An Antarctic Mystery

Jules Verne wrote this polar adventure as a direct sequel to Edgar Allan Poe’s unfinished tale of Arthur Gordon Pym, taking up the mystery of what lay beyond the icy edge of the world. Stranded on the bleak Kerguelen Islands, an American traveler named Jeorling books passage aboard the schooner Halbrane. Her captain soon learns that his own brother may have survived Pym’s doomed expedition years earlier, and the ship turns south into uncharted Antarctic waters. Ahead wait crushing ice fields, a strange magnetic mountain shaped like a sphinx, and the fading trail of lost men. Blending real exploration with Poe’s eerie imagination, the novel is one of Verne’s most atmospheric voyages. First published in 1897, it appears here as a free PDF and EPUB edition.