"I have high hopes.
After breakfast we'll make our way ashore and choose an observation post."
This issue settled, I went to find Ned Land.
I wanted to take him with me.
The obstinate Canadian refused, and I could clearly see that his tight–lipped mood and his bad temper were growing by the day.
Under the circumstances I ultimately wasn't sorry that he refused.
In truth, there were too many seals ashore, and it would never do to expose this impulsive fisherman to such temptations.
Breakfast over, I made my way ashore.
The Nautilus had gone a few more miles during the night.
It lay well out, a good league from the coast, which was crowned by a sharp peak 400 to 500 meters high.
In addition to me, the skiff carried Captain Nemo, two crewmen, and the instruments—in other words, a chronometer, a spyglass, and a barometer.
During our crossing I saw numerous baleen whales belonging to the three species unique to these southernmost seas: the bowhead whale (or "right whale," according to the English), which has no dorsal fin; the humpback whale from the genus Balaenoptera (in other words, "winged whales"), beasts with wrinkled bellies and huge whitish fins that, genus name regardless, do not yet form wings; and the finback whale, yellowish brown, the swiftest of all cetaceans.
This powerful animal is audible from far away when it sends up towering spouts of air and steam that resemble swirls of smoke.
Herds of these different mammals were playing about in the tranquil waters, and I could easily see that this Antarctic polar basin now served as a refuge for those cetaceans too relentlessly pursued by hunters.
I also noted long, whitish strings of salps, a type of mollusk found in clusters, and some jellyfish of large size that swayed in the eddies of the billows.
By nine o'clock we had pulled up to shore.
The sky was growing brighter.
Clouds were fleeing to the south.
Mists were rising from the cold surface of the water.
Captain Nemo headed toward the peak, which he no doubt planned to make his observatory.
It was an arduous climb over sharp lava and pumice stones in the midst of air often reeking with sulfurous fumes from the smoke holes.
For a man out of practice at treading land, the captain scaled the steepest slopes with a supple agility I couldn't equal, and which would have been envied by hunters of Pyrenees mountain goats.
It took us two hours to reach the summit of this half–crystal, half–basalt peak.
From there our eyes scanned a vast sea, which scrawled its boundary line firmly against the background of the northern sky.
At our feet: dazzling tracts of white.
Over our heads: a pale azure, clear of mists.
North of us: the sun's disk, like a ball of fire already cut into by the edge of the horizon.
From the heart of the waters: jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent bouquets.
Far off, like a sleeping cetacean: the Nautilus.
Behind us to the south and east: an immense shore, a chaotic heap of rocks and ice whose limits we couldn't see.
Arriving at the summit of this peak, Captain Nemo carefully determined its elevation by means of his barometer, since he had to take this factor into account in his noon sights.
At 11:45 the sun, by then seen only by refraction, looked like a golden disk, dispersing its last rays over this deserted continent and down to these seas not yet plowed by the ships of man.
Captain Nemo had brought a spyglass with a reticular eyepiece, which corrected the sun's refraction by means of a mirror, and he used it to observe the orb sinking little by little along a very extended diagonal that reached below the horizon.
I held the chronometer.
My heart was pounding mightily.
If the lower half of the sun's disk disappeared just as the chronometer said noon, we were right at the pole.
"Noon!"
I called.
"The South Pole!"
Captain Nemo replied in a solemn voice, handing me the spyglass, which showed the orb of day cut into two exactly equal parts by the horizon.
I stared at the last rays wreathing this peak, while shadows were gradually climbing its gradients.
Just then, resting his hand on my shoulder, Captain Nemo said to me:
"In 1600, sir, the Dutchman Gheritk was swept by storms and currents, reaching latitude 64° south and discovering the South Shetland Islands.
On January 17, 1773, the famous Captain Cook went along the 38th meridian, arriving at latitude 67° 30'; and on January 30, 1774, along the 109th meridian, he reached latitude 71° 15'.
In 1819 the Russian Bellinghausen lay on the 69th parallel, and in 1821 on the 66th at longitude 111° west.
In 1820 the Englishman Bransfield stopped at 65°.
That same year the American Morrel, whose reports are dubious, went along the 42nd meridian, finding open sea at latitude 70° 14'.
In 1825 the Englishman Powell was unable to get beyond 62°.
That same year a humble seal fisherman, the Englishman Weddell, went as far as latitude 72° 14' on the 35th meridian, and as far as 74° 15' on the 36th.
In 1829 the Englishman Forster, commander of the Chanticleer, laid claim to the Antarctic continent in latitude 63° 26' and longitude 66° 26'.