Part 2 · Chapter 14The South Pole

The South Pole. I bolted onto the platform. Yes! Open sea, with just a few scattered ice chunks and moving icebergs - a huge stretch of water; a world of birds in the air, and tons of fish swimming below, the water changing from bright blue to olive green depending on how deep it was.

The thermometer showed three degrees Celsius above zero. It felt like a mild spring, even though we were stuck behind this giant iceberg, its long shape barely visible on our northern horizon.

"Are we at the pole?" I asked the Captain, my heart pounding.

"I’m not sure," he replied. "I’ll take our readings at noon."

"But will the sun even peek through this fog?"

I said, looking up at the gray sky.

"Even a little bit will be enough," the Captain replied.

About ten miles south, a lone island rose about a hundred and four yards high. We headed towards it, but carefully, because the water might be full of hidden shallows. An hour later, we reached it, and two hours after that, we’d circled the whole thing. It was about four or five miles around.

A narrow channel separated it from a large piece of land, maybe even a continent, because we couldn't see where it ended. This land seemed to support Maury’s idea.

The clever American had noticed that, between the South Pole and the sixtieth parallel, the sea was covered with huge floating ice, which you never see in the North Atlantic.

From this, he figured that the Antarctic Circle surrounded big continents, because icebergs don’t form in open water, but only near coastlines. According to his calculations, the ice surrounding the southern pole formed a massive cap, with a circumference of at least two,five hundred miles.

But the Nautilus, worried about running aground, had stopped about three cable lengths from a shoreline covered in a stunning pile of rocks. The boat was launched; the Captain, two of his men carrying equipment, Conseil, and I were in it. It was ten in the morning. I hadn’t seen Ned Land.

I figured the Canadian didn’t want to admit we were at the South Pole. A few strokes of the oars brought us to the sand, where we landed. Conseil was about to jump onto the land when I held him back.

"Sir," I said to Captain Nemo, "you should be the first to step on this land."

"Yes, sir," said the Captain, "and I’m not hesitating to tread on this South Pole because, until now, no one has left a mark here."

Saying this, he jumped lightly onto the sand. He was clearly moved. He climbed a rock, sloping up to a small cliff, and there, with his arms crossed, silent and still, and with an eager look, he seemed to claim these southern regions.

After five minutes of this intense feeling, he turned to us. "Whenever you’re ready, sir."

I landed, followed by Conseil, leaving the two men in the boat. For a long way, the ground was made of reddish, sandy stone - kind of like crushed brick, volcanic rock, and pumice. It was clear this place had a volcanic past.

In some spots, wisps of smoke drifted out, smelling like rotten eggs, proving the heat inside hadnn't died down, even though I couldn’t see a volcano for miles after climbing a steep hill.

We know that in Antarctica, James Ross found two active volcanoes, Erebus and Terror, on the one hundred and sixty-seventh line of longitude, at seventy-seven° thirty-two' latitude. The plants on this empty continent seemed really limited.

Some lichens covered the black rocks, and there were tiny plants, like microscopic algae with shells made of quartz. I also saw long, purple and red seaweed, supported by little, floaty bladders, which the waves washed up on the shore. That was basically all the plants here.

The shoreline was covered with seashells, little mussels, and limpets. I also saw tons of tiny northern sea snails, about an inch and a quarter long - a whale could swallow a whole world of them in one bite! And some cool, perfect sea butterflies were swimming around near the shore.

On the higher ground, I spotted some coral bushes, the kind James Ross said lived in the Antarctic seas more than a thousand feet down. There were also little kingfishers and starfish scattered around. But the air was buzzing with life.

Thousands of birds were fluttering and flying everywhere, their cries deafening us. Others crowded the rocks, watching us pass without fear, even coming close to our feet.

There were penguins, super agile in the water, but clumsy on land, making loud, harsh noises - a whole crowd of them, serious-looking but noisy. Albatrosses soared overhead, with wingspans of at least four and a half feet - they're basically the vultures of the ocean.

I also saw huge petrels and some damiers, a kind of small duck with black and white undersides.

Then there were all sorts of other petrels, some whitish with brown-edged wings, others blue, unique to the Antarctic seas, and so oily, as I told Conseil, that the people of the Faroe Islands just needed to put a wick in them to use them as lamps!

"A little more," said Conseil, "and they’ve got everything they need! After that, you can’t expect Nature to have already given them wicks!"

About half a mile further on, the ground was full of ruffs’ nests - a kind of breeding ground - and lots of birds were coming out. Captain Nemo had already hunted hundreds.

They made a sound like a donkey braying, were about the size of a goose, slate-colored on their bodies, white underneath, with a yellow line around their necks. They just let themselves be killed with a stone, not even trying to get away.

But the fog didn’t clear up, and by eleven, the sun still hadn’t shown itself. Its absence made me nervous. Without it, we couldn’t make any observations. So, how could we know if we’d reached the pole? When I went to find Captain Nemo, he was leaning on a rock, silently watching the sky.

