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Title: 20,000 Leagues Under the Seas
       An Underwater Tour of the World

Author: Jules Verne

Translator: F. P. Walter

Release Date: January, 2001  [eBook #2488]
       [ Most recently updated: January 4, 2019 ]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEAS***


Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
An Underwater Tour of the World

JULES VERNE


Translated from the Original French by F. P. Walter

Copyright (C) 1999, Frederick Paul Walter.


A complete, unabridged translation of Vingt mille lieues sous les mers
by Jules Verne, based on the original French texts published in Paris
by J. Hetzel et Cie. over the period 1869-71.

The paintings of Illinois watercolorist Milo Winter (1888-1956) first
appeared in a 1922 juvenile edition published by Rand McNally &
Company.


VERNE’S TITLE

The French title of this novel is Vingt mille lieues sous les
mers. This is accurately translated as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under
the SEAS—rather than the SEA, as with many English editions. Verne’s
novel features a tour of the major oceans, and the term Leagues in its
title is used as a measure not of depth but distance. Ed.


Contents

Introduction
Units of Measure

FIRST PART

1. A Runaway Reef
2. The Pros and Cons
3. As Master Wishes
4. Ned Land
5. At Random!
6. At Full Steam
7. A Whale of Unknown Species
8. “Mobilis in Mobili”
9. The Tantrums of Ned Land
10. The Man of the Waters
11. The Nautilus
12. Everything through Electricity
13. Some Figures
14. The Black Current
15. An Invitation in Writing
16. Strolling the Plains
17. An Underwater Forest
18. Four Thousand Leagues Under the Pacific
19. Vanikoro
20. The Torres Strait
21. Some Days Ashore
22. The Lightning Bolts of Captain Nemo
23. “Aegri Somnia”
24. The Coral Realm

SECOND PART

1. The Indian Ocean
2. A New Proposition from Captain Nemo
3. A Pearl Worth Ten Million
4. The Red Sea
5. Arabian Tunnel
6. The Greek Islands
7. The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours
8. The Bay of Vigo
9. A Lost Continent
10. The Underwater Coalfields
11. The Sargasso Sea
12. Sperm Whales and Baleen Whales
13. The Ice Bank
14. The South Pole
15. Accident or Incident?
16. Shortage of Air
17. From Cape Horn to the Amazon
18. The Devilfish
19. The Gulf Stream
20. In Latitude 47° 24’ and Longitude 17° 28’
21. A Mass Execution
22. The Last Words of Captain Nemo
23. Conclusion


Introduction

“The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us,” admits
Professor Aronnax early in this novel. “What goes on in those distant
depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit, those regions twelve
or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water? It’s almost beyond
conjecture.”

Jules Verne (1828-1905) published the French equivalents of these
words in 1869, and little has changed since. 126 years later, a Time
cover story on deep-sea exploration made much the same admission: “We
know more about Mars than we know about the oceans.” This reality
begins to explain the dark power and otherworldly fascination of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.

Born in the French river town of Nantes, Verne had a lifelong passion
for the sea. First as a Paris stockbroker, later as a celebrated
author and yachtsman, he went on frequent voyages—to Britain, America,
the Mediterranean. But the specific stimulus for this novel was an
1865 fan letter from a fellow writer, Madame George Sand. She praised
Verne’s two early novels Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Journey to
the Center of the Earth (1864), then added: “Soon I hope you’ll take
us into the ocean depths, your characters traveling in diving
equipment perfected by your science and your imagination.” Thus
inspired, Verne created one of literature’s great rebels, a freedom
fighter who plunged beneath the waves to wage a unique form of
guerilla warfare.

Initially, Verne’s narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising of
Poland against Tsarist Russia. The Poles were quashed with a violence
that appalled not only Verne but all Europe. As originally conceived,
Verne’s Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire family had
been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds a fabulous futuristic
submarine, the Nautilus, then conducts an underwater campaign of
vengeance against his imperialist oppressor.

But in the 1860s France had to treat the Tsar as an ally, and Verne’s
publisher Pierre Hetzel pronounced the book unprintable. Verne
reworked its political content, devising new nationalities for Nemo
and his great enemy—information revealed only in a later novel, The
Mysterious Island (1875); in the present work Nemo’s background
remains a dark secret. In all, the novel had a difficult
gestation. Verne and Hetzel were in constant conflict and the book
went through multiple drafts, struggles reflected in its several
working titles over the period 1865-69: early on, it was variously
called Voyage Under the Waters, Twenty-five Thousand Leagues Under the
Waters, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, and A Thousand
Leagues Under the Oceans.

Verne is often dubbed, in Isaac Asimov’s phrase, “the world’s first
science-fiction writer.” And it’s true, many of his sixty-odd books do
anticipate future events and technologies: From the Earth to the Moon
(1865) and Hector Servadac (1877) deal in space travel, while Journey
to the Center of the Earth features travel to the earth’s core. But
with Verne the operative word is “travel,” and some of his best-known
titles don’t really qualify as sci-fi: Around the World in Eighty Days
(1872) and Michael Strogoff (1876) are closer to “travelogs”—adventure
yarns in far-away places.

These observations partly apply here. The subtitle of the present book
is An Underwater Tour of the World, so in good travelog style, the
Nautilus’s exploits supply an episodic story line. Shark attacks,
giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and other rip-roaring
adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loose structure gives the
novel an air of documentary realism. What’s more, Verne adds backbone
to the action by developing three recurring motifs: the deepening
mystery of Nemo’s past life and future intentions, the mounting
tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned’s
ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifying threads
tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum.

Other subtleties occur inside each episode, the textures sparkling
with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many
angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail
sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that
swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies
volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he
celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or
dig the Suez Canal. And Verne’s marine engineering proves especially
authoritative. His specifications for an open-sea submarine and a
self-contained diving suit were decades before their time, yet modern
technology bears them out triumphantly.

True, today’s scientists know a few things he didn’t: the South Pole
isn’t at the water’s edge but far inland; sharks don’t flip over
before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight; sperm
whales don’t prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding,
Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depths
before the arrival of Jacques Cousteau and technicolor film.

Lastly the book has stature as a novel of character. Even the
supporting cast is shrewdly drawn: Professor Aronnax, the career
scientist caught in an ethical conflict; Conseil, the compulsive
classifier who supplies humorous tag lines for Verne’s fast facts; the
harpooner Ned Land, a creature of constant appetites, man as heroic
animal.

But much of the novel’s brooding power comes from Captain
Nemo. Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he’s a trail-blazing
creation, the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists in
popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes
or Wolf Larsen. However, Verne gives his hero’s brilliance and
benevolence a dark underside—the man’s obsessive hate for his old
enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions: he’s a
fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there
for good; he works to save lives, both human and animal, yet he
himself creates a holocaust; he detests imperialism, yet he lays
personal claim to the South Pole. And in this last action he falls
into the classic sin of Pride. He’s swiftly punished. The Nautilus
nearly perishes in the Antarctic and Nemo sinks into a growing
depression.

Like Shakespeare’s King Lear he courts death and madness in a great
storm, then commits mass murder, collapses in catatonic paralysis, and
suicidally runs his ship into the ocean’s most dangerous
whirlpool. Hate swallows him whole.

For many, then, this book has been a source of fascination, surely one
of the most influential novels ever written, an inspiration for such
scientists and discoverers as engineer Simon Lake, oceanographer
William Beebe, polar traveler Sir Ernest Shackleton. Likewise
Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the sunken Titanic, confesses that
this was his favorite book as a teenager, and Cousteau himself, most
renowned of marine explorers, called it his shipboard bible.

The present translation is a faithful yet communicative rendering of
the original French texts published in Paris by J. Hetzel et Cie.—the
hardcover first edition issued in the autumn of 1871, collated with
the softcover editions of the First and Second Parts issued separately
in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Although prior English
versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation is
complete to the smallest substantive detail.

Because, as that Time cover story suggests, we still haven’t caught up
with Verne. Even in our era of satellite dishes and video games, the
seas keep their secrets. We’ve seen progress in sonar, torpedoes, and
other belligerent machinery, but sailors and scientists—to say nothing
of tourists—have yet to voyage in a submarine with the luxury and
efficiency of the Nautilus.

F. P. WALTER University of Houston


Units of Measure

CABLE LENGTH In Verne’s context, 600 feet

CENTIGRADE 0 degrees centigrade = freezing water

37 degrees centigrade = human body temperature

100 degrees centigrade = boiling water

FATHOM 6 feet

GRAM Roughly 1/28 of an ounce

- MILLIGRAM Roughly 1/28,000 of an ounce

- KILOGRAM (KILO) Roughly 2.2 pounds

HECTARE Roughly 2.5 acres

KNOT 1.15 miles per hour

LEAGUE In Verne’s context, 2.16 miles

LITER Roughly 1 quart

METER Roughly 1 yard, 3 inches

- MILLIMETER Roughly 1/25 of an inch

- CENTIMETER Roughly 2/5 of an inch

- DECIMETER Roughly 4 inches

- KILOMETER Roughly 6/10 of a mile

- MYRIAMETER Roughly 6.2 miles

TON, METRIC Roughly 2,200 pounds viii



FIRST PART


CHAPTER 1

A Runaway Reef


THE YEAR 1866 was marked by a bizarre development, an unexplained and
downright inexplicable phenomenon that surely no one has
forgotten. Without getting into those rumors that upset civilians in
the seaports and deranged the public mind even far inland, it must be
said that professional seamen were especially alarmed. Traders,
shipowners, captains of vessels, skippers, and master mariners from
Europe and America, naval officers from every country, and at their
heels the various national governments on these two continents, were
all extremely disturbed by the business.

In essence, over a period of time several ships had encountered “an
enormous thing” at sea, a long spindle-shaped object, sometimes giving
off a phosphorescent glow, infinitely bigger and faster than any
whale.

The relevant data on this apparition, as recorded in various logbooks,
agreed pretty closely as to the structure of the object or creature in
question, its unprecedented speed of movement, its startling
locomotive power, and the unique vitality with which it seemed to be
gifted. If it was a cetacean, it exceeded in bulk any whale previously
classified by science. No naturalist, neither Cuvier nor Lacépède,
neither Professor Dumeril nor Professor de Quatrefages, would have
accepted the existence of such a monster sight unseen—specifically,
unseen by their own scientific eyes.

Striking an average of observations taken at different times—rejecting
those timid estimates that gave the object a length of 200 feet, and
ignoring those exaggerated views that saw it as a mile wide and three
long—you could still assert that this phenomenal creature greatly
exceeded the dimensions of anything then known to ichthyologists, if
it existed at all.

Now then, it did exist, this was an undeniable fact; and since the
human mind dotes on objects of wonder, you can understand the
worldwide excitement caused by this unearthly apparition. As for
relegating it to the realm of fiction, that charge had to be dropped.

In essence, on July 20, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson, from the
Calcutta & Burnach Steam Navigation Co., encountered this moving mass
five miles off the eastern shores of Australia.

Captain Baker at first thought he was in the presence of an unknown
reef; he was even about to fix its exact position when two waterspouts
shot out of this inexplicable object and sprang hissing into the air
some 150 feet. So, unless this reef was subject to the intermittent
eruptions of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had fair and honest
dealings with some aquatic mammal, until then unknown, that could
spurt from its blowholes waterspouts mixed with air and steam.

Similar events were likewise observed in Pacific seas, on July 23 of
the same year, by the Christopher Columbus from the West India &
Pacific Steam Navigation Co. Consequently, this extraordinary cetacean
could transfer itself from one locality to another with startling
swiftness, since within an interval of just three days, the Governor
Higginson and the Christopher Columbus had observed it at two
positions on the charts separated by a distance of more than 700
nautical leagues.

Fifteen days later and 2,000 leagues farther, the Helvetia from the
Compagnie Nationale and the Shannon from the Royal Mail line, running
on opposite tacks in that part of the Atlantic lying between the
United States and Europe, respectively signaled each other that the
monster had been sighted in latitude 42 degrees 15’ north and
longitude 60 degrees 35’ west of the meridian of Greenwich. From their
simultaneous observations, they were able to estimate the mammal’s
minimum length at more than 350 English feet;* this was because both
the Shannon and the Helvetia were of smaller dimensions, although each
measured 100 meters stem to stern. Now then, the biggest whales, those
rorqual whales that frequent the waterways of the Aleutian Islands,
have never exceeded a length of 56 meters—if they reach even that.

*Author’s Note: About 106 meters. An English foot is only 30.4
 centimeters.

One after another, reports arrived that would profoundly affect public
opinion: new observations taken by the transatlantic liner Pereire,
the Inman line’s Etna running afoul of the monster, an official report
drawn up by officers on the French frigate Normandy, dead-earnest
reckonings obtained by the general staff of Commodore Fitz-James
aboard the Lord Clyde. In lighthearted countries, people joked about
this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England,
America, and Germany were deeply concerned.

In every big city the monster was the latest rage; they sang about it
in the coffee houses, they ridiculed it in the newspapers, they
dramatized it in the theaters. The tabloids found it a fine
opportunity for hatching all sorts of hoaxes. In those newspapers
short of copy, you saw the reappearance of every gigantic imaginary
creature, from “Moby Dick,” that dreadful white whale from the High
Arctic regions, to the stupendous kraken whose tentacles could entwine
a 500-ton craft and drag it into the ocean depths. They even reprinted
reports from ancient times: the views of Aristotle and Pliny accepting
the existence of such monsters, then the Norwegian stories of Bishop
Pontoppidan, the narratives of Paul Egede, and finally the reports of
Captain Harrington—whose good faith is above suspicion—in which he
claims he saw, while aboard the Castilian in 1857, one of those
enormous serpents that, until then, had frequented only the seas of
France’s old extremist newspaper, The Constitutionalist.

An interminable debate then broke out between believers and skeptics
in the scholarly societies and scientific journals. The “monster
question” inflamed all minds. During this memorable campaign,
journalists making a profession of science battled with those making a
profession of wit, spilling waves of ink and some of them even two or
three drops of blood, since they went from sea serpents to the most
offensive personal remarks.

For six months the war seesawed. With inexhaustible zest, the popular
press took potshots at feature articles from the Geographic Institute
of Brazil, the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin, the British
Association, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., at
discussions in The Indian Archipelago, in Cosmos published by Father
Moigno, in Petermann’s Mittheilungen,* and at scientific chronicles in
the great French and foreign newspapers. When the monster’s detractors
cited a saying by the botanist Linnaeus that “nature doesn’t make
leaps,” witty writers in the popular periodicals parodied it,
maintaining in essence that “nature doesn’t make lunatics,” and
ordering their contemporaries never to give the lie to nature by
believing in krakens, sea serpents, “Moby Dicks,” and other all-out
efforts from drunken seamen. Finally, in a much-feared satirical
journal, an article by its most popular columnist finished off the
monster for good, spurning it in the style of Hippolytus repulsing the
amorous advances of his stepmother Phaedra, and giving the creature
its quietus amid a universal burst of laughter. Wit had defeated
science.

*German: “Bulletin.” Ed.

During the first months of the year 1867, the question seemed to be
buried, and it didn’t seem due for resurrection, when new facts were
brought to the public’s attention. But now it was no longer an issue
of a scientific problem to be solved, but a quite real and serious
danger to be avoided. The question took an entirely new turn. The
monster again became an islet, rock, or reef, but a runaway reef,
unfixed and elusive.

On March 5, 1867, the Moravian from the Montreal Ocean Co., lying
during the night in latitude 27 degrees 30’ and longitude 72 degrees
15’, ran its starboard quarter afoul of a rock marked on no charts of
these waterways. Under the combined efforts of wind and 400-horsepower
steam, it was traveling at a speed of thirteen knots. Without the high
quality of its hull, the Moravian would surely have split open from
this collision and gone down together with those 237 passengers it was
bringing back from Canada.

This accident happened around five o’clock in the morning, just as day
was beginning to break. The officers on watch rushed to the craft’s
stern. They examined the ocean with the most scrupulous care. They saw
nothing except a strong eddy breaking three cable lengths out, as if
those sheets of water had been violently churned. The site’s exact
bearings were taken, and the Moravian continued on course apparently
undamaged. Had it run afoul of an underwater rock or the wreckage of
some enormous derelict ship? They were unable to say. But when they
examined its undersides in the service yard, they discovered that part
of its keel had been smashed.

This occurrence, extremely serious in itself, might perhaps have been
forgotten like so many others, if three weeks later it hadn’t been
reenacted under identical conditions. Only, thanks to the nationality
of the ship victimized by this new ramming, and thanks to the
reputation of the company to which this ship belonged, the event
caused an immense uproar.

No one is unaware of the name of that famous English shipowner,
Cunard. In 1840 this shrewd industrialist founded a postal service
between Liverpool and Halifax, featuring three wooden ships with
400-horsepower paddle wheels and a burden of 1,162 metric tons. Eight
years later, the company’s assets were increased by four
650-horsepower ships at 1,820 metric tons, and in two more years, by
two other vessels of still greater power and tonnage. In 1853 the
Cunard Co., whose mail-carrying charter had just been renewed,
successively added to its assets the Arabia, the Persia, the China,
the Scotia, the Java, and the Russia, all ships of top speed and,
after the Great Eastern, the biggest ever to plow the seas. So in 1867
this company owned twelve ships, eight with paddle wheels and four
with propellers.

If I give these highly condensed details, it is so everyone can fully
understand the importance of this maritime transportation company,
known the world over for its shrewd management. No transoceanic
navigational undertaking has been conducted with more ability, no
business dealings have been crowned with greater success. In
twenty-six years Cunard ships have made 2,000 Atlantic crossings
without so much as a voyage canceled, a delay recorded, a man, a
craft, or even a letter lost. Accordingly, despite strong competition
from France, passengers still choose the Cunard line in preference to
all others, as can be seen in a recent survey of official
documents. Given this, no one will be astonished at the uproar
provoked by this accident involving one of its finest steamers.

On April 13, 1867, with a smooth sea and a moderate breeze, the Scotia
lay in longitude 15 degrees 12’ and latitude 45 degrees 37’. It was
traveling at a speed of 13.43 knots under the thrust of its
1,000-horsepower engines. Its paddle wheels were churning the sea with
perfect steadiness. It was then drawing 6.7 meters of water and
displacing 6,624 cubic meters.

At 4:17 in the afternoon, during a high tea for passengers gathered in
the main lounge, a collision occurred, scarcely noticeable on the
whole, affecting the Scotia’s hull in that quarter a little astern of
its port paddle wheel.

The Scotia hadn’t run afoul of something, it had been fouled, and by a
cutting or perforating instrument rather than a blunt one. This
encounter seemed so minor that nobody on board would have been
disturbed by it, had it not been for the shouts of crewmen in the
hold, who climbed on deck yelling:

“We’re sinking! We’re sinking!”

At first the passengers were quite frightened, but Captain Anderson
hastened to reassure them. In fact, there could be no immediate
danger. Divided into seven compartments by watertight bulkheads, the
Scotia could brave any leak with impunity.

Captain Anderson immediately made his way into the hold. He discovered
that the fifth compartment had been invaded by the sea, and the speed
of this invasion proved that the leak was considerable. Fortunately
this compartment didn’t contain the boilers, because their furnaces
would have been abruptly extinguished.

Captain Anderson called an immediate halt, and one of his sailors
dived down to assess the damage. Within moments they had located a
hole two meters in width on the steamer’s underside. Such a leak could
not be patched, and with its paddle wheels half swamped, the Scotia
had no choice but to continue its voyage. By then it lay 300 miles
from Cape Clear, and after three days of delay that filled Liverpool
with acute anxiety, it entered the company docks.

The engineers then proceeded to inspect the Scotia, which had been put
in dry dock. They couldn’t believe their eyes. Two and a half meters
below its waterline, there gaped a symmetrical gash in the shape of an
isosceles triangle. This breach in the sheet iron was so perfectly
formed, no punch could have done a cleaner job of it. Consequently, it
must have been produced by a perforating tool of uncommon
toughness—plus, after being launched with prodigious power and then
piercing four centimeters of sheet iron, this tool had needed to
withdraw itself by a backward motion truly inexplicable.

This was the last straw, and it resulted in arousing public passions
all over again. Indeed, from this moment on, any maritime casualty
without an established cause was charged to the monster’s
account. This outrageous animal had to shoulder responsibility for all
derelict vessels, whose numbers are unfortunately considerable, since
out of those 3,000 ships whose losses are recorded annually at the
marine insurance bureau, the figure for steam or sailing ships
supposedly lost with all hands, in the absence of any news, amounts to
at least 200!

Now then, justly or unjustly, it was the “monster” who stood accused
of their disappearance; and since, thanks to it, travel between the
various continents had become more and more dangerous, the public
spoke up and demanded straight out that, at all cost, the seas be
purged of this fearsome cetacean.


CHAPTER 2

The Pros and Cons


DURING THE PERIOD in which these developments were occurring, I had
returned from a scientific undertaking organized to explore the
Nebraska badlands in the United States. In my capacity as Assistant
Professor at the Paris Museum of Natural History, I had been attached
to this expedition by the French government. After spending six months
in Nebraska, I arrived in New York laden with valuable collections
near the end of March. My departure for France was set for early
May. In the meantime, then, I was busy classifying my mineralogical,
botanical, and zoological treasures when that incident took place with
the Scotia.

I was perfectly abreast of this question, which was the big news of
the day, and how could I not have been? I had read and reread every
American and European newspaper without being any farther along. This
mystery puzzled me. Finding it impossible to form any views, I drifted
from one extreme to the other. Something was out there, that much was
certain, and any doubting Thomas was invited to place his finger on
the Scotia’s wound.

When I arrived in New York, the question was at the boiling point. The
hypothesis of a drifting islet or an elusive reef, put forward by
people not quite in their right minds, was completely eliminated. And
indeed, unless this reef had an engine in its belly, how could it move
about with such prodigious speed?

Also discredited was the idea of a floating hull or some other
enormous wreckage, and again because of this speed of movement.

So only two possible solutions to the question were left, creating two
very distinct groups of supporters: on one side, those favoring a
monster of colossal strength; on the other, those favoring an
“underwater boat” of tremendous motor power.

Now then, although the latter hypothesis was completely admissible, it
couldn’t stand up to inquiries conducted in both the New World and the
Old. That a private individual had such a mechanism at his disposal
was less than probable. Where and when had he built it, and how could
he have built it in secret?

Only some government could own such an engine of destruction, and in
these disaster-filled times, when men tax their ingenuity to build
increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that,
unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing
such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and
the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn
will lead to the world putting its foot down. At least I hope it will.

But this hypothesis of a war machine collapsed in the face of formal
denials from the various governments. Since the public interest was at
stake and transoceanic travel was suffering, the sincerity of these
governments could not be doubted. Besides, how could the assembly of
this underwater boat have escaped public notice? Keeping a secret
under such circumstances would be difficult enough for an individual,
and certainly impossible for a nation whose every move is under
constant surveillance by rival powers.

So, after inquiries conducted in England, France, Russia, Prussia,
Spain, Italy, America, and even Turkey, the hypothesis of an
underwater Monitor was ultimately rejected.

And so the monster surfaced again, despite the endless witticisms
heaped on it by the popular press, and the human imagination soon got
caught up in the most ridiculous ichthyological fantasies.

After I arrived in New York, several people did me the honor of
consulting me on the phenomenon in question. In France I had published
a two-volume work, in quarto, entitled The Mysteries of the Great
Ocean Depths. Well received in scholarly circles, this book had
established me as a specialist in this pretty obscure field of natural
history. My views were in demand. As long as I could deny the reality
of the business, I confined myself to a flat “no comment.” But soon,
pinned to the wall, I had to explain myself straight out. And in this
vein, “the honorable Pierre Aronnax, Professor at the Paris Museum,”
was summoned by The New York Herald to formulate his views no matter
what.

I complied. Since I could no longer hold my tongue, I let it wag. I
discussed the question in its every aspect, both political and
scientific, and this is an excerpt from the well-padded article I
published in the issue of April 30.

“Therefore,” I wrote, “after examining these different hypotheses one
by one, we are forced, every other supposition having been refuted, to
accept the existence of an extremely powerful marine animal.

“The deepest parts of the ocean are totally unknown to us. No
soundings have been able to reach them. What goes on in those distant
depths? What creatures inhabit, or could inhabit, those regions twelve
or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the water? What is the
constitution of these animals? It’s almost beyond conjecture.

“However, the solution to this problem submitted to me can take the
form of a choice between two alternatives.

“Either we know every variety of creature populating our planet, or we
do not.

“If we do not know every one of them, if nature still keeps
ichthyological secrets from us, nothing is more admissible than to
accept the existence of fish or cetaceans of new species or even new
genera, animals with a basically ‘cast-iron’ constitution that inhabit
strata beyond the reach of our soundings, and which some development
or other, an urge or a whim if you prefer, can bring to the upper
level of the ocean for long intervals.

“If, on the other hand, we do know every living species, we must look
for the animal in question among those marine creatures already
cataloged, and in this event I would be inclined to accept the
existence of a giant narwhale.

“The common narwhale, or sea unicorn, often reaches a length of sixty
feet. Increase its dimensions fivefold or even tenfold, then give this
cetacean a strength in proportion to its size while enlarging its
offensive weapons, and you have the animal we’re looking for. It would
have the proportions determined by the officers of the Shannon, the
instrument needed to perforate the Scotia, and the power to pierce a
steamer’s hull.

“In essence, the narwhale is armed with a sort of ivory sword, or
lance, as certain naturalists have expressed it. It’s a king-sized
tooth as hard as steel. Some of these teeth have been found buried in
the bodies of baleen whales, which the narwhale attacks with
invariable success. Others have been wrenched, not without difficulty,
from the undersides of vessels that narwhales have pierced clean
through, as a gimlet pierces a wine barrel. The museum at the Faculty
of Medicine in Paris owns one of these tusks with a length of 2.25
meters and a width at its base of forty-eight centimeters!

“All right then! Imagine this weapon to be ten times stronger and the
animal ten times more powerful, launch it at a speed of twenty miles
per hour, multiply its mass times its velocity, and you get just the
collision we need to cause the specified catastrophe.

“So, until information becomes more abundant, I plump for a sea
unicorn of colossal dimensions, no longer armed with a mere lance but
with an actual spur, like ironclad frigates or those warships called
‘rams,’ whose mass and motor power it would possess simultaneously.

“This inexplicable phenomenon is thus explained away—unless it’s
something else entirely, which, despite everything that has been
sighted, studied, explored and experienced, is still possible!”

These last words were cowardly of me; but as far as I could, I wanted
to protect my professorial dignity and not lay myself open to laughter
from the Americans, who when they do laugh, laugh raucously. I had
left myself a loophole. Yet deep down, I had accepted the existence of
“the monster.”

My article was hotly debated, causing a fine old uproar. It rallied a
number of supporters. Moreover, the solution it proposed allowed for
free play of the imagination. The human mind enjoys impressive visions
of unearthly creatures. Now then, the sea is precisely their best
medium, the only setting suitable for the breeding and growing of such
giants—next to which such land animals as elephants or rhinoceroses
are mere dwarves. The liquid masses support the largest known species
of mammals and perhaps conceal mollusks of incomparable size or
crustaceans too frightful to contemplate, such as 100-meter lobsters
or crabs weighing 200 metric tons! Why not? Formerly, in prehistoric
days, land animals (quadrupeds, apes, reptiles, birds) were built on a
gigantic scale. Our Creator cast them using a colossal mold that time
has gradually made smaller. With its untold depths, couldn’t the sea
keep alive such huge specimens of life from another age, this sea that
never changes while the land masses undergo almost continuous
alteration? Couldn’t the heart of the ocean hide the last-remaining
varieties of these titanic species, for whom years are centuries and
centuries millennia?

But I mustn’t let these fantasies run away with me! Enough of these
fairy tales that time has changed for me into harsh realities. I
repeat: opinion had crystallized as to the nature of this phenomenon,
and the public accepted without argument the existence of a prodigious
creature that had nothing in common with the fabled sea serpent.

Yet if some saw it purely as a scientific problem to be solved, more
practical people, especially in America and England, were determined
to purge the ocean of this daunting monster, to insure the safety of
transoceanic travel. The industrial and commercial newspapers dealt
with the question chiefly from this viewpoint. The Shipping &
Mercantile Gazette, the Lloyd’s List, France’s Packetboat and Maritime
& Colonial Review, all the rags devoted to insurance companies—who
threatened to raise their premium rates—were unanimous on this point.

Public opinion being pronounced, the States of the Union were the
first in the field. In New York preparations were under way for an
expedition designed to chase this narwhale. A high-speed frigate, the
Abraham Lincoln, was fitted out for putting to sea as soon as
possible. The naval arsenals were unlocked for Commander Farragut, who
pressed energetically forward with the arming of his frigate.

But, as it always happens, just when a decision had been made to chase
the monster, the monster put in no further appearances. For two months
nobody heard a word about it. Not a single ship encountered
it. Apparently the unicorn had gotten wise to these plots being woven
around it. People were constantly babbling about the creature, even
via the Atlantic Cable! Accordingly, the wags claimed that this
slippery rascal had waylaid some passing telegram and was making the
most of it.

So the frigate was equipped for a far-off voyage and armed with
fearsome fishing gear, but nobody knew where to steer it. And
impatience grew until, on June 2, word came that the Tampico, a
steamer on the San Francisco line sailing from California to Shanghai,
had sighted the animal again, three weeks before in the northerly seas
of the Pacific.

This news caused intense excitement. Not even a 24-hour breather was
granted to Commander Farragut. His provisions were loaded on
board. His coal bunkers were overflowing. Not a crewman was missing
from his post. To cast off, he needed only to fire and stoke his
furnaces! Half a day’s delay would have been unforgivable! But
Commander Farragut wanted nothing more than to go forth.

I received a letter three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left its
Brooklyn pier;* the letter read as follows:

*Author’s Note: A pier is a type of wharf expressly set aside for an
 individual vessel.

  Pierre Aronnax
  Professor at the Paris Museum
  Fifth Avenue Hotel
  New York

  Sir:

  If you would like to join the expedition on the Abraham Lincoln, the
  government of the Union will be pleased to regard you as France’s
  representative in this undertaking. Commander Farragut has a cabin at
  your disposal.

  Very cordially yours,

  J. B. HOBSON,
  Secretary of the Navy.


CHAPTER 3

As Master Wishes


THREE SECONDS before the arrival of J. B. Hobson’s letter, I no more
dreamed of chasing the unicorn than of trying for the Northwest
Passage. Three seconds after reading this letter from the honorable
Secretary of the Navy, I understood at last that my true vocation, my
sole purpose in life, was to hunt down this disturbing monster and rid
the world of it.

Even so, I had just returned from an arduous journey, exhausted and
badly needing a rest. I wanted nothing more than to see my country
again, my friends, my modest quarters by the Botanical Gardens, my
dearly beloved collections! But now nothing could hold me back. I
forgot everything else, and without another thought of exhaustion,
friends, or collections, I accepted the American government’s offer.

“Besides,” I mused, “all roads lead home to Europe, and our unicorn
may be gracious enough to take me toward the coast of France! That
fine animal may even let itself be captured in European seas—as a
personal favor to me—and I’ll bring back to the Museum of Natural
History at least half a meter of its ivory lance!”

But in the meantime I would have to look for this narwhale in the
northern Pacific Ocean; which meant returning to France by way of the
Antipodes.

“Conseil!” I called in an impatient voice.

Conseil was my manservant. A devoted lad who went with me on all my
journeys; a gallant Flemish boy whom I genuinely liked and who
returned the compliment; a born stoic, punctilious on principle,
habitually hardworking, rarely startled by life’s surprises, very
skillful with his hands, efficient in his every duty, and despite his
having a name that means “counsel,” never giving advice—not even the
unsolicited kind!

From rubbing shoulders with scientists in our little universe by the
Botanical Gardens, the boy had come to know a thing or two. In Conseil
I had a seasoned specialist in biological classification, an
enthusiast who could run with acrobatic agility up and down the whole
ladder of branches, groups, classes, subclasses, orders, families,
genera, subgenera, species, and varieties. But there his science came
to a halt. Classifying was everything to him, so he knew nothing
else. Well versed in the theory of classification, he was poorly
versed in its practical application, and I doubt that he could tell a
sperm whale from a baleen whale! And yet, what a fine, gallant lad!

For the past ten years, Conseil had gone with me wherever science
beckoned. Not once did he comment on the length or the hardships of a
journey. Never did he object to buckling up his suitcase for any
country whatever, China or the Congo, no matter how far off it was. He
went here, there, and everywhere in perfect contentment. Moreover, he
enjoyed excellent health that defied all ailments, owned solid
muscles, but hadn’t a nerve in him, not a sign of nerves—the mental
type, I mean.

The lad was thirty years old, and his age to that of his employer was
as fifteen is to twenty. Please forgive me for this underhanded way of
admitting I had turned forty.

But Conseil had one flaw. He was a fanatic on formality, and he only
addressed me in the third person—to the point where it got tiresome.

“Conseil!” I repeated, while feverishly beginning my preparations for
departure.

To be sure, I had confidence in this devoted lad. Ordinarily, I never
asked whether or not it suited him to go with me on my journeys; but
this time an expedition was at issue that could drag on indefinitely,
a hazardous undertaking whose purpose was to hunt an animal that could
sink a frigate as easily as a walnut shell! There was good reason to
stop and think, even for the world’s most emotionless man. What would
Conseil say?

“Conseil!” I called a third time.

Conseil appeared.

“Did master summon me?” he said, entering.

“Yes, my boy. Get my things ready, get yours ready. We’re departing in
two hours.”

“As master wishes,” Conseil replied serenely.

“We haven’t a moment to lose. Pack as much into my trunk as you can,
my traveling kit, my suits, shirts, and socks, don’t bother counting,
just squeeze it all in—and hurry!”

“What about master’s collections?” Conseil ventured to observe.

“We’ll deal with them later.”

“What! The archaeotherium, hyracotherium, oreodonts, cheiropotamus,
and master’s other fossil skeletons?”

“The hotel will keep them for us.”

“What about master’s live babirusa?”

“They’ll feed it during our absence. Anyhow, we’ll leave instructions
to ship the whole menagerie to France.”

“Then we aren’t returning to Paris?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, we are . . . certainly . . . ,” I replied evasively, “but after
we make a detour.”

“Whatever detour master wishes.”

“Oh, it’s nothing really! A route slightly less direct, that’s
all. We’re leaving on the Abraham Lincoln.”

“As master thinks best,” Conseil replied placidly.

“You see, my friend, it’s an issue of the monster, the notorious
narwhale. We’re going to rid the seas of it! The author of a
two-volume work, in quarto, on The Mysteries of the Great Ocean Depths
has no excuse for not setting sail with Commander Farragut. It’s a
glorious mission but also a dangerous one! We don’t know where it will
take us! These beasts can be quite unpredictable! But we’re going just
the same! We have a commander who’s game for anything!”

“What master does, I’ll do,” Conseil replied.

“But think it over, because I don’t want to hide anything from
you. This is one of those voyages from which people don’t always come
back!”

“As master wishes.”

A quarter of an hour later, our trunks were ready. Conseil did them in
a flash, and I was sure the lad hadn’t missed a thing, because he
classified shirts and suits as expertly as birds and mammals.

The hotel elevator dropped us off in the main vestibule on the
mezzanine. I went down a short stair leading to the ground floor. I
settled my bill at that huge counter that was always under siege by a
considerable crowd. I left instructions for shipping my containers of
stuffed animals and dried plants to Paris, France. I opened a line of
credit sufficient to cover the babirusa and, Conseil at my heels, I
jumped into a carriage.

For a fare of twenty francs, the vehicle went down Broadway to Union
Square, took Fourth Ave. to its junction with Bowery St., turned into
Katrin St. and halted at Pier 34. There the Katrin ferry transferred
men, horses, and carriage to Brooklyn, that great New York annex
located on the left bank of the East River, and in a few minutes we
arrived at the wharf next to which the Abraham Lincoln was vomiting
torrents of black smoke from its two funnels.

Our baggage was immediately carried to the deck of the frigate. I
rushed aboard. I asked for Commander Farragut. One of the sailors led
me to the afterdeck, where I stood in the presence of a smart-looking
officer who extended his hand to me.

“Professor Pierre Aronnax?” he said to me.

“The same,” I replied. “Commander Farragut?”

“In person. Welcome aboard, professor. Your cabin is waiting for you.”

I bowed, and letting the commander attend to getting under way, I was
taken to the cabin that had been set aside for me.

The Abraham Lincoln had been perfectly chosen and fitted out for its
new assignment. It was a high-speed frigate furnished with
superheating equipment that allowed the tension of its steam to build
to seven atmospheres. Under this pressure the Abraham Lincoln reached
an average speed of 18.3 miles per hour, a considerable speed but
still not enough to cope with our gigantic cetacean.

The frigate’s interior accommodations complemented its nautical
virtues. I was well satisfied with my cabin, which was located in the
stern and opened into the officers’ mess.

“We’ll be quite comfortable here,” I told Conseil.

“With all due respect to master,” Conseil replied, “as comfortable as
a hermit crab inside the shell of a whelk.”

I left Conseil to the proper stowing of our luggage and climbed on
deck to watch the preparations for getting under way.

Just then Commander Farragut was giving orders to cast off the last
moorings holding the Abraham Lincoln to its Brooklyn pier. And so if
I’d been delayed by a quarter of an hour or even less, the frigate
would have gone without me, and I would have missed out on this
unearthly, extraordinary, and inconceivable expedition, whose true
story might well meet with some skepticism.

But Commander Farragut didn’t want to waste a single day, or even a
single hour, in making for those seas where the animal had just been
sighted. He summoned his engineer.

“Are we up to pressure?” he asked the man.

“Aye, sir,” the engineer replied.

“Go ahead, then!” Commander Farragut called.

At this order, which was relayed to the engine by means of a
compressed-air device, the mechanics activated the start-up
wheel. Steam rushed whistling into the gaping valves. Long horizontal
pistons groaned and pushed the tie rods of the drive shaft. The blades
of the propeller churned the waves with increasing speed, and the
Abraham Lincoln moved out majestically amid a spectator-laden escort
of some 100 ferries and tenders.*

*Author’s Note: Tenders are small steamboats that assist the big
 liners.

The wharves of Brooklyn, and every part of New York bordering the East
River, were crowded with curiosity seekers. Departing from 500,000
throats, three cheers burst forth in succession. Thousands of
handkerchiefs were waving above these tightly packed masses, hailing
the Abraham

Lincoln until it reached the waters of the Hudson River, at the tip of
the long peninsula that forms New York City.

The frigate then went along the New Jersey coast—the wonderful right
bank of this river, all loaded down with country homes—and passed by
the forts to salutes from their biggest cannons. The Abraham Lincoln
replied by three times lowering and hoisting the American flag, whose
thirty-nine stars gleamed from the gaff of the mizzen sail; then,
changing speed to take the buoy-marked channel that curved into the
inner bay formed by the spit of Sandy Hook, it hugged this
sand-covered strip of land where thousands of spectators acclaimed us
one more time.

The escort of boats and tenders still followed the frigate and only
left us when we came abreast of the lightship, whose two signal lights
mark the entrance of the narrows to Upper New York Bay.

Three o’clock then sounded. The harbor pilot went down into his dinghy
and rejoined a little schooner waiting for him to leeward. The
furnaces were stoked; the propeller churned the waves more swiftly;
the frigate skirted the flat, yellow coast of Long Island; and at
eight o’clock in the evening, after the lights of Fire Island had
vanished into the northwest, we ran at full steam onto the dark waters
of the Atlantic.


CHAPTER 4

Ned Land


COMMANDER FARRAGUT was a good seaman, worthy of the frigate he
commanded. His ship and he were one. He was its very soul. On the
cetacean question no doubts arose in his mind, and he didn’t allow the
animal’s existence to be disputed aboard his vessel. He believed in it
as certain pious women believe in the leviathan from the Book of
Job—out of faith, not reason. The monster existed, and he had vowed to
rid the seas of it. The man was a sort of Knight of Rhodes, a
latter-day Sir Dieudonné of Gozo, on his way to fight an encounter
with the dragon devastating the island. Either Commander Farragut
would slay the narwhale, or the narwhale would slay Commander
Farragut. No middle of the road for these two.

The ship’s officers shared the views of their leader. They could be
heard chatting, discussing, arguing, calculating the different chances
of an encounter, and observing the vast expanse of the
ocean. Voluntary watches from the crosstrees of the topgallant sail
were self-imposed by more than one who would have cursed such toil
under any other circumstances. As often as the sun swept over its
daily arc, the masts were populated with sailors whose feet itched and
couldn’t hold still on the planking of the deck below! And the Abraham
Lincoln’s stempost hadn’t even cut the suspected waters of the
Pacific.

As for the crew, they only wanted to encounter the unicorn, harpoon
it, haul it on board, and carve it up. They surveyed the sea with
scrupulous care. Besides, Commander Farragut had mentioned that a
certain sum of $2,000.00 was waiting for the man who first sighted the
animal, be he cabin boy or sailor, mate or officer. I’ll let the
reader decide whether eyes got proper exercise aboard the Abraham
Lincoln.

As for me, I didn’t lag behind the others and I yielded to no one my
share in these daily observations. Our frigate would have had
fivescore good reasons for renaming itself the Argus, after that
mythological beast with 100 eyes! The lone rebel among us was Conseil,
who seemed utterly uninterested in the question exciting us and was
out of step with the general enthusiasm on board.

As I said, Commander Farragut had carefully equipped his ship with all
the gear needed to fish for a gigantic cetacean. No whaling vessel
could have been better armed. We had every known mechanism, from the
hand-hurled harpoon, to the blunderbuss firing barbed arrows, to the
duck gun with exploding bullets. On the forecastle was mounted the
latest model breech-loading cannon, very heavy of barrel and narrow of
bore, a weapon that would figure in the Universal Exhibition of
1867. Made in America, this valuable instrument could fire a
four-kilogram conical projectile an average distance of sixteen
kilometers without the least bother.

So the Abraham Lincoln wasn’t lacking in means of destruction. But it
had better still. It had Ned Land, the King of Harpooners.

Gifted with uncommon manual ability, Ned Land was a Canadian who had
no equal in his dangerous trade. Dexterity, coolness, bravery, and
cunning were virtues he possessed to a high degree, and it took a
truly crafty baleen whale or an exceptionally astute sperm whale to
elude the thrusts of his harpoon.

Ned Land was about forty years old. A man of great height—over six
English feet—he was powerfully built, serious in manner, not very
sociable, sometimes headstrong, and quite ill-tempered when
crossed. His looks caught the attention, and above all the strength of
his gaze, which gave a unique emphasis to his facial appearance.

Commander Farragut, to my thinking, had made a wise move in hiring on
this man. With his eye and his throwing arm, he was worth the whole
crew all by himself. I can do no better than to compare him with a
powerful telescope that could double as a cannon always ready to fire.

To say Canadian is to say French, and as unsociable as Ned Land was, I
must admit he took a definite liking to me. No doubt it was my
nationality that attracted him. It was an opportunity for him to
speak, and for me to hear, that old Rabelaisian dialect still used in
some Canadian provinces. The harpooner’s family originated in Quebec,
and they were already a line of bold fishermen back in the days when
this town still belonged to France.

Little by little Ned developed a taste for chatting, and I loved
hearing the tales of his adventures in the polar seas. He described
his fishing trips and his battles with great natural lyricism. His
tales took on the form of an epic poem, and I felt I was hearing some
Canadian Homer reciting his Iliad of the High Arctic regions.

