"If you repeat what the man says," answered Hatteras, "I'll have you shut up in your cabin and guarded! Seize that man! Do you hear?" Johnson, Bell, and Simpson advanced towards the sailor, who was in a terrible passion. "The first who touches me----" he said, brandishing a handspike. Hatteras approached him. "Pen," said he tranquilly, "if you move, I shall blow out your brains!" So speaking, he cocked a pistol and aimed it at the sailor. A murmur was heard. "Not a word, men," said Hatteras, "or that man falls dead!" Johnson and Bell disarmed Pen, who no longer made any resistance, and placed him in the hold. "Go, Brunton," said Hatteras. The engineer, followed by Plover and Warren, went down to his post. Hatteras returned to the poop. "That Pen is a wretched fellow!" said the doctor. "No man has ever been nearer death!" answered the captain, simply. The steam was soon got up, the anchors were weighed, and the _Forward_ veered away east, cutting the young ice with her steel prow. Between Baring Island and Beecher Point there are a considerable quantity of islands in the midst of ice-fields; the streams crowd together in the little channels which cut up this part of the sea; they had a tendency to agglomerate under the relatively low temperature; hummocks were formed here and there, and these masses, already more compact, denser, and closer together, would soon form an impenetrable mass. The _Forward_ made its way with great difficulty amidst the snowstorms. However, with the mobility that characterises the climate of these regions, the sun appeared from time to time, the temperature went up several degrees, obstacles melted as if by magic, and a fine sheet of water lay where icebergs bristled all the passes. The horizon glowed with those magnificent orange shades which rest the eye, tired with the eternal white of the snow.