"Are you a fool?
It's Kerguelen Land, that's what it is--where it rains all day, and nobody lives--not even a nigger.

It's like enough that you'll stop there, though; for I don't reckon that anybody will come to take you off in a hurry." Mr.Meeson collapsed with a groan, and a few minutes afterwards the sun rose, while the mist grew less and less till at last it almost disappeared, revealing a grand panorama to the occupants of the boat.

For before them was line upon line of jagged and lofty peaks, stretching as far as the eye could reach, gradually melting in the distance into the cold white gleam of snow.

Bill slightly altered the boat's course to the southward, and, sailing round a point, she came into comparatively calm water.

Then, due north of them, running into the land, they saw the mouth of a great fjord, bounded on each side by towering mountain banks, so steep as to be almost precipitous, around whose lofty sides thousands of sea fowl wheeled, awaking the echoes with their clamour.