He seemed impatient and annoyed. But what could we do? This bold and powerful man couldn’t control the sun like he controlled the sea. Noon arrived, but the sun didn’t show itself even for a second. We couldn’t even tell where it was behind the fog, and soon the fog turned to snow.

"Until tomorrow," said the Captain calmly, and we headed back to the Nautilus in the bad weather.

The snowstorm raged until the next day. It was impossible to stay on the platform. From the saloon, where I was taking notes of what was happening on this trip to the polar continent, I could hear the cries of petrels and albatrosses flying around in the middle of this crazy storm.

The Nautilus wasn't just sitting there; it was hugging the coastline, moving ten more miles south in the dim light left by the sun as it disappeared over the horizon. The next day, March twentieth, the snow had stopped. It was even colder, with the thermometer reading two° below zero.

The fog was lifting, and I really hoped we could finally start our observations that day. Captain Nemo still hadn’t shown up, so the boat took Conseil and me to shore.

The ground was still volcanic - everywhere you looked, there were signs of lava, scoria, and basalt, but I couldn't see the crater that had spewed them out. Here, just like lower down, this continent teemed with birds.

But now, they shared the place with huge groups of sea mammals, staring at us with their gentle eyes. There were different kinds of seals - some stretched out on the ground, others on ice floes, many swimming in and out of the sea.

They didn't run when we approached; they’d never had anything to do with humans. I figured there was enough food there to feed hundreds of ships.

"Sir," said Conseil, "what are these creatures called?" "They’re seals and walruses."

It was now eight in the morning. We had four hours before the sun would be bright enough to observe. I led the way towards a huge bay cut into the steep granite cliffs.

There, I swear, the earth and ice were completely hidden by the sheer number of sea mammals covering everything, and I instinctively thought of old Proteus, the mythological shepherd who watched over Neptune’s immense flocks.

There were more seals than anything else, forming distinct groups - males and females, the fathers watching over their families, the mothers nursing their young, some already strong enough to take a few steps.

When they wanted to move, they’d take little jumps, contracting their bodies, and awkwardly using their imperfect flippers, which, like their cousins, the manatees, formed a perfect forearm.

I’d say that in the water - their element - these creatures swim amazingly, thanks to their flexible spines, smooth skin, and webbed feet. When resting on land, they strike the most graceful poses.

The ancients, observing their soft, expressive looks - which I think are more beautiful than any woman’s - their clear, sensual eyes, their charming positions, and their graceful manners, transformed them, the males into tritons and the females into mermaids.

I pointed out to Conseil the really developed lobes of the brains of these fascinating marine mammals.

No mammal, except humans, has so much brain matter; they’re also capable of learning, are easily tamed, and I think, like other naturalists, that if properly trained, they’d be incredibly useful as fishing dogs. Most of them were sleeping on the rocks or in the sand.

Among these seals - which don't have external ears, unlike otters, whose ears stick out - I noticed several varieties of seals about nine feet long, with a white coat, bulldog faces, armed with teeth in both jaws - four incisors on top and four on the bottom - and two large canine teeth shaped like fleur-de-lis.

Among them swam sea elephants, a kind of seal, with short, flexible trunks. The giants of this species measured around twenty feet and were over thirty feet long, but they didn't move as we approached.

"Are these creatures dangerous?" asked Conseil.

"Nah, not unless they attack. When they’re protecting their young, they get seriously mad, and it’s not uncommon for them to smash fishing boats to pieces."

"They’re totally right," said Conseil.

"I’m not saying they’re wrong."

About two miles further on, we were stopped by a headland that shields the bay from the southerly winds. Beyond it, we heard loud bellowing, like a bunch of cows.

"Awesome!" said Conseil; "a bull concert!" "No way; a morse concert." "They’re fighting!"

"Or they’re just messing around." We started climbing the black rocks, and it was super slippery with ice.

We stumbled a lot, and I rolled over more than once, ouch! Conseil, being more careful or just steadier, didn't fall, and he helped me up, saying:

"If you took bigger steps, sir, you’d have better balance."

When we reached the top of the headland, I saw a huge white plain covered with morses. They were playing with each other, and what we heard were happy bellows, not angry ones. As I passed these weird animals, I could check them out closely, because they didn’t move.

Their skins were thick and rough, yellowish-red. Their hair was short and sparse. Some of them were over four yards long. Calmer and less jumpy than their northern cousins, they didn’t have lookouts around their camp. After checking out this morse city, I started thinking about heading back.

It was eleven o’clock, and if Captain Nemo found the conditions good for observing, I wanted to be there. We followed a narrow path along the top of the steep shore. By half-past eleven, we’d reached where we’d landed. The boat had run aground, and the Captain was there.

I saw him standing on a block of basalt, his instruments nearby, his eyes fixed on the northern horizon, where the sun was drawing a long curve. I stood next to him, and waited without saying anything. Noon arrived, and, just like before, the sun didn’t show up. It was bad luck.

We still needed to make observations. If we didn’t do it tomorrow, we’d have to give up. We were exactly at March twentieth. Tomorrow, March twenty-first, would be the equinox; the sun would disappear behind the horizon for six months, and with it, the long polar night would begin.

