It was eight o'clock in the morning. The sun was rapidly approaching the zenith; but its disc, from the extreme remoteness, was proportionately dwarfed; its beams being all but destitute of their proper warmth and radiance. The volcano to its very summit and the surrounding rocks were still covered with the unsullied mantle of snow that had fallen while the atmosphere was still to some extent charged with vapor; but on the north side the snow had given place to the cascade of fiery lava, which, making its way down the sloping rocks as far as the vaulted opening of the central cavern, fell thence perpendicularly into the sea. Above the cavern, 130 feet up the mountain, was a dark hole, above which the stream of lava made a bifurcation in its course. From this hole projected the case of an astronomer's telescope; it was the opening of Palmyrin Rosette's observatory.
Sea and land seemed blended into one dreary whiteness, to which the pale blue sky offered scarcely any contrast. The shore was indented with the marks of many footsteps left by the colonists either on their way to collect ice for drinking purposes, or as the result of their skating expeditions; the edges of the skates had cut out a labyrinth of curves complicated as the figures traced by aquatic insects upon the surface of a pool.
Across the quarter of a mile of level ground that lay between the mountain and the creek, a series of footprints, frozen hard into the snow, marked the course taken by Isaac Hakkabut on his last return from Nina's Hive.
On approaching the creek, Lieutenant Procope drew his companions' attention to the elevation of the _Dobryna's_ and _Hansa's_ waterline, both vessels being now some fifteen feet above the level of the sea.
"What a strange phenomenon!" exclaimed the captain.
"It makes me very uneasy," rejoined the lieutenant; "in shallow places like this, as the crust of ice thickens, it forces everything upwards with irresistible force."
"But surely this process of congelation must have a limit!" said the count.
"But who can say what that limit will be? Remember that we have not yet reached our maximum of cold," replied Procope.
"Indeed, I hope not!" exclaimed the professor; "where would be the use of our traveling 200,000,000 leagues from the sun, if we are only to experience the same temperature as we should find at the poles of the earth?"
"Fortunately for us, however, professor," said the lieutenant, with a smile, "the temperature of the remotest space never descends beyond 70 degrees below zero."
"And as long as there is no wind," added Servadac, "we may pass comfortably through the winter, without a single attack of catarrh."
Lieutenant Procope proceeded to impart to the count his anxiety about the situation of his yacht. He pointed out that by the constant superposition of new deposits of ice, the vessel would be elevated to a great height, and consequently in the event of a thaw, it must be exposed to a calamity similar to those which in polar seas cause destruction to so many whalers.
There was no time now for concerting measures offhand to prevent the disaster, for the other members of the party had already reached the spot where the _Hansa_ lay bound in her icy trammels. A flight of steps, recently hewn by Hakkabut himself, gave access for the present to the gangway, but it was evident that some different contrivance would have to be resorted to when the tartan should be elevated perhaps to a hundred feet.
A thin curl of blue smoke issued from the copper funnel that projected above the mass of snow which had accumulated upon the deck of the _Hansa_. The owner was sparing of his fuel, and it was only the non-conducting layer of ice enveloping the tartan that rendered the internal temperature endurable.
"Hi! old Nebuchadnezzar, where are you?" shouted Ben Zoof, at the full strength of his lungs.
At the sound of his voice, the cabin door opened, and the Jew's head and shoulders protruded onto the deck.
CHAPTER VI
MONEY AT A PREMIUM
"Who's there? I have nothing here for anyone.