I’m writing of this bold companion as I currently know him. Because
we’ve become old friends, united in that permanent comradeship born
and cemented during only the most frightful crises! Ah, my gallant
Ned! I ask only to live 100 years more, the longer to remember you!

And now, what were Ned Land’s views on this question of a marine
monster? I must admit that he flatly didn’t believe in the unicorn,
and alone on board, he didn’t share the general conviction. He avoided
even dealing with the subject, for which one day I felt compelled to
take him to task.

During the magnificent evening of June 25—in other words, three weeks
after our departure—the frigate lay abreast of Cabo Blanco, thirty
miles to leeward of the coast of Patagonia. We had crossed the Tropic
of Capricorn, and the Strait of Magellan opened less than 700 miles to
the south. Before eight days were out, the Abraham Lincoln would plow
the waves of the Pacific.

Seated on the afterdeck, Ned Land and I chatted about one thing and
another, staring at that mysterious sea whose depths to this day are
beyond the reach of human eyes. Quite naturally, I led our
conversation around to the giant unicorn, and I weighed our
expedition’s various chances for success or failure. Then, seeing that
Ned just let me talk without saying much himself, I pressed him more
closely.

“Ned,” I asked him, “how can you still doubt the reality of this
cetacean we’re after? Do you have any particular reasons for being so
skeptical?”

The harpooner stared at me awhile before replying, slapped his broad
forehead in one of his standard gestures, closed his eyes as if to
collect himself, and finally said:

“Just maybe, Professor Aronnax.”

“But Ned, you’re a professional whaler, a man familiar with all the
great marine mammals—your mind should easily accept this hypothesis of
an enormous cetacean, and you ought to be the last one to doubt it
under these circumstances!”

“That’s just where you’re mistaken, professor,” Ned replied. “The
common man may still believe in fabulous comets crossing outer space,
or in prehistoric monsters living at the earth’s core, but astronomers
and geologists don’t swallow such fairy tales. It’s the same with
whalers. I’ve chased plenty of cetaceans, I’ve harpooned a good
number, I’ve killed several. But no matter how powerful and well armed
they were, neither their tails or their tusks could puncture the
sheet-iron plates of a steamer.”

“Even so, Ned, people mention vessels that narwhale tusks have run
clean through.”

“Wooden ships maybe,” the Canadian replied. “But I’ve never seen the
like. So till I have proof to the contrary, I’ll deny that baleen
whales, sperm whales, or unicorns can do any such thing.”

“Listen to me, Ned—”

“No, no, professor. I’ll go along with anything you want except
that. Some gigantic devilfish maybe . . . ?”

“Even less likely, Ned. The devilfish is merely a mollusk, and even
this name hints at its semiliquid flesh, because it’s Latin meaning
soft one. The devilfish doesn’t belong to the vertebrate branch, and
even if it were 500 feet long, it would still be utterly harmless to
ships like the Scotia or the Abraham Lincoln. Consequently, the feats
of krakens or other monsters of that ilk must be relegated to the
realm of fiction.”

“So, Mr. Naturalist,” Ned Land continued in a bantering tone, “you’ll
just keep on believing in the existence of some enormous cetacean
. . . ?”

“Yes, Ned, I repeat it with a conviction backed by factual logic. I
believe in the existence of a mammal with a powerful constitution,
belonging to the vertebrate branch like baleen whales, sperm whales,
or dolphins, and armed with a tusk made of horn that has tremendous
penetrating power.”

“Humph!” the harpooner put in, shaking his head with the attitude of a
man who doesn’t want to be convinced.

“Note well, my fine Canadian,” I went on, “if such an animal exists,
if it lives deep in the ocean, if it frequents the liquid strata
located miles beneath the surface of the water, it needs to have a
constitution so solid, it defies all comparison.”

“And why this powerful constitution?” Ned asked.

“Because it takes incalculable strength just to live in those deep
strata and withstand their pressure.”

“Oh really?” Ned said, tipping me a wink.

“Oh really, and I can prove it to you with a few simple figures.”

“Bosh!” Ned replied. “You can make figures do anything you want!”

“In business, Ned, but not in mathematics. Listen to me. Let’s accept
that the pressure of one atmosphere is represented by the pressure of
a column of water thirty-two feet high. In reality, such a column of
water wouldn’t be quite so high because here we’re dealing with salt
water, which is denser than fresh water. Well then, when you dive
under the waves, Ned, for every thirty-two feet of water above you,
your body is tolerating the pressure of one more atmosphere, in other
words, one more kilogram per each square centimeter on your body’s
surface. So it follows that at 320 feet down, this pressure is equal
to ten atmospheres, to 100 atmospheres at 3,200 feet, and to 1,000
atmospheres at 32,000 feet, that is, at about two and a half vertical
leagues down. Which is tantamount to saying that if you could reach
such a depth in the ocean, each square centimeter on your body’s
surface would be experiencing 1,000 kilograms of pressure. Now, my
gallant Ned, do you know how many square centimeters you have on your
bodily surface?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion, Professor Aronnax.”

“About 17,000.”

“As many as that?”

“Yes, and since the atmosphere’s pressure actually weighs slightly
more than one kilogram per square centimeter, your 17,000 square
centimeters are tolerating 17,568 kilograms at this very moment.”

“Without my noticing it?”

“Without your noticing it. And if you aren’t crushed by so much
pressure, it’s because the air penetrates the interior of your body
with equal pressure. When the inside and outside pressures are in
perfect balance, they neutralize each other and allow you to tolerate
them without discomfort. But in the water it’s another story.”

“Yes, I see,” Ned replied, growing more interested. “Because the water
surrounds me but doesn’t penetrate me.”

“Precisely, Ned. So at thirty-two feet beneath the surface of the sea,
you’ll undergo a pressure of 17,568 kilograms; at 320 feet, or ten
times greater pressure, it’s 175,680 kilograms; at 3,200 feet, or 100
times greater pressure, it’s 1,756,800 kilograms; finally, at 32,000
feet, or 1,000 times greater pressure, it’s 17,568,000 kilograms; in
other words, you’d be squashed as flat as if you’d just been yanked
from between the plates of a hydraulic press!”

“Fire and brimstone!” Ned put in.

“All right then, my fine harpooner, if vertebrates several hundred
meters long and proportionate in bulk live at such depths, their
surface areas make up millions of square centimeters, and the pressure
they undergo must be assessed in billions of kilograms. Calculate,
then, how much resistance of bone structure and strength of
constitution they’d need in order to withstand such pressures!”

“They’d need to be manufactured,” Ned Land replied, “from sheet-iron
plates eight inches thick, like ironclad frigates.”

“Right, Ned, and then picture the damage such a mass could inflict if
it were launched with the speed of an express train against a ship’s
hull.”

“Yes . . . indeed . . . maybe,” the Canadian replied, staggered by
these figures but still not willing to give in.

“Well, have I convinced you?”

“You’ve convinced me of one thing, Mr. Naturalist. That deep in the
sea, such animals would need to be just as strong as you say—if they
exist.”

“But if they don’t exist, my stubborn harpooner, how do you explain
the accident that happened to the Scotia?”

“It’s maybe . . . ,” Ned said, hesitating.

“Go on!”

“Because . . . it just couldn’t be true!” the Canadian replied,
unconsciously echoing a famous catchphrase of the scientist Arago.

But this reply proved nothing, other than how bullheaded the harpooner
could be. That day I pressed him no further. The Scotia’s accident was
undeniable. Its hole was real enough that it had to be plugged up, and
I don’t think a hole’s existence can be more emphatically proven. Now
then, this hole didn’t make itself, and since it hadn’t resulted from
underwater rocks or underwater machines, it must have been caused by
the perforating tool of some animal.

Now, for all the reasons put forward to this point, I believed that
this animal was a member of the branch Vertebrata, class Mammalia,
group Pisciforma, and finally, order Cetacea. As for the family in
which it would be placed (baleen whale, sperm whale, or dolphin), the
genus to which it belonged, and the species in which it would find its
proper home, these questions had to be left for later. To answer them
called for dissecting this unknown monster; to dissect it called for
catching it; to catch it called for harpooning it—which was Ned Land’s
business; to harpoon it called for sighting it—which was the crew’s
business; and to sight it called for encountering it—which was a
chancy business.


CHAPTER 5

At Random!


FOR SOME WHILE the voyage of the Abraham Lincoln was marked by no
incident. But one circumstance arose that displayed Ned Land’s
marvelous skills and showed just how much confidence we could place in
him.

Off the Falkland Islands on June 30, the frigate came in contact with
a fleet of American whalers, and we learned that they hadn’t seen the
narwhale. But one of them, the captain of the Monroe, knew that Ned
Land had shipped aboard the Abraham Lincoln and asked his help in
hunting a baleen whale that was in sight. Anxious to see Ned Land at
work, Commander Farragut authorized him to make his way aboard the
Monroe. And the Canadian had such good luck that with a right-and-left
shot, he harpooned not one whale but two, striking the first straight
to the heart and catching the other after a few minutes’ chase!

Assuredly, if the monster ever had to deal with Ned Land’s harpoon, I
wouldn’t bet on the monster.

The frigate sailed along the east coast of South America with
prodigious speed. By July 3 we were at the entrance to the Strait of
Magellan, abreast of Cabo de las Virgenes. But Commander Farragut was
unwilling to attempt this tortuous passageway and maneuvered instead
to double Cape Horn.

The crew sided with him unanimously. Indeed, were we likely to
encounter the narwhale in such a cramped strait? Many of our sailors
swore that the monster couldn’t negotiate this passageway simply
because “he’s too big for it!”

Near three o’clock in the afternoon on July 6, fifteen miles south of
shore, the Abraham Lincoln doubled that solitary islet at the tip of
the South American continent, that stray rock Dutch seamen had named
Cape Horn after their hometown of Hoorn. Our course was set for the
northwest, and the next day our frigate’s propeller finally churned
the waters of the Pacific.

“Open your eyes! Open your eyes!” repeated the sailors of the Abraham
Lincoln.

And they opened amazingly wide. Eyes and spyglasses (a bit dazzled, it
is true, by the vista of $2,000.00) didn’t remain at rest for an
instant. Day and night we observed the surface of the ocean, and those
with nyctalopic eyes, whose ability to see in the dark increased their
chances by fifty percent, had an excellent shot at winning the prize.

As for me, I was hardly drawn by the lure of money and yet was far
from the least attentive on board. Snatching only a few minutes for
meals and a few hours for sleep, come rain or come shine, I no longer
left the ship’s deck. Sometimes bending over the forecastle railings,
sometimes leaning against the sternrail, I eagerly scoured that
cotton-colored wake that whitened the ocean as far as the eye could
see! And how many times I shared the excitement of general staff and
crew when some unpredictable whale lifted its blackish back above the
waves. In an instant the frigate’s deck would become densely
populated. The cowls over the companionways would vomit a torrent of
sailors and officers. With panting chests and anxious eyes, we each
would observe the cetacean’s movements. I stared; I stared until I
nearly went blind from a worn-out retina, while Conseil, as stoic as
ever, kept repeating to me in a calm tone:

“If master’s eyes would kindly stop bulging, master will see farther!”

But what a waste of energy! The Abraham Lincoln would change course
and race after the animal sighted, only to find an ordinary baleen
whale or a common sperm whale that soon disappeared amid a chorus of
curses!

However, the weather held good. Our voyage was proceeding under the
most favorable conditions. By then it was the bad season in these
southernmost regions, because July in this zone corresponds to our
January in Europe; but the sea remained smooth and easily visible over
a vast perimeter.

Ned Land still kept up the most tenacious skepticism; beyond his
spells on watch, he pretended that he never even looked at the surface
of the waves, at least while no whales were in sight. And yet the
marvelous power of his vision could have performed yeoman service. But
this stubborn Canadian spent eight hours out of every twelve reading
or sleeping in his cabin. A hundred times I chided him for his
unconcern.

“Bah!” he replied. “Nothing’s out there, Professor Aronnax, and if
there is some animal, what chance would we have of spotting it? Can’t
you see we’re just wandering around at random? People say they’ve
sighted this slippery beast again in the Pacific high seas—I’m truly
willing to believe it, but two months have already gone by since then,
and judging by your narwhale’s personality, it hates growing moldy
from hanging out too long in the same waterways! It’s blessed with a
terrific gift for getting around. Now, professor, you know even better
than I that nature doesn’t violate good sense, and she wouldn’t give
some naturally slow animal the ability to move swiftly if it hadn’t a
need to use that talent. So if the beast does exist, it’s already long
gone!”

I had no reply to this. Obviously we were just groping blindly. But
how else could we go about it? All the same, our chances were
automatically pretty limited. Yet everyone still felt confident of
success, and not a sailor on board would have bet against the narwhale
appearing, and soon.

On July 20 we cut the Tropic of Capricorn at longitude 105 degrees,
and by the 27th of the same month, we had cleared the equator on the
110th meridian. These bearings determined, the frigate took a more
decisive westward heading and tackled the seas of the central
Pacific. Commander Farragut felt, and with good reason, that it was
best to stay in deep waters and keep his distance from continents or
islands, whose neighborhoods the animal always seemed to avoid—“No
doubt,” our bosun said, “because there isn’t enough water for him!” So
the frigate kept well out when passing the Tuamotu, Marquesas, and
Hawaiian Islands, then cut the Tropic of Cancer at longitude 132
degrees and headed for the seas of China.

We were finally in the area of the monster’s latest antics! And in all
honesty, shipboard conditions became life-threatening. Hearts were
pounding hideously, gearing up for futures full of incurable
aneurysms. The entire crew suffered from a nervous excitement that
it’s beyond me to describe. Nobody ate, nobody slept. Twenty times a
day some error in perception, or the optical illusions of some sailor
perched in the crosstrees, would cause intolerable anguish, and this
emotion, repeated twenty times over, kept us in a state of
irritability so intense that a reaction was bound to follow.

And this reaction wasn’t long in coming. For three months, during
which each day seemed like a century, the Abraham Lincoln plowed all
the northerly seas of the Pacific, racing after whales sighted,
abruptly veering off course, swerving sharply from one tack to
another, stopping suddenly, putting on steam and reversing engines in
quick succession, at the risk of stripping its gears, and it didn’t
leave a single point unexplored from the beaches of Japan to the
coasts of America. And we found nothing! Nothing except an immenseness
of deserted waves! Nothing remotely resembling a gigantic narwhale, or
an underwater islet, or a derelict shipwreck, or a runaway reef, or
anything the least bit unearthly!

So the reaction set in. At first, discouragement took hold of people’s
minds, opening the door to disbelief. A new feeling appeared on board,
made up of three-tenths shame and seven-tenths fury. The crew called
themselves “out-and-out fools” for being hoodwinked by a fairy tale,
then grew steadily more furious! The mountains of arguments amassed
over a year collapsed all at once, and each man now wanted only to
catch up on his eating and sleeping, to make up for the time he had so
stupidly sacrificed.

With typical human fickleness, they jumped from one extreme to the
other. Inevitably, the most enthusiastic supporters of the undertaking
became its most energetic opponents. This reaction mounted upward from
the bowels of the ship, from the quarters of the bunker hands to the
messroom of the general staff; and for certain, if it hadn’t been for
Commander Farragut’s characteristic stubbornness, the frigate would
ultimately have put back to that cape in the south.

But this futile search couldn’t drag on much longer. The Abraham
Lincoln had done everything it could to succeed and had no reason to
blame itself. Never had the crew of an American naval craft shown more
patience and zeal; they weren’t responsible for this failure; there
was nothing to do but go home.

A request to this effect was presented to the commander. The commander
stood his ground. His sailors couldn’t hide their discontent, and
their work suffered because of it. I’m unwilling to say that there was
mutiny on board, but after a reasonable period of intransigence,
Commander Farragut, like Christopher Columbus before him, asked for a
grace period of just three days more. After this three-day delay, if
the monster hadn’t appeared, our helmsman would give three turns of
the wheel, and the Abraham Lincoln would chart a course toward
European seas.

This promise was given on November 2. It had the immediate effect of
reviving the crew’s failing spirits. The ocean was observed with
renewed care. Each man wanted one last look with which to sum up his
experience. Spyglasses functioned with feverish energy. A supreme
challenge had been issued to the giant narwhale, and the latter had no
acceptable excuse for ignoring this Summons to Appear!

Two days passed. The Abraham Lincoln stayed at half steam. On the
offchance that the animal might be found in these waterways, a
thousand methods were used to spark its interest or rouse it from its
apathy. Enormous sides of bacon were trailed in our wake, to the great
satisfaction, I must say, of assorted sharks. While the Abraham
Lincoln heaved to, its longboats radiated in every direction around it
and didn’t leave a single point of the sea unexplored. But the evening
of November 4 arrived with this underwater mystery still unsolved.

At noon the next day, November 5, the agreed-upon delay expired. After
a position fix, true to his promise, Commander Farragut would have to
set his course for the southeast and leave the northerly regions of
the Pacific decisively behind.

By then the frigate lay in latitude 31 degrees 15’ north and longitude
136 degrees 42’ east. The shores of Japan were less than 200 miles to
our leeward. Night was coming on. Eight o’clock had just struck. Huge
clouds covered the moon’s disk, then in its first quarter. The sea
undulated placidly beneath the frigate’s stempost.

Just then I was in the bow, leaning over the starboard rail. Conseil,
stationed beside me, stared straight ahead. Roosting in the shrouds,
the crew examined the horizon, which shrank and darkened little by
little. Officers were probing the increasing gloom with their night
glasses. Sometimes the murky ocean sparkled beneath moonbeams that
darted between the fringes of two clouds. Then all traces of light
vanished into the darkness.

Observing Conseil, I discovered that, just barely, the gallant lad had
fallen under the general influence. At least so I thought. Perhaps his
nerves were twitching with curiosity for the first time in history.

“Come on, Conseil!” I told him. “Here’s your last chance to pocket
that $2,000.00!”

“If master will permit my saying so,” Conseil replied, “I never
expected to win that prize, and the Union government could have
promised $100,000.00 and been none the poorer.”

“You’re right, Conseil, it turned out to be a foolish business after
all, and we jumped into it too hastily. What a waste of time, what a
futile expense of emotion! Six months ago we could have been back in
France—”

“In master’s little apartment,” Conseil answered. “In master’s museum!
And by now I would have classified master’s fossils. And master’s
babirusa would be ensconced in its cage at the zoo in the Botanical
Gardens, and it would have attracted every curiosity seeker in town!”

“Quite so, Conseil, and what’s more, I imagine that people will soon
be poking fun at us!”

“To be sure,” Conseil replied serenely, “I do think they’ll have fun
at master’s expense. And must it be said . . . ?”

“It must be said, Conseil.”

“Well then, it will serve master right!”

“How true!”

“When one has the honor of being an expert as master is, one mustn’t
lay himself open to—”

Conseil didn’t have time to complete the compliment. In the midst of
the general silence, a voice became audible. It was Ned Land’s voice,
and it shouted:

“Ahoy! There’s the thing in question, abreast of us to leeward!”


CHAPTER 6

At Full Steam


AT THIS SHOUT the entire crew rushed toward the harpooner—commander,
officers, mates, sailors, cabin boys, down to engineers leaving their
machinery and stokers neglecting their furnaces. The order was given
to stop, and the frigate merely coasted.

By then the darkness was profound, and as good as the Canadian’s eyes
were, I still wondered how he could see—and what he had seen. My heart
was pounding fit to burst.

But Ned Land was not mistaken, and we all spotted the object his hand
was indicating.

Two cable lengths off the Abraham Lincoln’s starboard quarter, the sea
seemed to be lit up from underneath. This was no mere phosphorescent
phenomenon, that much was unmistakable. Submerged some fathoms below
the surface of the water, the monster gave off that very intense but
inexplicable glow that several captains had mentioned in their
reports. This magnificent radiance had to come from some force with a
great illuminating capacity. The edge of its light swept over the sea
in an immense, highly elongated oval, condensing at the center into a
blazing core whose unbearable glow diminished by degrees outward.

“It’s only a cluster of phosphorescent particles!” exclaimed one of
the officers.

“No, sir,” I answered with conviction. “Not even angel-wing clams or
salps have ever given off such a powerful light. That glow is
basically electric in nature. Besides . . . look, look! It’s shifting!
It’s moving back and forth! It’s darting at us!”

A universal shout went up from the frigate.

“Quiet!” Commander Farragut said. “Helm hard to leeward! Reverse
engines!”

Sailors rushed to the helm, engineers to their machinery. Under
reverse steam immediately, the Abraham Lincoln beat to port, sweeping
in a semicircle.

“Right your helm! Engines forward!” Commander Farragut called.

These orders were executed, and the frigate swiftly retreated from
this core of light.

My mistake. It wanted to retreat, but the unearthly animal came at us
with a speed double our own.

We gasped. More stunned than afraid, we stood mute and motionless. The
animal caught up with us, played with us. It made a full circle around
the frigate—then doing fourteen knots—and wrapped us in sheets of
electricity that were like luminous dust. Then it retreated two or
three miles, leaving a phosphorescent trail comparable to those swirls
of steam that shoot behind the locomotive of an express
train. Suddenly, all the way from the dark horizon where it had gone
to gather momentum, the monster abruptly dashed toward the Abraham
Lincoln with frightening speed, stopped sharply twenty feet from our
side plates, and died out—not by diving under the water, since its
glow did not recede gradually—but all at once, as if the source of
this brilliant emanation had suddenly dried up. Then it reappeared on
the other side of the ship, either by circling around us or by gliding
under our hull. At any instant a collision could have occurred that
would have been fatal to us.

Meanwhile I was astonished at the frigate’s maneuvers. It was fleeing,
not fighting. Built to pursue, it was being pursued, and I commented
on this to Commander Farragut. His face, ordinarily so emotionless,
was stamped with indescribable astonishment.

“Professor Aronnax,” he answered me, “I don’t know what kind of
fearsome creature I’m up against, and I don’t want my frigate running
foolish risks in all this darkness. Besides, how should we attack this
unknown creature, how should we defend ourselves against it? Let’s
wait for daylight, and then we’ll play a different role.”

“You’ve no further doubts, commander, as to the nature of this
animal?”

“No, sir, it’s apparently a gigantic narwhale, and an electric one to
boot.”

“Maybe,” I added, “it’s no more approachable than an electric eel or
an electric ray!”

“Right,” the commander replied. “And if it has their power to
electrocute, it’s surely the most dreadful animal ever conceived by
our Creator. That’s why I’ll keep on my guard, sir.”

The whole crew stayed on their feet all night long. No one even
thought of sleeping. Unable to compete with the monster’s speed, the
Abraham Lincoln slowed down and stayed at half steam. For its part,
the narwhale mimicked the frigate, simply rode with the waves, and
seemed determined not to forsake the field of battle.

However, near midnight it disappeared, or to use a more appropriate
expression, “it went out,” like a huge glowworm. Had it fled from us?
We were duty bound to fear so rather than hope so. But at 12:53 in the
morning, a deafening hiss became audible, resembling the sound made by
a waterspout expelled with tremendous intensity.

By then Commander Farragut, Ned Land, and I were on the afterdeck,
peering eagerly into the profound gloom.

“Ned Land,” the commander asked, “you’ve often heard whales
bellowing?”

“Often, sir, but never a whale like this, whose sighting earned me
$2,000.00.”

“Correct, the prize is rightfully yours. But tell me, isn’t that the
noise cetaceans make when they spurt water from their blowholes?”

“The very noise, sir, but this one’s way louder. So there can be no
mistake. There’s definitely a whale lurking in our waters. With your
permission, sir,” the harpooner added, “tomorrow at daybreak we’ll
have words with it.”

“If it’s in a mood to listen to you, Mr. Land,” I replied in a tone
far from convinced.

“Let me get within four harpoon lengths of it,” the Canadian shot
back, “and it had better listen!”

“But to get near it,” the commander went on, “I’d have to put a
whaleboat at your disposal?”

“Certainly, sir.”

“That would be gambling with the lives of my men.”

“And with my own!” the harpooner replied simply.

Near two o’clock in the morning, the core of light reappeared, no less
intense, five miles to windward of the Abraham Lincoln. Despite the
distance, despite the noise of wind and sea, we could distinctly hear
the fearsome thrashings of the animal’s tail, and even its panting
breath. Seemingly, the moment this enormous narwhale came up to
breathe at the surface of the ocean, air was sucked into its lungs
like steam into the huge cylinders of a 2,000-horsepower engine.

“Hmm!” I said to myself. “A cetacean as powerful as a whole cavalry
regiment—now that’s a whale of a whale!”

We stayed on the alert until daylight, getting ready for
action. Whaling gear was set up along the railings. Our chief officer
loaded the blunderbusses, which can launch harpoons as far as a mile,
and long duck guns with exploding bullets that can mortally wound even
the most powerful animals. Ned Land was content to sharpen his
harpoon, a dreadful weapon in his hands.

At six o’clock day began to break, and with the dawn’s early light,
the narwhale’s electric glow disappeared. At seven o’clock the day was
well along, but a very dense morning mist shrank the horizon, and our
best spyglasses were unable to pierce it. The outcome: disappointment
and anger.

I hoisted myself up to the crosstrees of the mizzen sail. Some
officers were already perched on the mastheads.

At eight o’clock the mist rolled ponderously over the waves, and its
huge curls were lifting little by little. The horizon grew wider and
clearer all at once.

Suddenly, just as on the previous evening, Ned Land’s voice was
audible.

“There’s the thing in question, astern to port!” the harpooner
shouted.

Every eye looked toward the point indicated.

There, a mile and a half from the frigate, a long blackish body
emerged a meter above the waves. Quivering violently, its tail was
creating a considerable eddy. Never had caudal equipment thrashed the
sea with such power. An immense wake of glowing whiteness marked the
animal’s track, sweeping in a long curve.

Our frigate drew nearer to the cetacean. I examined it with a
completely open mind. Those reports from the Shannon and the Helvetia
had slightly exaggerated its dimensions, and I put its length at only
250 feet. Its girth was more difficult to judge, but all in all, the
animal seemed to be wonderfully proportioned in all three dimensions.

While I was observing this phenomenal creature, two jets of steam and
water sprang from its blowholes and rose to an altitude of forty
meters, which settled for me its mode of breathing. From this I
finally concluded that it belonged to the branch Vertebrata, class
Mammalia, subclass Monodelphia, group Pisciforma, order Cetacea,
family . . . but here I couldn’t make up my mind. The order Cetacea
consists of three families, baleen whales, sperm whales, dolphins, and
it’s in this last group that narwhales are placed. Each of these
families is divided into several genera, each genus into species, each
species into varieties. So I was still missing variety, species,
genus, and family, but no doubt I would complete my classifying with
the aid of Heaven and Commander Farragut.

The crew were waiting impatiently for orders from their leader. The
latter, after carefully observing the animal, called for his
engineer. The engineer raced over.

“Sir,” the commander said, “are you up to pressure?”

“Aye, sir,” the engineer replied.

“Fine. Stoke your furnaces and clap on full steam!”

Three cheers greeted this order. The hour of battle had sounded. A few
moments later, the frigate’s two funnels vomited torrents of black
smoke, and its deck quaked from the trembling of its boilers.

Driven forward by its powerful propeller, the Abraham Lincoln headed
straight for the animal. Unconcerned, the latter let us come within
half a cable length; then, not bothering to dive, it got up a little
speed, retreated, and was content to keep its distance.

This chase dragged on for about three-quarters of an hour without the
frigate gaining two fathoms on the cetacean. At this rate, it was
obvious that we would never catch up with it.

Infuriated, Commander Farragut kept twisting the thick tuft of hair
that flourished below his chin.

“Ned Land!” he called.

The Canadian reported at once.

“Well, Mr. Land,” the commander asked, “do you still advise putting my
longboats to sea?”

“No, sir,” Ned Land replied, “because that beast won’t be caught
against its will.”

“Then what should we do?”

“Stoke up more steam, sir, if you can. As for me, with your permission
I’ll go perch on the bobstays under the bowsprit, and if we can get
within a harpoon length, I’ll harpoon the brute.”

“Go to it, Ned,” Commander Farragut replied. “Engineer,” he called,
“keep the pressure mounting!”

Ned Land made his way to his post. The furnaces were urged into
greater activity; our propeller did forty-three revolutions per
minute, and steam shot from the valves. Heaving the log, we verified
that the Abraham Lincoln was going at the rate of 18.5 miles per hour.

But that damned animal also did a speed of 18.5.

For the next hour our frigate kept up this pace without gaining a
fathom! This was humiliating for one of the fastest racers in the
American navy. The crew were working up into a blind rage. Sailor
after sailor heaved insults at the monster, which couldn’t be bothered
with answering back. Commander Farragut was no longer content simply
to twist his goatee; he chewed on it.

The engineer was summoned once again.

“You’re up to maximum pressure?” the commander asked him.

“Aye, sir,” the engineer replied.

“And your valves are charged to . . . ?”

“To six and a half atmospheres.”

“Charge them to ten atmospheres.”

A typical American order if I ever heard one. It would have sounded
just fine during some Mississippi paddle-wheeler race, to “outstrip
the competition!”

“Conseil,” I said to my gallant servant, now at my side, “you realize
that we’ll probably blow ourselves skyhigh?”

“As master wishes!” Conseil replied.

All right, I admit it: I did wish to run this risk!

The valves were charged. More coal was swallowed by the
furnaces. Ventilators shot torrents of air over the braziers. The
Abraham Lincoln’s speed increased. Its masts trembled down to their
blocks, and swirls of smoke could barely squeeze through the narrow
funnels.

We heaved the log a second time.

“Well, helmsman?” Commander Farragut asked.

“19.3 miles per hour, sir.”

“Keep stoking the furnaces.”

The engineer did so. The pressure gauge marked ten atmospheres. But no
doubt the cetacean itself had “warmed up,” because without the least
trouble, it also did 19.3.

What a chase! No, I can’t describe the excitement that shook my very
being. Ned Land stayed at his post, harpoon in hand. Several times the
animal let us approach.

“We’re overhauling it!” the Canadian would shout.

Then, just as he was about to strike, the cetacean would steal off
with a swiftness I could estimate at no less than thirty miles per
hour. And even at our maximum speed, it took the liberty of thumbing
its nose at the frigate by running a full circle around us! A howl of
fury burst from every throat!

By noon we were no farther along than at eight o’clock in the morning.

Commander Farragut then decided to use more direct methods.

“Bah!” he said. “So that animal is faster than the Abraham
Lincoln. All right, we’ll see if it can outrun our conical shells!
Mate, man the gun in the bow!”

Our forecastle cannon was immediately loaded and leveled. The
cannoneer fired a shot, but his shell passed some feet above the
cetacean, which stayed half a mile off.

“Over to somebody with better aim!” the commander shouted. “And
$500.00 to the man who can pierce that infernal beast!”

Calm of eye, cool of feature, an old gray-bearded gunner—I can see him
to this day—approached the cannon, put it in position, and took aim
for a good while. There was a mighty explosion, mingled with cheers
from the crew.

The shell reached its target; it hit the animal, but not in the usual
fashion—it bounced off that rounded surface and vanished into the sea
two miles out.

“Oh drat!” said the old gunner in his anger. “That rascal must be
covered with six-inch armor plate!”

“Curse the beast!” Commander Farragut shouted.

The hunt was on again, and Commander Farragut leaned over to me,
saying:

“I’ll chase that animal till my frigate explodes!”

“Yes,” I replied, “and nobody would blame you!”

We could still hope that the animal would tire out and not be as
insensitive to exhaustion as our steam engines. But no such luck. Hour
after hour went by without it showing the least sign of weariness.

However, to the Abraham Lincoln’s credit, it must be said that we
struggled on with tireless persistence. I estimate that we covered a
distance of at least 500 kilometers during this ill-fated day of
November 6. But night fell and wrapped the surging ocean in its
shadows.

By then I thought our expedition had come to an end, that we would
never see this fantastic animal again. I was mistaken.

At 10:50 in the evening, that electric light reappeared three miles to
windward of the frigate, just as clear and intense as the night
before.

The narwhale seemed motionless. Was it asleep perhaps, weary from its
workday, just riding with the waves? This was our chance, and
Commander Farragut was determined to take full advantage of it.

He gave his orders. The Abraham Lincoln stayed at half steam,
advancing cautiously so as not to awaken its adversary. In midocean
it’s not unusual to encounter whales so sound asleep they can
successfully be attacked, and Ned Land had harpooned more than one in
its slumber. The Canadian went to resume his post on the bobstays
under the bowsprit.

The frigate approached without making a sound, stopped two cable
lengths from the animal and coasted. Not a soul breathed on board. A
profound silence reigned over the deck. We were not 100 feet from the
blazing core of light, whose glow grew stronger and dazzled the eyes.

Just then, leaning over the forecastle railing, I saw Ned Land below
me, one hand grasping the martingale, the other brandishing his
dreadful harpoon. Barely twenty feet separated him from the motionless
animal.

All at once his arm shot forward and the harpoon was launched. I heard
the weapon collide resonantly, as if it had hit some hard substance.

The electric light suddenly went out, and two enormous waterspouts
crashed onto the deck of the frigate, racing like a torrent from stem
to stern, toppling crewmen, breaking spare masts and yardarms from
their lashings.

A hideous collision occurred, and thrown over the rail with no time to
catch hold of it, I was hurled into the sea.


CHAPTER 7

A Whale of Unknown Species


ALTHOUGH I WAS startled by this unexpected descent, I at least have a
very clear recollection of my sensations during it.

At first I was dragged about twenty feet under. I’m a good swimmer,
without claiming to equal such other authors as Byron and Edgar Allan
Poe, who were master divers, and I didn’t lose my head on the way
down. With two vigorous kicks of the heel, I came back to the surface
of the sea.

My first concern was to look for the frigate. Had the crew seen me go
overboard? Was the Abraham Lincoln tacking about? Would Commander
Farragut put a longboat to sea? Could I hope to be rescued?

The gloom was profound. I glimpsed a black mass disappearing eastward,
where its running lights were fading out in the distance. It was the
frigate. I felt I was done for.

“Help! Help!” I shouted, swimming desperately toward the Abraham
Lincoln.

My clothes were weighing me down. The water glued them to my body,
they were paralyzing my movements. I was sinking! I was suffocating
. . . !

“Help!”

This was the last shout I gave. My mouth was filling with water. I
struggled against being dragged into the depths. . . .

Suddenly my clothes were seized by energetic hands, I felt myself
pulled abruptly back to the surface of the sea, and yes, I heard these
words pronounced in my ear:

“If master would oblige me by leaning on my shoulder, master will swim
with much greater ease.”

With one hand I seized the arm of my loyal Conseil.

“You!” I said. “You!”

“Myself,” Conseil replied, “and at master’s command.”

“That collision threw you overboard along with me?”

“Not at all. But being in master’s employ, I followed master.”

The fine lad thought this only natural!

“What about the frigate?” I asked.

“The frigate?” Conseil replied, rolling over on his back. “I think
master had best not depend on it to any great extent!”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that just as I jumped overboard, I heard the men at the
helm shout, ‘Our propeller and rudder are smashed!’ ”

“Smashed?”

“Yes, smashed by the monster’s tusk! I believe it’s the sole injury
the Abraham Lincoln has sustained. But most inconveniently for us, the
ship can no longer steer.”

“Then we’re done for!”

“Perhaps,” Conseil replied serenely. “However, we still have a few
hours before us, and in a few hours one can do a great many things!”

Conseil’s unflappable composure cheered me up. I swam more vigorously,
but hampered by clothes that were as restricting as a cloak made of
lead, I was managing with only the greatest difficulty. Conseil
noticed as much.

“Master will allow me to make an incision,” he said.

And he slipped an open clasp knife under my clothes, slitting them
from top to bottom with one swift stroke. Then he briskly undressed me
while I swam for us both.

I then did Conseil the same favor, and we continued to “navigate” side
by side.

But our circumstances were no less dreadful. Perhaps they hadn’t seen
us go overboard; and even if they had, the frigate—being undone by its
rudder—couldn’t return to leeward after us. So we could count only on
its longboats.

Conseil had coolly reasoned out this hypothesis and laid his plans
accordingly. An amazing character, this boy; in midocean, this stoic
lad seemed right at home!

So, having concluded that our sole chance for salvation lay in being
picked up by the Abraham Lincoln’s longboats, we had to take steps to
wait for them as long as possible. Consequently, I decided to divide
our energies so we wouldn’t both be worn out at the same time, and
this was the arrangement: while one of us lay on his back, staying
motionless with arms crossed and legs outstretched, the other would
swim and propel his partner forward. This towing role was to last no
longer than ten minutes, and by relieving each other in this way, we
could stay afloat for hours, perhaps even until daybreak.

Slim chance, but hope springs eternal in the human breast! Besides,
there were two of us. Lastly, I can vouch—as improbable as it
seems—that even if I had wanted to destroy all my illusions, even if I
had been willing to “give in to despair,” I could not have done so!

The cetacean had rammed our frigate at about eleven o’clock in the
evening. I therefore calculated on eight hours of swimming until
sunrise. A strenuous task, but feasible, thanks to our relieving each
other. The sea was pretty smooth and barely tired us. Sometimes I
tried to peer through the dense gloom, which was broken only by the
phosphorescent flickers coming from our movements. I stared at the
luminous ripples breaking over my hands, shimmering sheets spattered
with blotches of bluish gray. It seemed as if we’d plunged into a pool
of quicksilver.

Near one o’clock in the morning, I was overcome with tremendous
exhaustion. My limbs stiffened in the grip of intense cramps. Conseil
had to keep me going, and attending to our self-preservation became
his sole responsibility. I soon heard the poor lad gasping; his
breathing became shallow and quick. I didn’t think he could stand such
exertions for much longer.

“Go on! Go on!” I told him.

“Leave master behind?” he replied. “Never! I’ll drown before he does!”

Just then, past the fringes of a large cloud that the wind was driving
eastward, the moon appeared. The surface of the sea glistened under
its rays. That kindly light rekindled our strength. I held up my head
again. My eyes darted to every point of the horizon. I spotted the
frigate. It was five miles from us and formed no more than a dark,
barely perceptible mass. But as for longboats, not a one in sight!

I tried to call out. What was the use at such a distance! My swollen
lips wouldn’t let a single sound through. Conseil could still
articulate a few words, and I heard him repeat at intervals:

“Help! Help!”

Ceasing all movement for an instant, we listened. And it may have been
a ringing in my ear, from this organ filling with impeded blood, but
it seemed to me that Conseil’s shout had received an answer back.

“Did you hear that?” I muttered.

“Yes, yes!”

And Conseil hurled another desperate plea into space.

This time there could be no mistake! A human voice had answered us!
Was it the voice of some poor devil left behind in midocean, some
other victim of that collision suffered by our ship? Or was it one of
the frigate’s longboats, hailing us out of the gloom?

Conseil made one final effort, and bracing his hands on my shoulders,
while I offered resistance with one supreme exertion, he raised
himself half out of the water, then fell back exhausted.

“What did you see?”

“I saw . . . ,” he muttered, “I saw . . . but we mustn’t talk
. . . save our strength . . . !”

What had he seen? Then, lord knows why, the thought of the monster
came into my head for the first time . . . ! But even so, that voice
. . . ? Gone are the days when Jonahs took refuge in the bellies of
whales!

Nevertheless, Conseil kept towing me. Sometimes he looked up, stared
straight ahead, and shouted a request for directions, which was
answered by a voice that was getting closer and closer. I could barely
hear it. I was at the end of my strength; my fingers gave out; my
hands were no help to me; my mouth opened convulsively, filling with
brine; its coldness ran through me; I raised my head one last time,
then I collapsed. . . .

Just then something hard banged against me. I clung to it. Then I felt
myself being pulled upward, back to the surface of the water; my chest
caved in, and I fainted. . . .

For certain, I came to quickly, because someone was massaging me so
vigorously it left furrows in my flesh. I half opened my eyes. . . .

“Conseil!” I muttered.

“Did master ring for me?” Conseil replied.

Just then, in the last light of a moon settling on the horizon, I
spotted a face that wasn’t Conseil’s but which I recognized at once.

“Ned!” I exclaimed.

“In person, sir, and still after his prize!” the Canadian replied.

“You were thrown overboard after the frigate’s collision?”

“Yes, professor, but I was luckier than you, and right away I was able
to set foot on this floating islet.”

“Islet?”

“Or in other words, on our gigantic narwhale.”

“Explain yourself, Ned.”

“It’s just that I soon realized why my harpoon got blunted and
couldn’t puncture its hide.”

“Why, Ned, why?”

“Because, professor, this beast is made of boilerplate steel!”

At this point in my story, I need to get a grip on myself, reconstruct
exactly what I experienced, and make doubly sure of everything I
write.

The Canadian’s last words caused a sudden upheaval in my brain. I
swiftly hoisted myself to the summit of this half-submerged creature
or object that was serving as our refuge. I tested it with my
foot. Obviously it was some hard, impenetrable substance, not the soft
matter that makes up the bodies of our big marine mammals.

But this hard substance could have been a bony carapace, like those
that covered some prehistoric animals, and I might have left it at
that and classified this monster among such amphibious reptiles as
turtles or alligators.

Well, no. The blackish back supporting me was smooth and polished with
no overlapping scales. On impact, it gave off a metallic sonority, and
as incredible as this sounds, it seemed, I swear, to be made of
riveted plates.

No doubts were possible! This animal, this monster, this natural
phenomenon that had puzzled the whole scientific world, that had
muddled and misled the minds of seamen in both hemispheres, was, there
could be no escaping it, an even more astonishing phenomenon—a
phenomenon made by the hand of man.

Even if I had discovered that some fabulous, mythological creature
really existed, it wouldn’t have given me such a terrific mental
jolt. It’s easy enough to accept that prodigious things can come from
our Creator. But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that
the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this
staggers the mind!

But there was no question now. We were stretched out on the back of
some kind of underwater boat that, as far as I could judge, boasted
the shape of an immense steel fish. Ned Land had clear views on the
issue. Conseil and I could only line up behind him.

“But then,” I said, “does this contraption contain some sort of
locomotive mechanism, and a crew to run it?”

“Apparently,” the harpooner replied. “And yet for the three hours I’ve
lived on this floating island, it hasn’t shown a sign of life.”

“This boat hasn’t moved at all?”

“No, Professor Aronnax. It just rides with the waves, but otherwise it
hasn’t stirred.”

“But we know that it’s certainly gifted with great speed. Now then,
since an engine is needed to generate that speed, and a mechanic to
run that engine, I conclude: we’re saved.”

“Humph!” Ned Land put in, his tone denoting reservations.

Just then, as if to take my side in the argument, a bubbling began
astern of this strange submersible—whose drive mechanism was obviously
a propeller—and the boat started to move. We barely had time to hang
on to its topside, which emerged about eighty centimeters above
water. Fortunately its speed was not excessive.

“So long as it navigates horizontally,” Ned Land muttered, “I’ve no
complaints. But if it gets the urge to dive, I wouldn’t give $2.00 for
my hide!”

The Canadian might have quoted a much lower price. So it was
imperative to make contact with whatever beings were confined inside
the plating of this machine. I searched its surface for an opening or
a hatch, a “manhole,” to use the official term; but the lines of
rivets had been firmly driven into the sheet-iron joins and were
straight and uniform.

Moreover, the moon then disappeared and left us in profound
darkness. We had to wait for daylight to find some way of getting
inside this underwater boat.

So our salvation lay totally in the hands of the mysterious helmsmen
steering this submersible, and if it made a dive, we were done for!
But aside from this occurring, I didn’t doubt the possibility of our
making contact with them. In fact, if they didn’t produce their own
air, they inevitably had to make periodic visits to the surface of the
ocean to replenish their oxygen supply. Hence the need for some
opening that put the boat’s interior in contact with the atmosphere.

