Well, let it preserve ours, and that is all I ask of it ?" The hour had come for us to return to the camp and to seek our sleeping-places.
Dirk Peters alone refused to be relieved of his duty as watchman of the boat, and nobody thought of disputing the post with him.
Captain Len Guy and West did not enter the tents until they had made certain that Hearne and his companions had gone to their usual place of rest.

I came back likewise and went to bed.
I could not tell how long I had been sleeping, nor what time it was, when I found myself rolling on the ground after a violent shock.
What could be happening?
Was it another capsize of the iceberg?
We were all up in a second, then outside the tents in the full light of a night in the polar regions.
A second floating mass of enormous size had just struck our iceberg, which had "hoisted the anchor" (as the sailors say) and was drifting towards the south.
An unhoped-for change in the situation had taken place.

What were to be the consequences of our being no longer cast away at that place?
The current was now carrying us in the direction of the pole! The first feeling of joy inspired by this conviction was, however, succeeded by all the terrors of the unknown l and what an unknown! Dirk Peters only was entirely rejoiced that we had resumed the route which, he believed, would lead us to the discovery of traces of his "poor Pym"-- far other ideas occupied the minds of his companions.
Captain Len Guy no longer entertained any hope of rescuing his countrymen, and having reached the condition of despair, he was bound by his duty to take his crew back to the north, so as to clear the antarctic circle while the season rendered it possible to do so.
And we were being carried away towards the south! Naturally enough, we were all deeply impressed by the fearfulness of our position, which may be summed up in a few words.

We were no longer cast away, with a possible ship, but the tenants of a floating iceberg, with no hope but that our monster tenement might encounter one of the whaling ships whose business in the deep waters lies between the Orkneys, New Georgia, and the Sandwich Islands.

A quantity of things had been thrown into the ice by the collision which had set our iceberg afloat, but these were chiefly articles belonging to the _Halbrane_.