Chapter 16 Chapter 16 Magnetic Pole

Hatteras grew more and more anxious as he approached this strait; after all, the fate of his voyage was about to be decided; so far he had outperformed his predecessors; the luckiest of them was Mike Clindock, who took fifteen months to reach this part of the Polar Sea; but this was insignificant, and it may even be said to be nothing, if he could not pass through the Bello Channel; coming year. All he wanted was a careful examination of the coast alone; he climbed up to the magpie's nest and spent several hours in it on Saturday morning. The crew was fully aware of the ship's condition; the people on board were silent for a long time; the engines slowed down; the "Forward" could not get any closer to land; icebergs stood on the coast, and they melted even in the hottest summer months No; one must have a keen eye to cut a way through them.

Hatteras contrasts the map with the land.Near noon, the sun showed its face for a while, Shandon and Wall took the opportunity to observe carefully, and told Hatteras loudly. All people spend half the day in a state of anxiety.Suddenly, just before two o'clock, a loud voice came from high up on the foremast: "Westward, full throttle!" The ship obeyed at once; it turned its bow in the designated direction, the sea foamed under the propeller's push, and the Forward rushed at full speed between two tumultuous glaciers. The way was found; Hatteras descended above the poop, and the Iceberg Pilot took his post again.

"Then, captain," said the doctor, "shall we enter this famous strait?" "Yes," Hatteras replied with a low voice, "but it doesn't mean that everything will be fine once you go in, and you have to come out." As soon as the words fell, he returned to his cabin. "He's right," said the doctor to himself. "We've fallen into a trap here, and we don't have much room for maneuver. If we have to spend the winter in this channel! . . . Great! We're not the first A person who encounters this kind of danger, since others can get out of the predicament, we can also get out of the danger!"

The doctor was right.It was here, in a little sheltered harbor that Mike Clintock called Port Kennedy, that at this moment the high band of granite and the sheer cliffs on either side were recognizable. The Bello Strait is 1 nautical mile wide, 17 nautical miles long, and the current velocity is 6-7 nautical miles per hour. It is surrounded by mountains with a height of 600 feet.It separates North Somerset from the land of Portia; where ships are notoriously free to move. The "Advance" proceeded cautiously, but she was advancing, and storms were so frequent in this narrow region that the ship could not escape her customary fury; by order of Hatteras, the third tier and the second tier The yards of the sails were lowered, and the masts lowered; nevertheless, the ship was exceedingly weary, and the storm was driving the waves against her face; the steam was flying eastward with astonishing speed; Risky; the barometer dropped 785 mm; it was difficult to stay on deck;

Hatteras, Johnson, and Shandon stayed on the poop, ignoring the swirling rain and snow, and it should be added that the doctor, after privately thinking about the last thing he wanted to do, went on deck at once, and everyone He couldn't hear the other person, and could barely see him; that left him room for contemplation. Hatteras tried to penetrate the barrier of fog, for he reckoned he should be at the end of the channel by six o'clock in the evening; but all exits seemed to be closed; anchored on an iceberg; but he was tense all night. The weather was exceptionally frightening. The Forward was in constant danger of breaking its chains; there was a fear that the iceberg would break from its foundations and stray from the ship under the violent westerly wind.The officers were constantly on the alert and apprehensive; the snow was thick with real hail from the hurricane on the ice of the great pack ice; it filled the sky like sharp arrows.

The temperature rose strangely during this terrible night; the scale on the thermometer read 14°C, and the doctor felt with great amazement several flashes of lightning in the south, followed by thunder from afar.This seems to confirm the statement of the whaler Scoresby, who saw a similar phenomenon farther than 65° north latitude.Captain Barry also witnessed this peculiar weather phenomenon in 1821. Towards five o'clock in the morning there was a startling change in the weather; the temperature suddenly dropped to zero, the wind turned north and began to calm down.One could see the western exit of the strait, but it was completely blocked.Hatteras glanced greedily at the shore, wondering if the passage really existed.