As for any hope of being rescued by Commander Farragut, that had to be
renounced completely. We were being swept westward, and I estimate
that our comparatively moderate speed reached twelve miles per
hour. The propeller churned the waves with mathematical regularity,
sometimes emerging above the surface and throwing phosphorescent spray
to great heights.

Near four o’clock in the morning, the submersible picked up speed. We
could barely cope with this dizzying rush, and the waves battered us
at close range. Fortunately Ned’s hands came across a big mooring ring
fastened to the topside of this sheet-iron back, and we all held on
for dear life.

Finally this long night was over. My imperfect memories won’t let me
recall my every impression of it. A single detail comes back to
me. Several times, during various lulls of wind and sea, I thought I
heard indistinct sounds, a sort of elusive harmony produced by distant
musical chords. What was the secret behind this underwater navigating,
whose explanation the whole world had sought in vain? What beings
lived inside this strange boat? What mechanical force allowed it to
move about with such prodigious speed?

Daylight appeared. The morning mists surrounded us, but they soon
broke up. I was about to proceed with a careful examination of the
hull, whose topside formed a sort of horizontal platform, when I felt
it sinking little by little.

“Oh, damnation!” Ned Land shouted, stamping his foot on the resonant
sheet iron. “Open up there, you antisocial navigators!”

But it was difficult to make yourself heard above the deafening beats
of the propeller. Fortunately this submerging movement stopped.

From inside the boat, there suddenly came noises of iron fastenings
pushed roughly aside. One of the steel plates flew up, a man appeared,
gave a bizarre yell, and instantly disappeared.

A few moments later, eight strapping fellows appeared silently, their
faces like masks, and dragged us down into their fearsome machine.


CHAPTER 8

“Mobilis in Mobili”


THIS BRUTALLY EXECUTED capture was carried out with lightning
speed. My companions and I had no time to collect ourselves. I don’t
know how they felt about being shoved inside this aquatic prison, but
as for me, I was shivering all over. With whom were we dealing? Surely
with some new breed of pirates, exploiting the sea after their own
fashion.

The narrow hatch had barely closed over me when I was surrounded by
profound darkness. Saturated with the outside light, my eyes couldn’t
make out a thing. I felt my naked feet clinging to the steps of an
iron ladder. Forcibly seized, Ned Land and Conseil were behind me. At
the foot of the ladder, a door opened and instantly closed behind us
with a loud clang.

We were alone. Where? I couldn’t say, could barely even imagine. All
was darkness, but such utter darkness that after several minutes, my
eyes were still unable to catch a single one of those hazy gleams that
drift through even the blackest nights.

Meanwhile, furious at these goings on, Ned Land gave free rein to his
indignation.

“Damnation!” he exclaimed. “These people are about as hospitable as
the savages of New Caledonia! All that’s lacking is for them to be
cannibals! I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, but believe you me,
they won’t eat me without my kicking up a protest!”

“Calm yourself, Ned my friend,” Conseil replied serenely. “Don’t flare
up so quickly! We aren’t in a kettle yet!”

“In a kettle, no,” the Canadian shot back, “but in an oven for
sure. It’s dark enough for one. Luckily my Bowie knife hasn’t left me,
and I can still see well enough to put it to use.* The first one of
these bandits who lays a hand on me—”

*Author’s Note: A Bowie knife is a wide-bladed dagger that Americans
 are forever carrying around.

“Don’t be so irritable, Ned,” I then told the harpooner, “and don’t
ruin things for us with pointless violence. Who knows whether they
might be listening to us? Instead, let’s try to find out where we
are!”

I started moving, groping my way. After five steps I encountered an
iron wall made of riveted boilerplate. Then, turning around, I bumped
into a wooden table next to which several stools had been set. The
floor of this prison lay hidden beneath thick, hempen matting that
deadened the sound of footsteps. Its naked walls didn’t reveal any
trace of a door or window. Going around the opposite way, Conseil met
up with me, and we returned to the middle of this cabin, which had to
be twenty feet long by ten wide. As for its height, not even Ned Land,
with his great stature, was able to determine it.

Half an hour had already gone by without our situation changing, when
our eyes were suddenly spirited from utter darkness into blinding
light. Our prison lit up all at once; in other words, it filled with
luminescent matter so intense that at first I couldn’t stand the
brightness of it. From its glare and whiteness, I recognized the
electric glow that had played around this underwater boat like some
magnificent phosphorescent phenomenon. After involuntarily closing my
eyes, I reopened them and saw that this luminous force came from a
frosted half globe curving out of the cabin’s ceiling.

“Finally! It’s light enough to see!” Ned Land exclaimed, knife in
hand, staying on the defensive.

“Yes,” I replied, then ventured the opposite view. “But as for our
situation, we’re still in the dark.”

“Master must learn patience,” said the emotionless Conseil.

This sudden illumination of our cabin enabled me to examine its
tiniest details. It contained only a table and five stools. Its
invisible door must have been hermetically sealed. Not a sound reached
our ears. Everything seemed dead inside this boat. Was it in motion,
or stationary on the surface of the ocean, or sinking into the depths?
I couldn’t tell.

But this luminous globe hadn’t been turned on without good
reason. Consequently, I hoped that some crewmen would soon make an
appearance. If you want to consign people to oblivion, you don’t light
up their dungeons.

I was not mistaken. Unlocking noises became audible, a door opened,
and two men appeared.

One was short and stocky, powerfully muscled, broad shouldered, robust
of limbs, the head squat, the hair black and luxuriant, the mustache
heavy, the eyes bright and penetrating, and his whole personality
stamped with that southern-blooded zest that, in France, typifies the
people of Provence. The philosopher Diderot has very aptly claimed
that a man’s bearing is the clue to his character, and this stocky
little man was certainly a living proof of this claim. You could sense
that his everyday conversation must have been packed with such vivid
figures of speech as personification, symbolism, and misplaced
modifiers. But I was never in a position to verify this because,
around me, he used only an odd and utterly incomprehensible dialect.

The second stranger deserves a more detailed description. A disciple
of such character-judging anatomists as Gratiolet or Engel could have
read this man’s features like an open book. Without hesitation, I
identified his dominant qualities—self-confidence, since his head
reared like a nobleman’s above the arc formed by the lines of his
shoulders, and his black eyes gazed with icy assurance; calmness,
since his skin, pale rather than ruddy, indicated tranquility of
blood; energy, shown by the swiftly knitting muscles of his brow; and
finally courage, since his deep breathing denoted tremendous reserves
of vitality.

I might add that this was a man of great pride, that his calm, firm
gaze seemed to reflect thinking on an elevated plane, and that the
harmony of his facial expressions and bodily movements resulted in an
overall effect of unquestionable candor—according to the findings of
physiognomists, those analysts of facial character.

I felt “involuntarily reassured” in his presence, and this boded well
for our interview.

Whether this individual was thirty-five or fifty years of age, I could
not precisely state. He was tall, his forehead broad, his nose
straight, his mouth clearly etched, his teeth magnificent, his hands
refined, tapered, and to use a word from palmistry, highly “psychic,”
in other words, worthy of serving a lofty and passionate spirit. This
man was certainly the most wonderful physical specimen I had ever
encountered. One unusual detail: his eyes were spaced a little far
from each other and could instantly take in nearly a quarter of the
horizon. This ability—as I later verified—was strengthened by a range
of vision even greater than Ned Land’s. When this stranger focused his
gaze on an object, his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy
eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision,
and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking
into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could
pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the
deepest seas . . . !

Wearing caps made of sea-otter fur, and shod in sealskin fishing
boots, these two strangers were dressed in clothing made from some
unique fabric that flattered the figure and allowed great freedom of
movement.

The taller of the two—apparently the leader on board—examined us with
the greatest care but without pronouncing a word. Then, turning to his
companion, he conversed with him in a language I didn’t recognize. It
was a sonorous, harmonious, flexible dialect whose vowels seemed to
undergo a highly varied accentuation.

The other replied with a shake of the head and added two or three
utterly incomprehensible words. Then he seemed to question me directly
with a long stare.

I replied in clear French that I wasn’t familiar with his language;
but he didn’t seem to understand me, and the situation grew rather
baffling.

“Still, master should tell our story,” Conseil said to me. “Perhaps
these gentlemen will grasp a few words of it!”

I tried again, telling the tale of our adventures, clearly
articulating my every syllable, and not leaving out a single detail. I
stated our names and titles; then, in order, I introduced Professor
Aronnax, his manservant Conseil, and Mr. Ned Land, harpooner.

The man with calm, gentle eyes listened to me serenely, even
courteously, and paid remarkable attention. But nothing in his facial
expression indicated that he understood my story. When I finished, he
didn’t pronounce a single word.

One resource still left was to speak English. Perhaps they would be
familiar with this nearly universal language. But I only knew it, as I
did the German language, well enough to read it fluently, not well
enough to speak it correctly. Here, however, our overriding need was
to make ourselves understood.

“Come on, it’s your turn,” I told the harpooner. “Over to you,
Mr. Land. Pull out of your bag of tricks the best English ever spoken
by an Anglo-Saxon, and try for a more favorable result than mine.”

Ned needed no persuading and started our story all over again, most of
which I could follow. Its content was the same, but the form
differed. Carried away by his volatile temperament, the Canadian put
great animation into it. He complained vehemently about being
imprisoned in defiance of his civil rights, asked by virtue of which
law he was hereby detained, invoked writs of habeas corpus, threatened
to press charges against anyone holding him in illegal custody,
ranted, gesticulated, shouted, and finally conveyed by an expressive
gesture that we were dying of hunger.

This was perfectly true, but we had nearly forgotten the fact.

Much to his amazement, the harpooner seemed no more intelligible than
I had been. Our visitors didn’t bat an eye. Apparently they were
engineers who understood the languages of neither the French physicist
Arago nor the English physicist Faraday.

Thoroughly baffled after vainly exhausting our philological resources,
I no longer knew what tactic to pursue, when Conseil told me:

“If master will authorize me, I’ll tell the whole business in German.”

“What! You know German?” I exclaimed.

“Like most Flemish people, with all due respect to master.”

“On the contrary, my respect is due you. Go to it, my boy.”

And Conseil, in his serene voice, described for the third time the
various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our narrator’s fine
accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German language met with no
success.

Finally, as a last resort, I hauled out everything I could remember
from my early schooldays, and I tried to narrate our adventures in
Latin. Cicero would have plugged his ears and sent me to the scullery,
but somehow I managed to pull through. With the same negative result.

This last attempt ultimately misfiring, the two strangers exchanged a
few words in their incomprehensible language and withdrew, not even
favoring us with one of those encouraging gestures that are used in
every country in the world. The door closed again.

“This is outrageous!” Ned Land shouted, exploding for the twentieth
time. “I ask you! We speak French, English, German, and Latin to these
rogues, and neither of them has the decency to even answer back!”

“Calm down, Ned,” I told the seething harpooner. “Anger won’t get us
anywhere.”

“But professor,” our irascible companion went on, “can’t you see that
we could die of hunger in this iron cage?”

“Bah!” Conseil put in philosophically. “We can hold out a good while
yet!”

“My friends,” I said, “we mustn’t despair. We’ve gotten out of tighter
spots. So please do me the favor of waiting a bit before you form your
views on the commander and crew of this boat.”

“My views are fully formed,” Ned Land shot back. “They’re rogues!”

“Oh good! And from what country?”

“Roguedom!”

“My gallant Ned, as yet that country isn’t clearly marked on maps of
the world, but I admit that the nationality of these two strangers is
hard to make out! Neither English, French, nor German, that’s all we
can say. But I’m tempted to think that the commander and his chief
officer were born in the low latitudes. There must be southern blood
in them. But as to whether they’re Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, or East
Indians, their physical characteristics don’t give me enough to go
on. And as for their speech, it’s utterly incomprehensible.”

“That’s the nuisance in not knowing every language,” Conseil replied,
“or the drawback in not having one universal language!”

“Which would all go out the window!” Ned Land replied. “Don’t you see,
these people have a language all to themselves, a language they’ve
invented just to cause despair in decent people who ask for a little
dinner! Why, in every country on earth, when you open your mouth, snap
your jaws, smack your lips and teeth, isn’t that the world’s most
understandable message? From Quebec to the Tuamotu Islands, from Paris
to the Antipodes, doesn’t it mean: I’m hungry, give me a bite to eat!”

“Oh,” Conseil put in, “there are some people so unintelligent by
nature . . .”

As he was saying these words, the door opened. A steward entered.* He
brought us some clothes, jackets and sailor’s pants, made out of a
fabric whose nature I didn’t recognize. I hurried to change into them,
and my companions followed suit.

*Author’s Note: A steward is a waiter on board a steamer.

Meanwhile our silent steward, perhaps a deaf-mute, set the table and
laid three place settings.

“There’s something serious afoot,” Conseil said, “and it bodes well.”

“Bah!” replied the rancorous harpooner. “What the devil do you suppose
they eat around here? Turtle livers, loin of shark, dogfish steaks?”

“We’ll soon find out!” Conseil said.

Overlaid with silver dish covers, various platters had been neatly
positioned on the table cloth, and we sat down to eat. Assuredly, we
were dealing with civilized people, and if it hadn’t been for this
electric light flooding over us, I would have thought we were in the
dining room of the Hotel Adelphi in Liverpool, or the Grand Hotel in
Paris. However, I feel compelled to mention that bread and wine were
totally absent. The water was fresh and clear, but it was still
water—which wasn’t what Ned Land had in mind. Among the foods we were
served, I was able to identify various daintily dressed fish; but I
couldn’t make up my mind about certain otherwise excellent dishes, and
I couldn’t even tell whether their contents belonged to the vegetable
or the animal kingdom. As for the tableware, it was elegant and in
perfect taste. Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, and plate, bore on
its reverse a letter encircled by a Latin motto, and here is its exact
duplicate:

  MOBILIS IN MOBILI
  N

Moving within the moving element! It was a highly appropriate motto
for this underwater machine, so long as the preposition in is
translated as within and not upon. The letter N was no doubt the
initial of the name of that mystifying individual in command beneath
the seas!

Ned and Conseil had no time for such musings. They were wolfing down
their food, and without further ado I did the same. By now I felt
reassured about our fate, and it seemed obvious that our hosts didn’t
intend to let us die of starvation.

But all earthly things come to an end, all things must pass, even the
hunger of people who haven’t eaten for fifteen hours. Our appetites
appeased, we felt an urgent need for sleep. A natural reaction after
that interminable night of fighting for our lives.

“Ye gods, I’ll sleep soundly,” Conseil said.

“Me, I’m out like a light!” Ned Land replied.

My two companions lay down on the cabin’s carpeting and were soon deep
in slumber.

As for me, I gave in less readily to this intense need for sleep. Too
many thoughts had piled up in my mind, too many insoluble questions
had arisen, too many images were keeping my eyelids open! Where were
we? What strange power was carrying us along? I felt—or at least I
thought I did—the submersible sinking toward the sea’s lower
strata. Intense nightmares besieged me. In these mysterious marine
sanctuaries, I envisioned hosts of unknown animals, and this
underwater boat seemed to be a blood relation of theirs: living,
breathing, just as fearsome . . . ! Then my mind grew calmer, my
imagination melted into hazy drowsiness, and I soon fell into an
uneasy slumber.


CHAPTER 9

The Tantrums of Ned Land


I HAVE NO IDEA how long this slumber lasted; but it must have been a
good while, since we were completely over our exhaustion. I was the
first one to wake up. My companions weren’t yet stirring and still lay
in their corners like inanimate objects.

I had barely gotten up from my passably hard mattress when I felt my
mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a careful
reexamination of our cell.

Nothing had changed in its interior arrangements. The prison was still
a prison and its prisoners still prisoners. But, taking advantage of
our slumber, the steward had cleared the table. Consequently, nothing
indicated any forthcoming improvement in our situation, and I
seriously wondered if we were doomed to spend the rest of our lives in
this cage.

This prospect seemed increasingly painful to me because, even though
my brain was clear of its obsessions from the night before, I was
feeling an odd short-windedness in my chest. It was becoming hard for
me to breathe. The heavy air was no longer sufficient for the full
play of my lungs. Although our cell was large, we obviously had used
up most of the oxygen it contained. In essence, over an hour’s time a
single human being consumes all the oxygen found in 100 liters of air,
at which point that air has become charged with a nearly equal amount
of carbon dioxide and is no longer fit for breathing.

So it was now urgent to renew the air in our prison, and no doubt the
air in this whole underwater boat as well.

Here a question popped into my head. How did the commander of this
aquatic residence go about it? Did he obtain air using chemical
methods, releasing the oxygen contained in potassium chlorate by
heating it, meanwhile absorbing the carbon dioxide with potassium
hydroxide? If so, he would have to keep up some kind of relationship
with the shore, to come by the materials needed for such an
operation. Did he simply limit himself to storing the air in
high-pressure tanks and then dispense it according to his crew’s
needs? Perhaps. Or, proceeding in a more convenient, more economical,
and consequently more probable fashion, was he satisfied with merely
returning to breathe at the surface of the water like a cetacean,
renewing his oxygen supply every twenty-four hours? In any event,
whatever his method was, it seemed prudent to me that he use this
method without delay.

In fact, I had already resorted to speeding up my inhalations in order
to extract from the cell what little oxygen it contained, when
suddenly I was refreshed by a current of clean air, scented with a
salty aroma. It had to be a sea breeze, life-giving and charged with
iodine! I opened my mouth wide, and my lungs glutted themselves on the
fresh particles. At the same time, I felt a swaying, a rolling of
moderate magnitude but definitely noticeable. This boat, this
sheet-iron monster, had obviously just risen to the surface of the
ocean, there to breathe in good whale fashion. So the ship’s mode of
ventilation was finally established.

When I had absorbed a chestful of this clean air, I looked for the
conduit—the “air carrier,” if you prefer—that allowed this beneficial
influx to reach us, and I soon found it. Above the door opened an air
vent that let in a fresh current of oxygen, renewing the thin air in
our cell.

I had gotten to this point in my observations when Ned and Conseil
woke up almost simultaneously, under the influence of this reviving
air purification. They rubbed their eyes, stretched their arms, and
sprang to their feet.

“Did master sleep well?” Conseil asked me with his perennial good
manners.

“Extremely well, my gallant lad,” I replied. “And how about you,
Mr. Ned Land?”

“Like a log, professor. But I must be imagining things, because it
seems like I’m breathing a sea breeze!”

A seaman couldn’t be wrong on this topic, and I told the Canadian what
had gone on while he slept.

“Good!” he said. “That explains perfectly all that bellowing we heard,
when our so-called narwhale lay in sight of the Abraham Lincoln.”

“Perfectly, Mr. Land. It was catching its breath!”

“Only I’ve no idea what time it is, Professor Aronnax, unless maybe
it’s dinnertime?”

“Dinnertime, my fine harpooner? I’d say at least breakfast time,
because we’ve certainly woken up to a new day.”

“Which indicates,” Conseil replied, “that we’ve spent twenty-four
hours in slumber.”

“That’s my assessment,” I replied.

“I won’t argue with you,” Ned Land answered. “But dinner or breakfast,
that steward will be plenty welcome whether he brings the one or the
other.”

“The one and the other,” Conseil said.

“Well put,” the Canadian replied. “We deserve two meals, and speaking
for myself, I’ll do justice to them both.”

“All right, Ned, let’s wait and see!” I replied. “It’s clear that
these strangers don’t intend to let us die of hunger, otherwise last
evening’s dinner wouldn’t make any sense.”

“Unless they’re fattening us up!” Ned shot back.

“I object,” I replied. “We have not fallen into the hands of
cannibals.”

“Just because they don’t make a habit of it,” the Canadian replied in
all seriousness, “doesn’t mean they don’t indulge from time to
time. Who knows? Maybe these people have gone without fresh meat for a
long while, and in that case three healthy, well-built specimens like
the professor, his manservant, and me —-”

“Get rid of those ideas, Mr. Land,” I answered the harpooner. “And
above all, don’t let them lead you to flare up against our hosts,
which would only make our situation worse.”

“Anyhow,” the harpooner said, “I’m as hungry as all Hades, and dinner
or breakfast, not one puny meal has arrived!”

“Mr. Land,” I answered, “we have to adapt to the schedule on board,
and I imagine our stomachs are running ahead of the chief cook’s
dinner bell.”

“Well then, we’ll adjust our stomachs to the chef’s timetable!”
Conseil replied serenely.

“There you go again, Conseil my friend!” the impatient Canadian shot
back. “You never allow yourself any displays of bile or attacks of
nerves! You’re everlastingly calm! You’d say your after-meal grace
even if you didn’t get any food for your before-meal blessing—and
you’d starve to death rather than complain!”

“What good would it do?” Conseil asked.

“Complaining doesn’t have to do good, it just feels good! And if these
pirates—I say pirates out of consideration for the professor’s
feelings, since he doesn’t want us to call them cannibals—if these
pirates think they’re going to smother me in this cage without hearing
what cusswords spice up my outbursts, they’ve got another think
coming! Look here, Professor Aronnax, speak frankly. How long do you
figure they’ll keep us in this iron box?”

“To tell the truth, friend Land, I know little more about it than you
do.”

“But in a nutshell, what do you suppose is going on?”

“My supposition is that sheer chance has made us privy to an important
secret. Now then, if the crew of this underwater boat have a personal
interest in keeping that secret, and if their personal interest is
more important than the lives of three men, I believe that our very
existence is in jeopardy. If such is not the case, then at the first
available opportunity, this monster that has swallowed us will return
us to the world inhabited by our own kind.”

“Unless they recruit us to serve on the crew,” Conseil said, “and keep
us here—”

“Till the moment,” Ned Land answered, “when some frigate that’s faster
or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers,
then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!”

“Well thought out, Mr. Land,” I replied. “But as yet, I don’t believe
we’ve been tendered any enlistment offers. Consequently, it’s
pointless to argue about what tactics we should pursue in such a
case. I repeat: let’s wait, let’s be guided by events, and let’s do
nothing, since right now there’s nothing we can do.”

“On the contrary, professor,” the harpooner replied, not wanting to
give in. “There is something we can do.”

“Oh? And what, Mr. Land?”

“Break out of here!”

“Breaking out of a prison on shore is difficult enough, but with an
underwater prison, it strikes me as completely unworkable.”

“Come now, Ned my friend,” Conseil asked, “how would you answer
master’s objection? I refuse to believe that an American is at the end
of his tether.”

Visibly baffled, the harpooner said nothing. Under the conditions in
which fate had left us, it was absolutely impossible to escape. But a
Canadian’s wit is half French, and Mr. Ned Land made this clear in his
reply.

“So, Professor Aronnax,” he went on after thinking for a few moments,
“you haven’t figured out what people do when they can’t escape from
their prison?”

“No, my friend.”

“Easy. They fix things so they stay there.”

“Of course!” Conseil put in. “Since we’re deep in the ocean, being
inside this boat is vastly preferable to being above it or below it!”

“But we fix things by kicking out all the jailers, guards, and
wardens,” Ned Land added.

“What’s this, Ned?” I asked. “You’d seriously consider taking over
this craft?”

“Very seriously,” the Canadian replied.

“It’s impossible.”

“And why is that, sir? Some promising opportunity might come up, and I
don’t see what could stop us from taking advantage of it. If there are
only about twenty men on board this machine, I don’t think they can
stave off two Frenchmen and a Canadian!”

It seemed wiser to accept the harpooner’s proposition than to debate
it. Accordingly, I was content to reply:

“Let such circumstances come, Mr. Land, and we’ll see. But until then,
I beg you to control your impatience. We need to act shrewdly, and
your flare-ups won’t give rise to any promising opportunities. So
swear to me that you’ll accept our situation without throwing a
tantrum over it.”

“I give you my word, professor,” Ned Land replied in an unenthusiastic
tone. “No vehement phrases will leave my mouth, no vicious gestures
will give my feelings away, not even when they don’t feed us on time.”

“I have your word, Ned,” I answered the Canadian.

Then our conversation petered out, and each of us withdrew into his
own thoughts. For my part, despite the harpooner’s confident talk, I
admit that I entertained no illusions. I had no faith in those
promising opportunities that Ned Land mentioned. To operate with such
efficiency, this underwater boat had to have a sizeable crew, so if it
came to a physical contest, we would be facing an overwhelming
opponent. Besides, before we could do anything, we had to be free, and
that we definitely were not. I didn’t see any way out of this
sheet-iron, hermetically sealed cell. And if the strange commander of
this boat did have a secret to keep—which seemed rather likely—he
would never give us freedom of movement aboard his vessel. Now then,
would he resort to violence in order to be rid of us, or would he drop
us off one day on some remote coast? There lay the unknown. All these
hypotheses seemed extremely plausible to me, and to hope for freedom
through use of force, you had to be a harpooner.

I realized, moreover, that Ned Land’s brooding was getting him madder
by the minute. Little by little, I heard those aforesaid cusswords
welling up in the depths of his gullet, and I saw his movements turn
threatening again. He stood up, pacing in circles like a wild beast in
a cage, striking the walls with his foot and fist. Meanwhile the hours
passed, our hunger nagged unmercifully, and this time the steward did
not appear. Which amounted to forgetting our castaway status for much
too long, if they really had good intentions toward us.

Tortured by the growling of his well-built stomach, Ned Land was
getting more and more riled, and despite his word of honor, I was in
real dread of an explosion when he stood in the presence of one of the
men on board.

For two more hours Ned Land’s rage increased. The Canadian shouted and
pleaded, but to no avail. The sheet-iron walls were deaf. I didn’t
hear a single sound inside this dead-seeming boat. The vessel hadn’t
stirred, because I obviously would have felt its hull vibrating under
the influence of the propeller. It had undoubtedly sunk into the
watery deep and no longer belonged to the outside world. All this
dismal silence was terrifying.

As for our neglect, our isolation in the depths of this cell, I was
afraid to guess at how long it might last. Little by little, hopes I
had entertained after our interview with the ship’s commander were
fading away. The gentleness of the man’s gaze, the generosity
expressed in his facial features, the nobility of his bearing, all
vanished from my memory. I saw this mystifying individual anew for
what he inevitably must be: cruel and merciless. I viewed him as
outside humanity, beyond all feelings of compassion, the implacable
foe of his fellow man, toward whom he must have sworn an undying hate!

But even so, was the man going to let us die of starvation, locked up
in this cramped prison, exposed to those horrible temptations to which
people are driven by extreme hunger? This grim possibility took on a
dreadful intensity in my mind, and fired by my imagination, I felt an
unreasoning terror run through me. Conseil stayed calm. Ned Land
bellowed.

Just then a noise was audible outside. Footsteps rang on the metal
tiling. The locks were turned, the door opened, the steward appeared.

Before I could make a single movement to prevent him, the Canadian
rushed at the poor man, threw him down, held him by the throat. The
steward was choking in the grip of those powerful hands.

Conseil was already trying to loosen the harpooner’s hands from his
half-suffocated victim, and I had gone to join in the rescue, when I
was abruptly nailed to the spot by these words pronounced in French:

“Calm down, Mr. Land! And you, professor, kindly listen to me!”


CHAPTER 10

The Man of the Waters


IT WAS THE ship’s commander who had just spoken.

At these words Ned Land stood up quickly. Nearly strangled, the
steward staggered out at a signal from his superior; but such was the
commander’s authority aboard his vessel, not one gesture gave away the
resentment that this man must have felt toward the Canadian. In
silence we waited for the outcome of this scene; Conseil, in spite of
himself, seemed almost fascinated, I was stunned.

Arms crossed, leaning against a corner of the table, the commander
studied us with great care. Was he reluctant to speak further? Did he
regret those words he had just pronounced in French? You would have
thought so.

After a few moments of silence, which none of us would have dreamed of
interrupting:

“Gentlemen,” he said in a calm, penetrating voice, “I speak French,
English, German, and Latin with equal fluency. Hence I could have
answered you as early as our initial interview, but first I wanted to
make your acquaintance and then think things over. Your four versions
of the same narrative, perfectly consistent by and large, established
your personal identities for me. I now know that sheer chance has
placed in my presence Professor Pierre Aronnax, specialist in natural
history at the Paris Museum and entrusted with a scientific mission
abroad, his manservant Conseil, and Ned Land, a harpooner of Canadian
origin aboard the Abraham Lincoln, a frigate in the national navy of
the United States of America.”

I bowed in agreement. The commander hadn’t put a question to me. So no
answer was called for. This man expressed himself with perfect ease
and without a trace of an accent. His phrasing was clear, his words
well chosen, his facility in elocution remarkable. And yet, to me, he
didn’t have “the feel” of a fellow countryman.

He went on with the conversation as follows:

“No doubt, sir, you’ve felt that I waited rather too long before
paying you this second visit. After discovering your identities, I
wanted to weigh carefully what policy to pursue toward you. I had
great difficulty deciding. Some extremely inconvenient circumstances
have brought you into the presence of a man who has cut himself off
from humanity. Your coming has disrupted my whole existence.”

“Unintentionally,” I said.

“Unintentionally?” the stranger replied, raising his voice a
little. “Was it unintentionally that the Abraham Lincoln hunted me on
every sea? Was it unintentionally that you traveled aboard that
frigate? Was it unintentionally that your shells bounced off my ship’s
hull? Was it unintentionally that Mr. Ned Land hit me with his
harpoon?”

I detected a controlled irritation in these words. But there was a
perfectly natural reply to these charges, and I made it.

“Sir,” I said, “you’re surely unaware of the discussions that have
taken place in Europe and America with yourself as the subject. You
don’t realize that various accidents, caused by collisions with your
underwater machine, have aroused public passions on those two
continents. I’ll spare you the innumerable hypotheses with which we’ve
tried to explain this inexplicable phenomenon, whose secret is yours
alone. But please understand that the Abraham Lincoln chased you over
the Pacific high seas in the belief it was hunting some powerful
marine monster, which had to be purged from the ocean at all cost.”

A half smile curled the commander’s lips; then, in a calmer tone:

“Professor Aronnax,” he replied, “do you dare claim that your frigate
wouldn’t have chased and cannonaded an underwater boat as readily as a
monster?”

This question baffled me, since Commander Farragut would certainly
have shown no such hesitation. He would have seen it as his sworn duty
to destroy a contrivance of this kind just as promptly as a gigantic
narwhale.

“So you understand, sir,” the stranger went on, “that I have a right
to treat you as my enemy.”

I kept quiet, with good reason. What was the use of debating such a
proposition, when superior force can wipe out the best arguments?

“It took me a good while to decide,” the commander went on. “Nothing
obliged me to grant you hospitality. If I were to part company with
you, I’d have no personal interest in ever seeing you again. I could
put you back on the platform of this ship that has served as your
refuge. I could sink under the sea, and I could forget you ever
existed. Wouldn’t that be my right?”

“Perhaps it would be the right of a savage,” I replied. “But not that
of a civilized man.”

“Professor,” the commander replied swiftly, “I’m not what you term a
civilized man! I’ve severed all ties with society, for reasons that I
alone have the right to appreciate. Therefore I obey none of its
regulations, and I insist that you never invoke them in front of me!”

This was plain speaking. A flash of anger and scorn lit up the
stranger’s eyes, and I glimpsed a fearsome past in this man’s
life. Not only had he placed himself beyond human laws, he had
rendered himself independent, out of all reach, free in the strictest
sense of the word! For who would dare chase him to the depths of the
sea when he thwarted all attacks on the surface? What ship could
withstand a collision with his underwater Monitor? What armor plate,
no matter how heavy, could bear the thrusts of his spur? No man among
men could call him to account for his actions. God, if he believed in
Him, his conscience if he had one—these were the only judges to whom
he was answerable.

These thoughts swiftly crossed my mind while this strange individual
fell silent, like someone completely self-absorbed. I regarded him
with a mixture of fear and fascination, in the same way, no doubt,
that Oedipus regarded the Sphinx.

After a fairly long silence, the commander went on with our
conversation.

“So I had difficulty deciding,” he said. “But I concluded that my
personal interests could be reconciled with that natural compassion to
which every human being has a right. Since fate has brought you here,
you’ll stay aboard my vessel. You’ll be free here, and in exchange for
that freedom, moreover totally related to it, I’ll lay on you just one
condition. Your word that you’ll submit to it will be sufficient.”

“Go on, sir,” I replied. “I assume this condition is one an honest man
can accept?”

“Yes, sir. Just this. It’s possible that certain unforeseen events may
force me to confine you to your cabins for some hours, or even for
some days as the case may be. Since I prefer never to use violence, I
expect from you in such a case, even more than in any other, your
unquestioning obedience. By acting in this way, I shield you from
complicity, I absolve you of all responsibility, since I myself make
it impossible for you to see what you aren’t meant to see. Do you
accept this condition?”

So things happened on board that were quite odd to say the least,
things never to be seen by people not placing themselves beyond
society’s laws! Among all the surprises the future had in store for
me, this would not be the mildest.

“We accept,” I replied. “Only, I’ll ask your permission, sir, to
address a question to you, just one.”

“Go ahead, sir.”

“You said we’d be free aboard your vessel?”

“Completely.”

“Then I would ask what you mean by this freedom.”

“Why, the freedom to come, go, see, and even closely observe
everything happening here—except under certain rare circumstances—in
short, the freedom we ourselves enjoy, my companions and I.”

It was obvious that we did not understand each other.

“Pardon me, sir,” I went on, “but that’s merely the freedom that every
prisoner has, the freedom to pace his cell! That’s not enough for us.”

“Nevertheless, it will have to do!”

“What! We must give up seeing our homeland, friends, and relatives
ever again?”

“Yes, sir. But giving up that intolerable earthly yoke that some men
call freedom is perhaps less painful than you think!”

“By thunder!” Ned Land shouted. “I’ll never promise I won’t try
getting out of here!”

“I didn’t ask for such a promise, Mr. Land,” the commander replied
coldly.

“Sir,” I replied, flaring up in spite of myself, “you’re taking unfair
advantage of us! This is sheer cruelty!”

“No, sir, it’s an act of mercy! You’re my prisoners of war! I’ve cared
for you when, with a single word, I could plunge you back into the
ocean depths! You attacked me! You’ve just stumbled on a secret no
living man must probe, the secret of my entire existence! Do you think
I’ll send you back to a world that must know nothing more of me?
Never! By keeping you on board, it isn’t you whom I care for, it’s
me!”

These words indicated that the commander pursued a policy impervious
to arguments.

“Then, sir,” I went on, “you give us, quite simply, a choice between
life and death?”

“Quite simply.”

“My friends,” I said, “to a question couched in these terms, our
answer can be taken for granted. But no solemn promises bind us to the
commander of this vessel.”

“None, sir,” the stranger replied.

Then, in a gentler voice, he went on:

“Now, allow me to finish what I have to tell you. I’ve heard of you,
Professor Aronnax. You, if not your companions, won’t perhaps complain
too much about the stroke of fate that has brought us together. Among
the books that make up my favorite reading, you’ll find the work
you’ve published on the great ocean depths. I’ve pored over it. You’ve
taken your studies as far as terrestrial science can go. But you don’t
know everything because you haven’t seen everything. Let me tell you,
professor, you won’t regret the time you spend aboard my
vessel. You’re going to voyage through a land of wonders. Stunned
amazement will probably be your habitual state of mind. It will be a
long while before you tire of the sights constantly before your
eyes. I’m going to make another underwater tour of the world—perhaps
my last, who knows?—and I’ll review everything I’ve studied in the
depths of these seas that I’ve crossed so often, and you can be my
fellow student. Starting this very day, you’ll enter a new element,
you’ll see what no human being has ever seen before—since my men and I
no longer count—and thanks to me, you’re going to learn the ultimate
secrets of our planet.”

I can’t deny it; the commander’s words had a tremendous effect on
me. He had caught me on my weak side, and I momentarily forgot that
not even this sublime experience was worth the loss of my
freedom. Besides, I counted on the future to resolve this important
question. So I was content to reply:

“Sir, even though you’ve cut yourself off from humanity, I can see
that you haven’t disowned all human feeling. We’re castaways whom
you’ve charitably taken aboard, we’ll never forget that. Speaking for
myself, I don’t rule out that the interests of science could override
even the need for freedom, which promises me that, in exchange, our
encounter will provide great rewards.”

I thought the commander would offer me his hand, to seal our
agreement. He did nothing of the sort. I regretted that.

“One last question,” I said, just as this inexplicable being seemed
ready to withdraw.

“Ask it, professor.”

“By what name am I to call you?”

“Sir,” the commander replied, “to you, I’m simply Captain Nemo;* to
me, you and your companions are simply passengers on the Nautilus.”

*Latin: nemo means “no one.” Ed.

Captain Nemo called out. A steward appeared. The captain gave him his
orders in that strange language I couldn’t even identify. Then,
turning to the Canadian and Conseil:

“A meal is waiting for you in your cabin,” he told them. “Kindly
follow this man.”

“That’s an offer I can’t refuse!” the harpooner replied.

After being confined for over thirty hours, he and Conseil were
finally out of this cell.

“And now, Professor Aronnax, our own breakfast is ready. Allow me to
lead the way.”

“Yours to command, captain.”

I followed Captain Nemo, and as soon as I passed through the doorway,
I went down a kind of electrically lit passageway that resembled a
gangway on a ship. After a stretch of some ten meters, a second door
opened before me.

I then entered a dining room, decorated and furnished in austere good
taste. Inlaid with ebony trim, tall oaken sideboards stood at both
ends of this room, and sparkling on their shelves were staggered rows
of earthenware, porcelain, and glass of incalculable value. There
silver-plated dinnerware gleamed under rays pouring from light
fixtures in the ceiling, whose glare was softened and tempered by
delicately painted designs.

In the center of this room stood a table, richly spread. Captain Nemo
indicated the place I was to occupy.

“Be seated,” he told me, “and eat like the famished man you must be.”

Our breakfast consisted of several dishes whose contents were all
supplied by the sea, and some foods whose nature and derivation were
unknown to me. They were good, I admit, but with a peculiar flavor to
which I would soon grow accustomed. These various food items seemed to
be rich in phosphorous, and I thought that they, too, must have been
of marine origin.

Captain Nemo stared at me. I had asked him nothing, but he read my
thoughts, and on his own he answered the questions I was itching to
address him.

“Most of these dishes are new to you,” he told me. “But you can
consume them without fear. They’re healthy and nourishing. I renounced
terrestrial foods long ago, and I’m none the worse for it. My crew are
strong and full of energy, and they eat what I eat.”

“So,” I said, “all these foods are products of the sea?”

“Yes, professor, the sea supplies all my needs. Sometimes I cast my
nets in our wake, and I pull them up ready to burst. Sometimes I go
hunting right in the midst of this element that has long seemed so far
out of man’s reach, and I corner the game that dwells in my underwater
forests. Like the flocks of old Proteus, King Neptune’s shepherd, my
herds graze without fear on the ocean’s immense prairies. There I own
vast properties that I harvest myself, and which are forever sown by
the hand of the Creator of All Things.”

I stared at Captain Nemo in definite astonishment, and I answered him:

“Sir, I understand perfectly how your nets can furnish excellent fish
for your table; I understand less how you can chase aquatic game in
your underwater forests; but how a piece of red meat, no matter how
small, can figure in your menu, that I don’t understand at all.”

“Nor I, sir,” Captain Nemo answered me. “I never touch the flesh of
land animals.”

“Nevertheless, this . . . ,” I went on, pointing to a dish where some
slices of loin were still left.

“What you believe to be red meat, professor, is nothing other than
loin of sea turtle. Similarly, here are some dolphin livers you might
mistake for stewed pork. My chef is a skillful food processor who
excels at pickling and preserving these various exhibits from the
ocean. Feel free to sample all of these foods. Here are some preserves
of sea cucumber that a Malaysian would declare to be unrivaled in the
entire world, here’s cream from milk furnished by the udders of
cetaceans, and sugar from the huge fucus plants in the North Sea; and
finally, allow me to offer you some marmalade of sea anemone, equal to
that from the tastiest fruits.”

So I sampled away, more as a curiosity seeker than an epicure, while
Captain Nemo delighted me with his incredible anecdotes.

“But this sea, Professor Aronnax,” he told me, “this prodigious,
inexhaustible wet nurse of a sea not only feeds me, she dresses me as
well. That fabric covering you was woven from the masses of filaments
that anchor certain seashells; as the ancients were wont to do, it was
dyed with purple ink from the murex snail and shaded with violet tints
that I extract from a marine slug, the Mediterranean sea hare. The
perfumes you’ll find on the washstand in your cabin were produced from
the oozings of marine plants. Your mattress was made from the ocean’s
softest eelgrass. Your quill pen will be whalebone, your ink a juice
secreted by cuttlefish or squid. Everything comes to me from the sea,
just as someday everything will return to it!”

“You love the sea, captain.”

“Yes, I love it! The sea is the be all and end all! It covers
seven-tenths of the planet earth. Its breath is clean and
healthy. It’s an immense wilderness where a man is never lonely,
because he feels life astir on every side. The sea is simply the
vehicle for a prodigious, unearthly mode of existence; it’s simply
movement and love; it’s living infinity, as one of your poets put
it. And in essence, professor, nature is here made manifest by all
three of her kingdoms, mineral, vegetable, and animal. The last of
these is amply represented by the four zoophyte groups, three classes
of articulates, five classes of mollusks, and three vertebrate
classes: mammals, reptiles, and those countless legions of fish, an
infinite order of animals totaling more than 13,000 species, of which
only one-tenth belong to fresh water. The sea is a vast pool of
nature. Our globe began with the sea, so to speak, and who can say we
won’t end with it! Here lies supreme tranquility. The sea doesn’t
belong to tyrants. On its surface they can still exercise their
iniquitous claims, battle each other, devour each other, haul every
earthly horror. But thirty feet below sea level, their dominion
ceases, their influence fades, their power vanishes! Ah, sir, live!
Live in the heart of the seas! Here alone lies independence! Here I
recognize no superiors! Here I’m free!”

Captain Nemo suddenly fell silent in the midst of this enthusiastic
outpouring. Had he let himself get carried away, past the bounds of
his habitual reserve? Had he said too much? For a few moments he
strolled up and down, all aquiver. Then his nerves grew calmer, his
facial features recovered their usual icy composure, and turning to
me:

“Now, professor,” he said, “if you’d like to inspect the Nautilus, I’m
yours to command.”


CHAPTER 11

The Nautilus


CAPTAIN NEMO stood up. I followed him. Contrived at the rear of the
dining room, a double door opened, and I entered a room whose
dimensions equaled the one I had just left.

It was a library. Tall, black-rosewood bookcases, inlaid with
copperwork, held on their wide shelves a large number of uniformly
bound books. These furnishings followed the contours of the room,
their lower parts leading to huge couches upholstered in maroon
leather and curved for maximum comfort. Light, movable reading stands,
which could be pushed away or pulled near as desired, allowed books to
be positioned on them for easy study. In the center stood a huge table
covered with pamphlets, among which some newspapers, long out of date,
were visible. Electric light flooded this whole harmonious totality,
falling from four frosted half globes set in the scrollwork of the
ceiling. I stared in genuine wonderment at this room so ingeniously
laid out, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Captain Nemo,” I told my host, who had just stretched out on a couch,
“this is a library that would do credit to more than one continental
palace, and I truly marvel to think it can go with you into the
deepest seas.”

“Where could one find greater silence or solitude, professor?” Captain
Nemo replied. “Did your study at the museum afford you such a perfect
retreat?”

