noon
`` 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 .