y?" inquired the
captain.

"Nobody," answered the boatswain.

"Can anything have happened to him?"

"Don't be afraid," cried the boatswain. "Dirk Peters is in
his element, and as much at his ease in the fog as a polar bear. He
has got out of one bad scrape; he will get out of a second!"

I let Hurliguerly have his say, knowing well why the half-breed kept
out of the way.

That night none of us, I am sure, could sleep. We were smothered in
the tents, for lack of oxygen. And we were all more or less under
the influence of a strange sort of presentiment, as though our fate
were about to change, for better or worse, if indeed it could be
worse.

The night wore on without any alarm, and at six o'clock in the
morning each of us came out to breathe a more wholesome air.

The state of things was unchanged, the density of the fog was
extraordinary. It was, however, found that the barometer had risen,
too quickly, it is true, for the rise to be serious. Presently other
signs of change became evident. The wind, which was growing
colder--a south wind since we had passed beyond the south
pole--began to blow a full gale, and the noises from below were
heard more distinctly through the space swept by the atmospheric
currents.

At nine o'clock the iceberg doffed its cap of vapour quite
suddenly, producing an indescribable transformation scene which no
fairy's wand could have accomplished in less time or with greater
success.

In a few moments, the sky was clear to the extreme verge of the
horizon, and the sea reappeared, illumined by the oblique rays of
the sun, which now rose only a few degrees above it. A rolling swell
of the waves bathed the base of our iceberg in white foam, as it
drifted, together with a great multitude of floating mountains under
the double action of wind and current, on a course inclining to the
nor-'nor'-east.

"Land!"

This cry came from the summit of the moving mountain, and Dirk
Peters was revealed to our sight, standing on the outermost block,
his hand stretched towards the north.

The half-breed was not mistaken. The land this time--yes!--it was
land! Its distant heights, of a blackish hue, rose within three or
four miles of us.

86 deg. 12' south latitude.
114 deg. 17' east longitude.

The iceberg was nearly four degrees beyond the antarctic pole, and
from the western longitudes that our schooner had followed tracing
the course of the _Jane_, we had passed into the eastern longi