An Antarctic Mystery Page 01
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[ Redactor's Note: An Antarctic Mystery (Number V046 in the T&M numerical listing of Verne's works, is a translation of Le Sphinx de Glaces (1897) translated by Mrs. Cashel Hoey who also translated other Verne works.
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AN
ANTARCTIC MYSTERY
BY
JULES VERNE
TRANSLATED BY MRS. CASHEL HOEY
ILLUSTRATED
1899
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The Tasman to the rescue frontispiece
The approach of the Halbrane 11
Going aboard the Halbrane 29
Cook's route was effectively barred by ice floes 83
Taking in sail under difficulties 103
"There, look there! That's a fin-back!" 117
Hunt to the rescue 127
Four sailors at the oars, and one at the helm 139
Hunt extended his enormous hand, holding a metal collar 161
Dirk Peters shows the way 179
The half-breed in the crow's nest 189
The Halbrane fast in the iceberg 227
The Halbrane, staved in, broken up 253
"I was afraid; I got away from him" 267
William Guy 299
An Antarctic Mystery 321
The Parcuta 329
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I. The Kerguelen Islands.
Chapter II. The Schooner Halbrane
Chapter III. Captain Len Guy
Chapter IV. From the Kerguelen Isles to Prince Edward Island
Chapter V. Edgar Poe's Romance
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
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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° 45' south latitude, and 69° 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.