CHAPTER THIRTEEN

THE SIGNAL

Finding the French flag fixed to the end of a pole at the summit of a glacier, in an uninhabitable region hundreds of leagues from any settlement, appeared to Nicaise to be one of those events of such extreme improbability that they invite a shrug of the shoulders and a pitying smile.

The thing was, however, real, evident and palpable. It really was the tricolor that was flapping before the eyes of the weary voyagers; it really was the flag of the fatherland that the wind was waving like a joyful appeal at the summit of the ice cliff on the desolate coast of the Antarctic continent.

Greatly excited, Trinitus did not take long to realize that the wind-battered rag was a distress signal, probably planted by castaways on the ice escarpment. Followed by Nicaise, who was having a great deal of trouble recovering from his astonishment, he launched forth after Marcel, and, in spite of the young man’s agility, reached the summit of the glacier almost at the same time as him.

The flag was nailed to the tip of a long yard-arm, and the latter, wedged in the middle of enormous blocks of ice piled on top of one another, had been able to resist the efforts of the wind and to maintain itself almost vertical in spite of the violent squalls blowing from the sea.

Unfortunately, the signal had not been seen by any navigator, for a lantern appeared, visible from some distance away, fixed to the mast beneath the flag, with a bottle beside it containing a scroll of paper.

There, probably was the key to the enigma that was tormenting Nicaise’s mind, so the three companions hastened to detach the bottle from the yard-arm and break it, in order to read the document it contained.

With a feverish hand, Trinitus took the paper and unrolled it rapidly. This is what it contained:

The French ship Jenny, departed from New Caledonia bound for Brest on 22 October, has been driven by a tempest on to the coast of Victoria Land. The crew has just set up this signal on the culminating point of the coast. The Jenny is trapped in the ice about three miles to the north. Our provisions have run out; the cold is decimating us. Help us.

Trinitus finished reading the document with a deep sigh, but Marcel, attentive to nothing but his bravery and devotion, grabbed his friend’s hand. “There’s no time to lose—let’s run!” he said.

The scientist lowered his head, and, with his eyes fixed on the lantern, in which nothing remained but a fragment of carbonized wick, replied in a low voice: “It’s too late.”

“And besides,” Nicaise added, “what could we do for them? Isn’t our situation the same as theirs?”

“They’re dead,” Trinitus continued, distractedly.

“And we won’t be long delayed,” muttered Nicaise, shivering.

“Come on!” Marcel went on. “We don’t know anything! Let’s move, damn it! And we won’t get cold! The ship must still exist, and we’ll find it!”

The last words caused the scientist’s pensive face to light up. “Oh! Great God! If the ship exists.…”

“Well?” said Marcel.

“Well, we’ll be saved. In a matter of hours the Éclair, repaired, can take to the sea again!”

“We’re leaving!” exclaimed Nicaise. “Oh, I won’t miss this place!”

“But the Éclair can only carry three people,” said Marcel. “What if the crew of the Jenny are still alive?”

“Well,” said Nicaise, “we’ll leave on the sly, without saying anything. Perhaps it’s a trifle cowardly, but it’s better to leave.…”

“Don’t talk like that, Nicaise!” Trinitus interjected. “Unfortunately, we’ll only find cadavers on the Jenny. That empty lantern must have died with the last sailor on the ship. You can take it for granted that that beacon, the only hope of the poor castaways, would have been carefully maintained so long as there was a single living man on the ice.…”

Nicaise, blushing at his selfishness, bit his lip—but as he was better than he seemed, deep down, he shook Trinitus’ hand, and said: “You’re right. Let’s go back to the Éclair, and set out in search of the Jenny.”

The three friends straightened up the yard-arm where the flag was floating, just in case, and went down the slope of the glacier rapidly in order to retrace their route.

After an hour of walking through the ice, a few strange cracking sounds became audible underfoot, and Trinitus thought that he felt two or three volcanic tremors.

Soon, the sky, which was extremely misty to the north, seemed to fill up with smoke; thick clouds accumulated in that direction and dull rumbled resounded in the atmosphere.

“What’s that now?” asked Nicaise, surprised.

A formidable explosion replied to him instantly, and a sheaf of flames suddenly appeared in the mists of the distant horizon. The bright light that it projected lit up the sheer peak of a high mountain previously hidden in the mist, vomiting fire.

“A volcano!” exclaimed Nicaise and Marcel, terrified.

