hallucinations which must have troubled
tile mind of Arthur Pym. It seemed to me that I was losing myself in
his extraordinary personality; at last I was beholding all that he
had seen! Was not that impenetrable mist the curtain of vapours
which he had seen in his delirium? I peered into it, seeking for
those luminous rays which had streaked the sky from east to west! I
sought in its depths for that limitless cataract, rolling in silence
from the height of some immense rampart lost in the vastness of the
zenith! I sought for the awful white giant of the South Pole!

At length reason resumed her sway. This visionary madness,
intoxicating while it lasted, passed off by degrees, and I descended
the slope to our camp.

The whole day passed without a change. The fog never once lifted to
give us a glimpse outside of its muffling folds, and if the iceberg,
which had travelled forty miles since the previous day, had passed
by the extremity of the axis of the earth, we should never know it.

CHAPTER XXI.
AMID THE MISTS.

So this was the sum of all our efforts, trials and disappointments!
Not to speak of the destruction of the _Halbrane_, the expedition had
already cost nine lives. From thirty-two men who had embarked on the
schooner, our number was reduced to twenty-three: how low was that
figure yet to fall?

Between the south pole and antarctic circle lay twenty degrees, and
those would have to be cleared in a month or six weeks at the most;
if not, the iceberg barrier would be re-formed and closed-up. As for
wintering in that part of the antarctic circle, not a man of us
could have survived it.

Besides, we had lost all hope of rescuing the survivors of the _Jane_,
and the sole desire of the crew was to escape as quickly as possible
from the awful solitudes of the south. Our drift, which had been
south, down to the pole, was now north, and, if that direction
should continue, perhaps vle might be favoured with such good
fortune as would make up for all the evil that had befallen us! In
any case there was nothing for it but, in familiar phrase, "to let
ourselves go."

The mist did not lift during the end, 3rd, and 4th of February, and
it would have been difficult to make out the rate of progress of our
iceberg since it had passed the pole. Captain Len Guy, however, and
West, considered themselves safe in reckoning it at two hundred and
fifty miles.

The current did not seem to have diminished in speed or chang