“No, sir, and I might add that it’s quite a humble one next to
yours. You own 6,000 or 7,000 volumes here . . .”

“12,000, Professor Aronnax. They’re my sole remaining ties with dry
land. But I was done with the shore the day my Nautilus submerged for
the first time under the waters. That day I purchased my last volumes,
my last pamphlets, my last newspapers, and ever since I’ve chosen to
believe that humanity no longer thinks or writes. In any event,
professor, these books are at your disposal, and you may use them
freely.”

I thanked Captain Nemo and approached the shelves of this
library. Written in every language, books on science, ethics, and
literature were there in abundance, but I didn’t see a single work on
economics—they seemed to be strictly banned on board. One odd detail:
all these books were shelved indiscriminately without regard to the
language in which they were written, and this jumble proved that the
Nautilus’s captain could read fluently whatever volumes he chanced to
pick up.

Among these books I noted masterpieces by the greats of ancient and
modern times, in other words, all of humanity’s finest achievements in
history, poetry, fiction, and science, from Homer to Victor Hugo, from
Xenophon to Michelet, from Rabelais to Madame George Sand. But
science, in particular, represented the major investment of this
library: books on mechanics, ballistics, hydrography, meteorology,
geography, geology, etc., held a place there no less important than
works on natural history, and I realized that they made up the
captain’s chief reading. There I saw the complete works of Humboldt,
the complete Arago, as well as works by Foucault, Henri Sainte-Claire
Deville, Chasles, Milne-Edwards, Quatrefages, John Tyndall, Faraday,
Berthelot, Father Secchi, Petermann, Commander Maury, Louis Agassiz,
etc., plus the transactions of France’s Academy of Sciences, bulletins
from the various geographical societies, etc., and in a prime
location, those two volumes on the great ocean depths that had perhaps
earned me this comparatively charitable welcome from Captain
Nemo. Among the works of Joseph Bertrand, his book entitled The
Founders of Astronomy even gave me a definite date; and since I knew
it had appeared in the course of 1865, I concluded that the fitting
out of the Nautilus hadn’t taken place before then. Accordingly, three
years ago at the most, Captain Nemo had begun his underwater
existence. Moreover, I hoped some books even more recent would permit
me to pinpoint the date precisely; but I had plenty of time to look
for them, and I didn’t want to put off any longer our stroll through
the wonders of the Nautilus.

“Sir,” I told the captain, “thank you for placing this library at my
disposal. There are scientific treasures here, and I’ll take advantage
of them.”

“This room isn’t only a library,” Captain Nemo said, “it’s also a
smoking room.”

“A smoking room?” I exclaimed. “Then one may smoke on board?”

“Surely.”

“In that case, sir, I’m forced to believe that you’ve kept up
relations with Havana.”

“None whatever,” the captain replied. “Try this cigar, Professor
Aronnax, and even though it doesn’t come from Havana, it will satisfy
you if you’re a connoisseur.”

I took the cigar offered me, whose shape recalled those from Cuba; but
it seemed to be made of gold leaf. I lit it at a small brazier
supported by an elegant bronze stand, and I inhaled my first whiffs
with the relish of a smoker who hasn’t had a puff in days.

“It’s excellent,” I said, “but it’s not from the tobacco plant.”

“Right,” the captain replied, “this tobacco comes from neither Havana
nor the Orient. It’s a kind of nicotine-rich seaweed that the ocean
supplies me, albeit sparingly. Do you still miss your Cubans, sir?”

“Captain, I scorn them from this day forward.”

“Then smoke these cigars whenever you like, without debating their
origin. They bear no government seal of approval, but I imagine
they’re none the worse for it.”

“On the contrary.”

Just then Captain Nemo opened a door facing the one by which I had
entered the library, and I passed into an immense, splendidly lit
lounge.

It was a huge quadrilateral with canted corners, ten meters long, six
wide, five high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with delicate
arabesques, distributed a soft, clear daylight over all the wonders
gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever
hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic
treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that
distinguishes a painter’s studio.

Some thirty pictures by the masters, uniformly framed and separated by
gleaming panoplies of arms, adorned walls on which were stretched
tapestries of austere design. There I saw canvases of the highest
value, the likes of which I had marveled at in private European
collections and art exhibitions. The various schools of the old
masters were represented by a Raphael Madonna, a Virgin by Leonardo da
Vinci, a nymph by Correggio, a woman by Titian, an adoration of the
Magi by Veronese, an assumption of the Virgin by Murillo, a Holbein
portrait, a monk by Velazquez, a martyr by Ribera, a village fair by
Rubens, two Flemish landscapes by Teniers, three little genre
paintings by Gerard Dow, Metsu, and Paul Potter, two canvases by
Gericault and Prud’hon, plus seascapes by Backhuysen and Vernet. Among
the works of modern art were pictures signed by Delacroix, Ingres,
Decamps, Troyon, Meissonier, Daubigny, etc., and some wonderful
miniature statues in marble or bronze, modeled after antiquity’s
finest originals, stood on their pedestals in the corners of this
magnificent museum. As the Nautilus’s commander had predicted, my mind
was already starting to fall into that promised state of stunned
amazement.

“Professor,” this strange man then said, “you must excuse the
informality with which I receive you, and the disorder reigning in
this lounge.”

“Sir,” I replied, “without prying into who you are, might I venture to
identify you as an artist?”

“A collector, sir, nothing more. Formerly I loved acquiring these
beautiful works created by the hand of man. I sought them greedily,
ferreted them out tirelessly, and I’ve been able to gather some
objects of great value. They’re my last mementos of those shores that
are now dead for me. In my eyes, your modern artists are already as
old as the ancients. They’ve existed for 2,000 or 3,000 years, and I
mix them up in my mind. The masters are ageless.”

“What about these composers?” I said, pointing to sheet music by
Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Hérold, Wagner,
Auber, Gounod, Victor Massé, and a number of others scattered over a
full size piano-organ, which occupied one of the wall panels in this
lounge.

“These composers,” Captain Nemo answered me, “are the contemporaries
of Orpheus, because in the annals of the dead, all chronological
differences fade; and I’m dead, professor, quite as dead as those
friends of yours sleeping six feet under!”

Captain Nemo fell silent and seemed lost in reverie. I regarded him
with intense excitement, silently analyzing his strange facial
expression. Leaning his elbow on the corner of a valuable mosaic
table, he no longer saw me, he had forgotten my very presence.

I didn’t disturb his meditations but continued to pass in review the
curiosities that enriched this lounge.

After the works of art, natural rarities predominated. They consisted
chiefly of plants, shells, and other exhibits from the ocean that must
have been Captain Nemo’s own personal finds. In the middle of the
lounge, a jet of water, electrically lit, fell back into a basin made
from a single giant clam. The delicately festooned rim of this shell,
supplied by the biggest mollusk in the class Acephala, measured about
six meters in circumference; so it was even bigger than those fine
giant clams given to King Franτois I by the Republic of Venice, and
which the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris has made into two gigantic
holy-water fonts.

Around this basin, inside elegant glass cases fastened with copper
bands, there were classified and labeled the most valuable marine
exhibits ever put before the eyes of a naturalist. My professorial
glee may easily be imagined.

The zoophyte branch offered some very unusual specimens from its two
groups, the polyps and the echinoderms. In the first group: organ-pipe
coral, gorgonian coral arranged into fan shapes, soft sponges from
Syria, isis coral from the Molucca Islands, sea-pen coral, wonderful
coral of the genus Virgularia from the waters of Norway, various coral
of the genus Umbellularia, alcyonarian coral, then a whole series of
those madrepores that my mentor Professor Milne-Edwards has so
shrewdly classified into divisions and among which I noted the
wonderful genus Flabellina as well as the genus Oculina from RΘunion
Island, plus a “Neptune’s chariot” from the Caribbean Sea—every superb
variety of coral, and in short, every species of these unusual
polyparies that congregate to form entire islands that will one day
turn into continents. Among the echinoderms, notable for being covered
with spines: starfish, feather stars, sea lilies, free-swimming
crinoids, brittle stars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, etc., represented
a complete collection of the individuals in this group.

An excitable conchologist would surely have fainted dead away before
other, more numerous glass cases in which were classified specimens
from the mollusk branch. There I saw a collection of incalculable
value that I haven’t time to describe completely. Among these exhibits
I’ll mention, just for the record: an elegant royal hammer shell from
the Indian Ocean, whose evenly spaced white spots stood out sharply
against a base of red and brown; an imperial spiny oyster, brightly
colored, bristling with thorns, a specimen rare to European museums,
whose value I estimated at 20,000 francs; a common hammer shell from
the seas near Queensland, very hard to come by; exotic cockles from
Senegal, fragile white bivalve shells that a single breath could pop
like a soap bubble; several varieties of watering-pot shell from Java,
a sort of limestone tube fringed with leafy folds and much fought over
by collectors; a whole series of top-shell snails—greenish yellow ones
fished up from American seas, others colored reddish brown that
patronize the waters off Queensland, the former coming from the Gulf
of Mexico and notable for their overlapping shells, the latter some
sun-carrier shells found in the southernmost seas, finally and rarest
of all, the magnificent spurred-star shell from New Zealand; then some
wonderful peppery-furrow shells; several valuable species of cythera
clams and venus clams; the trellis wentletrap snail from Tranquebar on
India’s eastern shore; a marbled turban snail gleaming with
mother-of-pearl; green parrot shells from the seas of China; the
virtually unknown cone snail from the genus Coenodullus; every variety
of cowry used as money in India and Africa; a “glory-of-the-seas,” the
most valuable shell in the East Indies; finally, common periwinkles,
delphinula snails, turret snails, violet snails, European cowries,
volute snails, olive shells, miter shells, helmet shells, murex
snails, whelks, harp shells, spiky periwinkles, triton snails, horn
shells, spindle shells, conch shells, spider conchs, limpets, glass
snails, sea butterflies—every kind of delicate, fragile seashell that
science has baptized with its most delightful names.

Aside and in special compartments, strings of supremely beautiful
pearls were spread out, the electric light flecking them with little
fiery sparks: pink pearls pulled from saltwater fan shells in the Red
Sea; green pearls from the rainbow abalone; yellow, blue, and black
pearls, the unusual handiwork of various mollusks from every ocean and
of certain mussels from rivers up north; in short, several specimens
of incalculable worth that had been oozed by the rarest of
shellfish. Some of these pearls were bigger than a pigeon egg; they
more than equaled the one that the explorer Tavernier sold the Shah of
Persia for 3,000,000 francs, and they surpassed that other pearl owned
by the Imam of Muscat, which I had believed to be unrivaled in the
entire world.

Consequently, to calculate the value of this collection was, I should
say, impossible. Captain Nemo must have spent millions in acquiring
these different specimens, and I was wondering what financial
resources he tapped to satisfy his collector’s fancies, when these
words interrupted me:

“You’re examining my shells, professor? They’re indeed able to
fascinate a naturalist; but for me they have an added charm, since
I’ve collected every one of them with my own two hands, and not a sea
on the globe has escaped my investigations.”

“I understand, captain, I understand your delight at strolling in the
midst of this wealth. You’re a man who gathers his treasure in
person. No museum in Europe owns such a collection of exhibits from
the ocean. But if I exhaust all my wonderment on them, I’ll have
nothing left for the ship that carries them! I have absolutely no wish
to probe those secrets of yours! But I confess that my curiosity is
aroused to the limit by this Nautilus, the motor power it contains,
the equipment enabling it to operate, the ultra powerful force that
brings it to life. I see some instruments hanging on the walls of this
lounge whose purposes are unknown to me. May I learn—”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo answered me, “I’ve said you’d be
free aboard my vessel, so no part of the Nautilus is off-limits to
you. You may inspect it in detail, and I’ll be delighted to act as
your guide.”

“I don’t know how to thank you, sir, but I won’t abuse your good
nature. I would only ask you about the uses intended for these
instruments of physical measure—”

“Professor, these same instruments are found in my stateroom, where
I’ll have the pleasure of explaining their functions to you. But
beforehand, come inspect the cabin set aside for you. You need to
learn how you’ll be lodged aboard the Nautilus.”

I followed Captain Nemo, who, via one of the doors cut into the
lounge’s canted corners, led me back down the ship’s gangways. He took
me to the bow, and there I found not just a cabin but an elegant
stateroom with a bed, a washstand, and various other furnishings.

I could only thank my host.

“Your stateroom adjoins mine,” he told me, opening a door, “and mine
leads into that lounge we’ve just left.”

I entered the captain’s stateroom. It had an austere, almost monastic
appearance. An iron bedstead, a worktable, some washstand
fixtures. Subdued lighting. No luxuries. Just the bare necessities.

Captain Nemo showed me to a bench.

“Kindly be seated,” he told me.

I sat, and he began speaking as follows:


CHAPTER 12

Everything through Electricity


“SIR,” CAPTAIN NEMO SAID, showing me the instruments hanging on the
walls of his stateroom, “these are the devices needed to navigate the
Nautilus. Here, as in the lounge, I always have them before my eyes,
and they indicate my position and exact heading in the midst of the
ocean. You’re familiar with some of them, such as the thermometer,
which gives the temperature inside the Nautilus; the barometer, which
measures the heaviness of the outside air and forecasts changes in the
weather; the humidistat, which indicates the degree of dryness in the
atmosphere; the storm glass, whose mixture decomposes to foretell the
arrival of tempests; the compass, which steers my course; the sextant,
which takes the sun’s altitude and tells me my latitude; chronometers,
which allow me to calculate my longitude; and finally, spyglasses for
both day and night, enabling me to scrutinize every point of the
horizon once the Nautilus has risen to the surface of the waves.”

“These are the normal navigational instruments,” I replied, “and I’m
familiar with their uses. But no doubt these others answer pressing
needs unique to the Nautilus. That dial I see there, with the needle
moving across it—isn’t it a pressure gauge?”

“It is indeed a pressure gauge. It’s placed in contact with the water,
and it indicates the outside pressure on our hull, which in turn gives
me the depth at which my submersible is sitting.”

“And these are some new breed of sounding line?”

“They’re thermometric sounding lines that report water temperatures in
the different strata.”

“And these other instruments, whose functions I can’t even guess?”

“Here, professor, I need to give you some background information,”
Captain Nemo said. “So kindly hear me out.”

He fell silent for some moments, then he said:

“There’s a powerful, obedient, swift, and effortless force that can be
bent to any use and which reigns supreme aboard my vessel. It does
everything. It lights me, it warms me, it’s the soul of my mechanical
equipment. This force is electricity.”

“Electricity!” I exclaimed in some surprise.

“Yes, sir.”

“But, captain, you have a tremendous speed of movement that doesn’t
square with the strength of electricity. Until now, its dynamic
potential has remained quite limited, capable of producing only small
amounts of power!”

“Professor,” Captain Nemo replied, “my electricity isn’t the
run-of-the-mill variety, and with your permission, I’ll leave it at
that.”

“I won’t insist, sir, and I’ll rest content with simply being
flabbergasted at your results. I would ask one question, however,
which you needn’t answer if it’s indiscreet. The electric cells you
use to generate this marvelous force must be depleted very
quickly. Their zinc component, for example: how do you replace it,
since you no longer stay in contact with the shore?”

“That question deserves an answer,” Captain Nemo replied. “First off,
I’ll mention that at the bottom of the sea there exist veins of zinc,
iron, silver, and gold whose mining would quite certainly be
feasible. But I’ve tapped none of these land-based metals, and I
wanted to make demands only on the sea itself for the sources of my
electricity.”

“The sea itself?”

“Yes, professor, and there was no shortage of such sources. In fact,
by establishing a circuit between two wires immersed to different
depths, I’d be able to obtain electricity through the diverging
temperatures they experience; but I preferred to use a more practical
procedure.”

“And that is?”

“You’re familiar with the composition of salt water. In 1,000 grams
one finds 96.5% water and about 2.66% sodium chloride; then small
quantities of magnesium chloride, potassium chloride, magnesium
bromide, sulfate of magnesia, calcium sulfate, and calcium
carbonate. Hence you observe that sodium chloride is encountered there
in significant proportions. Now then, it’s this sodium that I extract
from salt water and with which I compose my electric cells.”

“Sodium?”

“Yes, sir. Mixed with mercury, it forms an amalgam that takes the
place of zinc in Bunsen cells. The mercury is never depleted. Only the
sodium is consumed, and the sea itself gives me that. Beyond this,
I’ll mention that sodium batteries have been found to generate the
greater energy, and their electro-motor strength is twice that of zinc
batteries.”

“Captain, I fully understand the excellence of sodium under the
conditions in which you’re placed. The sea contains it. Fine. But it
still has to be produced, in short, extracted. And how do you
accomplish this? Obviously your batteries could do the extracting; but
if I’m not mistaken, the consumption of sodium needed by your electric
equipment would be greater than the quantity you’d extract. It would
come about, then, that in the process of producing your sodium, you’d
use up more than you’d make!”

“Accordingly, professor, I don’t extract it with batteries; quite
simply, I utilize the heat of coal from the earth.”

“From the earth?” I said, my voice going up on the word.

“We’ll say coal from the seafloor, if you prefer,” Captain Nemo
replied.

“And you can mine these veins of underwater coal?”

“You’ll watch me work them, Professor Aronnax. I ask only a little
patience of you, since you’ll have ample time to be patient. Just
remember one thing: I owe everything to the ocean; it generates
electricity, and electricity gives the Nautilus heat, light, motion,
and, in a word, life itself.”

“But not the air you breathe?”

“Oh, I could produce the air needed on board, but it would be
pointless, since I can rise to the surface of the sea whenever I
like. However, even though electricity doesn’t supply me with
breathable air, it at least operates the powerful pumps that store it
under pressure in special tanks; which, if need be, allows me to
extend my stay in the lower strata for as long as I want.”

“Captain,” I replied, “I’ll rest content with marveling. You’ve
obviously found what all mankind will surely find one day, the true
dynamic power of electricity.”

“I’m not so certain they’ll find it,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “But
be that as it may, you’re already familiar with the first use I’ve
found for this valuable force. It lights us, and with a uniformity and
continuity not even possessed by sunlight. Now, look at that clock:
it’s electric, it runs with an accuracy rivaling the finest
chronometers. I’ve had it divided into twenty-four hours like Italian
clocks, since neither day nor night, sun nor moon, exist for me, but
only this artificial light that I import into the depths of the seas!
See, right now it’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

“That’s perfect.”

“Another use for electricity: that dial hanging before our eyes
indicates how fast the Nautilus is going. An electric wire puts it in
contact with the patent log; this needle shows me the actual speed of
my submersible. And . . . hold on . . . just now we’re proceeding at
the moderate pace of fifteen miles per hour.”

“It’s marvelous,” I replied, “and I truly see, captain, how right you
are to use this force; it’s sure to take the place of wind, water, and
steam.”

“But that’s not all, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said, standing
up. “And if you’d care to follow me, we’ll inspect the Nautilus’s
stern.”

In essence, I was already familiar with the whole forward part of this
underwater boat, and here are its exact subdivisions going from
amidships to its spur: the dining room, 5 meters long and separated
from the library by a watertight bulkhead, in other words, it couldn’t
be penetrated by the sea; the library, 5 meters long; the main lounge,
10 meters long, separated from the captain’s stateroom by a second
watertight bulkhead; the aforesaid stateroom, 5 meters long; mine, 2.5
meters long; and finally, air tanks 7.5 meters long and extending to
the stempost. Total: a length of 35 meters. Doors were cut into the
watertight bulkheads and were shut hermetically by means of
india-rubber seals, which insured complete safety aboard the Nautilus
in the event of a leak in any one section.

I followed Captain Nemo down gangways located for easy transit, and I
arrived amidships. There I found a sort of shaft heading upward
between two watertight bulkheads. An iron ladder, clamped to the wall,
led to the shaft’s upper end. I asked the captain what this ladder was
for.

“It goes to the skiff,” he replied.

“What! You have a skiff?” I replied in some astonishment.

“Surely. An excellent longboat, light and unsinkable, which is used
for excursions and fishing trips.”

“But when you want to set out, don’t you have to return to the surface
of the sea?”

“By no means. The skiff is attached to the topside of the Nautilus’s
hull and is set in a cavity expressly designed to receive it. It’s
completely decked over, absolutely watertight, and held solidly in
place by bolts. This ladder leads to a manhole cut into the Nautilus’s
hull and corresponding to a comparable hole cut into the side of the
skiff. I insert myself through this double opening into the
longboat. My crew close up the hole belonging to the Nautilus; I close
up the one belonging to the skiff, simply by screwing it into place. I
undo the bolts holding the skiff to the submersible, and the longboat
rises with prodigious speed to the surface of the sea. I then open the
deck paneling, carefully closed until that point; I up mast and hoist
sail—or I take out my oars—and I go for a spin.”

“But how do you return to the ship?”

“I don’t, Professor Aronnax; the Nautilus returns to me.”

“At your command?”

“At my command. An electric wire connects me to the ship. I fire off a
telegram, and that’s that.”

“Right,” I said, tipsy from all these wonders, “nothing to it!”

After passing the well of the companionway that led to the platform, I
saw a cabin 2 meters long in which Conseil and Ned Land, enraptured
with their meal, were busy devouring it to the last crumb. Then a door
opened into the galley, 3 meters long and located between the vessel’s
huge storage lockers.

There, even more powerful and obedient than gas, electricity did most
of the cooking. Arriving under the stoves, wires transmitted to
platinum griddles a heat that was distributed and sustained with
perfect consistency. It also heated a distilling mechanism that, via
evaporation, supplied excellent drinking water. Next to this galley
was a bathroom, conveniently laid out, with faucets supplying hot or
cold water at will.

After the galley came the crew’s quarters, 5 meters long. But the door
was closed and I couldn’t see its accommodations, which might have
told me the number of men it took to operate the Nautilus.

At the far end stood a fourth watertight bulkhead, separating the
crew’s quarters from the engine room. A door opened, and I stood in
the compartment where Captain Nemo, indisputably a world-class
engineer, had set up his locomotive equipment.

Brightly lit, the engine room measured at least 20 meters in
length. It was divided, by function, into two parts: the first
contained the cells for generating electricity, the second that
mechanism transmitting movement to the propeller.

Right off, I detected an odor permeating the compartment that was sui
generis.* Captain Nemo noticed the negative impression it made on me.

*Latin: “in a class by itself.” Ed.

“That,” he told me, “is a gaseous discharge caused by our use of
sodium, but it’s only a mild inconvenience. In any event, every
morning we sanitize the ship by ventilating it in the open air.”

Meanwhile I examined the Nautilus’s engine with a fascination easy to
imagine.

“You observe,” Captain Nemo told me, “that I use Bunsen cells, not
Ruhmkorff cells. The latter would be ineffectual. One uses fewer
Bunsen cells, but they’re big and strong, and experience has proven
their superiority. The electricity generated here makes its way to the
stern, where electromagnets of huge size activate a special system of
levers and gears that transmit movement to the propeller’s shaft. The
latter has a diameter of 6 meters, a pitch of 7.5 meters, and can do
up to 120 revolutions per minute.”

“And that gives you?”

“A speed of fifty miles per hour.”

There lay a mystery, but I didn’t insist on exploring it. How could
electricity work with such power? Where did this nearly unlimited
energy originate? Was it in the extraordinary voltage obtained from
some new kind of induction coil? Could its transmission have been
immeasurably increased by some unknown system of levers?** This was
the point I couldn’t grasp.

**Author’s Note: And sure enough, there’s now talk of such a
  discovery, in which a new set of levers generates considerable
  power. Did its inventor meet up with Captain Nemo?

“Captain Nemo,” I said, “I’ll vouch for the results and not try to
explain them. I’ve seen the Nautilus at work out in front of the
Abraham Lincoln, and I know where I stand on its speed. But it isn’t
enough just to move, we have to see where we’re going! We must be able
to steer right or left, up or down! How do you reach the lower depths,
where you meet an increasing resistance that’s assessed in hundreds of
atmospheres? How do you rise back to the surface of the ocean?
Finally, how do you keep your ship at whatever level suits you? Am I
indiscreet in asking you all these things?”

“Not at all, professor,” the captain answered me after a slight
hesitation, “since you’ll never leave this underwater boat. Come into
the lounge. It’s actually our work room, and there you’ll learn the
full story about the Nautilus!”


CHAPTER 13

Some Figures


A MOMENT LATER we were seated on a couch in the lounge, cigars between
our lips. The captain placed before my eyes a working drawing that
gave the ground plan, cross section, and side view of the
Nautilus. Then he began his description as follows:

“Here, Professor Aronnax, are the different dimensions of this boat
now transporting you. It’s a very long cylinder with conical ends. It
noticeably takes the shape of a cigar, a shape already adopted in
London for several projects of the same kind. The length of this
cylinder from end to end is exactly seventy meters, and its maximum
breadth of beam is eight meters. So it isn’t quite built on the
ten-to-one ratio of your high-speed steamers; but its lines are
sufficiently long, and their tapering gradual enough, so that the
displaced water easily slips past and poses no obstacle to the ship’s
movements.

“These two dimensions allow you to obtain, via a simple calculation,
the surface area and volume of the Nautilus. Its surface area totals
1,011.45 square meters, its volume 1,507.2 cubic meters—which is
tantamount to saying that when it’s completely submerged, it displaces
1,500 cubic meters of water, or weighs 1,500 metric tons.

“In drawing up plans for a ship meant to navigate underwater, I wanted
it, when floating on the waves, to lie nine-tenths below the surface
and to emerge only one-tenth. Consequently, under these conditions it
needed to displace only nine-tenths of its volume, hence 1,356.48
cubic meters; in other words, it was to weigh only that same number of
metric tons. So I was obliged not to exceed this weight while building
it to the aforesaid dimensions.

“The Nautilus is made up of two hulls, one inside the other; between
them, joining them together, are iron T-bars that give this ship the
utmost rigidity. In fact, thanks to this cellular arrangement, it has
the resistance of a stone block, as if it were completely solid. Its
plating can’t give way; it’s self-adhering and not dependent on the
tightness of its rivets; and due to the perfect union of its
materials, the solidarity of its construction allows it to defy the
most violent seas.

“The two hulls are manufactured from boilerplate steel, whose relative
density is 7.8 times that of water. The first hull has a thickness of
no less than five centimeters and weighs 394.96 metric tons. My second
hull, the outer cover, includes a keel fifty centimeters high by
twenty-five wide, which by itself weighs 62 metric tons; this hull,
the engine, the ballast, the various accessories and accommodations,
plus the bulkheads and interior braces, have a combined weight of
961.52 metric tons, which when added to 394.96 metric tons, gives us
the desired total of 1,356.48 metric tons. Clear?”

“Clear,” I replied.

“So,” the captain went on, “when the Nautilus lies on the waves under
these conditions, one-tenth of it does emerge above water. Now then,
if I provide some ballast tanks equal in capacity to that one-tenth,
hence able to hold 150.72 metric tons, and if I fill them with water,
the boat then displaces 1,507.2 metric tons—or it weighs that much—and
it would be completely submerged. That’s what comes about,
professor. These ballast tanks exist within easy access in the lower
reaches of the Nautilus. I open some stopcocks, the tanks fill, the
boat sinks, and it’s exactly flush with the surface of the water.”

“Fine, captain, but now we come to a genuine difficulty. You’re able
to lie flush with the surface of the ocean, that I understand. But
lower down, while diving beneath that surface, isn’t your submersible
going to encounter a pressure, and consequently undergo an upward
thrust, that must be assessed at one atmosphere per every thirty feet
of water, hence at about one kilogram per each square centimeter?”

“Precisely, sir.”

“Then unless you fill up the whole Nautilus, I don’t see how you can
force it down into the heart of these liquid masses.”

“Professor,” Captain Nemo replied, “static objects mustn’t be confused
with dynamic ones, or we’ll be open to serious error. Comparatively
little effort is spent in reaching the ocean’s lower regions, because
all objects have a tendency to become ‘sinkers.’ Follow my logic
here.”

“I’m all ears, captain.”

“When I wanted to determine what increase in weight the Nautilus
needed to be given in order to submerge, I had only to take note of
the proportionate reduction in volume that salt water experiences in
deeper and deeper strata.”

“That’s obvious,” I replied.

“Now then, if water isn’t absolutely incompressible, at least it
compresses very little. In fact, according to the most recent
calculations, this reduction is only .0000436 per atmosphere, or per
every thirty feet of depth. For instance, to go 1,000 meters down, I
must take into account the reduction in volume that occurs under a
pressure equivalent to that from a 1,000-meter column of water, in
other words, under a pressure of 100 atmospheres. In this instance the
reduction would be .00436. Consequently, I’d have to increase my
weight from 1,507.2 metric tons to 1,513.77. So the added weight would
only be 6.57 metric tons.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all, Professor Aronnax, and the calculation is easy to
check. Now then, I have supplementary ballast tanks capable of
shipping 100 metric tons of water. So I can descend to considerable
depths. When I want to rise again and lie flush with the surface, all
I have to do is expel that water; and if I desire that the Nautilus
emerge above the waves to one-tenth of its total capacity, I empty all
the ballast tanks completely.”

This logic, backed up by figures, left me without a single objection.

“I accept your calculations, captain,” I replied, “and I’d be
ill-mannered to dispute them, since your daily experience bears them
out. But at this juncture, I have a hunch that we’re still left with
one real difficulty.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“When you’re at a depth of 1,000 meters, the Nautilus’s plating bears
a pressure of 100 atmospheres. If at this point you want to empty the
supplementary ballast tanks in order to lighten your boat and rise to
the surface, your pumps must overcome that pressure of 100
atmospheres, which is 100 kilograms per each square centimeter. This
demands a strength—”

“That electricity alone can give me,” Captain Nemo said swiftly. “Sir,
I repeat: the dynamic power of my engines is nearly infinite. The
Nautilus’s pumps have prodigious strength, as you must have noticed
when their waterspouts swept like a torrent over the Abraham
Lincoln. Besides, I use my supplementary ballast tanks only to reach
an average depth of 1,500 to 2,000 meters, and that with a view to
conserving my machinery. Accordingly, when I have a mind to visit the
ocean depths two or three vertical leagues beneath the surface, I use
maneuvers that are more time-consuming but no less infallible.”

“What are they, captain?” I asked.

“Here I’m naturally led into telling you how the Nautilus is
maneuvered.”

“I can’t wait to find out.”

“In order to steer this boat to port or starboard, in short, to make
turns on a horizontal plane, I use an ordinary, wide-bladed rudder
that’s fastened to the rear of the sternpost and worked by a wheel and
tackle. But I can also move the Nautilus upward and downward on a
vertical plane by the simple method of slanting its two fins, which
are attached to its sides at its center of flotation; these fins are
flexible, able to assume any position, and can be operated from inside
by means of powerful levers. If these fins stay parallel with the
boat, the latter moves horizontally. If they slant, the Nautilus
follows the angle of that slant and, under its propeller’s thrust,
either sinks on a diagonal as steep as it suits me, or rises on that
diagonal. And similarly, if I want to return more swiftly to the
surface, I throw the propeller in gear, and the water’s pressure makes
the Nautilus rise vertically, as an air balloon inflated with hydrogen
lifts swiftly into the skies.”

“Bravo, captain!” I exclaimed. “But in the midst of the waters, how
can your helmsman follow the course you’ve given him?”

“My helmsman is stationed behind the windows of a pilothouse, which
protrudes from the topside of the Nautilus’s hull and is fitted with
biconvex glass.”

“Is glass capable of resisting such pressures?”

“Perfectly capable. Though fragile on impact, crystal can still offer
considerable resistance. In 1864, during experiments on fishing by
electric light in the middle of the North Sea, glass panes less than
seven millimeters thick were seen to resist a pressure of sixteen
atmospheres, all the while letting through strong, heat-generating
rays whose warmth was unevenly distributed. Now then, I use glass
windows measuring no less than twenty-one centimeters at their
centers; in other words, they’ve thirty times the thickness.”

“Fair enough, captain, but if we’re going to see, we need light to
drive away the dark, and in the midst of the murky waters, I wonder
how your helmsman can—”

“Set astern of the pilothouse is a powerful electric reflector whose
rays light up the sea for a distance of half a mile.”

“Oh, bravo! Bravo three times over, captain! That explains the
phosphorescent glow from this so-called narwhale that so puzzled us
scientists! Pertinent to this, I’ll ask you if the Nautilus’s running
afoul of the Scotia, which caused such a great uproar, was the result
of an accidental encounter?”

“Entirely accidental, sir. I was navigating two meters beneath the
surface of the water when the collision occurred. However, I could see
that it had no dire consequences.”

“None, sir. But as for your encounter with the Abraham Lincoln
. . . ?”

“Professor, that troubled me, because it’s one of the best ships in
the gallant American navy, but they attacked me and I had to defend
myself! All the same, I was content simply to put the frigate in a
condition where it could do me no harm; it won’t have any difficulty
getting repairs at the nearest port.”

“Ah, commander,” I exclaimed with conviction, “your Nautilus is truly
a marvelous boat!”

“Yes, professor,” Captain Nemo replied with genuine excitement, “and I
love it as if it were my own flesh and blood! Aboard a conventional
ship, facing the ocean’s perils, danger lurks everywhere; on the
surface of the sea, your chief sensation is the constant feeling of an
underlying chasm, as the Dutchman Jansen so aptly put it; but below
the waves aboard the Nautilus, your heart never fails you! There are
no structural deformities to worry about, because the double hull of
this boat has the rigidity of iron; no rigging to be worn out by
rolling and pitching on the waves; no sails for the wind to carry off;
no boilers for steam to burst open; no fires to fear, because this
submersible is made of sheet iron not wood; no coal to run out of,
since electricity is its mechanical force; no collisions to fear,
because it navigates the watery deep all by itself; no storms to
brave, because just a few meters beneath the waves, it finds absolute
tranquility! There, sir. There’s the ideal ship! And if it’s true that
the engineer has more confidence in a craft than the builder, and the
builder more than the captain himself, you can understand the utter
abandon with which I place my trust in this Nautilus, since I’m its
captain, builder, and engineer all in one!”

Captain Nemo spoke with winning eloquence. The fire in his eyes and
the passion in his gestures transfigured him. Yes, he loved his ship
the same way a father loves his child!

But one question, perhaps indiscreet, naturally popped up, and I
couldn’t resist asking it.

“You’re an engineer, then, Captain Nemo?”

“Yes, professor,” he answered me. “I studied in London, Paris, and New
York back in the days when I was a resident of the earth’s
continents.”

“But how were you able to build this wonderful Nautilus in secret?”

“Each part of it, Professor Aronnax, came from a different spot on the
globe and reached me at a cover address. Its keel was forged by
Creusot in France, its propeller shaft by Pen & Co. in London, the
sheet-iron plates for its hull by Laird’s in Liverpool, its propeller
by Scott’s in Glasgow. Its tanks were manufactured by Cail & Co. in
Paris, its engine by Krupp in Prussia, its spur by the Motala
workshops in Sweden, its precision instruments by Hart Bros. in New
York, etc.; and each of these suppliers received my specifications
under a different name.”

“But,” I went on, “once these parts were manufactured, didn’t they
have to be mounted and adjusted?”

“Professor, I set up my workshops on a deserted islet in
midocean. There our Nautilus was completed by me and my workmen, in
other words, by my gallant companions whom I’ve molded and
educated. Then, when the operation was over, we burned every trace of
our stay on that islet, which if I could have, I’d have blown up.”

“From all this, may I assume that such a boat costs a fortune?”

“An iron ship, Professor Aronnax, runs 1,125 francs per metric
ton. Now then, the Nautilus has a burden of 1,500 metric
tons. Consequently, it cost 1,687,000 francs, hence 2,000,000 francs
including its accommodations, and 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 with all the
collections and works of art it contains.”

“One last question, Captain Nemo.”

“Ask, professor.”

“You’re rich, then?”

“Infinitely rich, sir, and without any trouble, I could pay off the
ten-billion-franc French national debt!”

I gaped at the bizarre individual who had just spoken these words. Was
he playing on my credulity? Time would tell.


CHAPTER 14

The Black Current


THE PART OF THE planet earth that the seas occupy has been assessed at
3,832,558 square myriameters, hence more than 38,000,000,000
hectares. This liquid mass totals 2,250,000,000 cubic miles and could
form a sphere with a diameter of sixty leagues, whose weight would be
three quintillion metric tons. To appreciate such a number, we should
remember that a quintillion is to a billion what a billion is to one,
in other words, there are as many billions in a quintillion as ones in
a billion! Now then, this liquid mass nearly equals the total amount
of water that has poured through all the earth’s rivers for the past
40,000 years!

During prehistoric times, an era of fire was followed by an era of
water. At first there was ocean everywhere. Then, during the Silurian
period, the tops of mountains gradually appeared above the waves,
islands emerged, disappeared beneath temporary floods, rose again,
were fused to form continents, and finally the earth’s geography
settled into what we have today. Solid matter had wrested from liquid
matter some 37,657,000 square miles, hence 12,916,000,000 hectares.

The outlines of the continents allow the seas to be divided into five
major parts: the frozen Arctic and Antarctic oceans, the Indian Ocean,
the Atlantic Ocean, and the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific Ocean extends north to south between the two polar circles
and east to west between America and Asia over an expanse of 145
degrees of longitude. It’s the most tranquil of the seas; its currents
are wide and slow-moving, its tides moderate, its rainfall
abundant. And this was the ocean that I was first destined to cross
under these strangest of auspices.

“If you don’t mind, professor,” Captain Nemo told me, “we’ll determine
our exact position and fix the starting point of our voyage. It’s
fifteen minutes before noon. I’m going to rise to the surface of the
water.”

The captain pressed an electric bell three times. The pumps began to
expel water from the ballast tanks; on the pressure gauge, a needle
marked the decreasing pressures that indicated the Nautilus’s upward
progress; then the needle stopped.

“Here we are,” the captain said.

I made my way to the central companionway, which led to the
platform. I climbed its metal steps, passed through the open hatches,
and arrived topside on the Nautilus.

The platform emerged only eighty centimeters above the waves. The
Nautilus’s bow and stern boasted that spindle-shaped outline that had
caused the ship to be compared appropriately to a long cigar. I noted
the slight overlap of its sheet-iron plates, which resembled the
scales covering the bodies of our big land reptiles. So I had a
perfectly natural explanation for why, despite the best spyglasses,
this boat had always been mistaken for a marine animal.

Near the middle of the platform, the skiff was half set in the ship’s
hull, making a slight bulge. Fore and aft stood two cupolas of
moderate height, their sides slanting and partly inset with heavy
biconvex glass, one reserved for the helmsman steering the Nautilus,
the other for the brilliance of the powerful electric beacon lighting
his way.

The sea was magnificent, the skies clear. This long aquatic vehicle
could barely feel the broad undulations of the ocean. A mild breeze
out of the east rippled the surface of the water. Free of all mist,
the horizon was ideal for taking sights.

There was nothing to be seen. Not a reef, not an islet. No more
Abraham Lincoln. A deserted immenseness.

Raising his sextant, Captain Nemo took the altitude of the sun, which
would give him his latitude. He waited for a few minutes until the orb
touched the rim of the horizon. While he was taking his sights, he
didn’t move a muscle, and the instrument couldn’t have been steadier
in hands made out of marble.

“Noon,” he said. “Professor, whenever you’re ready. . . .”

I took one last look at the sea, a little yellowish near the landing
places of Japan, and I went below again to the main lounge.

There the captain fixed his position and used a chronometer to
calculate his longitude, which he double-checked against his previous
observations of hour angles. Then he told me:

“Professor Aronnax, we’re in longitude 137 degrees 15’ west—”

“West of which meridian?” I asked quickly, hoping the captain’s reply
might give me a clue to his nationality.

“Sir,” he answered me, “I have chronometers variously set to the
meridians of Paris, Greenwich, and Washington, D.C. But in your honor,
I’ll use the one for Paris.”

This reply told me nothing. I bowed, and the commander went on:

“We’re in longitude 137 degrees 15’ west of the meridian of Paris, and
latitude 30 degrees 7’ north, in other words, about 300 miles from the
shores of Japan. At noon on this day of November 8, we hereby begin
our voyage of exploration under the waters.”

“May God be with us!” I replied.

“And now, professor,” the captain added, “I’ll leave you to your
intellectual pursuits. I’ve set our course east-northeast at a depth
of fifty meters. Here are some large-scale charts on which you’ll be
able to follow that course. The lounge is at your disposal, and with
your permission, I’ll take my leave.”

Captain Nemo bowed. I was left to myself, lost in my thoughts. They
all centered on the Nautilus’s commander. Would I ever learn the
nationality of this eccentric man who had boasted of having none? His
sworn hate for humanity, a hate that perhaps was bent on some dreadful
revenge—what had provoked it? Was he one of those unappreciated
scholars, one of those geniuses “embittered by the world,” as Conseil
expressed it, a latter-day Galileo, or maybe one of those men of
science, like America’s Commander Maury, whose careers were ruined by
political revolutions? I couldn’t say yet. As for me, whom fate had
just brought aboard his vessel, whose life he had held in the balance:
he had received me coolly but hospitably. Only, he never took the hand
I extended to him. He never extended his own.

For an entire hour I was deep in these musings, trying to probe this
mystery that fascinated me so. Then my eyes focused on a huge world
map displayed on the table, and I put my finger on the very spot where
our just-determined longitude and latitude intersected.

Like the continents, the sea has its rivers. These are exclusive
currents that can be identified by their temperature and color, the
most remarkable being the one called the Gulf Stream. Science has
defined the global paths of five chief currents: one in the north
Atlantic, a second in the south Atlantic, a third in the north
Pacific, a fourth in the south Pacific, and a fifth in the southern
Indian Ocean. Also it’s likely that a sixth current used to exist in
the northern Indian Ocean, when the Caspian and Aral Seas joined up
with certain large Asian lakes to form a single uniform expanse of
water.

Now then, at the spot indicated on the world map, one of these
seagoing rivers was rolling by, the Kuroshio of the Japanese, the
Black Current: heated by perpendicular rays from the tropical sun, it
leaves the Bay of Bengal, crosses the Strait of Malacca, goes up the
shores of Asia, and curves into the north Pacific as far as the
Aleutian Islands, carrying along trunks of camphor trees and other
local items, the pure indigo of its warm waters sharply contrasting
with the ocean’s waves. It was this current the Nautilus was about to
cross. I watched it on the map with my eyes, I saw it lose itself in
the immenseness of the Pacific, and I felt myself swept along with it,
when Ned Land and Conseil appeared in the lounge doorway.

My two gallant companions stood petrified at the sight of the wonders
on display.

“Where are we?” the Canadian exclaimed. “In the Quebec Museum?”

“Begging master’s pardon,” Conseil answered, “but this seems more like
the Sommerard artifacts exhibition!”

“My friends,” I replied, signaling them to enter, “you’re in neither
Canada nor France, but securely aboard the Nautilus, fifty meters
below sea level.”

“If master says so, then so be it,” Conseil answered. “But in all
honesty, this lounge is enough to astonish even someone Flemish like
myself.”

“Indulge your astonishment, my friend, and have a look, because
there’s plenty of work here for a classifier of your talents.”

Conseil needed no encouraging. Bending over the glass cases, the
gallant lad was already muttering choice words from the naturalist’s
vocabulary: class Gastropoda, family Buccinoidea, genus cowry, species
Cypraea madagascariensis, etc.

Meanwhile Ned Land, less dedicated to conchology, questioned me about
my interview with Captain Nemo. Had I discovered who he was, where he
came from, where he was heading, how deep he was taking us? In short,
a thousand questions I had no time to answer.