“Of course!” said Trinitus, joyfully. “It’s Mount Erebus, discovered by James Ross in 1841! Don’t be afraid, my friends—it’s not malevolent.”

It was, indeed, Mount Erebus that had just been suddenly revealed.

The great volcano of the Antarctic pole, rising more than 3,750 meters above sea level, is a gigantic mountain of lava and glaciers. Situated on the seventy-sixth degree of latitude, it offers the frightful contrast of the most ardent fire with the most intense cold. Its base is composed of icebergs, its summit is ablaze. Snow covers its broad flanks and streams of boiling lava streak them. That produces an incessant conflict. At the contact of fire the mountain trembles. It shivers dolorously and roars like a victim of yore tortured with red-hot iron. The incandescent streams of molten basalt sink, whistling, into its rind of ice, like the ardent pincers into the victim’s flesh.

Trinitus and his friends contemplated the giant of the austral pole, crowned with a diadem of fire, admiringly. The scientist told Nicaise, who was still a little frightened, how James Ross and his sailors had been able to get quite close to the formidable volcano without running any danger. The bold navigator had realized that the entire mountain was formed of superimposed layers of basalt and tables of ice. The cold in this region was so intense that the burning lava was not adequate to melt the bed of ice on which it was staunched completely.

While Trinitus was speaking, Erebus rumbled incessantly, and its crater vomited torrents of vapor and intermittent sheaves of flame. The latter reddened the sky on the horizon and the ragged edges of the clouds. The surrounding mountains were gilded by the vast conflagration, like hills by the setting sun, and their snowy summits, their crystal needles and their inaccessible peaks, carved like prisms, reflected the immense blaze with a thousand flashes.

Here and there in that land of fire, other mountains displayed their jagged crests, and they could make out distinctly, alongside Erebus, another extinct crater, probably the one that James Ross had designated by the name of Terror, which he regarded as Erebus’ elder brother.

Around the gigantic brazier, like specters surrounding a Sabbat fire, high glaciers still appeared, reminiscent of mighty towers, the multiple ridges of which scintillated in the mist like luminous stripes.

Trinitus paused occasionally to contemplate that grandiose spectacle, and if Nicaise and Marcel had not pressed him to continue on their way, the scientist would have stood there for hours, in ecstasy before the fantastic eruption.

The three voyagers ended up, however, by reaching the cliff at the foot of which they had disembarked, and went back into their mobile home joyfully in order to take a brief rest before setting forth to search for the Jenny.

Nevertheless, it was in the evening of the same day that they began that adventurous expedition. The Éclair, dragged by Trinitus and Nicaise, slid once again over the ice, following the northern coast of the continent.

Given that the Jenny was trapped in the middle of an ice-sheet three miles from the cliff where the signal had been set up, Trinitus thought that it would be better to leave the Éclair at the foot of the glacier than to be inconvenienced by it while searching for the wrecked ship.

Marcel and Nicaise accepted this proposition, and when the caravan had reached the foot of the cliff Trinitus’ amphibious boat was lodged in a fissure in the glacier, sheltered from the sea-wind that was driving the icebergs and floes toward the continent.

Then the three men, exhausted by fatigue, went into the cabin and slept profoundly for a few hours.

Meanwhile, Mount Erebus, after having vomited lava and swirls of smoke for a long time, gradually calmed down, and its dull growling ceased to be audible.

The eruption was reaching its end when Trinitus woke up, but, even though the volcano was more than thirty kilometers away, the scientist noticed that a thin layer of ash was covering the immense icy plain that extended between the coast and the first mountains of the continent. During his sleep, that ash, vomited by the crater, had settled gently on the ground.

When Nicaise, fully armed, came out of the cabin in his turn to go in search of the Jenny, the sight of that vast sheet of dust, laid like a carpet of the glacial desert, struck him with surprise and extracted an emotional tear from him.

Trinitus and Marcel, observing his emotion but being unable to deduce its cause, asked him what as wrong.

“I’ve just realized,” the old mariner replied, “why the good God put volcanoes in this place.”

“Damn!” said Trinutus. “I’d like to know that myself.”

“Well, it’s obvious,” the fellow added, with a smile. “It’s simply to throw the ash on to the ice, in order that brave men who go in search of ships don’t run the risk of slipping and breaking their backs!”

“Right!” said Trinitus. “It’s not the most scientific of explanations, but it’s no worse for that!”