ithout fear, and pressing familiarly close by our
feet. There were penguins, so agile in the water, heavy and awkward as
they are on the ground; they were uttering harsh cries, a large
assembly, sober in gesture, but extravagant in clamour. Albatrosses
passed in the air, the expanse of their wings being at least four yards
and a half, and justly called the vultures of the ocean; some gigantic
petrels, and some damiers, a kind of small duck, the underpart of whose
body is black and white; then there were a whole series of petrels,
some whitish, with brown-bordered wings, others blue, peculiar to the
Antarctic seas, and so oily, as I told Conseil, that the inhabitants of
the Ferroe Islands had nothing to do before lighting them but to put a
wick in.

"A little more," said Conseil, "and they would be perfect lamps! After
that, we cannot expect Nature to have previously furnished them with
wicks!"

About half a mile farther on the soil was riddled with ruffs' nests, a
sort of laying-ground, out of which many birds were issuing. Captain
Nemo had some hundreds hunted. They uttered a cry like the braying of
an ass, were about the size of a goose, slate-colour on the body, white
beneath, with a yellow line round their throats; they allowed
themselves to be killed with a stone, never trying to escape. But the
fog did not lift, and at eleven the sun had not yet shown itself. Its
absence made me uneasy. Without it no observations were possible.
How, then, could we decide whether we had reached the pole? When I
rejoined Captain Nemo, I found him leaning on a piece of rock, silently
watching the sky. He seemed impatient and vexed. But what was to be
done? This rash and powerful man could not command the sun as he did
the sea. Noon arrived without the orb of day showing itself for an
instant. We could not even tell its position behind the curtain of
fog; and soon the fog turned to snow.

"Till to-morrow," said the Captain, quietly, and we returned to the
Nautilus amid these atmospheric disturbances.

The tempest of snow continued till the next day. It was impossible to
remain on the platform. From the saloon, where I was taking notes of
incidents happening during this excursion to the polar continent, I
could hear the cries of petrels and albatrosses sporting in the midst
of this violent storm. The Nautilus did not remain motionless, but
skirted the coast, advancing ten miles more to the south in the
half-light