Chapter VI. An Ocean Waif

Chapter VII. Tristan D'Acunha

Chapter VIII. Bound for the Falklands

Chapter IX. Fitting out the _Halbrane_

Chapter X. The Outset of the Enterprise

Chapter XI. From the Sandwich Islands to the Polar Circle

Chapter XII. Between the Polar Circle and the Ice Wall

Chapter XIII. Along the Front of the Icebergs

Chapter XIV. A Voice in a Dream

Chapter XV. Bennet Islet

Chapter XVI. Tsalal Island

Chapter XVII. And Pym

Chapter XVIII. A Revelation

Chapter XIX. Land?

Chapter XX. "Unmerciful Disaster"

Chapter XXI. Amid the Mists

Chapter XXII. In Camp

Chapter XXIII. Found at Last

Chapter XXIV. Eleven Years in a Few Pages

Chapter XXV. "We Were the First"

Chapter XXVI. A Little Remnant

AN ANTARCTIC MYSTERY

(Also called THE SPHINX OF THE ICE FIELDS)

CHAPTER I.
THE KERGUELEN ISLANDS

No doubt the following narrative will be received: with entire
incredulity, but I think it well that the public should be put in
possession of the facts narrated in "An Antarctic Mystery." The
public is free to believe them or not, at its good pleasure.

No more appropriate scene for the wonderful and terrible adventures
which I am about to relate could be imagined than the Desolation
Islands, so called, in 1779, by Captain Cook. I lived there for
several weeks, and I can affirm, on the evidence of my own eyes and
my own experience, that the famous English explorer and navigator
was happily inspired when he gave the islands that significant name.

Geographical nomenclature, however, insists on the name of
Kerguelen, which is generally adopted for the group which lies in
49 deg. 45' south latitude, and 69 deg. 6' east longitude. This is
just, because in 1772, Baron Kerguelen, a Frenchman, was the first
to discover those islands in the southern part of the Indian Ocean.
Indeed, the commander of the squadron on that voyage believed that
he had found a new continent on the limit of the Antarctic seas, but
in the course of a second expedition he recognized his error. There
was only an archipelago. I may be believed when I assert that
Desolation Islands is the only suitable name for this group of three
hundred isles or islets in the midst of the vast expanse of ocean,
which is constantly disturbed by austral storms.

Nevertheless, the group is inhabited, and the