CHAPTER XIX.
land?
"Land" is the only word to be found at the beginning of the nineteenth chapter of Edgar Poe's book. I thought it would be a good idea—placing after it a note of interrogation—to put it as a heading to this portion of our narrative.
Did that word, dropped from our fore-masthead, indicate an island or a continent? And, whether a continent or an island, did not a disappointment await us? Could they be there whom we had come to seek? And Arthur Pym, who was dead, unquestionably dead, in spite of Dirk Peters' assertions, had he ever set foot on this land?
When the welcome word resounded on board the Jane on the 17th January, 1828—(a day full of incidents according to Arthur Pym's diary)—it was succeeded by "Land on the starboard bow!" Such might have been the signal from the masthead of the Halbrane.
The outlines of land lightly drawn above the sky line were visible on this side.
The land announced to the sailors of the Jane was the wild and barren Bennet Islet. Less than one degree south of it lay Tsalal Island, then fertile, habitable and inhabited, and on which Captain Len Guy had hoped to meet his fellow-countrymen. But what would this un-
