Chapter 53—The Open Sea
The next morning Johnson and Bell set about carrying on board the camping material. At eight o’clock all the preparations for departure were complete. At the moment of starting the doctor’s thoughts returned to the footprints they had seen.
Were these men trying to gain the North? Had they any means of crossing the Polar Sea? Should they meet them again?
For three days they had come across no trace of the travellers, and certainly, whoever they were, they could not have reached Altamont Harbor. That was a place which they were the first to set foot in.
But the doctor, who was harassed by his thoughts, wanted to take a last view of the country, and he ascended a little hill about a hundred feet high, whence he had a distant view to the south.
When he had reached
