studying until five o'clock. Then I went to bed,
not, however, without invoking, like the Indian, the favour of the
radiant orb. The next day, the 21st of March, at five in the morning,
I mounted the platform. I found Captain Nemo there.

"The weather is lightening a little," said he. "I have some hope.
After breakfast we will go on shore and choose a post for observation."

That point settled, I sought Ned Land. I wanted to take him with me.
But the obstinate Canadian refused, and I saw that his taciturnity and
his bad humour grew day by day. After all, I was not sorry for his
obstinacy under the circumstances. Indeed, there were too many seals
on shore, and we ought not to lay such temptation in this unreflecting
fisherman's way. Breakfast over, we went on shore. The Nautilus had
gone some miles further up in the night. It was a whole league from
the coast, above which reared a sharp peak about five hundred yards
high. The boat took with me Captain Nemo, two men of the crew, and the
instruments, which consisted of a chronometer, a telescope, and a
barometer. While crossing, I saw numerous whales belonging to the
three kinds peculiar to the southern seas; the whale, or the English
"right whale," which has no dorsal fin; the "humpback," with reeved
chest and large, whitish fins, which, in spite of its name, do not form
wings; and the fin-back, of a yellowish brown, the liveliest of all the
cetacea. This powerful creature is heard a long way off when he throws
to a great height columns of air and vapour, which look like whirlwinds
of smoke. These different mammals were disporting themselves in troops
in the quiet waters; and I could see that this basin of the Antarctic
Pole serves as a place of refuge to the cetacea too closely tracked by
the hunters. I also noticed large medusae floating between the reeds.

At nine we landed; the sky was brightening, the clouds were flying to
the south, and the fog seemed to be leaving the cold surface of the
waters. Captain Nemo went towards the peak, which he doubtless meant
to be his observatory. It was a painful ascent over the sharp lava and
the pumice-stones, in an atmosphere often impregnated with a sulphurous
smell from the smoking cracks. For a man unaccustomed to walk on land,
the Captain climbed the steep slopes with an agility I never saw
equalled and which a hunter would have envied. We were two hours
getting to the summit of this peak, which was half por