SECOND PART
CHAPTER 14: The South Pole
(continued)
A few strokes of the oar brought the skiff to the sand,
where it ran aground. Just as Conseil was about to jump ashore,
I held him back.
"Sir," I told Captain Nemo, "to you belongs the honor of first
setting foot on this shore."
"Yes, sir," the captain replied, "and if I have no hesitation
in treading this polar soil, it's because no human being until
now has left a footprint here."
So saying, he leaped lightly onto the sand. His heart must
have been throbbing with intense excitement. He scaled an
overhanging rock that ended in a small promontory and there,
mute and motionless, with crossed arms and blazing eyes,
he seemed to be laying claim to these southernmost regions.
After spending five minutes in this trance, he turned to us.
"Whenever you're ready, sir," he called to me.
I got out, Conseil at my heels, leaving the two men in the skiff.
Over an extensive area, the soil consisted of that igneous gravel
called "tuff," reddish in color as if made from crushed bricks.
The ground was covered with slag, lava flows, and pumice stones.
Its volcanic origin was unmistakable. In certain localities thin smoke
holes gave off a sulfurous odor, showing that the inner fires still kept
their wide-ranging power. Nevertheless, when I scaled a high escarpment,
I could see no volcanoes within a radius of several miles.
In these Antarctic districts, as is well known, Sir James Clark Ross
had found the craters of Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror in fully active
condition on the 167th meridian at latitude 77 degrees 32'.
The vegetation on this desolate continent struck me as quite limited.
A few lichens of the species Usnea melanoxanthra sprawled over
the black rocks. The whole meager flora of this region consisted
of certain microscopic buds, rudimentary diatoms made up of a type
of cell positioned between two quartz-rich shells, plus long purple
and crimson fucus plants, buoyed by small air bladders and washed
up on the coast by the surf.
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