telescope; it was the opening of
Palmyrin Rosette's observatory.

Sea and land seemed blended into one dreary whiteness, to which the pale
blue sky offered scarcely any contrast. The shore was indented with the
marks of many footsteps left by the colonists either on their way to
collect ice for drinking purposes, or as the result of their skating
expeditions; the edges of the skates had cut out a labyrinth of curves
complicated as the figures traced by aquatic insects upon the surface of
a pool.

Across the quarter of a mile of level ground that lay between the
mountain and the creek, a series of footprints, frozen hard into the
snow, marked the course taken by Isaac Hakkabut on his last return from
Nina's Hive.

On approaching the creek, Lieutenant Procope drew his companions'
attention to the elevation of the _Dobryna's_ and _Hansa's_ waterline,
both vessels being now some fifteen feet above the level of the sea.

"What a strange phenomenon!" exclaimed the captain.

"It makes me very uneasy," rejoined the lieutenant; "in shallow places
like this, as the crust of ice thickens, it forces everything upwards
with irresistible force."

"But surely this process of congelation must have a limit!" said the
count.

"But who can say what that limit will be? Remember that we have not yet
reached our maximum of cold," replied Procope.

"Indeed, I hope not!" exclaimed the professor; "where would be the use
of our traveling 200,000,000 leagues from the sun, if we are only to
experience the same temperature as we should find at the poles of the
earth?"

"Fortunately for us, however, professor," said the lieutenant, with a
smile, "the temperature of the remotest space never descends beyond 70
degrees below zero."

"And as long as there is no wind," added Servadac, "we may pass
comfortably through the winter, without a single attack of catarrh."

Lieutenant Procope proceeded to impart to the count his anxiety
about the situation of his yacht. He pointed out that by the constant
superposition of new deposits of ice, the vessel would be elevated to
a great height, and consequently in the event of a thaw, it must
be exposed to a calamity similar to those which in polar seas cause
destruction to so many whalers.

There was no time now for concerting measures offhand to prevent the
disaster, for the other members of the party had already reached the
spot where the _Hansa_ lay bound in her icy trammels. A flight of steps,