"A bear!" said Hatteras; "let's go down."
"No!" said the doctor; "we shall lose our way, and have to begin it all over again."
"And if he eats our dogs—" said Hatteras.
At that moment Duke was heard barking, the sound rising through the mist.
"That's Duke!" shouted Hatteras; "there's something wrong. I'm going down."
All sorts of howling arose to their ears; Duke and the dogs were barking furiously. The noise sounded like a dull murmur, like the roar of a crowded, noisy room. They knew that some invisible struggle was going on below, and the mist was occasionally agitated like the sea when marine monsters are fighting.
"Duke, Duke!" shouted the captain, as he made ready to enter again into the frost-rime.
"Wait a moment, Hatteras,—wait a moment! It seems to me that the fog is lifting."
It was not lifting, but sinking, like water in a pool; it appeared to be descending into the ground from which it had risen; the summits of the icebergs grew larger; others, which had been hidden, arose like new islands; by an optical illusion, which may be easily imagined, the travellers, clinging to these ice-cones, seemed to be rising in the air, while the top of the mist sank beneath them.
Soon the top of the sledge appeared, then the harnessed dogs, and then about thirty other animals, then great objects moving confusedly, and Duke leaping about with his head alternately rising and sinking in the frozen mist.