place
of rest. I came back likewise and went to bed.

I could not tell how long I had been sleeping, nor what time it was,
when I found myself rolling on the ground after a violent shock.

What could be happening? Was it another capsize of the iceberg?

We were all up in a second, then outside the tents in the full light
of a night in the polar regions.

A second floating mass of enormous size had just struck our iceberg,
which had "hoisted the anchor" (as the sailors say) and was
drifting towards the south.

An unhoped-for change in the situation had taken place. What were to
be the consequences of our being no longer cast away at that place?
The current was now carrying us in the direction of the pole! The
first feeling of joy inspired by this conviction was, however,
succeeded by all the terrors of the unknown l and what an unknown!

Dirk Peters only was entirely rejoiced that we had resumed the route
which, he believed, would lead us to the discovery of traces of his
"poor Pym"--far other ideas occupied the minds of his companions.

Captain Len Guy no longer entertained any hope of rescuing his
countrymen, and having reached the condition of despair, he was
bound by his duty to take his crew back to the north, so as to clear
the antarctic circle while the season rendered it possible to do so.
And we were being carried away towards the south!

Naturally enough, we were all deeply impressed by the fearfulness of
our position, which may be summed up in a few words. We were no
longer cast away, with a possible ship, but the tenants of a
floating iceberg, with no hope but that our monster tenement might
encounter one of the whaling ships whose business in the deep waters
lies between the Orkneys, New Georgia, and the Sandwich Islands. A
quantity of things had been thrown into the ice by the collision
which had set our iceberg afloat, but these were chiefly articles
belonging to the _Halbrane_. Owing to the precaution that had been
taken on the previous day, when the cargo was stowed away in the
clefts, it had been only slightly damaged. What would have become of
us, had all our reserves been swallowed up in that grim encounter?

Now, the two icebergs formed but one, which was travelling south at
the rate of two miles an hour. At this rate, thirty hours would
suffice to bring us to the point of the axis at which the
terrestrial meridians unite. Did the current which was carrying us
along pass on to the pole it