But the ship set sail, moving slowly among the glaciers, and the ice floes smashed against the ship's sides with a loud noise; the ice packs were six or seven feet thick at that time; their pressure should be carefully avoided, because, Once the boat has resisted this pressure, it is likely to lift and roll. At noon, for the first time, people enjoyed a spectacular sunrise, a halo with two parhelia; the doctor looked at it and made accurate measurements; the outer arc was only within 30° of each end of the diameter of the horizon. Visible; the two faces of the sun appear very distinct; bright arcs of colors from the outside to the inside: red, yellow, green, lavender, and finally white with no definite outer limit.

The doctor remembered Thomas Young's ingenious theory of such weather.The physicist hypothesizes that certain clouds of icy edges hang in the atmosphere; the light rays falling on these icy edges are broken up into angles of 60° or 90°.Halos cannot form in calm weather.The doctor felt that this explanation was very ingenious. Sailors who are accustomed to the northern seas usually see this phenomenon as a precursor to heavy snow.If this observation holds true, the situation on the Forward becomes very complicated.Hatteras resolved to go on, and for the rest of the day and the night that followed he did not rest for a moment, watching the horizon with a telescope, and rushing for the ropes, never missing an opportunity to get near the exit of the strait.

But in the morning, he had to stop in front of the impassable ice floes.The doctor found him on the poop.Hatteras immediately pulled him back so they didn't have to worry about the conversation being overheard. "We're stuck," said Hatteras, "and it's impossible to go any further." "Impossible?" said the doctor. "Impossible! All the gunpowder on the 'Forward' won't get us a quarter of a mile!" "Then what?" asked the doctor. "How did I know that this unfortunate year should be cursed, there are so many bad omens!"

"Well, Captain, if winter is necessary, we shall! This place is like any other place!" "No doubt," whispered Hatteras, "but wintering shouldn't be done, especially in June, when it's fraught with physical and mental dangers, and the crew's morale will soon be eroded by the real A painfully long rest and low down. And, I'm only going to winter nearer to the pole!" "Yes, but Baffin Bay is destined to be sealed." "But someone else found it clear!" exclaimed Hatteras angrily. "For this American, this..." "Look, Hatteras," said the doctor, interrupting him deliberately, "we are only on the 5th of June. Let us not despair. A passage will suddenly appear before us. You know that icebergs have a way of breaking apart. The tendency to break up into multiple pieces, even in clear weather, seems to be a repulsive force at work between the different groups that make up the pack ice, and we'll soon find ice-free seas."

