f the
ocean.

But the ice grew rarer, and was not enough to interfere with the boat.
It is to be remembered that the launch was then ten degrees above the
pole of cold; and as to the parallels of temperature, they might as
well have been ten degrees to the other side. There was nothing
surprising in the sea being open at this epoch, as it must have been
at Disco Island in Baffin's Bay. So a sailing vessel would have plenty
of sailing room in the summer months.

This observation had a great practical importance; in fact, if whalers
can ever get to the polar basin, either by the seas of North America
or those of the north of Asia, they are sure of getting full cargoes,
for this part of the ocean seems to be the universal fishing-pond, the
general reservoir of whales, seals, and all marine animals. At noon
the line of the horizon was still unbroken; the doctor began to doubt
of the existence of a continent in so high latitudes.

Still, as he reflected, he was compelled to believe in the existence
of an arctic continent; in fact, at the creation of the world, after
the cooling of the terrestrial crust, the waters formed by the
condensation of the atmospheric vapor were compelled to obey the
centrifugal force, to fly to the equator and leave the motionless
extremities of the globe. Hence the necessary emersion of the
countries near the Pole. The doctor considered this reasoning very
just. And so it seemed to Hatteras.

[Illustration]

Hence the captain still tried to pierce the mists of the horizon. His
glass never left his eyes. In the color of the water, the shape of the
waves, the direction of the wind, he tried to find traces of
neighboring land. His head was bent forward, and even one who did not
know his thoughts would have admired, so full was his attitude of
energetic desire and anxious interrogation.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE APPROACH TO THE POLE.

The time flew by in this uncertainty. Nothing appeared on the sharply
defined circle of the sea; nothing was to be seen save sky and
sea,--not one of those floating land-plants which rejoiced the heart
of Christopher Columbus as he was about to discover America. Hatteras
was still gazing. At length, at about six o'clock in the evening, a
shapeless vapor appeared at a little height above the level of the
sea; it looked like a puff of smoke; the sky was perfectly cold, so
this vapor was no cloud; it would keep appearing and disappearing, as
if it were in commoti