I told him everything I knew—or, rather, everything I didn’t know—and
I asked him what he had seen or heard on his part.

“Haven’t seen or heard a thing!” the Canadian replied. “I haven’t even
spotted the crew of this boat. By any chance, could they be electric
too?”

“Electric?”

“Oh ye gods, I’m half tempted to believe it! But back to you,
Professor Aronnax,” Ned Land said, still hanging on to his
ideas. “Can’t you tell me how many men are on board? Ten, twenty,
fifty, a hundred?”

“I’m unable to answer you, Mr. Land. And trust me on this: for the
time being, get rid of these notions of taking over the Nautilus or
escaping from it. This boat is a masterpiece of modern technology, and
I’d be sorry to have missed it! Many people would welcome the
circumstances that have been handed us, just to walk in the midst of
these wonders. So keep calm, and let’s see what’s happening around
us.”

“See!” the harpooner exclaimed. “There’s nothing to see, nothing we’ll
ever see from this sheet-iron prison! We’re simply running around
blindfolded—”

Ned Land was just pronouncing these last words when we were suddenly
plunged into darkness, utter darkness. The ceiling lights went out so
quickly, my eyes literally ached, just as if we had experienced the
opposite sensation of going from the deepest gloom to the brightest
sunlight.

We stood stock-still, not knowing what surprise was waiting for us,
whether pleasant or unpleasant. But a sliding sound became
audible. You could tell that some panels were shifting over the
Nautilus’s sides.

“It’s the beginning of the end!” Ned Land said.

“. . . order Hydromedusa,” Conseil muttered.

Suddenly, through two oblong openings, daylight appeared on both sides
of the lounge. The liquid masses came into view, brightly lit by the
ship’s electric outpourings. We were separated from the sea by two
panes of glass. Initially I shuddered at the thought that these
fragile partitions could break; but strong copper bands secured them,
giving them nearly infinite resistance.

The sea was clearly visible for a one-mile radius around the
Nautilus. What a sight! What pen could describe it? Who could portray
the effects of this light through these translucent sheets of water,
the subtlety of its progressive shadings into the ocean’s upper and
lower strata?

The transparency of salt water has long been recognized. Its clarity
is believed to exceed that of spring water. The mineral and organic
substances it holds in suspension actually increase its
translucency. In certain parts of the Caribbean Sea, you can see the
sandy bottom with startling distinctness as deep as 145 meters down,
and the penetrating power of the sun’s rays seems to give out only at
a depth of 300 meters. But in this fluid setting traveled by the
Nautilus, our electric glow was being generated in the very heart of
the waves. It was no longer illuminated water, it was liquid light.

If we accept the hypotheses of the microbiologist Ehrenberg—who
believes that these underwater depths are lit up by phosphorescent
organisms—nature has certainly saved one of her most prodigious sights
for residents of the sea, and I could judge for myself from the
thousandfold play of the light. On both sides I had windows opening
over these unexplored depths. The darkness in the lounge enhanced the
brightness outside, and we stared as if this clear glass were the
window of an immense aquarium.

The Nautilus seemed to be standing still. This was due to the lack of
landmarks. But streaks of water, parted by the ship’s spur, sometimes
threaded before our eyes with extraordinary speed.

In wonderment, we leaned on our elbows before these show windows, and
our stunned silence remained unbroken until Conseil said:

“You wanted to see something, Ned my friend; well, now you have
something to see!”

“How unusual!” the Canadian put in, setting aside his tantrums and
getaway schemes while submitting to this irresistible allure. “A man
would go an even greater distance just to stare at such a sight!”

“Ah!” I exclaimed. “I see our captain’s way of life! He’s found
himself a separate world that saves its most astonishing wonders just
for him!”

“But where are the fish?” the Canadian ventured to observe. “I don’t
see any fish!”

“Why would you care, Ned my friend?” Conseil replied. “Since you have
no knowledge of them.”

“Me? A fisherman!” Ned Land exclaimed.

And on this subject a dispute arose between the two friends, since
both were knowledgeable about fish, but from totally different
standpoints.

Everyone knows that fish make up the fourth and last class in the
vertebrate branch. They have been quite aptly defined as:
“cold-blooded vertebrates with a double circulatory system, breathing
through gills, and designed to live in water.” They consist of two
distinct series: the series of bony fish, in other words, those whose
spines have vertebrae made of bone; and cartilaginous fish, in other
words, those whose spines have vertebrae made of cartilage.

Possibly the Canadian was familiar with this distinction, but Conseil
knew far more about it; and since he and Ned were now fast friends, he
just had to show off. So he told the harpooner:

“Ned my friend, you’re a slayer of fish, a highly skilled
fisherman. You’ve caught a large number of these fascinating
animals. But I’ll bet you don’t know how they’re classified.”

“Sure I do,” the harpooner replied in all seriousness. “They’re
classified into fish we eat and fish we don’t eat!”

“Spoken like a true glutton,” Conseil replied. “But tell me, are you
familiar with the differences between bony fish and cartilaginous
fish?”

“Just maybe, Conseil.”

“And how about the subdivisions of these two large classes?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion,” the Canadian replied.

“All right, listen and learn, Ned my friend! Bony fish are subdivided
into six orders. Primo, the acanthopterygians, whose upper jaw is
fully formed and free-moving, and whose gills take the shape of a
comb. This order consists of fifteen families, in other words,
three-quarters of all known fish. Example: the common perch.”

“Pretty fair eating,” Ned Land replied.

“Secundo,” Conseil went on, “the abdominals, whose pelvic fins hang
under the abdomen to the rear of the pectorals but aren’t attached to
the shoulder bone, an order that’s divided into five families and
makes up the great majority of freshwater fish. Examples: carp, pike.”

“Ugh!” the Canadian put in with distinct scorn. “You can keep the
freshwater fish!”

“Tertio,” Conseil said, “the subbrachians, whose pelvic fins are
attached under the pectorals and hang directly from the shoulder
bone. This order contains four families. Examples: flatfish such as
sole, turbot, dab, plaice, brill, etc.”

“Excellent, really excellent!” the harpooner exclaimed, interested in
fish only from an edible viewpoint.

“Quarto,” Conseil went on, unabashed, “the apods, with long bodies
that lack pelvic fins and are covered by a heavy, often glutinous
skin, an order consisting of only one family. Examples: common eels
and electric eels.”

“So-so, just so-so!” Ned Land replied.

“Quinto,” Conseil said, “the lophobranchians, which have fully formed,
free-moving jaws but whose gills consist of little tufts arranged in
pairs along their gill arches. This order includes only one
family. Examples: seahorses and dragonfish.”

“Bad, very bad!” the harpooner replied.

“Sexto and last,” Conseil said, “the plectognaths, whose maxillary
bone is firmly attached to the side of the intermaxillary that forms
the jaw, and whose palate arch is locked to the skull by sutures that
render the jaw immovable, an order lacking true pelvic fins and which
consists of two families. Examples: puffers and moonfish.”

“They’re an insult to a frying pan!” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Are you grasping all this, Ned my friend?” asked the scholarly
Conseil.

“Not a lick of it, Conseil my friend,” the harpooner replied. “But
keep going, because you fill me with fascination.”

“As for cartilaginous fish,” Conseil went on unflappably, “they
consist of only three orders.”

“Good news,” Ned put in.

“Primo, the cyclostomes, whose jaws are fused into a flexible ring and
whose gill openings are simply a large number of holes, an order
consisting of only one family. Example: the lamprey.”

“An acquired taste,” Ned Land replied.

“Secundo, the selacians, with gills resembling those of the
cyclostomes but whose lower jaw is free-moving. This order, which is
the most important in the class, consists of two families. Examples:
the ray and the shark.”

“What!” Ned Land exclaimed. “Rays and man-eaters in the same order?
Well, Conseil my friend, on behalf of the rays, I wouldn’t advise you
to put them in the same fish tank!”

“Tertio,” Conseil replied, “The sturionians, whose gill opening is the
usual single slit adorned with a gill cover, an order consisting of
four genera. Example: the sturgeon.”

“Ah, Conseil my friend, you saved the best for last, in my opinion
anyhow! And that’s all of ‘em?”

“Yes, my gallant Ned,” Conseil replied. “And note well, even when one
has grasped all this, one still knows next to nothing, because these
families are subdivided into genera, subgenera, species, varieties—”

“All right, Conseil my friend,” the harpooner said, leaning toward the
glass panel, “here come a couple of your varieties now!”

“Yes! Fish!” Conseil exclaimed. “One would think he was in front of an
aquarium!”

“No,” I replied, “because an aquarium is nothing more than a cage, and
these fish are as free as birds in the air!”

“Well, Conseil my friend, identify them! Start naming them!” Ned Land
exclaimed.

“Me?” Conseil replied. “I’m unable to! That’s my employer’s
bailiwick!”

And in truth, although the fine lad was a classifying maniac, he was
no naturalist, and I doubt that he could tell a bonito from a tuna. In
short, he was the exact opposite of the Canadian, who knew nothing
about classification but could instantly put a name to any fish.

“A triggerfish,” I said.

“It’s a Chinese triggerfish,” Ned Land replied.

“Genus Balistes, family Scleroderma, order Plectognatha,” Conseil
muttered.

Assuredly, Ned and Conseil in combination added up to one outstanding
naturalist.

The Canadian was not mistaken. Cavorting around the Nautilus was a
school of triggerfish with flat bodies, grainy skins, armed with
stings on their dorsal fins, and with four prickly rows of quills
quivering on both sides of their tails. Nothing could have been more
wonderful than the skin covering them: white underneath, gray above,
with spots of gold sparkling in the dark eddies of the waves. Around
them, rays were undulating like sheets flapping in the wind, and among
these I spotted, much to my glee, a Chinese ray, yellowish on its
topside, a dainty pink on its belly, and armed with three stings
behind its eyes; a rare species whose very existence was still doubted
in Lacépède’s day, since that pioneering classifier of fish had seen
one only in a portfolio of Japanese drawings.

For two hours a whole aquatic army escorted the Nautilus. In the midst
of their leaping and cavorting, while they competed with each other in
beauty, radiance, and speed, I could distinguish some green wrasse,
bewhiskered mullet marked with pairs of black lines, white gobies from
the genus Eleotris with curved caudal fins and violet spots on the
back, wonderful Japanese mackerel from the genus Scomber with blue
bodies and silver heads, glittering azure goldfish whose name by
itself gives their full description, several varieties of porgy or
gilthead (some banded gilthead with fins variously blue and yellow,
some with horizontal heraldic bars and enhanced by a black strip
around their caudal area, some with color zones and elegantly corseted
in their six waistbands), trumpetfish with flutelike beaks that looked
like genuine seafaring woodcocks and were sometimes a meter long,
Japanese salamanders, serpentine moray eels from the genus Echidna
that were six feet long with sharp little eyes and a huge mouth
bristling with teeth; etc.

Our wonderment stayed at an all-time fever pitch. Our exclamations
were endless. Ned identified the fish, Conseil classified them, and as
for me, I was in ecstasy over the verve of their movements and the
beauty of their forms. Never before had I been given the chance to
glimpse these animals alive and at large in their native element.

Given such a complete collection from the seas of Japan and China, I
won’t mention every variety that passed before our dazzled eyes. More
numerous than birds in the air, these fish raced right up to us, no
doubt attracted by the brilliant glow of our electric beacon.

Suddenly daylight appeared in the lounge. The sheet-iron panels slid
shut. The magical vision disappeared. But for a good while I kept
dreaming away, until the moment my eyes focused on the instruments
hanging on the wall. The compass still showed our heading as
east-northeast, the pressure gauge indicated a pressure of five
atmospheres (corresponding to a depth of fifty meters), and the
electric log gave our speed as fifteen miles per hour.

I waited for Captain Nemo. But he didn’t appear. The clock marked the
hour of five.

Ned Land and Conseil returned to their cabin. As for me, I repaired to
my stateroom. There I found dinner ready for me. It consisted of
turtle soup made from the daintiest hawksbill, a red mullet with
white, slightly flaky flesh, whose liver, when separately prepared,
makes delicious eating, plus loin of imperial angelfish, whose flavor
struck me as even better than salmon.

I spent the evening in reading, writing, and thinking. Then drowsiness
overtook me, I stretched out on my eelgrass mattress, and I fell into
a deep slumber, while the Nautilus glided through the swiftly flowing
Black Current.


CHAPTER 15

An Invitation in Writing


THE NEXT DAY, November 9, I woke up only after a long, twelve-hour
slumber. Conseil, a creature of habit, came to ask “how master’s night
went,” and to offer his services. He had left his Canadian friend
sleeping like a man who had never done anything else.

I let the gallant lad babble as he pleased, without giving him much in
the way of a reply. I was concerned about Captain Nemo’s absence
during our session the previous afternoon, and I hoped to see him
again today.

Soon I had put on my clothes, which were woven from strands of
seashell tissue. More than once their composition provoked comments
from Conseil. I informed him that they were made from the smooth,
silken filaments with which the fan mussel, a type of seashell quite
abundant along Mediterranean beaches, attaches itself to rocks. In
olden times, fine fabrics, stockings, and gloves were made from such
filaments, because they were both very soft and very warm. So the
Nautilus’s crew could dress themselves at little cost, without needing
a thing from cotton growers, sheep, or silkworms on shore.

As soon as I was dressed, I made my way to the main lounge. It was
deserted.

I dove into studying the conchological treasures amassed inside the
glass cases. I also investigated the huge plant albums that were
filled with the rarest marine herbs, which, although they were pressed
and dried, still kept their wonderful colors. Among these valuable
water plants, I noted various seaweed: some Cladostephus
verticillatus, peacock’s tails, fig-leafed caulerpa, grain-bearing
beauty bushes, delicate rosetangle tinted scarlet, sea colander
arranged into fan shapes, mermaid’s cups that looked like the caps of
squat mushrooms and for years had been classified among the zoophytes;
in short, a complete series of algae.

The entire day passed without my being honored by a visit from Captain
Nemo. The panels in the lounge didn’t open. Perhaps they didn’t want
us to get tired of these beautiful things.

The Nautilus kept to an east-northeasterly heading, a speed of twelve
miles per hour, and a depth between fifty and sixty meters.

Next day, November 10: the same neglect, the same solitude. I didn’t
see a soul from the crew. Ned and Conseil spent the better part of the
day with me. They were astonished at the captain’s inexplicable
absence. Was this eccentric man ill? Did he want to change his plans
concerning us?

But after all, as Conseil noted, we enjoyed complete freedom, we were
daintily and abundantly fed. Our host had kept to the terms of his
agreement. We couldn’t complain, and moreover the very uniqueness of
our situation had such generous rewards in store for us, we had no
grounds for criticism.

That day I started my diary of these adventures, which has enabled me
to narrate them with the most scrupulous accuracy; and one odd detail:
I wrote it on paper manufactured from marine eelgrass.

Early in the morning on November 11, fresh air poured through the
Nautilus’s interior, informing me that we had returned to the surface
of the ocean to renew our oxygen supply. I headed for the central
companionway and climbed onto the platform.

It was six o’clock. I found the weather overcast, the sea gray but
calm. Hardly a billow. I hoped to encounter Captain Nemo there—would
he come? I saw only the helmsman imprisoned in his glass-windowed
pilothouse. Seated on the ledge furnished by the hull of the skiff, I
inhaled the sea’s salty aroma with great pleasure.

Little by little, the mists were dispersed under the action of the
sun’s rays. The radiant orb cleared the eastern horizon. Under its
gaze, the sea caught on fire like a trail of gunpowder. Scattered on
high, the clouds were colored in bright, wonderfully shaded hues, and
numerous “ladyfingers” warned of daylong winds.*

*Author’s Note: “Ladyfingers” are small, thin, white clouds with
 ragged edges.

But what were mere winds to this Nautilus, which no storms could
intimidate!

So I was marveling at this delightful sunrise, so life-giving and
cheerful, when I heard someone climbing onto the platform.

I was prepared to greet Captain Nemo, but it was his chief officer who
appeared—whom I had already met during our first visit with the
captain. He advanced over the platform, not seeming to notice my
presence. A powerful spyglass to his eye, he scrutinized every point
of the horizon with the utmost care. Then, his examination over, he
approached the hatch and pronounced a phrase whose exact wording
follows below. I remember it because, every morning, it was repeated
under the same circumstances. It ran like this:

“Nautron respoc lorni virch.”

What it meant I was unable to say.

These words pronounced, the chief officer went below again. I thought
the Nautilus was about to resume its underwater navigating. So I went
down the hatch and back through the gangways to my stateroom.

Five days passed in this way with no change in our situation. Every
morning I climbed onto the platform. The same phrase was pronounced by
the same individual. Captain Nemo did not appear.

I was pursuing the policy that we had seen the last of him, when on
November 16, while reentering my stateroom with Ned and Conseil, I
found a note addressed to me on the table.

I opened it impatiently. It was written in a script that was clear and
neat but a bit “Old English” in style, its characters reminding me of
German calligraphy.

The note was worded as follows:

  Professor Aronnax
  Aboard the Nautilus
  November 16, 1867

  Captain Nemo invites Professor Aronnax on a hunting trip that will
  take place tomorrow morning in his Crespo Island forests. He hopes
  nothing will prevent the professor from attending, and he looks
  forward with pleasure to the professor’s companions joining him.

  CAPTAIN NEMO,
  Commander of the Nautilus.

“A hunting trip!” Ned exclaimed.

“And in his forests on Crespo Island!” Conseil added.

“But does this mean the old boy goes ashore?” Ned Land went on.

“That seems to be the gist of it,” I said, rereading the letter.

“Well, we’ve got to accept!” the Canadian answered. “Once we’re on
solid ground, we’ll figure out a course of action. Besides, it
wouldn’t pain me to eat a couple slices of fresh venison!”

Without trying to reconcile the contradictions between Captain Nemo’s
professed horror of continents or islands and his invitation to go
hunting in a forest, I was content to reply:

“First let’s look into this Crespo Island.”

I consulted the world map; and in latitude 32 degrees 40’ north and
longitude 167 degrees 50’ west, I found an islet that had been
discovered in 1801 by Captain Crespo, which old Spanish charts called
Rocca de la Plata, in other words, “Silver Rock.” So we were about
1,800 miles from our starting point, and by a slight change of
heading, the Nautilus was bringing us back toward the southeast.

I showed my companions this small, stray rock in the middle of the
north Pacific.

“If Captain Nemo does sometimes go ashore,” I told them, “at least he
only picks desert islands!”

Ned Land shook his head without replying; then he and Conseil left
me. After supper was served me by the mute and emotionless steward, I
fell asleep; but not without some anxieties.

When I woke up the next day, November 17, I sensed that the Nautilus
was completely motionless. I dressed hurriedly and entered the main
lounge.

Captain Nemo was there waiting for me. He stood up, bowed, and asked
if it suited me to come along.

Since he made no allusion to his absence the past eight days, I also
refrained from mentioning it, and I simply answered that my companions
and I were ready to go with him.

“Only, sir,” I added, “I’ll take the liberty of addressing a question
to you.”

“Address away, Professor Aronnax, and if I’m able to answer, I will.”

“Well then, captain, how is it that you’ve severed all ties with the
shore, yet you own forests on Crespo Island?”

“Professor,” the captain answered me, “these forests of mine don’t
bask in the heat and light of the sun. They aren’t frequented by
lions, tigers, panthers, or other quadrupeds. They’re known only to
me. They grow only for me. These forests aren’t on land, they’re
actual underwater forests.”

“Underwater forests!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, professor.”

“And you’re offering to take me to them?”

“Precisely.”

“On foot?”

“Without getting your feet wet.”

“While hunting?”

“While hunting.”

“Rifles in hand?”

“Rifles in hand.”

I stared at the Nautilus’s commander with an air anything but
flattering to the man.

“Assuredly,” I said to myself, “he’s contracted some mental
illness. He’s had a fit that’s lasted eight days and isn’t over even
yet. What a shame! I liked him better eccentric than insane!”

These thoughts were clearly readable on my face; but Captain Nemo
remained content with inviting me to follow him, and I did so like a
man resigned to the worst.

We arrived at the dining room, where we found breakfast served.

“Professor Aronnax,” the captain told me, “I beg you to share my
breakfast without formality. We can chat while we eat. Because,
although I promised you a stroll in my forests, I made no pledge to
arrange for your encountering a restaurant there. Accordingly, eat
your breakfast like a man who’ll probably eat dinner only when it’s
extremely late.”

I did justice to this meal. It was made up of various fish and some
slices of sea cucumber, that praiseworthy zoophyte, all garnished with
such highly appetizing seaweed as the Porphyra laciniata and the
Laurencia primafetida. Our beverage consisted of clear water to which,
following the captain’s example, I added some drops of a fermented
liquor extracted by the Kamchatka process from the seaweed known by
name as Rhodymenia palmata.

At first Captain Nemo ate without pronouncing a single word. Then he
told me:

“Professor, when I proposed that you go hunting in my Crespo forests,
you thought I was contradicting myself. When I informed you that it
was an issue of underwater forests, you thought I’d gone
insane. Professor, you must never make snap judgments about your
fellow man.”

“But, captain, believe me—”

“Kindly listen to me, and you’ll see if you have grounds for accusing
me of insanity or self-contradiction.”

“I’m all attention.”

“Professor, you know as well as I do that a man can live underwater so
long as he carries with him his own supply of breathable air. For
underwater work projects, the workman wears a waterproof suit with his
head imprisoned in a metal capsule, while he receives air from above
by means of force pumps and flow regulators.”

“That’s the standard equipment for a diving suit,” I said.

“Correct, but under such conditions the man has no freedom. He’s
attached to a pump that sends him air through an india-rubber hose;
it’s an actual chain that fetters him to the shore, and if we were to
be bound in this way to the Nautilus, we couldn’t go far either.”

“Then how do you break free?” I asked.

“We use the Rouquayrol-Denayrouze device, invented by two of your
fellow countrymen but refined by me for my own special uses, thereby
enabling you to risk these new physiological conditions without
suffering any organic disorders. It consists of a tank built from
heavy sheet iron in which I store air under a pressure of fifty
atmospheres. This tank is fastened to the back by means of straps,
like a soldier’s knapsack. Its top part forms a box where the air is
regulated by a bellows mechanism and can be released only at its
proper tension. In the Rouquayrol device that has been in general use,
two india-rubber hoses leave this box and feed to a kind of tent that
imprisons the operator’s nose and mouth; one hose is for the entrance
of air to be inhaled, the other for the exit of air to be exhaled, and
the tongue closes off the former or the latter depending on the
breather’s needs. But in my case, since I face considerable pressures
at the bottom of the sea, I needed to enclose my head in a copper
sphere, like those found on standard diving suits, and the two hoses
for inhalation and exhalation now feed to that sphere.”

“That’s perfect, Captain Nemo, but the air you carry must be quickly
depleted; and once it contains no more than 15% oxygen, it becomes
unfit for breathing.”

“Surely, but as I told you, Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus’s pumps
enable me to store air under considerable pressure, and given this
circumstance, the tank on my diving equipment can supply breathable
air for nine or ten hours.”

“I’ve no more objections to raise,” I replied. “I’ll only ask you,
captain: how can you light your way at the bottom of the ocean?”

“With the Ruhmkorff device, Professor Aronnax. If the first is carried
on the back, the second is fastened to the belt. It consists of a
Bunsen battery that I activate not with potassium dichromate but with
sodium. An induction coil gathers the electricity generated and
directs it to a specially designed lantern. In this lantern one finds
a glass spiral that contains only a residue of carbon dioxide
gas. When the device is operating, this gas becomes luminous and gives
off a continuous whitish light. Thus provided for, I breathe and I
see.”

“Captain Nemo, to my every objection you give such crushing answers,
I’m afraid to entertain a single doubt. However, though I have no
choice but to accept both the Rouquayrol and Ruhmkorff devices, I’d
like to register some reservations about the rifle with which you’ll
equip me.”

“But it isn’t a rifle that uses gunpowder,” the captain replied.

“Then it’s an air gun?”

“Surely. How can I make gunpowder on my ship when I have no saltpeter,
sulfur, or charcoal?”

“Even so,” I replied, “to fire underwater in a medium that’s 855 times
denser than air, you’d have to overcome considerable resistance.”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow. There are certain Fulton-style guns
perfected by the Englishmen Philippe-Coles and Burley, the Frenchman
Furcy, and the Italian Landi; they’re equipped with a special system
of airtight fastenings and can fire in underwater conditions. But I
repeat: having no gunpowder, I’ve replaced it with air at high
pressure, which is abundantly supplied me by the Nautilus’s pumps.”

“But this air must be swiftly depleted.”

“Well, in a pinch can’t my Rouquayrol tank supply me with more? All I
have to do is draw it from an ad hoc spigot.* Besides, Professor
Aronnax, you’ll see for yourself that during these underwater hunting
trips, we make no great expenditure of either air or bullets.”

*Latin: a spigot “just for that purpose.” Ed.

“But it seems to me that in this semidarkness, amid this liquid that’s
so dense in comparison to the atmosphere, a gunshot couldn’t carry far
and would prove fatal only with difficulty!”

“On the contrary, sir, with this rifle every shot is fatal; and as
soon as the animal is hit, no matter how lightly, it falls as if
struck by lightning.”

“Why?”

“Because this rifle doesn’t shoot ordinary bullets but little glass
capsules invented by the Austrian chemist Leniebroek, and I have a
considerable supply of them. These glass capsules are covered with a
strip of steel and weighted with a lead base; they’re genuine little
Leyden jars charged with high-voltage electricity. They go off at the
slightest impact, and the animal, no matter how strong, drops dead. I
might add that these capsules are no bigger than number 4 shot, and
the chamber of any ordinary rifle could hold ten of them.”

“I’ll quit debating,” I replied, getting up from the table. “And all
that’s left is for me to shoulder my rifle. So where you go, I’ll go.”

Captain Nemo led me to the Nautilus’s stern, and passing by Ned and
Conseil’s cabin, I summoned my two companions, who instantly followed
us.

Then we arrived at a cell located within easy access of the engine
room; in this cell we were to get dressed for our stroll.


CHAPTER 16

Strolling the Plains


THIS CELL, properly speaking, was the Nautilus’s arsenal and
wardrobe. Hanging from its walls, a dozen diving outfits were waiting
for anybody who wanted to take a stroll.

After seeing these, Ned Land exhibited an obvious distaste for the
idea of putting one on.

“But my gallant Ned,” I told him, “the forests of Crespo Island are
simply underwater forests!”

“Oh great!” put in the disappointed harpooner, watching his dreams of
fresh meat fade away. “And you, Professor Aronnax, are you going to
stick yourself inside these clothes?”

“It has to be, Mr. Ned.”

“Have it your way, sir,” the harpooner replied, shrugging his
shoulders. “But speaking for myself, I’ll never get into those things
unless they force me!”

“No one will force you, Mr. Land,” Captain Nemo said.

“And is Conseil going to risk it?” Ned asked.

“Where master goes, I go,” Conseil replied.

At the captain’s summons, two crewmen came to help us put on these
heavy, waterproof clothes, made from seamless India rubber and
expressly designed to bear considerable pressures. They were like
suits of armor that were both yielding and resistant, you might
say. These clothes consisted of jacket and pants. The pants ended in
bulky footwear adorned with heavy lead soles. The fabric of the jacket
was reinforced with copper mail that shielded the chest, protected it
from the water’s pressure, and allowed the lungs to function freely;
the sleeves ended in supple gloves that didn’t impede hand movements.

These perfected diving suits, it was easy to see, were a far cry from
such misshapen costumes as the cork breastplates, leather jumpers,
seagoing tunics, barrel helmets, etc., invented and acclaimed in the
18th century.

Conseil and I were soon dressed in these diving suits, as were Captain
Nemo and one of his companions—a herculean type who must have been
prodigiously strong. All that remained was to encase one’s head in its
metal sphere. But before proceeding with this operation, I asked the
captain for permission to examine the rifles set aside for us.

One of the Nautilus’s men presented me with a streamlined rifle whose
butt was boilerplate steel, hollow inside, and of fairly large
dimensions. This served as a tank for the compressed air, which a
trigger-operated valve could release into the metal chamber. In a
groove where the butt was heaviest, a cartridge clip held some twenty
electric bullets that, by means of a spring, automatically took their
places in the barrel of the rifle. As soon as one shot had been fired,
another was ready to go off.

“Captain Nemo,” I said, “this is an ideal, easy-to-use weapon. I ask
only to put it to the test. But how will we reach the bottom of the
sea?”

“Right now, professor, the Nautilus is aground in ten meters of water,
and we’ve only to depart.”

“But how will we set out?”

“You’ll see.”

Captain Nemo inserted his cranium into its spherical headgear. Conseil
and I did the same, but not without hearing the Canadian toss us a
sarcastic “happy hunting.” On top, the suit ended in a collar of
threaded copper onto which the metal helmet was screwed. Three holes,
protected by heavy glass, allowed us to see in any direction with
simply a turn of the head inside the sphere. Placed on our backs, the
Rouquayrol device went into operation as soon as it was in position,
and for my part, I could breathe with ease.

The Ruhmkorff lamp hanging from my belt, my rifle in hand, I was ready
to go forth. But in all honesty, while imprisoned in these heavy
clothes and nailed to the deck by my lead soles, it was impossible for
me to take a single step.

But this circumstance had been foreseen, because I felt myself
propelled into a little room adjoining the wardrobe. Towed in the same
way, my companions went with me. I heard a door with watertight seals
close after us, and we were surrounded by profound darkness.

After some minutes a sharp hissing reached my ears. I felt a distinct
sensation of cold rising from my feet to my chest. Apparently a
stopcock inside the boat was letting in water from outside, which
overran us and soon filled up the room. Contrived in the Nautilus’s
side, a second door then opened. We were lit by a subdued light. An
instant later our feet were treading the bottom of the sea.

And now, how can I convey the impressions left on me by this stroll
under the waters. Words are powerless to describe such wonders! When
even the painter’s brush can’t depict the effects unique to the liquid
element, how can the writer’s pen hope to reproduce them?

Captain Nemo walked in front, and his companion followed us a few
steps to the rear. Conseil and I stayed next to each other, as if
daydreaming that through our metal carapaces, a little polite
conversation might still be possible! Already I no longer felt the
bulkiness of my clothes, footwear, and air tank, nor the weight of the
heavy sphere inside which my head was rattling like an almond in its
shell. Once immersed in water, all these objects lost a part of their
weight equal to the weight of the liquid they displaced, and thanks to
this law of physics discovered by Archimedes, I did just fine. I was
no longer an inert mass, and I had, comparatively speaking, great
freedom of movement.

Lighting up the seafloor even thirty feet beneath the surface of the
ocean, the sun astonished me with its power. The solar rays easily
crossed this aqueous mass and dispersed its dark colors. I could
easily distinguish objects 100 meters away. Farther on, the bottom was
tinted with fine shades of ultramarine; then, off in the distance, it
turned blue and faded in the midst of a hazy darkness. Truly, this
water surrounding me was just a kind of air, denser than the
atmosphere on land but almost as transparent. Above me I could see the
calm surface of the ocean.

We were walking on sand that was fine-grained and smooth, not wrinkled
like beach sand, which preserves the impressions left by the
waves. This dazzling carpet was a real mirror, throwing back the sun’s
rays with startling intensity. The outcome: an immense vista of
reflections that penetrated every liquid molecule. Will anyone believe
me if I assert that at this thirty-foot depth, I could see as if it
was broad daylight?

For a quarter of an hour, I trod this blazing sand, which was strewn
with tiny crumbs of seashell. Looming like a long reef, the Nautilus’s
hull disappeared little by little, but when night fell in the midst of
the waters, the ship’s beacon would surely facilitate our return on
board, since its rays carried with perfect distinctness. This effect
is difficult to understand for anyone who has never seen light beams
so sharply defined on shore. There the dust that saturates the air
gives such rays the appearance of a luminous fog; but above water as
well as underwater, shafts of electric light are transmitted with
incomparable clarity.

Meanwhile we went ever onward, and these vast plains of sand seemed
endless. My hands parted liquid curtains that closed again behind me,
and my footprints faded swiftly under the water’s pressure.

Soon, scarcely blurred by their distance from us, the forms of some
objects took shape before my eyes. I recognized the lower slopes of
some magnificent rocks carpeted by the finest zoophyte specimens, and
right off, I was struck by an effect unique to this medium.

By then it was ten o’clock in the morning. The sun’s rays hit the
surface of the waves at a fairly oblique angle, decomposing by
refraction as though passing through a prism; and when this light came
in contact with flowers, rocks, buds, seashells, and polyps, the edges
of these objects were shaded with all seven hues of the solar
spectrum. This riot of rainbow tints was a wonder, a feast for the
eyes: a genuine kaleidoscope of red, green, yellow, orange, violet,
indigo, and blue; in short, the whole palette of a color-happy
painter! If only I had been able to share with Conseil the intense
sensations rising in my brain, competing with him in exclamations of
wonderment! If only I had known, like Captain Nemo and his companion,
how to exchange thoughts by means of prearranged signals! So, for lack
of anything better, I talked to myself: I declaimed inside this copper
box that topped my head, spending more air on empty words than was
perhaps advisable.

Conseil, like me, had stopped before this splendid sight. Obviously,
in the presence of these zoophyte and mollusk specimens, the fine lad
was classifying his head off. Polyps and echinoderms abounded on the
seafloor: various isis coral, cornularian coral living in isolation,
tufts of virginal genus Oculina formerly known by the name “white
coral,” prickly fungus coral in the shape of mushrooms, sea anemone
holding on by their muscular disks, providing a literal flowerbed
adorned by jellyfish from the genus Porpita wearing collars of azure
tentacles, and starfish that spangled the sand, including veinlike
feather stars from the genus Asterophyton that were like fine lace
embroidered by the hands of water nymphs, their festoons swaying to
the faint undulations caused by our walking. It filled me with real
chagrin to crush underfoot the gleaming mollusk samples that littered
the seafloor by the thousands: concentric comb shells, hammer shells,
coquina (seashells that actually hop around), top-shell snails, red
helmet shells, angel-wing conchs, sea hares, and so many other
exhibits from this inexhaustible ocean. But we had to keep walking,
and we went forward while overhead there scudded schools of Portuguese
men-of-war that let their ultramarine tentacles drift in their wakes,
medusas whose milky white or dainty pink parasols were festooned with
azure tassels and shaded us from the sun’s rays, plus jellyfish of the
species Pelagia panopyra that, in the dark, would have strewn our path
with phosphorescent glimmers!

All these wonders I glimpsed in the space of a quarter of a mile,
barely pausing, following Captain Nemo whose gestures kept beckoning
me onward. Soon the nature of the seafloor changed. The plains of sand
were followed by a bed of that viscous slime Americans call “ooze,”
which is composed exclusively of seashells rich in limestone or
silica. Then we crossed a prairie of algae, open-sea plants that the
waters hadn’t yet torn loose, whose vegetation grew in wild
profusion. Soft to the foot, these densely textured lawns would have
rivaled the most luxuriant carpets woven by the hand of man. But while
this greenery was sprawling under our steps, it didn’t neglect us
overhead. The surface of the water was crisscrossed by a floating
arbor of marine plants belonging to that superabundant algae family
that numbers more than 2,000 known species. I saw long ribbons of
fucus drifting above me, some globular, others tubular: Laurencia,
Cladostephus with the slenderest foliage, Rhodymenia palmata
resembling the fan shapes of cactus. I observed that green-colored
plants kept closer to the surface of the sea, while reds occupied a
medium depth, which left blacks and browns in charge of designing
gardens and flowerbeds in the ocean’s lower strata.

These algae are a genuine prodigy of creation, one of the wonders of
world flora. This family produces both the biggest and smallest
vegetables in the world. Because, just as 40,000 near-invisible buds
have been counted in one five-square-millimeter space, so also have
fucus plants been gathered that were over 500 meters long!

We had been gone from the Nautilus for about an hour and a half. It
was almost noon. I spotted this fact in the perpendicularity of the
sun’s rays, which were no longer refracted. The magic of these solar
colors disappeared little by little, with emerald and sapphire shades
vanishing from our surroundings altogether. We walked with steady
steps that rang on the seafloor with astonishing intensity. The
tiniest sounds were transmitted with a speed to which the ear is
unaccustomed on shore. In fact, water is a better conductor of sound
than air, and under the waves noises carry four times as fast.

Just then the seafloor began to slope sharply downward. The light took
on a uniform hue. We reached a depth of 100 meters, by which point we
were undergoing a pressure of ten atmospheres. But my diving clothes
were built along such lines that I never suffered from this
pressure. I felt only a certain tightness in the joints of my fingers,
and even this discomfort soon disappeared. As for the exhaustion bound
to accompany a two-hour stroll in such unfamiliar trappings—it was
nil. Helped by the water, my movements were executed with startling
ease.

Arriving at this 300-foot depth, I still detected the sun’s rays, but
just barely. Their intense brilliance had been followed by a reddish
twilight, a midpoint between day and night. But we could see well
enough to find our way, and it still wasn’t necessary to activate the
Ruhmkorff device.

Just then Captain Nemo stopped. He waited until I joined him, then he
pointed a finger at some dark masses outlined in the shadows a short
distance away.

“It’s the forest of Crespo Island,” I thought; and I was not mistaken.


CHAPTER 17

An Underwater Forest


WE HAD FINALLY arrived on the outskirts of this forest, surely one of
the finest in Captain Nemo’s immense domains. He regarded it as his
own and had laid the same claim to it that, in the first days of the
world, the first men had to their forests on land. Besides, who else
could dispute his ownership of this underwater property? What other,
bolder pioneer would come, ax in hand, to clear away its dark
underbrush?

This forest was made up of big treelike plants, and when we entered
beneath their huge arches, my eyes were instantly struck by the unique
arrangement of their branches—an arrangement that I had never before
encountered.

None of the weeds carpeting the seafloor, none of the branches
bristling from the shrubbery, crept, or leaned, or stretched on a
horizontal plane. They all rose right up toward the surface of the
ocean. Every filament or ribbon, no matter how thin, stood ramrod
straight. Fucus plants and creepers were growing in stiff
perpendicular lines, governed by the density of the element that
generated them. After I parted them with my hands, these otherwise
motionless plants would shoot right back to their original
positions. It was the regime of verticality.

I soon grew accustomed to this bizarre arrangement, likewise to the
comparative darkness surrounding us. The seafloor in this forest was
strewn with sharp chunks of stone that were hard to avoid. Here the
range of underwater flora seemed pretty comprehensive to me, as well
as more abundant than it might have been in the arctic or tropical
zones, where such exhibits are less common. But for a few minutes I
kept accidentally confusing the two kingdoms, mistaking zoophytes for
water plants, animals for vegetables. And who hasn’t made the same
blunder? Flora and fauna are so closely associated in the underwater
world!

I observed that all these exhibits from the vegetable kingdom were
attached to the seafloor by only the most makeshift methods. They had
no roots and didn’t care which solid objects secured them, sand,
shells, husks, or pebbles; they didn’t ask their hosts for sustenance,
just a point of purchase. These plants are entirely self-propagating,
and the principle of their existence lies in the water that sustains
and nourishes them. In place of leaves, most of them sprouted blades
of unpredictable shape, which were confined to a narrow gamut of
colors consisting only of pink, crimson, green, olive, tan, and
brown. There I saw again, but not yet pressed and dried like the
Nautilus’s specimens, some peacock’s tails spread open like fans to
stir up a cooling breeze, scarlet rosetangle, sea tangle stretching
out their young and edible shoots, twisting strings of kelp from the
genus Nereocystis that bloomed to a height of fifteen meters, bouquets
of mermaid’s cups whose stems grew wider at the top, and a number of
other open-sea plants, all without flowers. “It’s an odd anomaly in
this bizarre element!” as one witty naturalist puts it. “The animal
kingdom blossoms, and the vegetable kingdom doesn’t!”

These various types of shrubbery were as big as trees in the temperate
zones; in the damp shade between them, there were clustered actual
bushes of moving flowers, hedges of zoophytes in which there grew
stony coral striped with twisting furrows, yellowish sea anemone from
the genus Caryophylia with translucent tentacles, plus anemone with
grassy tufts from the genus Zoantharia; and to complete the illusion,
minnows flitted from branch to branch like a swarm of hummingbirds,
while there rose underfoot, like a covey of snipe, yellow fish from
the genus Lepisocanthus with bristling jaws and sharp scales, flying
gurnards, and pinecone fish.

Near one o’clock, Captain Nemo gave the signal to halt. Speaking for
myself, I was glad to oblige, and we stretched out beneath an arbor of
winged kelp, whose long thin tendrils stood up like arrows.

This short break was a delight. It lacked only the charm of
conversation. But it was impossible to speak, impossible to reply. I
simply nudged my big copper headpiece against Conseil’s headpiece. I
saw a happy gleam in the gallant lad’s eyes, and to communicate his
pleasure, he jiggled around inside his carapace in the world’s
silliest way.

After four hours of strolling, I was quite astonished not to feel any
intense hunger. What kept my stomach in such a good mood I’m unable to
say. But, in exchange, I experienced that irresistible desire for
sleep that comes over every diver. Accordingly, my eyes soon closed
behind their heavy glass windows and I fell into an uncontrollable
doze, which until then I had been able to fight off only through the
movements of our walking. Captain Nemo and his muscular companion were
already stretched out in this clear crystal, setting us a fine naptime
example.

How long I was sunk in this torpor I cannot estimate; but when I
awoke, it seemed as if the sun were settling toward the
horizon. Captain Nemo was already up, and I had started to stretch my
limbs, when an unexpected apparition brought me sharply to my feet.

A few paces away, a monstrous, meter-high sea spider was staring at me
with beady eyes, poised to spring at me. Although my diving suit was
heavy enough to protect me from this animal’s bites, I couldn’t keep
back a shudder of horror. Just then Conseil woke up, together with the
Nautilus’s sailor. Captain Nemo alerted his companion to this hideous
crustacean, which a swing of the rifle butt quickly brought down, and
I watched the monster’s horrible legs writhing in dreadful
convulsions.

This encounter reminded me that other, more daunting animals must be
lurking in these dark reaches, and my diving suit might not be
adequate protection against their attacks. Such thoughts hadn’t
previously crossed my mind, and I was determined to keep on my
guard. Meanwhile I had assumed this rest period would be the turning
point in our stroll, but I was mistaken; and instead of heading back
to the Nautilus, Captain Nemo continued his daring excursion.

The seafloor kept sinking, and its significantly steeper slope took us
to greater depths. It must have been nearly three o’clock when we
reached a narrow valley gouged between high, vertical walls and
located 150 meters down. Thanks to the perfection of our equipment, we
had thus gone ninety meters below the limit that nature had, until
then, set on man’s underwater excursions.

I say 150 meters, although I had no instruments for estimating this
distance. But I knew that the sun’s rays, even in the clearest seas,
could reach no deeper. So at precisely this point the darkness became
profound. Not a single object was visible past ten
paces. Consequently, I had begun to grope my way when suddenly I saw
the glow of an intense white light. Captain Nemo had just activated
his electric device. His companion did likewise. Conseil and I
followed suit. By turning a switch, I established contact between the
induction coil and the glass spiral, and the sea, lit up by our four
lanterns, was illuminated for a radius of twenty-five meters.

Captain Nemo continued to plummet into the dark depths of this forest,
whose shrubbery grew ever more sparse. I observed that vegetable life
was disappearing more quickly than animal life. The open-sea plants
had already left behind the increasingly arid seafloor, where a
prodigious number of animals were still swarming: zoophytes,
articulates, mollusks, and fish.

