oat about in the wind, which was
blowing with fearful violence. Every now and then the launch leaned to
one side, so that almost her whole keel was exposed; still she obeyed
her rudder, and rose like a stumbling horse which his rider brings up
by spur and reins. Hatteras, with his hair flying and his hand on the
tiller, seemed to be part of the boat, like horse and man at the time
of the centaurs. Suddenly a terrible sight presented itself to their
eyes. Within less than ten fathoms a floe was balancing on the waves;
it fell and rose like the launch, threatening in its fall to crush it
to atoms. But to this danger of being plunged into the abyss was added
another no less terrible; for this drifting floe was covered with
white bears, crowded together and wild with terror.

[Illustration: "This drifting floe was covered with white bears,
crowded together."]

"Bears! bears!" cried Bell, in terror.

And each one gazed with terror. The floe pitched fearfully, sometimes
at such an angle that the bears were all rolled together. Then their
roars were almost as loud as the tempest; a formidable din arose from
the floating menagerie.

If the floe had upset, the bears would have swum to the boat and
clambered aboard.

For a quarter of an hour, which was as long as a century, the launch
and floe drifted along in consort, twenty fathoms from one another at
one moment and nearly running together the next, and at times they
were so near to one another, the bears need only have dropped to have
got on board. The Greenland dogs trembled from terror; Duke remained
motionless. Hatteras and his companions were silent; it did not occur
to them to put the helm down and sail away, and they went straight on.
A vague feeling, of astonishment rather than terror, took possession
of them; they admired this spectacle which completed the struggle of
the elements. Finally the floe drifted away, borne by the wind, which
the launch was able to withstand, as she lay with her head to the
wind, and it disappeared in the mist, its presence being known merely
by the distant roaring of the bears.

At that moment the fury of the tempest redoubled; there was an endless
unchaining of atmospheric waves; the boat, borne by the waves, was
tossed about giddily; her sail flew away like a huge white bird; a
whirlpool, a new Maelstrom, formed among the waves; the boat was
carried so fast that it seemed to the men as if the rapidly revolving
water were motionles