This work arose from the fascination that Verne always exerted The narration of Arthur Gordon Pym, by Edgar Allan Poe, and its mysterious end unfinished. Twenty years before he had written: "Who will continue it some day? Someone more daring than me and more determined to advance in the domain of impossible things ». At last he decided himself. To this end he devised Captain Len Guy, brother of Captain Guy of Poe's story, who embarks on a trip to the pole in the footsteps of his brother's missing schooner. And, in a succession of adventures in a fantastic Antarctic sea, they arrive in an unknown land, where they discover the ice cream secret of the Sphinx.