.

"Ah, that is too much!" shouted Bell.

"Courage, courage!" answered the doctor, stooping down to escape being
blown away.

Simpson was gasping for breath. Suddenly, with a last effort, he half
rose, stretched his clinched fist at Hatteras, who was gazing steadily
at him, uttered a heart-rending cry, and fell back dead in the midst
of his unfinished threat.

[Illustration: "Suddenly, with a last effort, he half rose."]

"Dead!" said the doctor.

"Dead!" repeated Bell.

Hatteras, who was approaching the corpse, drew back before the
violence of the wind.

He was the first of the crew who succumbed to the murderous climate,
the first to offer up his life, after incalculable sufferings, to the
captain's persistent obstinacy. This man had considered him an
assassin, but Hatteras did not quail before the accusation. But a
tear, falling from his eyes, froze on his pale cheek.

The doctor and Bell looked at him in terror. Supported by his long
staff, he seemed like the genius of these regions, straight in the
midst of the fierce blast, and terrible in his stern severity.

He remained standing, without stirring, till the first rays of the
twilight appeared, bold and unconquerable, and seeming to defy the
tempest which was roaring about him.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXII.
THE RETURN TO THE FORWARD.

Toward six o'clock in the morning the wind fell, and, shifting
suddenly to the north, it cleared the clouds from the sky; the
thermometer stood at -33 degrees. The first rays of the twilight
appeared on the horizon above which it would soon peer.

Hatteras approached his two dejected companions and said to them,
sadly and gently,--

"My friends, we are more than sixty miles from the point mentioned by
Sir Edward Belcher. We have only just enough food left to take us back
to the ship. To go farther would only expose us to certain death,
without our being of service to any one. We must return."

"That is a wise decision, Hatteras," answered the doctor; "I should
have followed you anywhere, but we are all growing weaker every day;
we can hardly set one foot before the other; I approve of returning."

"Is that your opinion, Bell?" asked Hatteras.

"Yes, Captain," answered the carpenter.

"Well," continued Hatteras, "we will take two days for rest. That's
not too much. The sledge needs a great many repairs. I think, too, we
ought to build a snow-house in which we can repose."

This being decided, the