The wind was good, but not strong, the sea not high; the birds and fish came as thick as the day before; the doctor, leaning over the gunwale, could see the cetacea rising slowly to the surface; a few icebergs and scattered pieces of ice alone broke the monotony of the ocean.
But the ice grew rarer, and was not enough to interfere with the boat. It is to be remembered that the launch was then ten degrees above the pole of cold; and as to the parallels of temperature, they might as well have been ten degrees to the other side. There was nothing surprising in the sea being open at this epoch, as it must have been at Disco Island in Baffin's Bay. So a sailing vessel would have plenty of sailing room in the summer months.
This observation had a great practical importance; in fact, if whalers can ever get to the polar basin, either by the seas of North America or those of the north of Asia, they are sure of getting full cargoes, for this part of the ocean seems to be the universal fishing-pond, the general reservoir of whales, seals, and all marine animals. At noon the line of the horizon was still unbroken; the doctor began to doubt of the existence of a continent in so high latitudes.
Still, as he reflected, he was compelled to believe in the existence of an arctic continent; in fact, at the creation of the world, after the cooling of the terrestrial crust, the waters formed by the condensation of the atmospheric vapor were compelled to obey the centrifugal force, to fly to the equator and leave the motionless extremities of the globe. Hence the necessary emersion of the countries near the Pole. The doctor considered this reasoning very just. And so it seemed to Hatteras.
Hence the captain still tried to pierce the mists of the horizon. His glass never left his eyes. In the color of the water, the shape of the waves, the direction of the wind, he tried to find traces of neighboring land. His head was bent forward, and even one who did not know his thoughts would have admired, so full was his attitude of energetic desire and anxious interrogation.