sledges by the daily consumption of the dogs. But the island was
soon found to be infested with bears: no fewer than five, with eleven
foxes, were killed, and then huge fires had to be kept up at night to
drive their survivors away.

Their provender thus notably increased, the party started in high
spirits; but though they were advancing toward the pole, they were
also advancing toward the Deep Sea, and the ice presented innumerable
dangers. Deep fissures, lakes, chasms, mountains, all lay in their
way; and no game presented itself to their anxious search. Day after
day they pushed on--here making long circuits, there driven back, and
losing sometimes in one day all they had made in the previous twelve
hours. Some fissures were crossed on bridges of ice, which took hours
to make, while every hour the cold seemed more intense. The sun was
now visible for hours, and, as usual in these parts, the cold was more
severe since his arrival.

At last, after more than twenty days of terrible fatigue, there was
seen looming in the distance what was no doubt the promised land. The
sledges were hurried forward--for they were drawing toward the end of
their provisions--and the whole party was at length collected on the
summit of a lofty mountain of ice. Before them were the hills of New
Siberia; to their right a prodigious open sea: and at their feet, as
far as the eye could reach, a narrow channel of rapid water, through
which huge lumps of ice rushed so furiously, as to have no time to
cement into a solid mass.

The adventurers stood aghast. But Sakalar led the way to the very
brink of the channel, and moved quietly along its course until he
found what he was in search of. This a sheet or floe of ice, large