"Well, let it appear, and we'll cross it! Probably out of Bellow Strait we could easily go north through Beale Strait or Mike-Clintock Strait, and then..." "Captain," said James Wall now, approaching, "we were nearly thrown off our rudder by the ice floe." "Well," replied Hatteras, "almost. Almost. I don't agree with its removal, I'd rather be ready at all times of the day and night. Take care to keep it as good as you can, Mr. Open the ice floe, but let it stay where it is, you know what I mean?" "But..." Wall continued. "I take no advice, sir," said Hatteras sternly, "go ahead." Wall returned to his post. "Ah!" said Hatteras, with a gesture of rage, "I'll spend five years of my life finding my way north! I don't know of a more dangerous way. It's more difficult, in So close to the magnetic poles, the compass becomes stationary and the needle becomes either motionless, or moves endlessly, often changing direction!" "I admit," replied the doctor, "that it was a perilous voyage, but in the end, those who practiced the business anticipated these dangers, and nothing surprised them." "Ah! Doctor! My crew has changed a lot, you just saw, the officers are already on the sidelines. The financial favors given to the sailors would have dictated their actions, but they have their bad Because after departure, they most want to come back! Doctor, I have no support in this matter, and if I fail, it is not the fault of this or that sailor, but the malice of some officers. ...Ah! They will pay for it!" "You worry too much, Hatteras." "I'm not exaggerating at all! Do you think the crew is angry at the obstacles I've encountered in my path? Quite the contrary! They want me to abandon my plans! And these people don't mutter, as long as the 'Forward' Heading south, that's how it's going to go, these lunatics! They're fantasizing that they're getting close to England! But as soon as I sail north again, you'll see things change! I swear there's not a single living thing that'll make me stray from my A program of action! Every way my ship passes, every exit, once I should leave its trace, there is a reason for what I do." The captain's wish should be granted to some extent.According to the doctor's prediction, the night would change suddenly, and the ice field would be torn apart by some influence of wind, current or temperature. The "Advance" advanced bravely, smashed the ice pack with her steel bow, and she was in full swing. Sailing through the night, she came out of Bello Channel near six o'clock on Tuesday. But how furious Hatteras was when he found out that the road to the north was sealed!But he still had enough patience to control his despair, as if the only clear road was the chosen one, he let the "advance" go down the Franklin Strait, and since he couldn't go up the Peel Strait, he decided to go around Wales The prince's territory for a week, and then to Mike-Clindock Strait.But he knew very well that Sandon and Wall could not be mistaken, and knew how to use his desperate hope. Nothing happened on June 6, the sky was snowing, and the halo omens were over. In 36 hours, as the "Advance" sailed along the winding Strait of Portia, unable to approach the domain of the Prince of Wales, Hatteras fired at full speed and burned a lot of coal. Equipped, on Thursday he reached the end of Franklin Strait and found the road to the north difficult to cross. It was so hopeless that he could no longer turn back, and the ice floe pushed him forward, and he saw his path keep closing behind him, as if it had never been clear where he had just passed an hour before ocean. In this way, the "Forward" not only cannot go northward, but also cannot stop for a moment, lest it be blocked. It escapes from the iceberg just like a ship flees from a storm. On Friday, June 8, it came near the coast of Portia, just at the mouth of the James Ross Strait, and should be avoided at all costs, as it has only exits on the west and direct access to America. Observations made at this spot at noon showed a latitude of 70°5'17" and a longitude of 96°46'45", and when the doctor knew these figures, he marked them on his chart and found that it ended up at the magnetic pole, at the John The Sir's nephew, James Ross, identified the place for this peculiar sight. The land adjacent to the coast is low, with a height of more than 60 feet, about a nautical mile from the sea. The boilers of the "Forward" had to be cleaned, the captain anchored the ship on an ice field, and allowed the doctor to go to land with the bosun's company. Entering the cabin, I greedily looked at the map of the polar regions. The doctor and his companions were easily on land, the former wishing to experiment, and taking a pair of compasses, he wished to examine the labors of James Ross, and with little difficulty he discovered the limestone mound erected by the latter, He ran over, and through a portal he could see a tin box inside which James Ross had placed the notes of his discovery that no living creature seemed to have come to this lonely shore for thirty years. At this point, a pointer is magnetized and dangles slightly, immediately being held somewhat vertical by the force of the magnet.The center of attraction is very close, almost just below the pointer. The doctor is doing the experiment carefully. If James Ross, due to the inaccuracy of his tools, only found that the inclination angle of the vertical pointer was 89°59', the real magnetic pole was one minute away from this place. "These are the magnetic poles of the earth!" he cried, beating the ground with his foot. "Is this the place?" asked Mr. Johnson. "Right here, my friend." "Then," continued the bosun, "it is time to abandon any speculation concerning magnetic mountains or piles." "Yes, my good Johnson," replied the doctor, laughing, "these are the suppositions of the gullible! As you have seen, no mountain attracts ships, stripped of their ironwork, anchor by anchor. Yes, nail by nail, your shoes are as free as anywhere else on earth." "Then how to explain..." "One cannot explain it, Johnson, and we are not learned enough about it. But it is certain, mathematically precise, that the pole is here, in this place!" "Oh, Mr. Crawburn, how glad the captain must be if he knows so much about the North Pole!" "He will, Johnson, he will." "May God bless you!" replied the latter. The doctor and his companions put up a sign at the designated place for the experiment, and they were signaled to come back, and they were back on board at five o'clock in the evening.