The day, with its emotions of anxiety and alternatives, had worn me
out. So I returned to my cabin, where I threw myself on my bunk in
my clothes.

But sleep did not come to me, owing to my besetting thoughts. I
willingly admit that the constant reading of Edgar Poe's works,
and reading them in this place in which his heroes delighted, had
exercised an influence on me which I did not fully recognize.

To-morrow, the forty-eight hours would be up, the last concession
which the crew had made to my entreaties.

"Things are not going as you wish?" the boatswain said to me
just as I was leaving the deck.

No, certainly not, since land was not to be seen behind the fleet of
icebergs. If no sign of a coast appeared between these moving
masses, Captain Len Guy would steer north to-morrow.

Ah! were I only master of the schooner! If I could have bought it
even at the price of all my fortune, if these men had been my slaves
to drive by the lash, the _Halbrane_ should never have given up this
voyage, even if it led her so far as the point above which flames
the Southern Cross.

My mind was quite upset, and teemed with a thousand thoughts, a
thousand regrets, a thousand desires! I wanted to get up, but a
heavy hand held me down in my bunk! And I longed to leave this cabin
where I was struggling against nightmare in my half-sleep, to launch
one of the boats of the _Halbrane_, to jump into it with Dirk Peters,
who would not hesitate about following me, and so abandon both of us
to the current running south.

And lo! I was doing this in a dream. It is to-morrow! Captain Len
Guy has given orders to reverse our course, after a last glance at
the horizon. One of the boats is in tow. I warn the half-breed. We
creep along without being seen. We cut the painter. Whilst the
schooner sails on ahead, we stay astern and the current carries us
off.

Thus we drift on the sea without hindrance! At length our boat
stops. Land is there. I see a sort of sphinx surmounting the
southern peak--the sea-sphinx. I go to him. I question him. He
discloses the secrets of these mysterious regions to me. And then,
the phenomena whose reality Arthur Pym asserted appear around the
mythic monster. The curtain of flickering vapours, striped with
luminous rays, is rent asunder. And it is not a face of superhuman
grandeur which arises before my astonished eyes: it is Arthur Pym,
fierce guardian of the south pole, flaunting the ensign of the
United States