on. Hatteras was the first to detect this
phenomenon; he examined it with his glass for a whole hour.

Suddenly, some sure sign apparently occurred to him, for he stretched
out his arms to the horizon and cried in a loud voice,--

"Land, ho!"

At these words each one sprang to his feet as if moved by electricity.
A sort of smoke was clearly rising above the sea.

[Illustration]

"I see it," cried the doctor.

"Yes! certainly!--yes!" said Johnson.

"It's a cloud," said Altamont.

"It's land!" answered Hatteras, as if perfectly convinced.

But, as often happens with objects that are indistinct in the
distance, the point they had been looking at seemed to have
disappeared. At length they found it again, and the doctor even
fancied that he could see a swift light twenty or twenty-five miles to
the north.

"It's a volcano!" he cried.

[Illustration: "'It's a volcano!' he cried."]

"A volcano?" said Altamont.

"Without doubt."

"At this high latitude?"

"And why not?" continued the doctor; "isn't Iceland a volcanic land,
so to speak, made of volcanoes?"

"Yes, Iceland," said the American, "but so near the Pole!"

"Well, didn't Commodore James Ross find in the Southern Continent two
active volcanoes, Erebus and Terror by name, in longitude 170 degrees
and latitude 78 degrees? Why then shouldn't there be volcanoes at the
North Pole?"

"It may be so, after all," answered Altamont.

"Ah," cried the doctor, "I see it clearly! It is a volcano."

"Well," said Hatteras, "let us sail straight towards it."

"The wind is changing," said Johnson.

"Haul on the fore-sheet, and bring her nearer the wind."

But this manoeuvre only turned the launch away from the point they had
been gazing at, and even with their closest examination they could not
find it again. Still, they could not doubt that they were nearing
land. They had seen, if they had not reached, the object of their
voyage, and within twenty-four hours they would set foot on this
unknown shore. Providence, after letting them get so near, would not
drive them back at the last moment.

Still, no one manifested the joy which might have been expected under
the circumstances; each one wondered in silence what this polar land
might be. The animals seemed to shun it; at evening the birds, instead
of seeking refuge there, flew with all speed to the south. Could not a
single gull or ptarmigan find a resting-place there? Even the fish,
the large cetacea, avo