Under these conditions the barometer generally stayed quite low. It fell as far as 73.5 centimeters. Our compass indications no longer offered any guarantees. The deranged needles would mark contradictory directions as we approached the southern magnetic pole, which doesn’t coincide with the South Pole proper. In fact, according to the astronomer Hansteen, this magnetic pole is located fairly close to latitude 70 degrees and longitude 130 degrees, or abiding by the observations of Louis-Isidore Duperrey, in longitude 135 degrees and latitude 70 degrees 30′. Hence we had to transport compasses to different parts of the ship, take many readings, and strike an average. Often we could chart our course only by guesswork, a less than satisfactory method in the midst of these winding passageways whose landmarks change continuously. At last on March 18, after twenty futile assaults, the Nautilus was decisively held in check. No longer was it an ice stream, patch, or field—it was an endless, immovable barrier formed by ice mountains fused to each other. “The Ice Bank!” the Canadian told me. For Ned Land, as well as for every navigator before us, I knew that this was the great insurmountable obstacle. When the sun appeared for an instant near noon, Captain Nemo took a reasonably accurate sight that gave our position as longitude 51 degrees 30′ and latitude 67 degrees 39′ south. This was a position already well along in these Antarctic regions. As for the liquid surface of the sea, there was no longer any semblance of it before our eyes. Before the Nautilus’s spur there lay vast broken plains, a tangle of confused chunks with all the helter-skelter unpredictability typical of a river’s surface a short while before its ice breakup; but in this case the proportions were gigantic. Here and there stood sharp peaks, lean spires that rose as high as 200 feet; farther off, a succession of steeply cut cliffs sporting a grayish tint, huge mirrors that reflected the sparse rays of a sun half drowned in mist. Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this desolate natural setting, a silence barely broken by the flapping wings of petrels or puffins. By this point everything was frozen, even sound. So the Nautilus had to halt in its venturesome course among these tracts of ice. “Sir,” Ned Land told me that day, “if your captain goes any farther . . .” “Yes?” “He’ll be a superman.” “How so, Ned?” “Because nobody can clear the Ice Bank. Your captain’s a powerful man, but damnation, he isn’t more powerful than nature. If she draws a boundary line, there you stop, like it or not!” “Correct, Ned Land, but I still want to know what’s behind this Ice Bank! Behold my greatest source of irritation—a wall!” “Master is right,” Conseil said. “Walls were invented simply to frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned.” “Fine!” the Canadian put in. “But we already know what’s behind this Ice Bank.” “What?” I asked. “Ice, ice, and more ice.”