Since the September equinox, it had risen from the northern horizon, spiraling higher and higher until December twenty-first. That was the summer solstice in the northern regions, and it had started to sink then; tomorrow it was supposed to shed its last rays on them.

I told Captain Nemo about my worries and what I’d noticed.

"You’re right, M. Aronnax," he said; "if I can’t measure the sun’s height tomorrow, I won’t be able to do it for six months. But that's why fate has led me into these seas on March twenty-first - if we can see the sun at noon tomorrow, my bearings will be easy to take. "Why, Captain?"

"Because then the sun travels such long curves that it’s hard to measure exactly how high it is above the horizon, and I could make serious mistakes with my instruments." "What will you do then?"

"I’m just going to use my chronometer," replied Captain Nemo.

"If, on March twenty-first, the sun’s disc, accounting for refraction, is exactly cut by the northern horizon, it will show that I’m at the South Pole."

"Right," I said. "But that statement isn’t mathematically perfect, because the equinox doesn’t always begin at noon."

"Probably, sir; but the error won’t be a hundred yards, and we don’t need more. Until tomorrow, then!"

Captain Nemo came back on board. Conseil and I stayed behind to check out the shoreline, looking around and studying everything until five o’clock. Then I went to bed, but not before, like someone from India, I asked for good luck from the bright sun.

The next day, March twenty-first, at five in the morning, I went up to the platform. There was Captain Nemo.

"The weather’s getting a little brighter," he said.

"I’m hopeful. After breakfast, we’ll go ashore and pick out a spot for observation."

Once that was settled, I looked for Ned Land. I wanted to take him with me, but the stubborn Canadian refused, and I noticed his quietness and bad mood were getting worse every day. Still, I wasn’t really upset by his stubbornness, considering the circumstances.

There were way too many seals on the shore, and we shouldn’t tempt this fisherman like that. After breakfast, we went ashore. The Nautilus had moved a few miles further up the coast during the night. It was about three miles from the coast, above which rose a steep peak about half a mile high.

The boat took me, Captain Nemo, two crew members, and the instruments - a clock, a telescope, and a barometer.

While we were crossing, I saw tons of whales, all different kinds from the southern seas: the whale, or the English "right whale," which doesn’t have a dorsal fin; the "humpback," with a curved chest and big, whitish fins, which, even though it’s called that, don’t act like wings; and the fin-back, a yellowish brown, the fastest of all the whales.

This powerful creature can be heard from far away when it shoots columns of air and vapor really high, looking like smoky whirlwinds.

All these different mammals were playing around in the calm waters, and I could see that this part of the Antarctic Pole is a safe place for whales that hunters are always chasing. I also noticed huge jellyfish floating among the reeds.

At nine, we landed. The sky was brightening, the clouds were moving south, and the fog seemed to be disappearing from the cold water. Captain Nemo headed towards the peak, which he probably wanted to use as his observatory.

It was a tough climb over sharp lava and pumice stones, and the air often smelled like sulfur from the smoking cracks. For a guy who wasn’t used to walking on land, the Captain climbed the steep slopes with unbelievable speed and skill - a hunter would have been jealous.

It took us two hours to reach the top of the peak, which was half porphyry and half basalt. From there, we looked out over a huge sea that, to the north, clearly met the sky. Below us were fields of dazzling white. Above us, a pale blue sky, free of fog.

To the north, the sun looked like a ball of fire, already partially hidden by the horizon. From the water rose hundreds of jets of water. In the distance, the Nautilus looked like a sleeping whale on the water.

Behind us, to the south and east, was a massive country and a chaotic pile of rocks and ice, the edges of which weren’t visible. When we reached the top, Captain Nemo carefully checked the barometer reading, because he’s have to factor that in when he made his observations.

At a quarter to twelve, the sun, seen only through refraction, looked like a golden disc casting its last rays on this deserted continent and seas that no human had ever plowed.

Captain Nemo, using a special lens that used a mirror to correct the refraction, watched the orb sink below the horizon, following a long, slanted line. I held the clock. My heart was pounding.

If the bottom half of the sun disappeared at twelve o’clock on the clock, we’d be at the pole itself. "Twelve!" I shouted.

"The South Pole!" Captain Nemo replied, his voice serious, handing me the glass.

It showed the globe cut perfectly in half by the horizon.

I looked at the last bit of sunlight hitting the top, and the shadows creeping up the sides. At that moment, Captain Nemo, with his hand on my shoulder, said:

"I, Captain Nemo, on March twenty-first, eighteen sixty-eight, have reached the South Pole - ninety degrees exactly! And I’m claiming this part of the globe, which is like one-sixth of all the continents we know. "In whose name, Captain? "In my own, sir!"

He said that, then Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag with a big gold "N" on it. Then, turning towards the setting sun, whose last rays were kissing the ocean horizon, he shouted:

"Later, sun! Go down! Rest under this open sea, and let a six-month-long night cover my new territory!"