three
o’clock in the morning
Hope and fear besieged me by turns . I got up several times . The Nautilus continued groping . Near three o'clock in the morning , I observed that we encountered the Ice Bank 's underbelly at a depth of only fifty meters . So only 150 feet separated us from the surface of the water . Little by little the Ice Bank was turning into an ice field again . The mountains were changing back into plains .