s. They were gradually sinking down. There was an
irresistible power dragging them down and ingulfing them alive. All
five arose. They looked at one another with terror. They grew dizzy.
They felt an undefinable dread of the abyss! But suddenly the launch
arose perpendicularly. Her prow was higher than the whirling waves;
the speed with which she was moving hurled her beyond the centre of
attraction, and escaping by the tangent of this circumference which
was making more than a thousand turns a second, she was hurled away
with the rapidity of a cannon-ball.

[Illustration: "Her sail flew away like a huge white bird; a
whirlpool, a new Maelstrom, formed among the waves."]

Altamont, the doctor, Johnson, and Bell were thrown down among the
seats. When they rose, Hatteras had disappeared. It was two o'clock in
the morning.

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ENGLISH FLAG.

One cry, bursting from the lips of the other four, succeeded their
first stupefaction.

"Hatteras!" cried the doctor.

"Gone!" said Johnson and Bell.

"Lost!"

They looked about, but nothing was to be seen on the storm-tossed sea.
Duke barked despairingly; he tried to spring into the water, but Bell
managed to hold him.

"Take a place at the helm, Altamont," said the doctor; "let us try
everything to save the captain."

Johnson and Bell took their seats. Altamont took the helm, and the
launch came into wind again. Johnson and Bell began to row vigorously;
for an hour they remained at the scene of the accident. They sought
earnestly, but in vain. The unfortunate Hatteras was lost in the
storm! Lost, so near the Pole, so near the end, of which he had had
but a glimpse!

The doctor called aloud, and fired the guns; Duke added his howling,
but there was no answer. Then profound grief seized Clawbonny; his
head sank into his hands, and his companions saw that he was weeping.
In fact, at this distance from land, with a scrap of wood to hold him
up, Hatteras could not reach the shore alive; and if anything did come
ashore, it would be his disfigured corpse. After hunting for an hour,
they decided to turn to the north, and struggle against the last
furies of the tempest.

At five o'clock in the morning of July 11th the wind went down; the
sea grew quieter; the sky regained its polar clearness, and within
three miles of them appeared the land. This continent was but an
island, or rather a volcano, peering up like a lighthouse at the North
Pole. The mou