While we were walking, I thought the lights of our Ruhmkorff devices
would automatically attract some inhabitants of these dark strata. But
if they did approach us, at least they kept at a distance regrettable
from the hunter’s standpoint. Several times I saw Captain Nemo stop
and take aim with his rifle; then, after sighting down its barrel for
a few seconds, he would straighten up and resume his walk.

Finally, at around four o’clock, this marvelous excursion came to an
end. A wall of superb rocks stood before us, imposing in its sheer
mass: a pile of gigantic stone blocks, an enormous granite cliffside
pitted with dark caves but not offering a single gradient we could
climb up. This was the underpinning of Crespo Island. This was land.

The captain stopped suddenly. A gesture from him brought us to a halt,
and however much I wanted to clear this wall, I had to stop. Here
ended the domains of Captain Nemo. He had no desire to pass beyond
them. Farther on lay a part of the globe he would no longer tread
underfoot.

Our return journey began. Captain Nemo resumed the lead in our little
band, always heading forward without hesitation. I noted that we
didn’t follow the same path in returning to the Nautilus. This new
route, very steep and hence very arduous, quickly took us close to the
surface of the sea. But this return to the upper strata wasn’t so
sudden that decompression took place too quickly, which could have led
to serious organic disorders and given us those internal injuries so
fatal to divers. With great promptness, the light reappeared and grew
stronger; and the refraction of the sun, already low on the horizon,
again ringed the edges of various objects with the entire color
spectrum.

At a depth of ten meters, we walked amid a swarm of small fish from
every species, more numerous than birds in the air, more agile too;
but no aquatic game worthy of a gunshot had yet been offered to our
eyes.

Just then I saw the captain’s weapon spring to his shoulder and track
a moving object through the bushes. A shot went off, I heard a faint
hissing, and an animal dropped a few paces away, literally struck by
lightning.

It was a magnificent sea otter from the genus Enhydra, the only
exclusively marine quadruped. One and a half meters long, this otter
had to be worth a good high price. Its coat, chestnut brown above and
silver below, would have made one of those wonderful fur pieces so
much in demand in the Russian and Chinese markets; the fineness and
luster of its pelt guaranteed that it would go for at least 2,000
francs. I was full of wonderment at this unusual mammal, with its
circular head adorned by short ears, its round eyes, its white
whiskers like those on a cat, its webbed and clawed feet, its bushy
tail. Hunted and trapped by fishermen, this valuable carnivore has
become extremely rare, and it takes refuge chiefly in the northernmost
parts of the Pacific, where in all likelihood its species will soon be
facing extinction.

Captain Nemo’s companion picked up the animal, loaded it on his
shoulder, and we took to the trail again.

For an hour plains of sand unrolled before our steps. Often the
seafloor rose to within two meters of the surface of the water. I
could then see our images clearly mirrored on the underside of the
waves, but reflected upside down: above us there appeared an identical
band that duplicated our every movement and gesture; in short, a
perfect likeness of the quartet near which it walked, but with heads
down and feet in the air.

Another unusual effect. Heavy clouds passed above us, forming and
fading swiftly. But after thinking it over, I realized that these
so-called clouds were caused simply by the changing densities of the
long ground swells, and I even spotted the foaming “white caps” that
their breaking crests were proliferating over the surface of the
water. Lastly, I couldn’t help seeing the actual shadows of large
birds passing over our heads, swiftly skimming the surface of the sea.

On this occasion I witnessed one of the finest gunshots ever to thrill
the marrow of a hunter. A large bird with a wide wingspan, quite
clearly visible, approached and hovered over us. When it was just a
few meters above the waves, Captain Nemo’s companion took aim and
fired. The animal dropped, electrocuted, and its descent brought it
within reach of our adroit hunter, who promptly took possession of
it. It was an albatross of the finest species, a wonderful specimen of
these open-sea fowl.

This incident did not interrupt our walk. For two hours we were
sometimes led over plains of sand, sometimes over prairies of seaweed
that were quite arduous to cross. In all honesty, I was dead tired by
the time I spotted a hazy glow half a mile away, cutting through the
darkness of the waters. It was the Nautilus’s beacon. Within twenty
minutes we would be on board, and there I could breathe easy
again—because my tank’s current air supply seemed to be quite low in
oxygen. But I was reckoning without an encounter that slightly delayed
our arrival.

I was lagging behind some twenty paces when I saw Captain Nemo
suddenly come back toward me. With his powerful hands he sent me
buckling to the ground, while his companion did the same to
Conseil. At first I didn’t know what to make of this sudden assault,
but I was reassured to observe the captain lying motionless beside me.

I was stretched out on the seafloor directly beneath some bushes of
algae, when I raised my head and spied two enormous masses hurtling
by, throwing off phosphorescent glimmers.

My blood turned cold in my veins! I saw that we were under threat from
a fearsome pair of sharks. They were blue sharks, dreadful man-eaters
with enormous tails, dull, glassy stares, and phosphorescent matter
oozing from holes around their snouts. They were like monstrous
fireflies that could thoroughly pulverize a man in their iron jaws! I
don’t know if Conseil was busy with their classification, but as for
me, I looked at their silver bellies, their fearsome mouths bristling
with teeth, from a viewpoint less than scientific—more as a victim
than as a professor of natural history.

Luckily these voracious animals have poor eyesight. They went by
without noticing us, grazing us with their brownish fins; and
miraculously, we escaped a danger greater than encountering a tiger
deep in the jungle.

Half an hour later, guided by its electric trail, we reached the
Nautilus. The outside door had been left open, and Captain Nemo closed
it after we reentered the first cell. Then he pressed a button. I
heard pumps operating within the ship, I felt the water lowering
around me, and in a few moments the cell was completely empty. The
inside door opened, and we passed into the wardrobe.

There our diving suits were removed, not without difficulty; and
utterly exhausted, faint from lack of food and rest, I repaired to my
stateroom, full of wonder at this startling excursion on the bottom of
the sea.


CHAPTER 18

Four Thousand Leagues Under the Pacific


BY THE NEXT MORNING, November 18, I was fully recovered from my
exhaustion of the day before, and I climbed onto the platform just as
the Nautilus’s chief officer was pronouncing his daily phrase. It then
occurred to me that these words either referred to the state of the
sea, or that they meant: “There’s nothing in sight.”

And in truth, the ocean was deserted. Not a sail on the horizon. The
tips of Crespo Island had disappeared during the night. The sea,
absorbing every color of the prism except its blue rays, reflected the
latter in every direction and sported a wonderful indigo tint. The
undulating waves regularly took on the appearance of watered silk with
wide stripes.

I was marveling at this magnificent ocean view when Captain Nemo
appeared. He didn’t seem to notice my presence and began a series of
astronomical observations. Then, his operations finished, he went and
leaned his elbows on the beacon housing, his eyes straying over the
surface of the ocean.

Meanwhile some twenty of the Nautilus’s sailors—all energetic,
well-built fellows—climbed onto the platform. They had come to pull up
the nets left in our wake during the night. These seamen obviously
belonged to different nationalities, although indications of European
physical traits could be seen in them all. If I’m not mistaken, I
recognized some Irishmen, some Frenchmen, a few Slavs, and a native of
either Greece or Crete. Even so, these men were frugal of speech and
used among themselves only that bizarre dialect whose origin I
couldn’t even guess. So I had to give up any notions of questioning
them.

The nets were hauled on board. They were a breed of trawl resembling
those used off the Normandy coast, huge pouches held half open by a
floating pole and a chain laced through the lower meshes. Trailing in
this way from these iron glove makers, the resulting receptacles
scoured the ocean floor and collected every marine exhibit in their
path. That day they gathered up some unusual specimens from these
fish-filled waterways: anglerfish whose comical movements qualify them
for the epithet “clowns,” black Commerson anglers equipped with their
antennas, undulating triggerfish encircled by little red bands,
bloated puffers whose venom is extremely insidious, some olive-hued
lampreys, snipefish covered with silver scales, cutlass fish whose
electrocuting power equals that of the electric eel and the electric
ray, scaly featherbacks with brown crosswise bands, greenish codfish,
several varieties of goby, etc.; finally, some fish of larger
proportions: a one-meter jack with a prominent head, several fine
bonito from the genus Scomber decked out in the colors blue and
silver, and three magnificent tuna whose high speeds couldn’t save
them from our trawl.

I estimate that this cast of the net brought in more than 1,000 pounds
of fish. It was a fine catch but not surprising. In essence, these
nets stayed in our wake for several hours, incarcerating an entire
aquatic world in prisons made of thread. So we were never lacking in
provisions of the highest quality, which the Nautilus’s speed and the
allure of its electric light could continually replenish.

These various exhibits from the sea were immediately lowered down the
hatch in the direction of the storage lockers, some to be eaten fresh,
others to be preserved.

After its fishing was finished and its air supply renewed, I thought
the Nautilus would resume its underwater excursion, and I was getting
ready to return to my stateroom, when Captain Nemo turned to me and
said without further preamble:

“Look at this ocean, professor! Doesn’t it have the actual gift of
life? Doesn’t it experience both anger and affection? Last evening it
went to sleep just as we did, and there it is, waking up after a
peaceful night!”

No hellos or good mornings for this gent! You would have thought this
eccentric individual was simply continuing a conversation we’d already
started!

“See!” he went on. “It’s waking up under the sun’s caresses! It’s
going to relive its daily existence! What a fascinating field of study
lies in watching the play of its organism. It owns a pulse and
arteries, it has spasms, and I side with the scholarly Commander
Maury, who discovered that it has a circulation as real as the
circulation of blood in animals.”

I’m sure that Captain Nemo expected no replies from me, and it seemed
pointless to pitch in with “Ah yes,” “Exactly,” or “How right you
are!” Rather, he was simply talking to himself, with long pauses
between sentences. He was meditating out loud.

“Yes,” he said, “the ocean owns a genuine circulation, and to start it
going, the Creator of All Things has only to increase its heat, salt,
and microscopic animal life. In essence, heat creates the different
densities that lead to currents and countercurrents. Evaporation,
which is nil in the High Arctic regions and very active in equatorial
zones, brings about a constant interchange of tropical and polar
waters. What’s more, I’ve detected those falling and rising currents
that make up the ocean’s true breathing. I’ve seen a molecule of salt
water heat up at the surface, sink into the depths, reach maximum
density at -2 degrees centigrade, then cool off, grow lighter, and
rise again. At the poles you’ll see the consequences of this
phenomenon, and through this law of farseeing nature, you’ll
understand why water can freeze only at the surface!”

As the captain was finishing his sentence, I said to myself: “The
pole! Is this brazen individual claiming he’ll take us even to that
location?”

Meanwhile the captain fell silent and stared at the element he had
studied so thoroughly and unceasingly. Then, going on:

“Salts,” he said, “fill the sea in considerable quantities, professor,
and if you removed all its dissolved saline content, you’d create a
mass measuring 4,500,000 cubic leagues, which if it were spread all
over the globe, would form a layer more than ten meters high. And
don’t think that the presence of these salts is due merely to some
whim of nature. No. They make ocean water less open to evaporation and
prevent winds from carrying off excessive amounts of steam, which,
when condensing, would submerge the temperate zones. Salts play a
leading role, the role of stabilizer for the general ecology of the
globe!”

Captain Nemo stopped, straightened up, took a few steps along the
platform, and returned to me:

“As for those billions of tiny animals,” he went on, “those infusoria
that live by the millions in one droplet of water, 800,000 of which
are needed to weigh one milligram, their role is no less
important. They absorb the marine salts, they assimilate the solid
elements in the water, and since they create coral and madrepores,
they’re the true builders of limestone continents! And so, after
they’ve finished depriving our water drop of its mineral nutrients,
the droplet gets lighter, rises to the surface, there absorbs more
salts left behind through evaporation, gets heavier, sinks again, and
brings those tiny animals new elements to absorb. The outcome: a
double current, rising and falling, constant movement, constant life!
More intense than on land, more abundant, more infinite, such life
blooms in every part of this ocean, an element fatal to man, they say,
but vital to myriads of animals—and to me!”

When Captain Nemo spoke in this way, he was transfigured, and he
filled me with extraordinary excitement.

“There,” he added, “out there lies true existence! And I can imagine
the founding of nautical towns, clusters of underwater households
that, like the Nautilus, would return to the surface of the sea to
breathe each morning, free towns if ever there were, independent
cities! Then again, who knows whether some tyrant . . .”

Captain Nemo finished his sentence with a vehement gesture. Then,
addressing me directly, as if to drive away an ugly thought:

“Professor Aronnax,” he asked me, “do you know the depth of the ocean
floor?”

“At least, captain, I know what the major soundings tell us.”

“Could you quote them to me, so I can double-check them as the need
arises?”

“Here,” I replied, “are a few of them that stick in my memory. If I’m
not mistaken, an average depth of 8,200 meters was found in the north
Atlantic, and 2,500 meters in the Mediterranean. The most remarkable
soundings were taken in the south Atlantic near the 35th parallel, and
they gave 12,000 meters, 14,091 meters, and 15,149 meters. All in all,
it’s estimated that if the sea bottom were made level, its average
depth would be about seven kilometers.”

“Well, professor,” Captain Nemo replied, “we’ll show you better than
that, I hope. As for the average depth of this part of the Pacific,
I’ll inform you that it’s a mere 4,000 meters.”

This said, Captain Nemo headed to the hatch and disappeared down the
ladder. I followed him and went back to the main lounge. The propeller
was instantly set in motion, and the log gave our speed as twenty
miles per hour.

Over the ensuing days and weeks, Captain Nemo was very frugal with his
visits. I saw him only at rare intervals. His chief officer regularly
fixed the positions I found reported on the chart, and in such a way
that I could exactly plot the Nautilus’s course.

Conseil and Land spent the long hours with me. Conseil had told his
friend about the wonders of our undersea stroll, and the Canadian was
sorry he hadn’t gone along. But I hoped an opportunity would arise for
a visit to the forests of Oceania.

Almost every day the panels in the lounge were open for some hours,
and our eyes never tired of probing the mysteries of the underwater
world.

The Nautilus’s general heading was southeast, and it stayed at a depth
between 100 and 150 meters. However, from lord-knows-what whim, one
day it did a diagonal dive by means of its slanting fins, reaching
strata located 2,000 meters underwater. The thermometer indicated a
temperature of 4.25 degrees centigrade, which at this depth seemed to
be a temperature common to all latitudes.

On November 26, at three o’clock in the morning, the Nautilus cleared
the Tropic of Cancer at longitude 172 degrees. On the 27th it passed
in sight of the Hawaiian Islands, where the famous Captain Cook met
his death on February 14, 1779. By then we had fared 4,860 leagues
from our starting point. When I arrived on the platform that morning,
I saw the Island of Hawaii two miles to leeward, the largest of the
seven islands making up this group. I could clearly distinguish the
tilled soil on its outskirts, the various mountain chains running
parallel with its coastline, and its volcanoes, crowned by Mauna Kea,
whose elevation is 5,000 meters above sea level. Among other specimens
from these waterways, our nets brought up some peacock-tailed
flabellarian coral, polyps flattened into stylish shapes and unique to
this part of the ocean.

The Nautilus kept to its southeasterly heading. On December 1 it cut
the equator at longitude 142 degrees, and on the 4th of the same
month, after a quick crossing marked by no incident, we raised the
Marquesas Islands. Three miles off, in latitude 8 degrees 57’ south
and longitude 139 degrees 32’ west, I spotted Martin Point on Nuku
Hiva, chief member of this island group that belongs to France. I
could make out only its wooded mountains on the horizon, because
Captain Nemo hated to hug shore. There our nets brought up some fine
fish samples: dolphinfish with azure fins, gold tails, and flesh
that’s unrivaled in the entire world, wrasse from the genus
Hologymnosus that were nearly denuded of scales but exquisite in
flavor, knifejaws with bony beaks, yellowish albacore that were as
tasty as bonito, all fish worth classifying in the ship’s pantry.

After leaving these delightful islands to the protection of the French
flag, the Nautilus covered about 2,000 miles from December 4 to the
11th. Its navigating was marked by an encounter with an immense school
of squid, unusual mollusks that are near neighbors of the
cuttlefish. French fishermen give them the name “cuckoldfish,” and
they belong to the class Cephalopoda, family Dibranchiata, consisting
of themselves together with cuttlefish and argonauts. The naturalists
of antiquity made a special study of them, and these animals furnished
many ribald figures of speech for soapbox orators in the Greek
marketplace, as well as excellent dishes for the tables of rich
citizens, if we’re to believe Athenaeus, a Greek physician predating
Galen.

It was during the night of December 9-10 that the Nautilus encountered
this army of distinctly nocturnal mollusks. They numbered in the
millions. They were migrating from the temperate zones toward zones
still warmer, following the itineraries of herring and sardines. We
stared at them through our thick glass windows: they swam backward
with tremendous speed, moving by means of their locomotive tubes,
chasing fish and mollusks, eating the little ones, eaten by the big
ones, and tossing in indescribable confusion the ten feet that nature
has rooted in their heads like a hairpiece of pneumatic
snakes. Despite its speed, the Nautilus navigated for several hours in
the midst of this school of animals, and its nets brought up an
incalculable number, among which I recognized all nine species that
Professor Orbigny has classified as native to the Pacific Ocean.

During this crossing, the sea continually lavished us with the most
marvelous sights. Its variety was infinite. It changed its setting and
decor for the mere pleasure of our eyes, and we were called upon not
simply to contemplate the works of our Creator in the midst of the
liquid element, but also to probe the ocean’s most daunting mysteries.

During the day of December 11, I was busy reading in the main
lounge. Ned Land and Conseil were observing the luminous waters
through the gaping panels. The Nautilus was motionless. Its ballast
tanks full, it was sitting at a depth of 1,000 meters in a
comparatively unpopulated region of the ocean where only larger fish
put in occasional appearances.

Just then I was studying a delightful book by Jean MacΘ, The Servants
of the Stomach, and savoring its ingenious teachings, when Conseil
interrupted my reading.

“Would master kindly come here for an instant?” he said to me in an
odd voice.

“What is it, Conseil?”

“It’s something that master should see.”

I stood up, went, leaned on my elbows before the window, and I saw it.

In the broad electric daylight, an enormous black mass, quite
motionless, hung suspended in the midst of the waters. I observed it
carefully, trying to find out the nature of this gigantic
cetacean. Then a sudden thought crossed my mind.

“A ship!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” the Canadian replied, “a disabled craft that’s sinking straight
down!”

Ned Land was not mistaken. We were in the presence of a ship whose
severed shrouds still hung from their clasps. Its hull looked in good
condition, and it must have gone under only a few hours before. The
stumps of three masts, chopped off two feet above the deck, indicated
a flooding ship that had been forced to sacrifice its masting. But it
had heeled sideways, filling completely, and it was listing to port
even yet. A sorry sight, this carcass lost under the waves, but
sorrier still was the sight on its deck, where, lashed with ropes to
prevent their being washed overboard, some human corpses still lay! I
counted four of them—four men, one still standing at the helm—then a
woman, halfway out of a skylight on the afterdeck, holding a child in
her arms. This woman was young. Under the brilliant lighting of the
Nautilus’s rays, I could make out her features, which the water hadn’t
yet decomposed. With a supreme effort, she had lifted her child above
her head, and the poor little creature’s arms were still twined around
its mother’s neck! The postures of the four seamen seemed ghastly to
me, twisted from convulsive movements, as if making a last effort to
break loose from the ropes that bound them to their ship. And the
helmsman, standing alone, calmer, his face smooth and serious, his
grizzled hair plastered to his brow, his hands clutching the wheel,
seemed even yet to be guiding his wrecked three-master through the
ocean depths!

What a scene! We stood dumbstruck, hearts pounding, before this
shipwreck caught in the act, as if it had been photographed in its
final moments, so to speak! And already I could see enormous sharks
moving in, eyes ablaze, drawn by the lure of human flesh!

Meanwhile, turning, the Nautilus made a circle around the sinking
ship, and for an instant I could read the board on its stern:

The Florida Sunderland, England


CHAPTER 19

Vanikoro


THIS DREADFUL SIGHT was the first of a whole series of maritime
catastrophes that the Nautilus would encounter on its run. When it
plied more heavily traveled seas, we often saw wrecked hulls rotting
in midwater, and farther down, cannons, shells, anchors, chains, and a
thousand other iron objects rusting away.

Meanwhile, continuously swept along by the Nautilus, where we lived in
near isolation, we raised the Tuamotu Islands on December 11, that old
“dangerous group” associated with the French global navigator
Commander Bougainville; it stretches from Ducie Island to Lazareff
Island over an area of 500 leagues from the east-southeast to the
west-northwest, between latitude 13 degrees 30’ and 23 degrees 50’
south, and between longitude 125 degrees 30’ and 151 degrees 30’
west. This island group covers a surface area of 370 square leagues,
and it’s made up of some sixty subgroups, among which we noted the
Gambier group, which is a French protectorate. These islands are coral
formations. Thanks to the work of polyps, a slow but steady upheaval
will someday connect these islands to each other. Later on, this new
island will be fused to its neighboring island groups, and a fifth
continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia as far as
the Marquesas Islands.

The day I expounded this theory to Captain Nemo, he answered me
coldly:

“The earth doesn’t need new continents, but new men!”

Sailors’ luck led the Nautilus straight to Reao Island, one of the
most unusual in this group, which was discovered in 1822 by Captain
Bell aboard the Minerva. So I was able to study the madreporic process
that has created the islands in this ocean.

Madrepores, which one must guard against confusing with precious
coral, clothe their tissue in a limestone crust, and their variations
in structure have led my famous mentor Professor Milne-Edwards to
classify them into five divisions. The tiny microscopic animals that
secrete this polypary live by the billions in the depths of their
cells. Their limestone deposits build up into rocks, reefs, islets,
islands. In some places, they form atolls, a circular ring surrounding
a lagoon or small inner lake that gaps place in contact with the
sea. Elsewhere, they take the shape of barrier reefs, such as those
that exist along the coasts of New Caledonia and several of the
Tuamotu Islands. In still other localities, such as RΘunion Island and
the island of Mauritius, they build fringing reefs, high, straight
walls next to which the ocean’s depth is considerable.

While cruising along only a few cable lengths from the underpinning of
Reao Island, I marveled at the gigantic piece of work accomplished by
these microscopic laborers. These walls were the express achievements
of madrepores known by the names fire coral, finger coral, star coral,
and stony coral. These polyps grow exclusively in the agitated strata
at the surface of the sea, and so it’s in the upper reaches that they
begin these substructures, which sink little by little together with
the secreted rubble binding them. This, at least, is the theory of
Mr. Charles Darwin, who thus explains the formation of atolls—a theory
superior, in my view, to the one that says these madreporic edifices
sit on the summits of mountains or volcanoes submerged a few feet
below sea level.

I could observe these strange walls quite closely: our sounding lines
indicated that they dropped perpendicularly for more than 300 meters,
and our electric beams made the bright limestone positively sparkle.

In reply to a question Conseil asked me about the growth rate of these
colossal barriers, I thoroughly amazed him by saying that scientists
put it at an eighth of an inch per biennium.

“Therefore,” he said to me, “to build these walls, it took . . . ?”

“192,000 years, my gallant Conseil, which significantly extends the
biblical Days of Creation. What’s more, the formation of coal—in other
words, the petrification of forests swallowed by floods—and the
cooling of basaltic rocks likewise call for a much longer period of
time. I might add that those ‘days’ in the Bible must represent whole
epochs and not literally the lapse of time between two sunrises,
because according to the Bible itself, the sun doesn’t date from the
first day of Creation.”

When the Nautilus returned to the surface of the ocean, I could take
in Reao Island over its whole flat, wooded expanse. Obviously its
madreporic rocks had been made fertile by tornadoes and
thunderstorms. One day, carried off by a hurricane from neighboring
shores, some seed fell onto these limestone beds, mixing with
decomposed particles of fish and marine plants to form vegetable
humus. Propelled by the waves, a coconut arrived on this new
coast. Its germ took root. Its tree grew tall, catching steam off the
water. A brook was born. Little by little, vegetation spread. Tiny
animals—worms, insects—rode ashore on tree trunks snatched from
islands to windward. Turtles came to lay their eggs. Birds nested in
the young trees. In this way animal life developed, and drawn by the
greenery and fertile soil, man appeared. And that’s how these islands
were formed, the immense achievement of microscopic animals.

Near evening Reao Island melted into the distance, and the Nautilus
noticeably changed course. After touching the Tropic of Capricorn at
longitude 135 degrees, it headed west-northwest, going back up the
whole intertropical zone. Although the summer sun lavished its rays on
us, we never suffered from the heat, because thirty or forty meters
underwater, the temperature didn’t go over 10 degrees to 12 degrees
centigrade.

By December 15 we had left the alluring Society Islands in the west,
likewise elegant Tahiti, queen of the Pacific. In the morning I
spotted this island’s lofty summits a few miles to leeward. Its waters
supplied excellent fish for the tables on board: mackerel, bonito,
albacore, and a few varieties of that sea serpent named the moray eel.

The Nautilus had cleared 8,100 miles. We logged 9,720 miles when we
passed between the Tonga Islands, where crews from the Argo,
Port-au-Prince, and Duke of Portland had perished, and the island
group of Samoa, scene of the slaying of Captain de Langle, friend of
that long-lost navigator, the Count de La PΘrouse. Then we raised the
Fiji Islands, where savages slaughtered sailors from the Union, as
well as Captain Bureau, commander of the Darling Josephine out of
Nantes, France.

Extending over an expanse of 100 leagues north to south, and over 90
leagues east to west, this island group lies between latitude 2
degrees and 6 degrees south, and between longitude 174 degrees and 179
degrees west. It consists of a number of islands, islets, and reefs,
among which we noted the islands of Viti Levu, Vanua Levu, and Kadavu.

It was the Dutch navigator Tasman who discovered this group in 1643,
the same year the Italian physicist Torricelli invented the barometer
and King Louis XIV ascended the French throne. I’ll let the reader
decide which of these deeds was more beneficial to humanity. Coming
later, Captain Cook in 1774, Rear Admiral d’Entrecasteaux in 1793, and
finally Captain Dumont d’Urville in 1827, untangled the whole chaotic
geography of this island group. The Nautilus drew near Wailea Bay, an
unlucky place for England’s Captain Dillon, who was the first to shed
light on the longstanding mystery surrounding the disappearance of
ships under the Count de La PΘrouse.

This bay, repeatedly dredged, furnished a huge supply of excellent
oysters. As the Roman playwright Seneca recommended, we opened them
right at our table, then stuffed ourselves. These mollusks belonged to
the species known by name as Ostrea lamellosa, whose members are quite
common off Corsica. This Wailea oysterbank must have been extensive,
and for certain, if they hadn’t been controlled by numerous natural
checks, these clusters of shellfish would have ended up jam-packing
the bay, since as many as 2,000,000 eggs have been counted in a single
individual.

And if Mr. Ned Land did not repent of his gluttony at our oyster fest,
it’s because oysters are the only dish that never causes
indigestion. In fact, it takes no less than sixteen dozen of these
headless mollusks to supply the 315 grams that satisfy one man’s
minimum daily requirement for nitrogen.

On December 25 the Nautilus navigated amid the island group of the New
Hebrides, which the Portuguese seafarer Queir≤s discovered in 1606,
which Commander Bougainville explored in 1768, and to which Captain
Cook gave its current name in 1773. This group is chiefly made up of
nine large islands and forms a 120-league strip from the
north-northwest to the south-southeast, lying between latitude 2
degrees and 15 degrees south, and between longitude 164 degrees and
168 degrees. At the moment of our noon sights, we passed fairly close
to the island of Aurou, which looked to me like a mass of green woods
crowned by a peak of great height.

That day it was yuletide, and it struck me that Ned Land badly missed
celebrating “Christmas,” that genuine family holiday where Protestants
are such zealots.

I hadn’t seen Captain Nemo for over a week, when, on the morning of
the 27th, he entered the main lounge, as usual acting as if he’d been
gone for just five minutes. I was busy tracing the Nautilus’s course
on the world map. The captain approached, placed a finger over a
position on the chart, and pronounced just one word:

“Vanikoro.”

This name was magic! It was the name of those islets where vessels
under the Count de La PΘrouse had miscarried. I straightened suddenly.

“The Nautilus is bringing us to Vanikoro?” I asked.

“Yes, professor,” the captain replied.

“And I’ll be able to visit those famous islands where the Compass and
the Astrolabe came to grief?”

“If you like, professor.”

“When will we reach Vanikoro?”

“We already have, professor.”

Followed by Captain Nemo, I climbed onto the platform, and from there
my eyes eagerly scanned the horizon.

In the northeast there emerged two volcanic islands of unequal size,
surrounded by a coral reef whose circuit measured forty miles. We were
facing the island of Vanikoro proper, to which Captain Dumont
d’Urville had given the name “Island of the Search”; we lay right in
front of the little harbor of Vana, located in latitude 16 degrees 4’
south and longitude 164 degrees 32’ east. Its shores seemed covered
with greenery from its beaches to its summits inland, crowned by
Mt. Kapogo, which is 476 fathoms high.

After clearing the outer belt of rocks via a narrow passageway, the
Nautilus lay inside the breakers where the sea had a depth of thirty
to forty fathoms. Under the green shade of some tropical evergreens, I
spotted a few savages who looked extremely startled at our
approach. In this long, blackish object advancing flush with the
water, didn’t they see some fearsome cetacean that they were obliged
to view with distrust?

Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the shipwreck of the
Count de La PΘrouse.

“What everybody knows, captain,” I answered him.

“And could you kindly tell me what everybody knows?” he asked me in a
gently ironic tone.

“Very easily.”

I related to him what the final deeds of Captain Dumont d’Urville had
brought to light, deeds described here in this heavily condensed
summary of the whole matter.

In 1785 the Count de La PΘrouse and his subordinate, Captain de
Langle, were sent by King Louis XVI of France on a voyage to
circumnavigate the globe. They boarded two sloops of war, the Compass
and the Astrolabe, which were never seen again.

In 1791, justly concerned about the fate of these two sloops of war,
the French government fitted out two large cargo boats, the Search and
the Hope, which left Brest on September 28 under orders from Rear
Admiral Bruni d’Entrecasteaux. Two months later, testimony from a
certain Commander Bowen, aboard the Albemarle, alleged that rubble
from shipwrecked vessels had been seen on the coast of New
Georgia. But d’Entrecasteaux was unaware of this news—which seemed a
bit dubious anyhow—and headed toward the Admiralty Islands, which had
been named in a report by one Captain Hunter as the site of the Count
de La PΘrouse’s shipwreck.

They looked in vain. The Hope and the Search passed right by Vanikoro
without stopping there; and overall, this voyage was plagued by
misfortune, ultimately costing the lives of Rear Admiral
d’Entrecasteaux, two of his subordinate officers, and several seamen
from his crew.

It was an old hand at the Pacific, the English adventurer Captain
Peter Dillon, who was the first to pick up the trail left by castaways
from the wrecked vessels. On May 15, 1824, his ship, the St. Patrick,
passed by Tikopia Island, one of the New Hebrides. There a native
boatman pulled alongside in a dugout canoe and sold Dillon a silver
sword hilt bearing the imprint of characters engraved with a cutting
tool known as a burin. Furthermore, this native boatman claimed that
during a stay in Vanikoro six years earlier, he had seen two Europeans
belonging to ships that had run aground on the island’s reefs many
years before.

Dillon guessed that the ships at issue were those under the Count de
La PΘrouse, ships whose disappearance had shaken the entire world. He
tried to reach Vanikoro, where, according to the native boatman, a
good deal of rubble from the shipwreck could still be found, but winds
and currents prevented his doing so.

Dillon returned to Calcutta. There he was able to interest the Asiatic
Society and the East India Company in his discovery. A ship named
after the Search was placed at his disposal, and he departed on
January 23, 1827, accompanied by a French deputy.

This new Search, after putting in at several stops over the Pacific,
dropped anchor before Vanikoro on July 7, 1827, in the same harbor of
Vana where the Nautilus was currently floating.

There Dillon collected many relics of the shipwreck: iron utensils,
anchors, eyelets from pulleys, swivel guns, an eighteen-pound shell,
the remains of some astronomical instruments, a piece of sternrail,
and a bronze bell bearing the inscription “Made by Bazin,” the foundry
mark at Brest Arsenal around 1785. There could no longer be any doubt.

Finishing his investigations, Dillon stayed at the site of the
casualty until the month of October. Then he left Vanikoro, headed
toward New Zealand, dropped anchor at Calcutta on April 7, 1828, and
returned to France, where he received a very cordial welcome from King
Charles X.

But just then the renowned French explorer Captain Dumont d’Urville,
unaware of Dillon’s activities, had already set sail to search
elsewhere for the site of the shipwreck. In essence, a whaling vessel
had reported that some medals and a Cross of St. Louis had been found
in the hands of savages in the Louisiade Islands and New Caledonia.

So Captain Dumont d’Urville had put to sea in command of a vessel
named after the Astrolabe, and just two months after Dillon had left
Vanikoro, Dumont d’Urville dropped anchor before Hobart. There he
heard about Dillon’s findings, and he further learned that a certain
James Hobbs, chief officer on the Union out of Calcutta, had put to
shore on an island located in latitude 8 degrees 18’ south and
longitude 156 degrees 30’ east, and had noted the natives of those
waterways making use of iron bars and red fabrics.

Pretty perplexed, Dumont d’Urville didn’t know if he should give
credence to these reports, which had been carried in some of the less
reliable newspapers; nevertheless, he decided to start on Dillon’s
trail.

On February 10, 1828, the new Astrolabe hove before Tikopia Island,
took on a guide and interpreter in the person of a deserter who had
settled there, plied a course toward Vanikoro, raised it on February
12, sailed along its reefs until the 14th, and only on the 20th
dropped anchor inside its barrier in the harbor of Vana.

On the 23rd, several officers circled the island and brought back some
rubble of little importance. The natives, adopting a system of denial
and evasion, refused to guide them to the site of the casualty. This
rather shady conduct aroused the suspicion that the natives had
mistreated the castaways; and in truth, the natives seemed afraid that
Dumont d’Urville had come to avenge the Count de La PΘrouse and his
unfortunate companions.

But on the 26th, appeased with gifts and seeing that they didn’t need
to fear any reprisals, the natives led the chief officer,
Mr. Jacquinot, to the site of the shipwreck.

At this location, in three or four fathoms of water between the Paeu
and Vana reefs, there lay some anchors, cannons, and ingots of iron
and lead, all caked with limestone concretions. A launch and whaleboat
from the new Astrolabe were steered to this locality, and after going
to exhausting lengths, their crews managed to dredge up an anchor
weighing 1,800 pounds, a cast-iron eight-pounder cannon, a lead ingot,
and two copper swivel guns.

Questioning the natives, Captain Dumont d’Urville also learned that
after La PΘrouse’s two ships had miscarried on the island’s reefs, the
count had built a smaller craft, only to go off and miscarry a second
time. Where? Nobody knew.

The commander of the new Astrolabe then had a monument erected under a
tuft of mangrove, in memory of the famous navigator and his
companions. It was a simple quadrangular pyramid, set on a coral base,
with no ironwork to tempt the natives’ avarice.

Then Dumont d’Urville tried to depart; but his crews were run down
from the fevers raging on these unsanitary shores, and quite ill
himself, he was unable to weigh anchor until March 17.

Meanwhile, fearing that Dumont d’Urville wasn’t abreast of Dillon’s
activities, the French government sent a sloop of war to Vanikoro, the
Bayonnaise under Commander Legoarant de Tromelin, who had been
stationed on the American west coast. Dropping anchor before Vanikoro
a few months after the new Astrolabe’s departure, the Bayonnaise
didn’t find any additional evidence but verified that the savages
hadn’t disturbed the memorial honoring the Count de La PΘrouse.

This is the substance of the account I gave Captain Nemo.

“So,” he said to me, “the castaways built a third ship on Vanikoro
Island, and to this day, nobody knows where it went and perished?”

“Nobody knows.”

Captain Nemo didn’t reply but signaled me to follow him to the main
lounge. The Nautilus sank a few meters beneath the waves, and the
panels opened.

I rushed to the window and saw crusts of coral: fungus coral,
siphonula coral, alcyon coral, sea anemone from the genus Caryophylia,
plus myriads of charming fish including greenfish, damselfish,
sweepers, snappers, and squirrelfish; underneath this coral covering I
detected some rubble the old dredges hadn’t been able to tear
free—iron stirrups, anchors, cannons, shells, tackle from a capstan, a
stempost, all objects hailing from the wrecked ships and now carpeted
in moving flowers.

And as I stared at this desolate wreckage, Captain Nemo told me in a
solemn voice:

“Commander La PΘrouse set out on December 7, 1785, with his ships, the
Compass and the Astrolabe. He dropped anchor first at Botany Bay,
visited the Tonga Islands and New Caledonia, headed toward the Santa
Cruz Islands, and put in at Nomuka, one of the islands in the Ha’apai
group. Then his ships arrived at the unknown reefs of
Vanikoro. Traveling in the lead, the Compass ran afoul of breakers on
the southerly coast. The Astrolabe went to its rescue and also ran
aground. The first ship was destroyed almost immediately. The second,
stranded to leeward, held up for some days. The natives gave the
castaways a fair enough welcome. The latter took up residence on the
island and built a smaller craft with rubble from the two large
ones. A few seamen stayed voluntarily in Vanikoro. The others, weak
and ailing, set sail with the Count de La PΘrouse. They headed to the
Solomon Islands, and they perished with all hands on the westerly
coast of the chief island in that group, between Cape Deception and
Cape Satisfaction!”

“And how do you know all this?” I exclaimed.

“Here’s what I found at the very site of that final shipwreck!”

Captain Nemo showed me a tin box, stamped with the coat of arms of
France and all corroded by salt water. He opened it and I saw a bundle
of papers, yellowed but still legible.

They were the actual military orders given by France’s Minister of the
Navy to Commander La PΘrouse, with notes along the margin in the
handwriting of King Louis XVI!

“Ah, what a splendid death for a seaman!” Captain Nemo then said. “A
coral grave is a tranquil grave, and may Heaven grant that my
companions and I rest in no other!”


CHAPTER 20

The Torres Strait


DURING THE NIGHT of December 27-28, the Nautilus left the waterways of
Vanikoro behind with extraordinary speed. Its heading was
southwesterly, and in three days it had cleared the 750 leagues that
separated La PΘrouse’s islands from the southeastern tip of Papua.

On January 1, 1868, bright and early, Conseil joined me on the
platform.

“Will master,” the gallant lad said to me, “allow me to wish him a
happy new year?”

“Good heavens, Conseil, it’s just like old times in my office at the
Botanical Gardens in Paris! I accept your kind wishes and I thank you
for them. Only, I’d like to know what you mean by a ‘happy year’ under
the circumstances in which we’re placed. Is it a year that will bring
our imprisonment to an end, or a year that will see this strange
voyage continue?”

“Ye gods,” Conseil replied, “I hardly know what to tell master. We’re
certainly seeing some unusual things, and for two months we’ve had no
time for boredom. The latest wonder is always the most astonishing,
and if this progression keeps up, I can’t imagine what its climax will
be. In my opinion, we’ll never again have such an opportunity.”

“Never, Conseil.”

“Besides, Mr. Nemo really lives up to his Latin name, since he
couldn’t be less in the way if he didn’t exist.”

“True enough, Conseil.”

“Therefore, with all due respect to master, I think a ‘happy year’
would be a year that lets us see everything—”

“Everything, Conseil? No year could be that long. But what does Ned
Land think about all this?”

“Ned Land’s thoughts are exactly the opposite of mine,” Conseil
replied. “He has a practical mind and a demanding stomach. He’s tired
of staring at fish and eating them day in and day out. This shortage
of wine, bread, and meat isn’t suitable for an upstanding Anglo-Saxon,
a man accustomed to beefsteak and unfazed by regular doses of brandy
or gin!”

“For my part, Conseil, that doesn’t bother me in the least, and I’ve
adjusted very nicely to the diet on board.”

“So have I,” Conseil replied. “Accordingly, I think as much about
staying as Mr. Land about making his escape. Thus, if this new year
isn’t a happy one for me, it will be for him, and vice versa. No
matter what happens, one of us will be pleased. So, in conclusion, I
wish master to have whatever his heart desires.”

“Thank you, Conseil. Only I must ask you to postpone the question of
new year’s gifts, and temporarily accept a hearty handshake in their
place. That’s all I have on me.”

“Master has never been more generous,” Conseil replied.

And with that, the gallant lad went away.

By January 2 we had fared 11,340 miles, hence 5,250 leagues, from our
starting point in the seas of Japan. Before the Nautilus’s spur there
stretched the dangerous waterways of the Coral Sea, off the northeast
coast of Australia. Our boat cruised along a few miles away from that
daunting shoal where Captain Cook’s ships wellnigh miscarried on June
10, 1770. The craft that Cook was aboard charged into some coral rock,
and if his vessel didn’t go down, it was thanks to the circumstance
that a piece of coral broke off in the collision and plugged the very
hole it had made in the hull.

I would have been deeply interested in visiting this long, 360-league
reef, against which the ever-surging sea broke with the fearsome
intensity of thunderclaps. But just then the Nautilus’s slanting fins
took us to great depths, and I could see nothing of those high coral
walls. I had to rest content with the various specimens of fish
brought up by our nets. Among others I noted some long-finned
albacore, a species in the genus Scomber, as big as tuna, bluish on
the flanks, and streaked with crosswise stripes that disappear when
the animal dies. These fish followed us in schools and supplied our
table with very dainty flesh. We also caught a large number of
yellow-green gilthead, half a decimeter long and tasting like dorado,
plus some flying gurnards, authentic underwater swallows that, on dark
nights, alternately streak air and water with their phosphorescent
glimmers. Among mollusks and zoophytes, I found in our trawl’s meshes
various species of alcyonarian coral, sea urchins, hammer shells,
spurred-star shells, wentletrap snails, horn shells, glass snails. The
local flora was represented by fine floating algae: sea tangle, and
kelp from the genus Macrocystis, saturated with the mucilage their
pores perspire, from which I selected a wonderful Nemastoma
geliniaroidea, classifying it with the natural curiosities in the
museum.

On January 4, two days after crossing the Coral Sea, we raised the
coast of Papua. On this occasion Captain Nemo told me that he intended
to reach the Indian Ocean via the Torres Strait. This was the extent
of his remarks. Ned saw with pleasure that this course would bring us,
once again, closer to European seas.

The Torres Strait is regarded as no less dangerous for its bristling
reefs than for the savage inhabitants of its coasts. It separates
Queensland from the huge island of Papua, also called New Guinea.

Papua is 400 leagues long by 130 leagues wide, with a surface area of
40,000 geographic leagues. It’s located between latitude 0 degrees 19’
and 10 degrees 2’ south, and between longitude 128 degrees 23’ and 146
degrees 15’. At noon, while the chief officer was taking the sun’s
altitude, I spotted the summits of the Arfak Mountains, rising in
terraces and ending in sharp peaks.

Discovered in 1511 by the Portuguese Francisco Serrano, these shores
were successively visited by Don Jorge de Meneses in 1526, by Juan de
Grijalva in 1527, by the Spanish general Alvaro de Saavedra in 1528,
by Inigo Ortiz in 1545, by the Dutchman Schouten in 1616, by Nicolas
Sruick in 1753, by Tasman, Dampier, Fumel, Carteret, Edwards,
Bougainville, Cook, McClure, and Thomas Forrest, by Rear Admiral
d’Entrecasteaux in 1792, by Louis-Isidore Duperrey in 1823, and by
Captain Dumont d’Urville in 1827. “It’s the heartland of the blacks
who occupy all Malaysia,” Mr. de Rienzi has said; and I hadn’t the
foggiest inkling that sailors’ luck was about to bring me face to face
with these daunting Andaman aborigines.

