their extreme astonishment.

Having rounded the great promontory that had barred her farther progress
to the north, the schooner skirted its upper edge. A few more leagues
and they ought to be abreast of the shores of France. Yes, of France.

But who shall describe the feelings of Hector Servadac when, instead of
the charming outline of his native land, he beheld nothing but a solid
boundary of savage rock? Who shall paint the look of consternation with
which he gazed upon the stony rampart--rising perpendicularly for a
thousand feet--that had replaced the shores of the smiling south? Who
shall reveal the burning anxiety with which he throbbed to see beyond
that cruel wall?

But there seemed no hope. Onwards and onwards the yacht made her way,
and still no sign of France. It might have been supposed that Servadac's
previous experiences would have prepared him for the discovery that the
catastrophe which had overwhelmed other sites had brought destruction
to his own country as well. But he had failed to realize how it might
extend to France; and when now he was obliged with his own eyes to
witness the waves of ocean rolling over what once had been the lovely
shores of Provence, he was well-nigh frantic with desperation.

"Am I to believe that Gourbi Island, that little shred of Algeria,
constitutes all that is left of our glorious France? No, no; it cannot
be. Not yet have we reached the pole of our new world. There is--there
must be--something more behind that frowning rock. Oh, that for a moment
we could scale its towering height and look beyond! By Heaven, I adjure
you, let us disembark, and mount the summit and explore! France lies
beyond."

Disembarkation, however, was an utter impossibility. There was no
semblance of a creek in which the _Dobryna_ could find an anchorage.
There was no outlying ridge on which a footing could be gained. The
precipice was perpendicular as a wall, its topmost height crowned with
the same conglomerate of crystallized lamellae that had all along been
so pronounced a feature.

With her steam at high pressure, the yacht made rapid progress towards
the east. The weather remained perfectly fine, the temperature
became gradually cooler, so that there was little prospect of vapors
accumulating in the atmosphere; and nothing more than a few cirri,
almost transparent, veiled here and there the clear azure of the sky.
Throughout the day the pale rays of the sun, apparently lessened in its