater parts still there? With this in mind, Hatteras stepped forward, as if he were about to see his Vampire from the farthest distance. On the morning of February 24, he stopped suddenly.Three hundred steps in front of him, a bright red light appeared, and a huge gray-black smoke column was shaking above it, disappearing into the gray mist of the sky! This smoke!he shouted. His heart was beating like it was going to break! have a look!over there!That smoke!He said to the two companions who caught up, my boat is on fire! But we were more than three nautical miles away from him, Bell said, and it couldn't be the Forward. No, said the doctor, it was it; it was a mirage that made it seem closer to us. run!Hatteras cried out, rushing ahead of his companions. The latter handed over the sled to Duck to take care of, and quickly followed along the captain's footsteps. An hour later, they were within sight of the boat!What a horrible sight!The ship burned among the ice floes, and the ice melted around the ship; the flames surrounded the hull, and the south wind sent a strange crackling sound to Hatteras' ears. Five hundred paces away a man was waving his arms in despair; he stood there, feebly, before the fire that engulfed the Vampire. This man was alone, and this man was old Johnson. Hatteras ran towards him. my ship!my ship!he asked, even his voice changed. you!captain?Johnson replied, you!stop!Don't move forward! how?asked Hatteras in a tone of terrible menace. Despicable people!Johnson replied: They have been walking for forty-eight hours.Before that they burned the ship! damn it!shouted Hatteras. Then there was a terrible explosion; there was a great earthquake; the iceberg fell on the rink; a column of smoke rose into the clouds, and the Forward exploded under the mighty force of her powder magazine, and was engulfed in flames. The doctor and Bell came to Hatteras at this time.The latter was immersed in despair and stood up all at once. My friends, he said firmly, the cowards have fled!Strong people will succeed!Johnson, Bell, you have courage; Doctor, you have knowledge; I, I have faith!The North Pole is there!Fight it, fight it! At these majestic words, Hatteras' companions felt as if they had come to life. But the situation has become dire for these four men and this dying man, left without resources, alone and blind, here at eighty degrees north, in this remote arctic region!