So the Nautilus hove before the entrance to the world’s most dangerous
strait, a passageway that even the boldest navigators hesitated to
clear: the strait that Luis Vaez de Torres faced on returning from the
South Seas in Melanesia, the strait in which sloops of war under
Captain Dumont d’Urville ran aground in 1840 and nearly miscarried
with all hands. And even the Nautilus, rising superior to every danger
in the sea, was about to become intimate with its coral reefs.

The Torres Strait is about thirty-four leagues wide, but it’s
obstructed by an incalculable number of islands, islets, breakers, and
rocks that make it nearly impossible to navigate. Consequently,
Captain Nemo took every desired precaution in crossing it. Floating
flush with the water, the Nautilus moved ahead at a moderate
pace. Like a cetacean’s tail, its propeller churned the waves slowly.

Taking advantage of this situation, my two companions and I found
seats on the ever-deserted platform. In front of us stood the
pilothouse, and unless I’m extremely mistaken, Captain Nemo must have
been inside, steering his Nautilus himself.

Under my eyes I had the excellent charts of the Torres Strait that had
been surveyed and drawn up by the hydrographic engineer Vincendon
Dumoulin and Sublieutenant (now Admiral) Coupvent-Desbois, who were
part of Dumont d’Urville’s general staff during his final voyage to
circumnavigate the globe. These, along with the efforts of Captain
King, are the best charts for untangling the snarl of this narrow
passageway, and I consulted them with scrupulous care.

Around the Nautilus the sea was boiling furiously. A stream of waves,
bearing from southeast to northwest at a speed of two and a half miles
per hour, broke over heads of coral emerging here and there.

“That’s one rough sea!” Ned Land told me.

“Abominable indeed,” I replied, “and hardly suitable for a craft like
the Nautilus.”

“That damned captain,” the Canadian went on, “must really be sure of
his course, because if these clumps of coral so much as brush us,
they’ll rip our hull into a thousand pieces!”

The situation was indeed dangerous, but as if by magic, the Nautilus
seemed to glide right down the middle of these rampaging reefs. It
didn’t follow the exact course of the Zealous and the new Astrolabe,
which had proved so ill-fated for Captain Dumont d’Urville. It went
more to the north, hugged the Murray Islands, and returned to the
southwest near Cumberland Passage. I thought it was about to charge
wholeheartedly into this opening, but it went up to the northwest,
through a large number of little-known islands and islets, and steered
toward Tound Island and the Bad Channel.

I was already wondering if Captain Nemo, rash to the point of sheer
insanity, wanted his ship to tackle the narrows where Dumont
d’Urville’s two sloops of war had gone aground, when he changed
direction a second time and cut straight to the west, heading toward
Gueboroa Island.

By then it was three o’clock in the afternoon. The current was
slacking off, it was almost full tide. The Nautilus drew near this
island, which I can see to this day with its remarkable fringe of
screw pines. We hugged it from less than two miles out.

A sudden jolt threw me down. The Nautilus had just struck a reef, and
it remained motionless, listing slightly to port.

When I stood up, I saw Captain Nemo and his chief officer on the
platform. They were examining the ship’s circumstances, exchanging a
few words in their incomprehensible dialect.

Here is what those circumstances entailed. Two miles to starboard lay
Gueboroa Island, its coastline curving north to west like an immense
arm. To the south and east, heads of coral were already on display,
left uncovered by the ebbing waters. We had run aground at full tide
and in one of those seas whose tides are moderate, an inconvenient
state of affairs for floating the Nautilus off. However, the ship
hadn’t suffered in any way, so solidly joined was its hull. But
although it could neither sink nor split open, it was in serious
danger of being permanently attached to these reefs, and that would
have been the finish of Captain Nemo’s submersible.

I was mulling this over when the captain approached, cool and calm,
forever in control of himself, looking neither alarmed nor annoyed.

“An accident?” I said to him.

“No, an incident,” he answered me.

“But an incident,” I replied, “that may oblige you to become a
resident again of these shores you avoid!”

Captain Nemo gave me an odd look and gestured no. Which told me pretty
clearly that nothing would ever force him to set foot on a land mass
again. Then he said:

“No, Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus isn’t consigned to perdition. It
will still carry you through the midst of the ocean’s wonders. Our
voyage is just beginning, and I’ve no desire to deprive myself so soon
of the pleasure of your company.”

“Even so, Captain Nemo,” I went on, ignoring his ironic turn of
phrase, “the Nautilus has run aground at a moment when the sea is
full. Now then, the tides aren’t strong in the Pacific, and if you
can’t unballast the Nautilus, which seems impossible to me, I don’t
see how it will float off.”

“You’re right, professor, the Pacific tides aren’t strong,” Captain
Nemo replied. “But in the Torres Strait, one still finds a
meter-and-a-half difference in level between high and low seas. Today
is January 4, and in five days the moon will be full. Now then, I’ll
be quite astonished if that good-natured satellite doesn’t
sufficiently raise these masses of water and do me a favor for which
I’ll be forever grateful.”

This said, Captain Nemo went below again to the Nautilus’s interior,
followed by his chief officer. As for our craft, it no longer stirred,
staying as motionless as if these coral polyps had already walled it
in with their indestructible cement.

“Well, sir?” Ned Land said to me, coming up after the captain’s
departure.

“Well, Ned my friend, we’ll serenely wait for the tide on the 9th,
because it seems the moon will have the good nature to float us away!”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that.”

“So our captain isn’t going to drop his anchors, put his engines on
the chains, and do anything to haul us off?”

“Since the tide will be sufficient,” Conseil replied simply.

The Canadian stared at Conseil, then he shrugged his shoulders. The
seaman in him was talking now.

“Sir,” he answered, “you can trust me when I say this hunk of iron
will never navigate again, on the seas or under them. It’s only fit to
be sold for its weight. So I think it’s time we gave Captain Nemo the
slip.”

“Ned my friend,” I replied, “unlike you, I haven’t given up on our
valiant Nautilus, and in four days we’ll know where we stand on these
Pacific tides. Besides, an escape attempt might be timely if we were
in sight of the coasts of England or Provence, but in the waterways of
Papua it’s another story. And we’ll always have that as a last resort
if the Nautilus doesn’t right itself, which I’d regard as a real
calamity.”

“But couldn’t we at least get the lay of the land?” Ned went
on. “Here’s an island. On this island there are trees. Under those
trees land animals loaded with cutlets and roast beef, which I’d be
happy to sink my teeth into.”

“In this instance our friend Ned is right,” Conseil said, “and I side
with his views. Couldn’t master persuade his friend Captain Nemo to
send the three of us ashore, if only so our feet don’t lose the knack
of treading on the solid parts of our planet?”

“I can ask him,” I replied, “but he’ll refuse.”

“Let master take the risk,” Conseil said, “and we’ll know where we
stand on the captain’s affability.”

Much to my surprise, Captain Nemo gave me the permission I asked for,
and he did so with grace and alacrity, not even exacting my promise to
return on board. But fleeing across the New Guinea territories would
be extremely dangerous, and I wouldn’t have advised Ned Land to try
it. Better to be prisoners aboard the Nautilus than to fall into the
hands of Papuan natives.

The skiff was put at our disposal for the next morning. I hardly
needed to ask whether Captain Nemo would be coming along. I likewise
assumed that no crewmen would be assigned to us, that Ned Land would
be in sole charge of piloting the longboat. Besides, the shore lay no
more than two miles off, and it would be child’s play for the Canadian
to guide that nimble skiff through those rows of reefs so ill-fated
for big ships.

The next day, January 5, after its deck paneling was opened, the skiff
was wrenched from its socket and launched to sea from the top of the
platform. Two men were sufficient for this operation. The oars were
inside the longboat and we had only to take our seats.

At eight o’clock, armed with rifles and axes, we pulled clear of the
Nautilus. The sea was fairly calm. A mild breeze blew from shore. In
place by the oars, Conseil and I rowed vigorously, and Ned steered us
into the narrow lanes between the breakers. The skiff handled easily
and sped swiftly.

Ned Land couldn’t conceal his glee. He was a prisoner escaping from
prison and never dreaming he would need to reenter it.

“Meat!” he kept repeating. “Now we’ll eat red meat! Actual game! A
real mess call, by thunder! I’m not saying fish aren’t good for you,
but we mustn’t overdo ‘em, and a slice of fresh venison grilled over
live coals will be a nice change from our standard fare.”

“You glutton,” Conseil replied, “you’re making my mouth water!”

“It remains to be seen,” I said, “whether these forests do contain
game, and if the types of game aren’t of such size that they can hunt
the hunter.”

“Fine, Professor Aronnax!” replied the Canadian, whose teeth seemed to
be as honed as the edge of an ax. “But if there’s no other quadruped
on this island, I’ll eat tiger—tiger sirloin.”

“Our friend Ned grows disturbing,” Conseil replied.

“Whatever it is,” Ned Land went on, “any animal having four feet
without feathers, or two feet with feathers, will be greeted by my
very own one-gun salute.”

“Oh good!” I replied. “The reckless Mr. Land is at it again!”

“Don’t worry, Professor Aronnax, just keep rowing!” the Canadian
replied. “I only need twenty-five minutes to serve you one of my own
special creations.”

By 8:30 the Nautilus’s skiff had just run gently aground on a sandy
strand, after successfully clearing the ring of coral that surrounds
Gueboroa Island.


CHAPTER 21

Some Days Ashore


STEPPING ASHORE had an exhilarating effect on me. Ned Land tested the
soil with his foot, as if he were laying claim to it. Yet it had been
only two months since we had become, as Captain Nemo expressed it,
“passengers on the Nautilus,” in other words, the literal prisoners of
its commander.

In a few minutes we were a gunshot away from the coast. The soil was
almost entirely madreporic, but certain dry stream beds were strewn
with granite rubble, proving that this island was of primordial
origin. The entire horizon was hidden behind a curtain of wonderful
forests. Enormous trees, sometimes as high as 200 feet, were linked to
each other by garlands of tropical creepers, genuine natural hammocks
that swayed in a mild breeze. There were mimosas, banyan trees,
beefwood, teakwood, hibiscus, screw pines, palm trees, all mingling in
wild profusion; and beneath the shade of their green canopies, at the
feet of their gigantic trunks, there grew orchids, leguminous plants,
and ferns.

Meanwhile, ignoring all these fine specimens of Papuan flora, the
Canadian passed up the decorative in favor of the functional. He
spotted a coconut palm, beat down some of its fruit, broke them open,
and we drank their milk and ate their meat with a pleasure that was a
protest against our standard fare on the Nautilus.

“Excellent!” Ned Land said.



“Exquisite!” Conseil replied.

“And I don’t think,” the Canadian said, “that your Nemo would object
to us stashing a cargo of coconuts aboard his vessel?”

“I imagine not,” I replied, “but he won’t want to sample them.”

“Too bad for him!” Conseil said.

“And plenty good for us!” Ned Land shot back. “There’ll be more left
over!”

“A word of caution, Mr. Land,” I told the harpooner, who was about to
ravage another coconut palm. “Coconuts are admirable things, but
before we stuff the skiff with them, it would be wise to find out
whether this island offers other substances just as useful. Some fresh
vegetables would be well received in the Nautilus’s pantry.”

“Master is right,” Conseil replied, “and I propose that we set aside
three places in our longboat: one for fruit, another for vegetables,
and a third for venison, of which I still haven’t glimpsed the tiniest
specimen.”

“Don’t give up so easily, Conseil,” the Canadian replied.

“So let’s continue our excursion,” I went on, “but keep a sharp
lookout. This island seems uninhabited, but it still might harbor
certain individuals who aren’t so finicky about the sort of game they
eat!”

“Hee hee!” Ned put in, with a meaningful movement of his jaws.

“Ned! Oh horrors!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Ye gods,” the Canadian shot back, “I’m starting to appreciate the
charms of cannibalism!”

“Ned, Ned! Don’t say that!” Conseil answered. “You a cannibal? Why,
I’ll no longer be safe next to you, I who share your cabin! Does this
mean I’ll wake up half devoured one fine day?”

“I’m awfully fond of you, Conseil my friend, but not enough to eat you
when there’s better food around.”

“Then I daren’t delay,” Conseil replied. “The hunt is on! We
absolutely must bag some game to placate this man-eater, or one of
these mornings master won’t find enough pieces of his manservant to
serve him.”

While exchanging this chitchat, we entered beneath the dark canopies
of the forest, and for two hours we explored it in every direction.

We couldn’t have been luckier in our search for edible vegetation, and
some of the most useful produce in the tropical zones supplied us with
a valuable foodstuff missing on board.

I mean the breadfruit tree, which is quite abundant on Gueboroa
Island, and there I chiefly noted the seedless variety that in
Malaysia is called “rima.”

This tree is distinguished from other trees by a straight trunk forty
feet high. To the naturalist’s eye, its gracefully rounded crown,
formed of big multilobed leaves, was enough to denote the artocarpus
that has been so successfully transplanted to the Mascarene Islands
east of

Madagascar. From its mass of greenery, huge globular fruit stood out,
a decimeter wide and furnished on the outside with creases that
assumed a hexangular pattern. It’s a handy plant that nature gives to
regions lacking in wheat; without needing to be cultivated, it bears
fruit eight months out of the year.

Ned Land was on familiar terms with this fruit. He had already eaten
it on his many voyages and knew how to cook its edible substance. So
the very sight of it aroused his appetite, and he couldn’t control
himself.

“Sir,” he told me, “I’ll die if I don’t sample a little breadfruit
pasta!”

“Sample some, Ned my friend, sample all you like. We’re here to
conduct experiments, let’s conduct them.”

“It won’t take a minute,” the Canadian replied.

Equipped with a magnifying glass, he lit a fire of deadwood that was
soon crackling merrily. Meanwhile Conseil and I selected the finest
artocarpus fruit. Some still weren’t ripe enough, and their thick
skins covered white, slightly fibrous pulps. But a great many others
were yellowish and gelatinous, just begging to be picked.

This fruit contained no pits. Conseil brought a dozen of them to Ned
Land, who cut them into thick slices and placed them over a fire of
live coals, all the while repeating:

“You’ll see, sir, how tasty this bread is!”

“Especially since we’ve gone without baked goods for so long,” Conseil
said.

“It’s more than just bread,” the Canadian added. “It’s a dainty
pastry. You’ve never eaten any, sir?”

“No, Ned.”

“All right, get ready for something downright delectable! If you don’t
come back for seconds, I’m no longer the King of Harpooners!”

After a few minutes, the parts of the fruit exposed to the fire were
completely toasted. On the inside there appeared some white pasta, a
sort of soft bread center whose flavor reminded me of artichoke.

This bread was excellent, I must admit, and I ate it with great
pleasure.

“Unfortunately,” I said, “this pasta won’t stay fresh, so it seems
pointless to make a supply for on board.”

“By thunder, sir!” Ned Land exclaimed. “There you go, talking like a
naturalist, but meantime I’ll be acting like a baker! Conseil, harvest
some of this fruit to take with us when we go back.”

“And how will you prepare it?” I asked the Canadian.

“I’ll make a fermented batter from its pulp that’ll keep indefinitely
without spoiling. When I want some, I’ll just cook it in the galley on
board—it’ll have a slightly tart flavor, but you’ll find it
excellent.”

“So, Mr. Ned, I see that this bread is all we need—”

“Not quite, professor,” the Canadian replied. “We need some fruit to
go with it, or at least some vegetables.”

“Then let’s look for fruit and vegetables.”

When our breadfruit harvesting was done, we took to the trail to
complete this “dry-land dinner.”

We didn’t search in vain, and near noontime we had an ample supply of
bananas. This delicious produce from the Torrid Zones ripens all year
round, and Malaysians, who give them the name “pisang,” eat them
without bothering to cook them. In addition to bananas, we gathered
some enormous jackfruit with a very tangy flavor, some tasty mangoes,
and some pineapples of unbelievable size. But this foraging took up a
good deal of our time, which, even so, we had no cause to regret.

Conseil kept Ned under observation. The harpooner walked in the lead,
and during his stroll through this forest, he gathered with sure hands
some excellent fruit that should have completed his provisions.

“So,” Conseil asked, “you have everything you need, Ned my friend?”

“Humph!” the Canadian put in.

“What! You’re complaining?”

“All this vegetation doesn’t make a meal,” Ned replied. “Just side
dishes, dessert. But where’s the soup course? Where’s the roast?”

“Right,” I said. “Ned promised us cutlets, which seems highly
questionable to me.”

“Sir,” the Canadian replied, “our hunting not only isn’t over, it
hasn’t even started. Patience! We’re sure to end up bumping into some
animal with either feathers or fur, if not in this locality, then in
another.”

“And if not today, then tomorrow, because we mustn’t wander too far
off,” Conseil added. “That’s why I propose that we return to the
skiff.”

“What! Already!” Ned exclaimed.

“We ought to be back before nightfall,” I said.

“But what hour is it, then?” the Canadian asked.

“Two o’clock at least,” Conseil replied.

“How time flies on solid ground!” exclaimed Mr. Ned Land with a sigh
of regret.

“Off we go!” Conseil replied.

So we returned through the forest, and we completed our harvest by
making a clean sweep of some palm cabbages that had to be picked from
the crowns of their trees, some small beans that I recognized as the
“abrou” of the Malaysians, and some high-quality yams.

We were overloaded when we arrived at the skiff. However, Ned Land
still found these provisions inadequate. But fortune smiled on
him. Just as we were boarding, he spotted several trees twenty-five to
thirty feet high, belonging to the palm species. As valuable as the
artocarpus, these trees are justly ranked among the most useful
produce in Malaysia.

They were sago palms, vegetation that grows without being cultivated;
like mulberry trees, they reproduce by means of shoots and seeds.

Ned Land knew how to handle these trees. Taking his ax and wielding it
with great vigor, he soon stretched out on the ground two or three
sago palms, whose maturity was revealed by the white dust sprinkled
over their palm fronds.

I watched him more as a naturalist than as a man in hunger. He began
by removing from each trunk an inch-thick strip of bark that covered a
network of long, hopelessly tangled fibers that were puttied with a
sort of gummy flour. This flour was the starch-like sago, an edible
substance chiefly consumed by the Melanesian peoples.

For the time being, Ned Land was content to chop these trunks into
pieces, as if he were making firewood; later he would extract the
flour by sifting it through cloth to separate it from its fibrous
ligaments, let it dry out in the sun, and leave it to harden inside
molds.

Finally, at five o’clock in the afternoon, laden with all our
treasures, we left the island beach and half an hour later pulled
alongside the Nautilus. Nobody appeared on our arrival. The enormous
sheet-iron cylinder seemed deserted. Our provisions loaded on board, I
went below to my stateroom. There I found my supper ready. I ate and
then fell asleep.

The next day, January 6: nothing new on board. Not a sound inside, not
a sign of life. The skiff stayed alongside in the same place we had
left it. We decided to return to Gueboroa Island. Ned Land hoped for
better luck in his hunting than on the day before, and he wanted to
visit a different part of the forest.

By sunrise we were off. Carried by an inbound current, the longboat
reached the island in a matter of moments.

We disembarked, and thinking it best to abide by the Canadian’s
instincts, we followed Ned Land, whose long legs threatened to outpace
us.

Ned Land went westward up the coast; then, fording some stream beds,
he reached open plains that were bordered by wonderful forests. Some
kingfishers lurked along the watercourses, but they didn’t let us
approach. Their cautious behavior proved to me that these winged
creatures knew where they stood on bipeds of our species, and I
concluded that if this island wasn’t inhabited, at least human beings
paid it frequent visits.

After crossing a pretty lush prairie, we arrived on the outskirts of a
small wood, enlivened by the singing and soaring of a large number of
birds.

“Still, they’re merely birds,” Conseil said.

“But some are edible,” the harpooner replied.

“Wrong, Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “because I see only ordinary
parrots here.”

“Conseil my friend,” Ned replied in all seriousness, “parrots are like
pheasant to people with nothing else on their plates.”

“And I might add,” I said, “that when these birds are properly cooked,
they’re at least worth a stab of the fork.”

Indeed, under the dense foliage of this wood, a whole host of parrots
fluttered from branch to branch, needing only the proper upbringing to
speak human dialects. At present they were cackling in chorus with
parakeets of every color, with solemn cockatoos that seemed to be
pondering some philosophical problem, while bright red lories passed
by like pieces of bunting borne on the breeze, in the midst of kalao
parrots raucously on the wing, Papuan lories painted the subtlest
shades of azure, and a whole variety of delightful winged creatures,
none terribly edible.

However, one bird unique to these shores, which never passes beyond
the boundaries of the Aru and Papuan Islands, was missing from this
collection. But I was given a chance to marvel at it soon enough.

After crossing through a moderately dense thicket, we again found some
plains obstructed by bushes. There I saw some magnificent birds
soaring aloft, the arrangement of their long feathers causing them to
head into the wind. Their undulating flight, the grace of their aerial
curves, and the play of their colors allured and delighted the eye. I
had no trouble identifying them.

“Birds of paradise!” I exclaimed.

“Order Passeriforma, division Clystomora,” Conseil replied.

“Partridge family?” Ned Land asked.

“I doubt it, Mr. Land. Nevertheless, I’m counting on your dexterity to
catch me one of these delightful representatives of tropical nature!”

“I’ll give it a try, professor, though I’m handier with a harpoon than
a rifle.”

Malaysians, who do a booming business in these birds with the Chinese,
have various methods for catching them that we couldn’t use. Sometimes
they set snares on the tops of the tall trees that the bird of
paradise prefers to inhabit. At other times they capture it with a
tenacious glue that paralyzes its movements. They will even go so far
as to poison the springs where these fowl habitually drink. But in our
case, all we could do was fire at them on the wing, which left us
little chance of getting one. And in truth, we used up a good part of
our ammunition in vain.

Near eleven o’clock in the morning, we cleared the lower slopes of the
mountains that form the island’s center, and we still hadn’t bagged a
thing. Hunger spurred us on. The hunters had counted on consuming the
proceeds of their hunting, and they had miscalculated. Luckily, and
much to his surprise, Conseil pulled off a right-and-left shot and
insured our breakfast. He brought down a white pigeon and a ringdove,
which were briskly plucked, hung from a spit, and roasted over a
blazing fire of deadwood. While these fascinating animals were
cooking, Ned prepared some bread from the artocarpus. Then the pigeon
and ringdove were devoured to the bones and declared
excellent. Nutmeg, on which these birds habitually gorge themselves,
sweetens their flesh and makes it delicious eating.

“They taste like chicken stuffed with truffles,” Conseil said.

“All right, Ned,” I asked the Canadian, “now what do you need?”

“Game with four paws, Professor Aronnax,” Ned Land replied. “All these
pigeons are only appetizers, snacks. So till I’ve bagged an animal
with cutlets, I won’t be happy!”

“Nor I, Ned, until I’ve caught a bird of paradise.”

“Then let’s keep hunting,” Conseil replied, “but while heading back to
the sea. We’ve arrived at the foothills of these mountains, and I
think we’ll do better if we return to the forest regions.”

It was good advice and we took it. After an hour’s walk we reached a
genuine sago palm forest. A few harmless snakes fled underfoot. Birds
of paradise stole off at our approach, and I was in real despair of
catching one when Conseil, walking in the lead, stooped suddenly, gave
a triumphant shout, and came back to me, carrying a magnificent bird
of paradise.

“Oh bravo, Conseil!” I exclaimed.

“Master is too kind,” Conseil replied.

“Not at all, my boy. That was a stroke of genius, catching one of
these live birds with your bare hands!”

“If master will examine it closely, he’ll see that I deserve no great
praise.”

“And why not, Conseil?”

“Because this bird is as drunk as a lord.”

“Drunk?”

“Yes, master, drunk from the nutmegs it was devouring under that
nutmeg tree where I caught it. See, Ned my friend, see the monstrous
results of intemperance!”

“Damnation!” the Canadian shot back. “Considering the amount of gin
I’ve had these past two months, you’ve got nothing to complain about!”

Meanwhile I was examining this unusual bird. Conseil was not
mistaken. Tipsy from that potent juice, our bird of paradise had been
reduced to helplessness. It was unable to fly. It was barely able to
walk. But this didn’t alarm me, and I just let it sleep off its
nutmeg.

This bird belonged to the finest of the eight species credited to
Papua and its neighboring islands. It was a “great emerald,” one of
the rarest birds of paradise. It measured three decimeters long. Its
head was comparatively small, and its eyes, placed near the opening of
its beak, were also small. But it offered a wonderful mixture of hues:
a yellow beak, brown feet and claws, hazel wings with purple tips,
pale yellow head and scruff of the neck, emerald throat, the belly and
chest maroon to brown. Two strands, made of a horn substance covered
with down, rose over its tail, which was lengthened by long, very
light feathers of wonderful fineness, and they completed the costume
of this marvelous bird that the islanders have poetically named “the
sun bird.”

How I wished I could take this superb bird of paradise back to Paris,
to make a gift of it to the zoo at the Botanical Gardens, which
doesn’t own a single live specimen.

“So it must be a rarity or something?” the Canadian asked, in the tone
of a hunter who, from the viewpoint of his art, gives the game a
pretty low rating.

“A great rarity, my gallant comrade, and above all very hard to
capture alive. And even after they’re dead, there’s still a major
market for these birds. So the natives have figured out how to create
fake ones, like people create fake pearls or diamonds.”

“What!” Conseil exclaimed. “They make counterfeit birds of paradise?”

“Yes, Conseil.”

“And is master familiar with how the islanders go about it?”

“Perfectly familiar. During the easterly monsoon season, birds of
paradise lose the magnificent feathers around their tails that
naturalists call ‘below-the-wing’ feathers. These feathers are
gathered by the fowl forgers and skillfully fitted onto some poor
previously mutilated parakeet. Then they paint over the suture,
varnish the bird, and ship the fruits of their unique labors to
museums and collectors in Europe.”

“Good enough!” Ned Land put in. “If it isn’t the right bird, it’s
still the right feathers, and so long as the merchandise isn’t meant
to be eaten, I see no great harm!”

But if my desires were fulfilled by the capture of this bird of
paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained
unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o’clock Ned Land brought down a
magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call “bari-outang.” This
animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped
meat, and it was warmly welcomed. Ned Land proved himself quite
gloriously with his gunshot. Hit by an electric bullet, the pig
dropped dead on the spot.

The Canadian properly skinned and cleaned it, after removing half a
dozen cutlets destined to serve as the grilled meat course of our
evening meal. Then the hunt was on again, and once more would be
marked by the exploits of Ned and Conseil.

In essence, beating the bushes, the two friends flushed a herd of
kangaroos that fled by bounding away on their elastic paws. But these
animals didn’t flee so swiftly that our electric capsules couldn’t
catch up with them.

“Oh, professor!” shouted Ned Land, whose hunting fever had gone to his
brain. “What excellent game, especially in a stew! What a supply for
the Nautilus! Two, three, five down! And just think how we’ll devour
all this meat ourselves, while those numbskulls on board won’t get a
shred!”

In his uncontrollable glee, I think the Canadian might have
slaughtered the whole horde, if he hadn’t been so busy talking! But he
was content with a dozen of these fascinating marsupials, which make
up the first order of aplacental mammals, as Conseil just had to tell
us.

These animals were small in stature. They were a species of those
“rabbit kangaroos” that usually dwell in the hollows of trees and are
tremendously fast; but although of moderate dimensions, they at least
furnish a meat that’s highly prized.

We were thoroughly satisfied with the results of our hunting. A
gleeful Ned proposed that we return the next day to this magic island,
which he planned to depopulate of its every edible quadruped. But he
was reckoning without events.

By six o’clock in the evening, we were back on the beach. The skiff
was aground in its usual place. The Nautilus, looking like a long
reef, emerged from the waves two miles offshore.

Without further ado, Ned Land got down to the important business of
dinner. He came wonderfully to terms with its entire cooking. Grilling
over the coals, those cutlets from the “bari-outang” soon gave off a
succulent aroma that perfumed the air.

But I catch myself following in the Canadian’s footsteps. Look at
me—in ecstasy over freshly grilled pork! Please grant me a pardon as
I’ve already granted one to Mr. Land, and on the same grounds!

In short, dinner was excellent. Two ringdoves rounded out this
extraordinary menu. Sago pasta, bread from the artocarpus, mangoes,
half a dozen pineapples, and the fermented liquor from certain
coconuts heightened our glee. I suspect that my two fine companions
weren’t quite as clearheaded as one could wish.

“What if we don’t return to the Nautilus this evening?” Conseil said.

“What if we never return to it?” Ned Land added.

Just then a stone whizzed toward us, landed at our feet, and cut short
the harpooner’s proposition.


CHAPTER 22

The Lightning Bolts of Captain Nemo


WITHOUT STANDING UP, we stared in the direction of the forest, my hand
stopping halfway to my mouth, Ned Land’s completing its assignment.

“Stones don’t fall from the sky,” Conseil said, “or else they deserve
to be called meteorites.”

A second well-polished stone removed a tasty ringdove leg from
Conseil’s hand, giving still greater relevance to his observation.

We all three stood up, rifles to our shoulders, ready to answer any
attack.

“Apes maybe?” Ned Land exclaimed.

“Nearly,” Conseil replied. “Savages.”

“Head for the skiff!” I said, moving toward the sea.

Indeed, it was essential to beat a retreat because some twenty
natives, armed with bows and slings, appeared barely a hundred paces
off, on the outskirts of a thicket that masked the horizon to our
right.

The skiff was aground ten fathoms away from us.

The savages approached without running, but they favored us with a
show of the greatest hostility. It was raining stones and arrows.

Ned Land was unwilling to leave his provisions behind, and despite the
impending danger, he clutched his pig on one side, his kangaroos on
the other, and scampered off with respectable speed.

In two minutes we were on the strand. Loading provisions and weapons
into the skiff, pushing it to sea, and positioning its two oars were
the work of an instant. We hadn’t gone two cable lengths when a
hundred savages, howling and gesticulating, entered the water up to
their waists. I looked to see if their appearance might draw some of
the Nautilus’s men onto the platform. But no. Lying well out, that
enormous machine still seemed completely deserted.

Twenty minutes later we boarded ship. The hatches were open. After
mooring the skiff, we reentered the Nautilus’s interior.

I went below to the lounge, from which some chords were
wafting. Captain Nemo was there, leaning over the organ, deep in a
musical trance.

“Captain!” I said to him.

He didn’t hear me.

“Captain!” I went on, touching him with my hand.

He trembled, and turning around:

“Ah, it’s you, professor!” he said to me. “Well, did you have a happy
hunt? Was your herb gathering a success?”

“Yes, captain,” I replied, “but unfortunately we’ve brought back a
horde of bipeds whose proximity worries me.”

“What sort of bipeds?”

“Savages.”

“Savages!” Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone. “You set foot on
one of the shores of this globe, professor, and you’re surprised to
find savages there? Where aren’t there savages? And besides, are they
any worse than men elsewhere, these people you call savages?”

“But captain—”

“Speaking for myself, sir, I’ve encountered them everywhere.”

“Well then,” I replied, “if you don’t want to welcome them aboard the
Nautilus, you’d better take some precautions!”

“Easy, professor, no cause for alarm.”

“But there are a large number of these natives.”

“What’s your count?”

“At least a hundred.”

“Professor Aronnax,” replied Captain Nemo, whose fingers took their
places again on the organ keys, “if every islander in Papua were to
gather on that beach, the Nautilus would still have nothing to fear
from their attacks!”

The captain’s fingers then ran over the instrument’s keyboard, and I
noticed that he touched only its black keys, which gave his melodies a
basically Scottish color. Soon he had forgotten my presence and was
lost in a reverie that I no longer tried to dispel.

I climbed onto the platform. Night had already fallen, because in this
low latitude the sun sets quickly, without any twilight. I could see
Gueboroa Island only dimly. But numerous fires had been kindled on the
beach, attesting that the natives had no thoughts of leaving it.

For several hours I was left to myself, sometimes musing on the
islanders—but no longer fearing them because the captain’s unflappable
confidence had won me over—and sometimes forgetting them to marvel at
the splendors of this tropical night. My memories took wing toward
France, in the wake of those zodiacal stars due to twinkle over it in
a few hours. The moon shone in the midst of the constellations at
their zenith. I then remembered that this loyal, good-natured
satellite would return to this same place the day after tomorrow, to
raise the tide and tear the Nautilus from its coral bed. Near
midnight, seeing that all was quiet over the darkened waves as well as
under the waterside trees, I repaired to my cabin and fell into a
peaceful sleep.

The night passed without mishap. No doubt the Papuans had been
frightened off by the mere sight of this monster aground in the bay,
because our hatches stayed open, offering easy access to the
Nautilus’s interior.

At six o’clock in the morning, January 8, I climbed onto the
platform. The morning shadows were lifting. The island was soon on
view through the dissolving mists, first its beaches, then its
summits.

The islanders were still there, in greater numbers than on the day
before, perhaps 500 or 600 of them. Taking advantage of the low tide,
some of them had moved forward over the heads of coral to within two
cable lengths of the Nautilus. I could easily distinguish them. They
obviously were true Papuans, men of fine stock, athletic in build,
forehead high and broad, nose large but not flat, teeth white. Their
woolly, red-tinted hair was in sharp contrast to their bodies, which
were black and glistening like those of Nubians. Beneath their
pierced, distended earlobes there dangled strings of beads made from
bone. Generally these savages were naked. I noted some women among
them, dressed from hip to knee in grass skirts held up by belts made
of vegetation. Some of the chieftains adorned their necks with
crescents and with necklaces made from beads of red and white
glass. Armed with bows, arrows, and shields, nearly all of them
carried from their shoulders a sort of net, which held those polished
stones their slings hurl with such dexterity.

One of these chieftains came fairly close to the Nautilus, examining
it with care. He must have been a “mado” of high rank, because he
paraded in a mat of banana leaves that had ragged edges and was
accented with bright colors.

I could easily have picked off this islander, he stood at such close
range; but I thought it best to wait for an actual show of
hostility. Between Europeans and savages, it’s acceptable for
Europeans to shoot back but not to attack first.

During this whole time of low tide, the islanders lurked near the
Nautilus, but they weren’t boisterous. I often heard them repeat the
word “assai,” and from their gestures I understood they were inviting
me to go ashore, an invitation I felt obliged to decline.

So the skiff didn’t leave shipside that day, much to the displeasure
of Mr. Land who couldn’t complete his provisions. The adroit Canadian
spent his time preparing the meat and flour products he had brought
from Gueboroa Island. As for the savages, they went back to shore near
eleven o’clock in the morning, when the heads of coral began to
disappear under the waves of the rising tide. But I saw their numbers
swell considerably on the beach. It was likely that they had come from
neighboring islands or from the mainland of Papua proper. However, I
didn’t see one local dugout canoe.

Having nothing better to do, I decided to dredge these beautiful,
clear waters, which exhibited a profusion of shells, zoophytes, and
open-sea plants. Besides, it was the last day the Nautilus would spend
in these waterways, if, tomorrow, it still floated off to the open sea
as Captain Nemo had promised.

So I summoned Conseil, who brought me a small, light dragnet similar
to those used in oyster fishing.

“What about these savages?” Conseil asked me. “With all due respect to
master, they don’t strike me as very wicked!”

“They’re cannibals even so, my boy.”

“A person can be both a cannibal and a decent man,” Conseil replied,
“just as a person can be both gluttonous and honorable. The one
doesn’t exclude the other.”

“Fine, Conseil! And I agree that there are honorable cannibals who
decently devour their prisoners. However, I’m opposed to being
devoured, even in all decency, so I’ll keep on my guard, especially
since the Nautilus’s commander seems to be taking no precautions. And
now let’s get to work!”

For two hours our fishing proceeded energetically but without bringing
up any rarities. Our dragnet was filled with Midas abalone, harp
shells, obelisk snails, and especially the finest hammer shells I had
seen to that day. We also gathered in a few sea cucumbers, some pearl
oysters, and a dozen small turtles that we saved for the ship’s
pantry.

But just when I least expected it, I laid my hands on a wonder, a
natural deformity I’d have to call it, something very seldom
encountered. Conseil had just made a cast of the dragnet, and his gear
had come back up loaded with a variety of fairly ordinary seashells,
when suddenly he saw me plunge my arms swiftly into the net, pull out
a shelled animal, and give a conchological yell, in other words, the
most piercing yell a human throat can produce.

“Eh? What happened to master?” Conseil asked, very startled. “Did
master get bitten?”

“No, my boy, but I’d gladly have sacrificed a finger for such a find!”

“What find?”

“This shell,” I said, displaying the subject of my triumph.

“But that’s simply an olive shell of the ‘tent olive’ species, genus
Oliva, order Pectinibranchia, class Gastropoda, branch Mollusca—”

“Yes, yes, Conseil! But instead of coiling from right to left, this
olive shell rolls from left to right!”

“It can’t be!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Yes, my boy, it’s a left-handed shell!”

“A left-handed shell!” Conseil repeated, his heart pounding.

“Look at its spiral!”

“Oh, master can trust me on this,” Conseil said, taking the valuable
shell in trembling hands, “but never have I felt such excitement!”

And there was good reason to be excited! In fact, as naturalists have
ventured to observe, “dextrality” is a well-known law of nature. In
their rotational and orbital movements, stars and their satellites go
from right to left. Man uses his right hand more often than his left,
and consequently his various instruments and equipment (staircases,
locks, watch springs, etc.) are designed to be used in a right-to-left
manner. Now then, nature has generally obeyed this law in coiling her
shells. They’re right-handed with only rare exceptions, and when by
chance a shell’s spiral is left-handed, collectors will pay its weight
in gold for it.

So Conseil and I were deep in the contemplation of our treasure, and I
was solemnly promising myself to enrich the Paris Museum with it, when
an ill-timed stone, hurled by one of the islanders, whizzed over and
shattered the valuable object in Conseil’s hands.

I gave a yell of despair! Conseil pounced on his rifle and aimed at a
savage swinging a sling just ten meters away from him. I tried to stop
him, but his shot went off and shattered a bracelet of amulets
dangling from the islander’s arm.

“Conseil!” I shouted. “Conseil!”

“Eh? What? Didn’t master see that this man-eater initiated the
attack?”

“A shell isn’t worth a human life!” I told him.

“Oh, the rascal!” Conseil exclaimed. “I’d rather he cracked my
shoulder!”

Conseil was in dead earnest, but I didn’t subscribe to his
views. However, the situation had changed in only a short time and we
hadn’t noticed. Now some twenty dugout canoes were surrounding the
Nautilus. Hollowed from tree trunks, these dugouts were long, narrow,
and well designed for speed, keeping their balance by means of two
bamboo poles that floated on the surface of the water. They were
maneuvered by skillful, half-naked paddlers, and I viewed their
advance with definite alarm.

It was obvious these Papuans had already entered into relations with
Europeans and knew their ships. But this long, iron cylinder lying in
the bay, with no masts or funnels—what were they to make of it?
Nothing good, because at first they kept it at a respectful
distance. However, seeing that it stayed motionless, they regained
confidence little by little and tried to become more familiar with
it. Now then, it was precisely this familiarity that we needed to
prevent. Since our weapons made no sound when they went off, they
would have only a moderate effect on these islanders, who reputedly
respect nothing but noisy mechanisms. Without thunderclaps, lightning
bolts would be much less frightening, although the danger lies in the
flash, not the noise.

Just then the dugout canoes drew nearer to the Nautilus, and a cloud
of arrows burst over us.

“Fire and brimstone, it’s hailing!” Conseil said. “And poisoned hail
perhaps!”

“We’ve got to alert Captain Nemo,” I said, reentering the hatch.

I went below to the lounge. I found no one there. I ventured a knock
at the door opening into the captain’s stateroom.

The word “Enter!” answered me. I did so and found Captain Nemo busy
with calculations in which there was no shortage of X and other
algebraic signs.

“Am I disturbing you?” I said out of politeness.

“Correct, Professor Aronnax,” the captain answered me. “But I imagine
you have pressing reasons for looking me up?”

“Very pressing. Native dugout canoes are surrounding us, and in a few
minutes we’re sure to be assaulted by several hundred savages.”

“Ah!” Captain Nemo put in serenely. “They’ve come in their dugouts?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, sir, closing the hatches should do the trick.”

“Precisely, and that’s what I came to tell you—”

“Nothing easier,” Captain Nemo said.

And he pressed an electric button, transmitting an order to the crew’s
quarters.

“There, sir, all under control!” he told me after a few moments. “The
skiff is in place and the hatches are closed. I don’t imagine you’re
worried that these gentlemen will stave in walls that shells from your
frigate couldn’t breach?”

“No, captain, but one danger still remains.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Tomorrow at about this time, we’ll need to reopen the hatches to
renew the Nautilus’s air.”

“No argument, sir, since our craft breathes in the manner favored by
cetaceans.”

“But if these Papuans are occupying the platform at that moment, I
don’t see how you can prevent them from entering.”

“Then, sir, you assume they’ll board the ship?”

“I’m certain of it.”

“Well, sir, let them come aboard. I see no reason to prevent
them. Deep down they’re just poor devils, these Papuans, and I don’t
want my visit to Gueboroa Island to cost the life of a single one of
these unfortunate people!”

On this note I was about to withdraw; but Captain Nemo detained me and
invited me to take a seat next to him. He questioned me with interest
on our excursions ashore and on our hunting, but seemed not to
understand the Canadian’s passionate craving for red meat. Then our
conversation skimmed various subjects, and without being more
forthcoming, Captain Nemo proved more affable.

Among other things, we came to talk of the Nautilus’s circumstances,
aground in the same strait where Captain Dumont d’Urville had nearly
miscarried. Then, pertinent to this:

“He was one of your great seamen,” the captain told me, “one of your
shrewdest navigators, that d’Urville! He was the Frenchman’s Captain
Cook. A man wise but unlucky! Braving the ice banks of the South Pole,
the coral of Oceania, the cannibals of the Pacific, only to perish
wretchedly in a train wreck! If that energetic man was able to think
about his life in its last seconds, imagine what his final thoughts
must have been!”

As he spoke, Captain Nemo seemed deeply moved, an emotion I felt was
to his credit.

Then, chart in hand, we returned to the deeds of the French navigator:
his voyages to circumnavigate the globe, his double attempt at the
South Pole, which led to his discovery of the Adélie Coast and the
Louis-Philippe Peninsula, finally his hydrographic surveys of the
chief islands in Oceania.

“What your d’Urville did on the surface of the sea,” Captain Nemo told
me, “I’ve done in the ocean’s interior, but more easily, more
completely than he. Constantly tossed about by hurricanes, the Zealous
and the new Astrolabe couldn’t compare with the Nautilus, a quiet work
room truly at rest in the midst of the waters!”

“Even so, captain,” I said, “there is one major similarity between
Dumont d’Urville’s sloops of war and the Nautilus.”

“What’s that, sir?”

“Like them, the Nautilus has run aground!”

“The Nautilus is not aground, sir,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “The
Nautilus was built to rest on the ocean floor, and I don’t need to
undertake the arduous labors, the maneuvers d’Urville had to attempt
in order to float off his sloops of war. The Zealous and the new
Astrolabe wellnigh perished, but my Nautilus is in no
danger. Tomorrow, on the day stated and at the hour stated, the tide
will peacefully lift it off, and it will resume its navigating through
the seas.”

