but
beyond these courtesies I did not feel disposed to go.

The good weather lasted, and on the 18th of August, in the
afternoon, the look-out discerned the mountains of the Crozet group.
The next day we passed Possession Island, which is inhabited only in
the fishing season. At this period the only dwellers there are
flocks of penguins, and the birds which whalers call "white
pigeons."

The approach to land is always interesting at sea. It occurred to me
that Captain Len Guy might take this opportunity of speaking to his
passenger; but he did not.

We should see land, that is to say the peaks of Marion and Prince
Edward Islands, before arriving at Tristan d'Acunha, but it was
there the _Halbrane_ was to take in a fresh supply of water. I
concluded therefore that the monotony of our voyage would continue
unbroken to the end. But, on the morning of the 20th of August, to
my extreme surprise, Captain Len Guy came on deck, approached me,
and said, speaking very low,--

"Sir, I have something to say to you."

"I am ready to hear you, captain."

"I have not spoken until to-day, for I am naturally taciturn."
Here he hesitated again, but after a pause, continued with an
effort,--

"Mr. Jeorling, have you tried to discover my reason for changing
my mind on the subject of your passage?"

"I have tried, but I have not succeeded, captain. Perhaps, as I am
not a compatriot of yours, you--"

"It is precisely because you are an American that I decided in the
end to offer you a passage on the _Halbrane_."

"Because I am an American?"

"Also, because you come from Connecticut."

"I don't understand."

"You will understand if I add that I thought it possible, since
you belong to Connecticut, since you have visited Nantucket Island,
that you might have known the family of Arthur Gordon Pym."

"The hero of Edgar Poe's romance?"

"The same. His narrative was founded upon the manuscript in which
the details of that extraordinary and disastrous voyage across the
Antarctic Sea was related."

I thought I must be dreaming when I heard Captain Len Guy's words.
Edgar Poe's romance was nothing but a fiction, a work of
imagination by the most brilliant of our American writers. And here
was a sane man treating that fiction as a reality.

I could not answer him. I was asking myself what manner of man was
this one with whom I had to deal.

"You have heard my question?" persisted the captain.

"Yes, yes, captain, certainly,