“Captain,” I said, “I don’t doubt—”

“Tomorrow,” Captain Nemo added, standing up, “tomorrow at 2:40 in the
afternoon, the Nautilus will float off and exit the Torres Strait
undamaged.”

Pronouncing these words in an extremely sharp tone, Captain Nemo gave
me a curt bow. This was my dismissal, and I reentered my stateroom.

There I found Conseil, who wanted to know the upshot of my interview
with the captain.

“My boy,” I replied, “when I expressed the belief that these Papuan
natives were a threat to his Nautilus, the captain answered me with
great irony. So I’ve just one thing to say to you: have faith in him
and sleep in peace.”

“Master has no need for my services?”

“No, my friend. What’s Ned Land up to?”

“Begging master’s indulgence,” Conseil replied, “but our friend Ned is
concocting a kangaroo pie that will be the eighth wonder!”

I was left to myself; I went to bed but slept pretty poorly. I kept
hearing noises from the savages, who were stamping on the platform and
letting out deafening yells. The night passed in this way, without the
crew ever emerging from their usual inertia. They were no more
disturbed by the presence of these man-eaters than soldiers in an
armored fortress are troubled by ants running over the armor plate.

I got up at six o’clock in the morning. The hatches weren’t open. So
the air inside hadn’t been renewed; but the air tanks were kept full
for any eventuality and would function appropriately to shoot a few
cubic meters of oxygen into the Nautilus’s thin atmosphere.

I worked in my stateroom until noon without seeing Captain Nemo even
for an instant. Nobody on board seemed to be making any preparations
for departure.

I still waited for a while, then I made my way to the main lounge. Its
timepiece marked 2:30. In ten minutes the tide would reach its maximum
elevation, and if Captain Nemo hadn’t made a rash promise, the
Nautilus would immediately break free. If not, many months might pass
before it could leave its coral bed.

But some preliminary vibrations could soon be felt over the boat’s
hull. I heard its plating grind against the limestone roughness of
that coral base.

At 2:35 Captain Nemo appeared in the lounge.

“We’re about to depart,” he said.

“Ah!” I put in.

“I’ve given orders to open the hatches.”

“What about the Papuans?”

“What about them?” Captain Nemo replied, with a light shrug of his
shoulders.

“Won’t they come inside the Nautilus?”

“How will they manage that?”

“By jumping down the hatches you’re about to open.”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied serenely, “the Nautilus’s
hatches aren’t to be entered in that fashion even when they’re open.”

I gaped at the captain.

“You don’t understand?” he said to me.

“Not in the least.”

“Well, come along and you’ll see!”

I headed to the central companionway. There, very puzzled, Ned Land
and Conseil watched the crewmen opening the hatches, while a frightful
clamor and furious shouts resounded outside.

The hatch lids fell back onto the outer plating. Twenty horrible faces
appeared. But when the first islander laid hands on the companionway
railing, he was flung backward by some invisible power, lord knows
what! He ran off, howling in terror and wildly prancing around.

Ten of his companions followed him. All ten met the same fate.

Conseil was in ecstasy. Carried away by his violent instincts, Ned
Land leaped up the companionway. But as soon as his hands seized the
railing, he was thrown backward in his turn.

“Damnation!” he exclaimed. “I’ve been struck by a lightning bolt!”

These words explained everything to me. It wasn’t just a railing that
led to the platform, it was a metal cable fully charged with the
ship’s electricity. Anyone who touched it got a fearsome shock—and
such a shock would have been fatal if Captain Nemo had thrown the full
current from his equipment into this conducting cable! It could
honestly be said that he had stretched between himself and his
assailants a network of electricity no one could clear with impunity.

Meanwhile, crazed with terror, the unhinged Papuans beat a retreat. As
for us, half laughing, we massaged and comforted poor Ned Land, who
was swearing like one possessed.

But just then, lifted off by the tide’s final undulations, the
Nautilus left its coral bed at exactly that fortieth minute pinpointed
by the captain. Its propeller churned the waves with lazy
majesty. Gathering speed little by little, the ship navigated on the
surface of the ocean, and safe and sound, it left behind the dangerous
narrows of the Torres Strait.


CHAPTER 23

“Aegri Somnia”*


*Latin: “troubled dreams.” Ed.

THE FOLLOWING DAY, January 10, the Nautilus resumed its travels in
midwater but at a remarkable speed that I estimated to be at least
thirty-five miles per hour. The propeller was going so fast I could
neither follow nor count its revolutions.

I thought about how this marvelous electric force not only gave
motion, heat, and light to the Nautilus but even protected it against
outside attack, transforming it into a sacred ark no profane hand
could touch without being blasted; my wonderment was boundless, and it
went from the submersible itself to the engineer who had created it.

We were traveling due west and on January 11 we doubled Cape Wessel,
located in longitude 135 degrees and latitude 10 degrees north, the
western tip of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Reefs were still numerous but
more widely scattered and were fixed on the chart with the greatest
accuracy. The Nautilus easily avoided the Money breakers to port and
the Victoria reefs to starboard, positioned at longitude 130 degrees
on the tenth parallel, which we went along rigorously.

On January 13, arriving in the Timor Sea, Captain Nemo raised the
island of that name at longitude 122 degrees. This island, whose
surface area measures 1,625 square leagues, is governed by
rajahs. These aristocrats deem themselves the sons of crocodiles, in
other words, descendants with the most exalted origins to which a
human being can lay claim. Accordingly, their scaly ancestors infest
the island’s rivers and are the subjects of special veneration. They
are sheltered, nurtured, flattered, pampered, and offered a ritual
diet of nubile maidens; and woe to the foreigner who lifts a finger
against these sacred saurians.

But the Nautilus wanted nothing to do with these nasty animals. Timor
Island was visible for barely an instant at noon while the chief
officer determined his position. I also caught only a glimpse of
little Roti Island, part of this same group, whose women have a
well-established reputation for beauty in the Malaysian marketplace.

After our position fix, the Nautilus’s latitude bearings were
modulated to the southwest. Our prow pointed to the Indian
Ocean. Where would Captain Nemo’s fancies take us? Would he head up to
the shores of Asia? Would he pull nearer to the beaches of Europe?
Unlikely choices for a man who avoided populated areas! So would he go
down south? Would he double the Cape of Good Hope, then Cape Horn, and
push on to the Antarctic pole? Finally, would he return to the seas of
the Pacific, where his Nautilus could navigate freely and easily? Time
would tell.

After cruising along the Cartier, Hibernia, Seringapatam, and Scott
reefs, the solid element’s last exertions against the liquid element,
we were beyond all sight of shore by January 14. The Nautilus slowed
down in an odd manner, and very unpredictable in its ways, it
sometimes swam in the midst of the waters, sometimes drifted on their
surface.

During this phase of our voyage, Captain Nemo conducted interesting
experiments on the different temperatures in various strata of the
sea. Under ordinary conditions, such readings are obtained using some
pretty complicated instruments whose findings are dubious to say the
least, whether they’re thermometric sounding lines, whose glass often
shatters under the water’s pressure, or those devices based on the
varying resistance of metals to electric currents. The results so
obtained can’t be adequately double-checked. By contrast, Captain Nemo
would seek the sea’s temperature by going himself into its depths, and
when he placed his thermometer in contact with the various layers of
liquid, he found the sought-for degree immediately and with certainty.

And so, by loading up its ballast tanks, or by sinking obliquely with
its slanting fins, the Nautilus successively reached depths of 3,000,
4,000, 5,000, 7,000, 9,000, and 10,000 meters, and the ultimate
conclusion from these experiments was that, in all latitudes, the sea
had a permanent temperature of 4.5 degrees centigrade at a depth of
1,000 meters.

I watched these experiments with the most intense fascination. Captain
Nemo brought a real passion to them. I often wondered why he took
these observations. Were they for the benefit of his fellow man? It
was unlikely, because sooner or later his work would perish with him
in some unknown sea! Unless he intended the results of his experiments
for me. But that meant this strange voyage of mine would come to an
end, and no such end was in sight.

Be that as it may, Captain Nemo also introduced me to the different
data he had obtained on the relative densities of the water in our
globe’s chief seas. From this news I derived some personal
enlightenment having nothing to do with science.

It happened the morning of January 15. The captain, with whom I was
strolling on the platform, asked me if I knew how salt water differs
in density from sea to sea. I said no, adding that there was a lack of
rigorous scientific observations on this subject.

“I’ve taken such observations,” he told me, “and I can vouch for their
reliability.”

“Fine,” I replied, “but the Nautilus lives in a separate world, and
the secrets of its scientists don’t make their way ashore.”

“You’re right, professor,” he told me after a few moments of
silence. “This is a separate world. It’s as alien to the earth as the
planets accompanying our globe around the sun, and we’ll never become
familiar with the work of scientists on Saturn or Jupiter. But since
fate has linked our two lives, I can reveal the results of my
observations to you.”

“I’m all attention, captain.”

“You’re aware, professor, that salt water is denser than fresh water,
but this density isn’t uniform. In essence, if I represent the density
of fresh water by 1.000, then I find 1.028 for the waters of the
Atlantic, 1.026 for the waters of the Pacific, 1.030 for the waters of
the Mediterranean—”

Aha, I thought, so he ventures into the Mediterranean?

“—1.018 for the waters of the Ionian Sea, and 1.029 for the waters of
the Adriatic.”

Assuredly, the Nautilus didn’t avoid the heavily traveled seas of
Europe, and from this insight I concluded that the ship would take us
back—perhaps very soon—to more civilized shores. I expected Ned Land
to greet this news with unfeigned satisfaction.

For several days our work hours were spent in all sorts of
experiments, on the degree of salinity in waters of different depths,
or on their electric properties, coloration, and transparency, and in
every instance Captain Nemo displayed an ingenuity equaled only by his
graciousness toward me. Then I saw no more of him for some days and
again lived on board in seclusion.

On January 16 the Nautilus seemed to have fallen asleep just a few
meters beneath the surface of the water. Its electric equipment had
been turned off, and the motionless propeller let it ride with the
waves. I assumed that the crew were busy with interior repairs,
required by the engine’s strenuous mechanical action.

My companions and I then witnessed an unusual sight. The panels in the
lounge were open, and since the Nautilus’s beacon was off, a hazy
darkness reigned in the midst of the waters. Covered with heavy
clouds, the stormy sky gave only the faintest light to the ocean’s
upper strata.

I was observing the state of the sea under these conditions, and even
the largest fish were nothing more than ill-defined shadows, when the
Nautilus was suddenly transferred into broad daylight. At first I
thought the beacon had gone back on and was casting its electric light
into the liquid mass. I was mistaken, and after a hasty examination I
discovered my error.

The Nautilus had drifted into the midst of some phosphorescent strata,
which, in this darkness, came off as positively dazzling. This effect
was caused by myriads of tiny, luminous animals whose brightness
increased when they glided over the metal hull of our submersible. In
the midst of these luminous sheets of water, I then glimpsed flashes
of light, like those seen inside a blazing furnace from streams of
molten lead or from masses of metal brought to a white heat—flashes so
intense that certain areas of the light became shadows by comparison,
in a fiery setting from which every shadow should seemingly have been
banished. No, this was no longer the calm emission of our usual
lighting! This light throbbed with unprecedented vigor and activity!
You sensed that it was alive!

In essence, it was a cluster of countless open-sea infusoria, of
noctiluca an eighth of an inch wide, actual globules of transparent
jelly equipped with a threadlike tentacle, up to 25,000 of which have
been counted in thirty cubic centimeters of water. And the power of
their light was increased by those glimmers unique to medusas,
starfish, common jellyfish, angel-wing clams, and other phosphorescent
zoophytes, which were saturated with grease from organic matter
decomposed by the sea, and perhaps with mucus secreted by fish.

For several hours the Nautilus drifted in this brilliant tide, and our
wonderment grew when we saw huge marine animals cavorting in it, like
the fire-dwelling salamanders of myth. In the midst of these flames
that didn’t burn, I could see swift, elegant porpoises, the tireless
pranksters of the seas, and sailfish three meters long, those shrewd
heralds of hurricanes, whose fearsome broadswords sometimes banged
against the lounge window. Then smaller fish appeared: miscellaneous
triggerfish, leather jacks, unicornfish, and a hundred others that
left stripes on this luminous atmosphere in their course.

Some magic lay behind this dazzling sight! Perhaps some atmospheric
condition had intensified this phenomenon? Perhaps a storm had been
unleashed on the surface of the waves? But only a few meters down, the
Nautilus felt no tempest’s fury, and the ship rocked peacefully in the
midst of the calm waters.

And so it went, some new wonder constantly delighting us. Conseil
observed and classified his zoophytes, articulates, mollusks, and
fish. The days passed quickly, and I no longer kept track of
them. Ned, as usual, kept looking for changes of pace from our
standard fare. Like actual snails, we were at home in our shell, and I
can vouch that it’s easy to turn into a full-fledged snail.

So this way of living began to seem simple and natural to us, and we
no longer envisioned a different lifestyle on the surface of the
planet earth, when something happened to remind us of our strange
circumstances.

On January 18 the Nautilus lay in longitude 105 degrees and latitude
15 degrees south. The weather was threatening, the sea rough and
billowy. The wind was blowing a strong gust from the east. The
barometer, which had been falling for some days, forecast an
approaching struggle of the elements.

I had climbed onto the platform just as the chief officer was taking
his readings of hour angles. Out of habit I waited for him to
pronounce his daily phrase. But that day it was replaced by a
different phrase, just as incomprehensible. Almost at once I saw
Captain Nemo appear, lift his spyglass, and inspect the horizon.

For some minutes the captain stood motionless, rooted to the spot
contained within the field of his lens. Then he lowered his spyglass
and exchanged about ten words with his chief officer. The latter
seemed to be in the grip of an excitement he tried in vain to
control. More in command of himself, Captain Nemo remained
cool. Furthermore, he seemed to be raising certain objections that his
chief officer kept answering with flat assurances. At least that’s
what I gathered from their differences in tone and gesture.

As for me, I stared industriously in the direction under observation
but without spotting a thing. Sky and water merged into a perfectly
clean horizon line.

Meanwhile Captain Nemo strolled from one end of the platform to the
other, not glancing at me, perhaps not even seeing me. His step was
firm but less regular than usual. Sometimes he would stop, cross his
arms over his chest, and observe the sea. What could he be looking for
over that immense expanse? By then the Nautilus lay hundreds of miles
from the nearest coast!

The chief officer kept lifting his spyglass and stubbornly examining
the horizon, walking up and down, stamping his foot, in his nervous
agitation a sharp contrast to his superior.

But this mystery would inevitably be cleared up, and soon, because
Captain Nemo gave orders to increase speed; at once the engine stepped
up its drive power, setting the propeller in swifter rotation.

Just then the chief officer drew the captain’s attention anew. The
latter interrupted his strolling and aimed his spyglass at the point
indicated. He observed it a good while. As for me, deeply puzzled, I
went below to the lounge and brought back an excellent long-range
telescope I habitually used. Leaning my elbows on the beacon housing,
which jutted from the stern of the platform, I got set to scour that
whole stretch of sky and sea.

But no sooner had I peered into the eyepiece than the instrument was
snatched from my hands.

I spun around. Captain Nemo was standing before me, but I almost
didn’t recognize him. His facial features were transfigured. Gleaming
with dark fire, his eyes had shrunk beneath his frowning brow. His
teeth were half bared. His rigid body, clenched fists, and head drawn
between his shoulders, all attested to a fierce hate breathing from
every pore. He didn’t move. My spyglass fell from his hand and rolled
at his feet.

Had I accidentally caused these symptoms of anger? Did this
incomprehensible individual think I had detected some secret forbidden
to guests on the Nautilus?

No! I wasn’t the subject of his hate because he wasn’t even looking at
me; his eyes stayed stubbornly focused on that inscrutable point of
the horizon.

Finally Captain Nemo regained his self-control. His facial appearance,
so profoundly changed, now resumed its usual calm. He addressed a few
words to his chief officer in their strange language, then he turned
to me:

“Professor Aronnax,” he told me in a tone of some urgency, “I ask that
you now honor one of the binding agreements between us.”

“Which one, captain?”

“You and your companions must be placed in confinement until I see fit
to set you free.”

“You’re in command,” I answered, gaping at him. “But may I address a
question to you?”

“You may not, sir.”

After that, I stopped objecting and started obeying, since resistance
was useless.

I went below to the cabin occupied by Ned Land and Conseil, and I
informed them of the captain’s decision. I’ll let the reader decide
how this news was received by the Canadian. In any case, there was no
time for explanations. Four crewmen were waiting at the door, and they
led us to the cell where we had spent our first night aboard the
Nautilus.

Ned Land tried to lodge a complaint, but the only answer he got was a
door shut in his face.

“Will master tell me what this means?” Conseil asked me.

I told my companions what had happened. They were as astonished as I
was, but no wiser.

Then I sank into deep speculation, and Captain Nemo’s strange facial
seizure kept haunting me. I was incapable of connecting two ideas in
logical order, and I had strayed into the most absurd hypotheses, when
I was snapped out of my mental struggles by these words from Ned Land:

“Well, look here! Lunch is served!”

Indeed, the table had been laid. Apparently Captain Nemo had given
this order at the same time he commanded the Nautilus to pick up
speed.

“Will master allow me to make him a recommendation?” Conseil asked me.

“Yes, my boy,” I replied.

“Well, master needs to eat his lunch! It’s prudent, because we have no
idea what the future holds.”

“You’re right, Conseil.”

“Unfortunately,” Ned Land said, “they’ve only given us the standard
menu.”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “what would you say if they’d given
us no lunch at all?”

This dose of sanity cut the harpooner’s complaints clean off.

We sat down at the table. Our meal proceeded pretty much in silence. I
ate very little. Conseil, everlastingly prudent, “force-fed” himself;
and despite the menu, Ned Land didn’t waste a bite. Then, lunch over,
each of us propped himself in a corner.

Just then the luminous globe lighting our cell went out, leaving us in
profound darkness. Ned Land soon dozed off, and to my astonishment,
Conseil also fell into a heavy slumber. I was wondering what could
have caused this urgent need for sleep, when I felt a dense torpor
saturate my brain. I tried to keep my eyes open, but they closed in
spite of me. I was in the grip of anguished hallucinations. Obviously
some sleep-inducing substance had been laced into the food we’d just
eaten! So imprisonment wasn’t enough to conceal Captain Nemo’s plans
from us—sleep was needed as well!

Then I heard the hatches close. The sea’s undulations, which had been
creating a gentle rocking motion, now ceased. Had the Nautilus left
the surface of the ocean? Was it reentering the motionless strata deep
in the sea?

I tried to fight off this drowsiness. It was impossible. My breathing
grew weaker. I felt a mortal chill freeze my dull, nearly paralyzed
limbs. Like little domes of lead, my lids fell over my eyes. I
couldn’t raise them. A morbid sleep, full of hallucinations, seized my
whole being. Then the visions disappeared and left me in utter
oblivion.


CHAPTER 24

The Coral Realm


THE NEXT DAY I woke up with my head unusually clear. Much to my
surprise, I was in my stateroom. No doubt my companions had been put
back in their cabin without noticing it any more than I had. Like me,
they would have no idea what took place during the night, and to
unravel this mystery I could count only on some future happenstance.

I then considered leaving my stateroom. Was I free or still a
prisoner? Perfectly free. I opened my door, headed down the gangways,
and climbed the central companionway. Hatches that had been closed the
day before were now open. I arrived on the platform.

Ned Land and Conseil were there waiting for me. I questioned
them. They knew nothing. Lost in a heavy sleep of which they had no
memory, they were quite startled to be back in their cabin.

As for the Nautilus, it seemed as tranquil and mysterious as ever. It
was cruising on the surface of the waves at a moderate speed. Nothing
seemed to have changed on board.

Ned Land observed the sea with his penetrating eyes. It was
deserted. The Canadian sighted nothing new on the horizon, neither
sail nor shore. A breeze was blowing noisily from the west, and
disheveled by the wind, long billows made the submersible roll very
noticeably.

After renewing its air, the Nautilus stayed at an average depth of
fifteen meters, enabling it to return quickly to the surface of the
waves. And, contrary to custom, it executed such a maneuver several
times during that day of January 19. The chief officer would then
climb onto the platform, and his usual phrase would ring through the
ship’s interior.

As for Captain Nemo, he didn’t appear. Of the other men on board, I
saw only my emotionless steward, who served me with his usual mute
efficiency.

Near two o’clock I was busy organizing my notes in the lounge, when
the captain opened the door and appeared. I bowed to him. He gave me
an almost imperceptible bow in return, without saying a word to me. I
resumed my work, hoping he might give me some explanation of the
previous afternoon’s events. He did nothing of the sort. I stared at
him. His face looked exhausted; his reddened eyes hadn’t been
refreshed by sleep; his facial features expressed profound sadness,
real chagrin. He walked up and down, sat and stood, picked up a book
at random, discarded it immediately, consulted his instruments without
taking his customary notes, and seemed unable to rest easy for an
instant.

Finally he came over to me and said:

“Are you a physician, Professor Aronnax?”

This inquiry was so unexpected that I stared at him a good while
without replying.

“Are you a physician?” he repeated. “Several of your scientific
colleagues took their degrees in medicine, such as Gratiolet,
Moquin-Tandon, and others.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I am a doctor, I used to be on call at the
hospitals. I was in practice for several years before joining the
museum.”

“Excellent, sir.”

My reply obviously pleased Captain Nemo. But not knowing what he was
driving at, I waited for further questions, ready to reply as
circumstances dictated.

“Professor Aronnax,” the captain said to me, “would you consent to
give your medical attentions to one of my men?”

“Someone is sick?”

“Yes.”

“I’m ready to go with you.”

“Come.”

I admit that my heart was pounding. Lord knows why, but I saw a
definite connection between this sick crewman and yesterday’s
happenings, and the mystery of those events concerned me at least as
much as the man’s sickness.

Captain Nemo led me to the Nautilus’s stern and invited me into a
cabin located next to the sailors’ quarters.

On a bed there lay a man some forty years old, with strongly molded
features, the very image of an Anglo-Saxon.

I bent over him. Not only was he sick, he was wounded. Swathed in
blood-soaked linen, his head was resting on a folded pillow. I undid
the linen bandages, while the wounded man gazed with great staring
eyes and let me proceed without making a single complaint.

It was a horrible wound. The cranium had been smashed open by some
blunt instrument, leaving the naked brains exposed, and the cerebral
matter had suffered deep abrasions. Blood clots had formed in this
dissolving mass, taking on the color of wine dregs. Both contusion and
concussion of the brain had occurred. The sick man’s breathing was
labored, and muscle spasms quivered in his face. Cerebral inflammation
was complete and had brought on a paralysis of movement and sensation.

I took the wounded man’s pulse. It was intermittent. The body’s
extremities were already growing cold, and I saw that death was
approaching without any possibility of my holding it in check. After
dressing the poor man’s wound, I redid the linen bandages around his
head, and I turned to Captain Nemo.

“How did he get this wound?” I asked him.

“That’s not important,” the captain replied evasively. “The Nautilus
suffered a collision that cracked one of the engine levers, and it
struck this man. My chief officer was standing beside him. This man
leaped forward to intercept the blow. A brother lays down his life for
his brother, a friend for his friend, what could be simpler? That’s
the law for everyone on board the Nautilus. But what’s your diagnosis
of his condition?”

I hesitated to speak my mind.

“You may talk freely,” the captain told me. “This man doesn’t
understand French.”

I took a last look at the wounded man, then I replied:

“This man will be dead in two hours.”

“Nothing can save him?”

“Nothing.”

Captain Nemo clenched his fists, and tears slid from his eyes, which I
had thought incapable of weeping.

For a few moments more I observed the dying man, whose life was ebbing
little by little. He grew still more pale under the electric light
that bathed his deathbed. I looked at his intelligent head, furrowed
with premature wrinkles that misfortune, perhaps misery, had etched
long before. I was hoping to detect the secret of his life in the last
words that might escape from his lips!

“You may go, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo told me.

I left the captain in the dying man’s cabin and I repaired to my
stateroom, very moved by this scene. All day long I was aquiver with
gruesome forebodings. That night I slept poorly, and between my fitful
dreams, I thought I heard a distant moaning, like a funeral dirge. Was
it a prayer for the dead, murmured in that language I couldn’t
understand?

The next morning I climbed on deck. Captain Nemo was already there. As
soon as he saw me, he came over.

“Professor,” he said to me, “would it be convenient for you to make an
underwater excursion today?”

“With my companions?” I asked.

“If they’re agreeable.”

“We’re yours to command, captain.”

“Then kindly put on your diving suits.”

As for the dead or dying man, he hadn’t come into the picture. I
rejoined Ned Land and Conseil. I informed them of Captain Nemo’s
proposition. Conseil was eager to accept, and this time the Canadian
proved perfectly amenable to going with us.

It was eight o’clock in the morning. By 8:30 we were suited up for
this new stroll and equipped with our two devices for lighting and
breathing. The double door opened, and accompanied by Captain Nemo
with a dozen crewmen following, we set foot on the firm seafloor where
the Nautilus was resting, ten meters down.

A gentle slope gravitated to an uneven bottom whose depth was about
fifteen fathoms. This bottom was completely different from the one I
had visited during my first excursion under the waters of the Pacific
Ocean. Here I saw no fine-grained sand, no underwater prairies, not
one open-sea forest. I immediately recognized the wondrous region in
which Captain Nemo did the honors that day. It was the coral realm.

In the zoophyte branch, class Alcyonaria, one finds the order
Gorgonaria, which contains three groups: sea fans, isidian polyps, and
coral polyps. It’s in this last that precious coral belongs, an
unusual substance that, at different times, has been classified in the
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Medicine to the ancients,
jewelry to the moderns, it wasn’t decisively placed in the animal
kingdom until 1694, by Peysonnel of Marseilles.

A coral is a unit of tiny animals assembled over a polypary that’s
brittle and stony in nature. These polyps have a unique generating
mechanism that reproduces them via the budding process, and they have
an individual existence while also participating in a communal
life. Hence they embody a sort of natural socialism. I was familiar
with the latest research on this bizarre zoophyte—which turns to stone
while taking on a tree form, as some naturalists have very aptly
observed—and nothing could have been more fascinating to me than to
visit one of these petrified forests that nature has planted on the
bottom of the sea.

We turned on our Ruhmkorff devices and went along a coral shoal in the
process of forming, which, given time, will someday close off this
whole part of the Indian Ocean. Our path was bordered by hopelessly
tangled bushes, formed from snarls of shrubs all covered with little
star-shaped, white-streaked flowers. Only, contrary to plants on
shore, these tree forms become attached to rocks on the seafloor by
heading from top to bottom.

Our lights produced a thousand delightful effects while playing over
these brightly colored boughs. I fancied I saw these cylindrical,
membrane-filled tubes trembling beneath the water’s undulations. I was
tempted to gather their fresh petals, which were adorned with delicate
tentacles, some newly in bloom, others barely opened, while nimble
fish with fluttering fins brushed past them like flocks of birds. But
if my hands came near the moving flowers of these sensitive, lively
creatures, an alarm would instantly sound throughout the colony. The
white petals retracted into their red sheaths, the flowers vanished
before my eyes, and the bush changed into a chunk of stony nipples.

Sheer chance had placed me in the presence of the most valuable
specimens of this zoophyte. This coral was the equal of those fished
up from the Mediterranean off the Barbary Coast or the shores of
France and Italy. With its bright colors, it lived up to those poetic
names of blood flower and blood foam that the industry confers on its
finest exhibits. Coral sells for as much as 500 francs per kilogram,
and in this locality the liquid strata hid enough to make the fortunes
of a whole host of coral fishermen. This valuable substance often
merges with other polyparies, forming compact, hopelessly tangled
units known as “macciota,” and I noted some wonderful pink samples of
this coral.

But as the bushes shrank, the tree forms magnified. Actual petrified
thickets and long alcoves from some fantastic school of architecture
kept opening up before our steps. Captain Nemo entered beneath a dark
gallery whose gentle slope took us to a depth of 100 meters. The light
from our glass coils produced magical effects at times, lingering on
the wrinkled roughness of some natural arch, or some overhang
suspended like a chandelier, which our lamps flecked with fiery
sparks. Amid these shrubs of precious coral, I observed other polyps
no less unusual: melita coral, rainbow coral with jointed outgrowths,
then a few tufts of genus Corallina, some green and others red,
actually a type of seaweed encrusted with limestone salts, which,
after long disputes, naturalists have finally placed in the vegetable
kingdom. But as one intellectual has remarked, “Here, perhaps, is the
actual point where life rises humbly out of slumbering stone, but
without breaking away from its crude starting point.”

Finally, after two hours of walking, we reached a depth of about 300
meters, in other words, the lowermost limit at which coral can begin
to form. But here it was no longer some isolated bush or a modest
grove of low timber. It was an immense forest, huge mineral
vegetation, enormous petrified trees linked by garlands of elegant
hydras from the genus Plumularia, those tropical creepers of the sea,
all decked out in shades and gleams. We passed freely under their
lofty boughs, lost up in the shadows of the waves, while at our feet
organ-pipe coral, stony coral, star coral, fungus coral, and sea
anemone from the genus Caryophylia formed a carpet of flowers all
strewn with dazzling gems.

What an indescribable sight! Oh, if only we could share our feelings!
Why were we imprisoned behind these masks of metal and glass! Why were
we forbidden to talk with each other! At least let us lead the lives
of the fish that populate this liquid element, or better yet, the
lives of amphibians, which can spend long hours either at sea or on
shore, traveling through their double domain as their whims dictate!

Meanwhile Captain Nemo had called a halt. My companions and I stopped
walking, and turning around, I saw the crewmen form a semicircle
around their leader. Looking with greater care, I observed that four
of them were carrying on their shoulders an object that was oblong in
shape.

At this locality we stood in the center of a huge clearing surrounded
by the tall tree forms of this underwater forest. Our lamps cast a
sort of brilliant twilight over the area, making inordinately long
shadows on the seafloor. Past the boundaries of the clearing, the
darkness deepened again, relieved only by little sparkles given off by
the sharp crests of coral.

Ned Land and Conseil stood next to me. We stared, and it dawned on me
that I was about to witness a strange scene. Observing the seafloor, I
saw that it swelled at certain points from low bulges that were
encrusted with limestone deposits and arranged with a symmetry that
betrayed the hand of man.

In the middle of the clearing, on a pedestal of roughly piled rocks,
there stood a cross of coral, extending long arms you would have
thought were made of petrified blood.

At a signal from Captain Nemo, one of his men stepped forward and, a
few feet from this cross, detached a mattock from his belt and began
to dig a hole.

I finally understood! This clearing was a cemetery, this hole a grave,
that oblong object the body of the man who must have died during the
night! Captain Nemo and his men had come to bury their companion in
this communal resting place on the inaccessible ocean floor!

No! My mind was reeling as never before! Never had ideas of such
impact raced through my brain! I didn’t want to see what my eyes saw!

Meanwhile the grave digging went slowly. Fish fled here and there as
their retreat was disturbed. I heard the pick ringing on the limestone
soil, its iron tip sometimes giving off sparks when it hit a stray
piece of flint on the sea bottom. The hole grew longer, wider, and
soon was deep enough to receive the body.

Then the pallbearers approached. Wrapped in white fabric made from
filaments of the fan mussel, the body was lowered into its watery
grave. Captain Nemo, arms crossed over his chest, knelt in a posture
of prayer, as did all the friends of him who had loved them. . . . My
two companions and I bowed reverently.

The grave was then covered over with the rubble dug from the seafloor,
and it formed a low mound.

When this was done, Captain Nemo and his men stood up; then they all
approached the grave, sank again on bended knee, and extended their
hands in a sign of final farewell. . . .

Then the funeral party went back up the path to the Nautilus,
returning beneath the arches of the forest, through the thickets,
along the coral bushes, going steadily higher.

Finally the ship’s rays appeared. Their luminous trail guided us to
the Nautilus. By one o’clock we had returned.

After changing clothes, I climbed onto the platform, and in the grip
of dreadfully obsessive thoughts, I sat next to the beacon.

Captain Nemo rejoined me. I stood up and said to him:

“So, as I predicted, that man died during the night?”

“Yes, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied.

“And now he rests beside his companions in that coral cemetery?”

“Yes, forgotten by the world but not by us! We dig the graves, then
entrust the polyps with sealing away our dead for eternity!”

And with a sudden gesture, the captain hid his face in his clenched
fists, vainly trying to hold back a sob. Then he added:

“There lies our peaceful cemetery, hundreds of feet beneath the
surface of the waves!”

“At least, captain, your dead can sleep serenely there, out of the
reach of sharks!”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Nemo replied solemnly, “of sharks and men!”


END OF THE FIRST PART



SECOND PART


CHAPTER 1

The Indian Ocean


NOW WE BEGIN the second part of this voyage under the seas. The first
ended in that moving scene at the coral cemetery, which left a
profound impression on my mind. And so Captain Nemo would live out his
life entirely in the heart of this immense sea, and even his grave lay
ready in its impenetrable depths. There the last sleep of the
Nautilus’s occupants, friends bound together in death as in life,
would be disturbed by no monster of the deep! “No man either!” the
captain had added.

Always that same fierce, implacable defiance of human society!

As for me, I was no longer content with the hypotheses that satisfied
Conseil. That fine lad persisted in seeing the Nautilus’s commander as
merely one of those unappreciated scientists who repay humanity’s
indifference with contempt. For Conseil, the captain was still a
misunderstood genius who, tired of the world’s deceptions, had been
driven to take refuge in this inaccessible environment where he was
free to follow his instincts. But to my mind, this hypothesis
explained only one side of Captain Nemo.

In fact, the mystery of that last afternoon when we were locked in
prison and put to sleep, the captain’s violent precaution of snatching
from my grasp a spyglass poised to scour the horizon, and the fatal
wound given that man during some unexplained collision suffered by the
Nautilus, all led me down a plain trail. No! Captain Nemo wasn’t
content simply to avoid humanity! His fearsome submersible served not
only his quest for freedom, but also, perhaps, it was used in
lord-knows-what schemes of dreadful revenge.

Right now, nothing is clear to me, I still glimpse only glimmers in
the dark, and I must limit my pen, as it were, to taking dictation
from events.

But nothing binds us to Captain Nemo. He believes that escaping from
the Nautilus is impossible. We are not even constrained by our word of
honor. No promises fetter us. We’re simply captives, prisoners
masquerading under the name “guests” for the sake of everyday
courtesy. Even so, Ned Land hasn’t given up all hope of recovering his
freedom. He’s sure to take advantage of the first chance that comes
his way. No doubt I will do likewise. And yet I will feel some regret
at making off with the Nautilus’s secrets, so generously unveiled for
us by Captain Nemo! Because, ultimately, should we detest or admire
this man? Is he the persecutor or the persecuted? And in all honesty,
before I leave him forever, I want to finish this underwater tour of
the world, whose first stages have been so magnificent. I want to
observe the full series of these wonders gathered under the seas of
our globe. I want to see what no man has seen yet, even if I must pay
for this insatiable curiosity with my life! What are my discoveries to
date? Nothing, relatively speaking—since so far we’ve covered only
6,000 leagues across the Pacific!

Nevertheless, I’m well aware that the Nautilus is drawing near to
populated shores, and if some chance for salvation becomes available
to us, it would be sheer cruelty to sacrifice my companions to my
passion for the unknown. I must go with them, perhaps even guide
them. But will this opportunity ever arise? The human being, robbed of
his free will, craves such an opportunity; but the scientist, forever
inquisitive, dreads it.

That day, January 21, 1868, the chief officer went at noon to take the
sun’s altitude. I climbed onto the platform, lit a cigar, and watched
him at work. It seemed obvious to me that this man didn’t understand
French, because I made several remarks in a loud voice that were bound
to provoke him to some involuntary show of interest had he understood
them; but he remained mute and emotionless.

While he took his sights with his sextant, one of the Nautilus’s
sailors—that muscular man who had gone with us to Crespo Island during
our first underwater excursion—came up to clean the glass panes of the
beacon. I then examined the fittings of this mechanism, whose power
was increased a hundredfold by biconvex lenses that were designed like
those in a lighthouse and kept its rays productively focused. This
electric lamp was so constructed as to yield its maximum illuminating
power. In essence, its light was generated in a vacuum, insuring both
its steadiness and intensity. Such a vacuum also reduced wear on the
graphite points between which the luminous arc expanded. This was an
important savings for Captain Nemo, who couldn’t easily renew
them. But under these conditions, wear and tear were almost
nonexistent.

When the Nautilus was ready to resume its underwater travels, I went
below again to the lounge. The hatches closed once more, and our
course was set due west.

We then plowed the waves of the Indian Ocean, vast liquid plains with
an area of 550,000,000 hectares, whose waters are so transparent it
makes you dizzy to lean over their surface. There the Nautilus
generally drifted at a depth between 100 and 200 meters. It behaved in
this way for some days. To anyone without my grand passion for the
sea, these hours would surely have seemed long and monotonous; but my
daily strolls on the platform where I was revived by the life-giving
ocean air, the sights in the rich waters beyond the lounge windows,
the books to be read in the library, and the composition of my
memoirs, took up all my time and left me without a moment of weariness
or boredom.

All in all, we enjoyed a highly satisfactory state of health. The diet
on board agreed with us perfectly, and for my part, I could easily
have gone without those changes of pace that Ned Land, in a spirit of
protest, kept taxing his ingenuity to supply us. What’s more, in this
constant temperature we didn’t even have to worry about catching
colds. Besides, the ship had a good stock of the madrepore
Dendrophylia, known in Provence by the name sea fennel, and a poultice
made from the dissolved flesh of its polyps will furnish an excellent
cough medicine.

For some days we saw a large number of aquatic birds with webbed feet,
known as gulls or sea mews. Some were skillfully slain, and when
cooked in a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of
water game. Among the great wind riders—carried over long distances
from every shore and resting on the waves from their exhausting
flights—I spotted some magnificent albatross, birds belonging to the
Longipennes (long-winged) family, whose discordant calls sound like
the braying of an ass. The Totipalmes (fully webbed) family was
represented by swift frigate birds, nimbly catching fish at the
surface, and by numerous tropic birds of the genus Phaeton, among
others the red-tailed tropic bird, the size of a pigeon, its white
plumage shaded with pink tints that contrasted with its dark-hued
wings.

The Nautilus’s nets hauled up several types of sea turtle from the
hawksbill genus with arching backs whose scales are highly
prized. Diving easily, these reptiles can remain a good while
underwater by closing the fleshy valves located at the external
openings of their nasal passages. When they were captured, some
hawksbills were still asleep inside their carapaces, a refuge from
other marine animals. The flesh of these turtles was nothing
memorable, but their eggs made an excellent feast.

As for fish, they always filled us with wonderment when, staring
through the open panels, we could unveil the secrets of their aquatic
lives. I noted several species I hadn’t previously been able to
observe.

I’ll mention chiefly some trunkfish unique to the Red Sea, the sea of
the East Indies, and that part of the ocean washing the coasts of
equinoctial America. Like turtles, armadillos, sea urchins, and
crustaceans, these fish are protected by armor plate that’s neither
chalky nor stony but actual bone. Sometimes this armor takes the shape
of a solid triangle, sometimes that of a solid quadrangle. Among the
triangular type, I noticed some half a decimeter long, with brown
tails, yellow fins, and wholesome, exquisitely tasty flesh; I even
recommend that they be acclimatized to fresh water, a change,
incidentally, that a number of saltwater fish can make with ease. I’ll
also mention some quadrangular trunkfish topped by four large
protuberances along the back; trunkfish sprinkled with white spots on
the underside of the body, which make good house pets like certain
birds; boxfish armed with stings formed by extensions of their bony
crusts, and whose odd grunting has earned them the nickname “sea
pigs”; then some trunkfish known as dromedaries, with tough, leathery
flesh and big conical humps.

From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrieve certain fish
from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas: southern puffers with
red backs and white chests distinguished by three lengthwise rows of
filaments, and jugfish, seven inches long, decked out in the brightest
colors. Then, as specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark
brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish,
genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate
themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles;
seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts
and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable
them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped
paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish
with long jaws, excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and
gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with
wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and
long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with
prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a
favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on
which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow
mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered
with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers
are thought to be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids;
finally, archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing
flycatchers, armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or
Chassepot: it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of
water.

From the eighty-ninth fish genus in Lacépède’s system of
classification, belonging to his second subclass of bony fish
(characterized by gill covers and a bronchial membrane), I noted some
scorpionfish whose heads are adorned with stings and which have only
one dorsal fin; these animals are covered with small scales, or have
none at all, depending on the subgenus to which they belong. The
second subgenus gave us some Didactylus specimens three to four
decimeters long, streaked with yellow, their heads having a
phantasmagoric appearance. As for the first subgenus, it furnished
several specimens of that bizarre fish aptly nicknamed “toadfish,”
whose big head is sometimes gouged with deep cavities, sometimes
swollen with protuberances; bristling with stings and strewn with
nodules, it sports hideously irregular horns; its body and tail are
adorned with callosities; its stings can inflict dangerous injuries;
it’s repulsive and horrible.

From January 21 to the 23rd, the Nautilus traveled at the rate of 250
leagues in twenty-four hours, hence 540 miles at twenty-two miles per
hour. If, during our trip, we were able to identify these different
varieties of fish, it’s because they were attracted by our electric
light and tried to follow alongside; but most of them were
outdistanced by our speed and soon fell behind; temporarily, however,
a few managed to keep pace in the Nautilus’s waters.

On the morning of the 24th, in latitude 12 degrees 5’ south and
longitude 94 degrees 33’, we raised Keeling Island, a madreporic
upheaving planted with magnificent coconut trees, which had been
visited by Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus cruised along
a short distance off the shore of this desert island. Our dragnets
brought up many specimens of polyps and echinoderms plus some unusual
shells from the branch Mollusca. Captain Nemo’s treasures were
enhanced by some valuable exhibits from the delphinula snail species,
to which I joined some pointed star coral, a sort of parasitic
polypary that often attaches itself to seashells.

Soon Keeling Island disappeared below the horizon, and our course was
set to the northwest, toward the tip of the Indian peninsula.

“Civilization!” Ned Land told me that day. “Much better than those
Papuan Islands where we ran into more savages than venison! On this
Indian shore, professor, there are roads and railways, English,
French, and Hindu villages. We wouldn’t go five miles without bumping
into a fellow countryman. Come on now, isn’t it time for our sudden
departure from Captain Nemo?”

“No, no, Ned,” I replied in a very firm tone. “Let’s ride it out, as
you seafaring fellows say. The Nautilus is approaching populated
areas. It’s going back toward Europe, let it take us there. After we
arrive in home waters, we can do as we see fit. Besides, I don’t
imagine Captain Nemo will let us go hunting on the coasts of Malabar
or Coromandel as he did in the forests of New Guinea.”

“Well, sir, can’t we manage without his permission?”

I didn’t answer the Canadian. I wanted no arguments. Deep down, I was
determined to fully exploit the good fortune that had put me on board
the Nautilus.

After leaving Keeling Island, our pace got generally slower. It also
got more unpredictable, often taking us to great depths. Several times
we used our slanting fins, which internal levers could set at an
oblique angle to our waterline. Thus we went as deep as two or three
kilometers down but without ever verifying the lowest depths of this
sea near India, which soundings of 13,000 meters have been unable to
reach. As for the temperature in these lower strata, the thermometer
always and invariably indicated 4 degrees centigrade. I merely
observed that in the upper layers, the water was always colder over
shallows than in the open sea.

On January 25, the ocean being completely deserted, the Nautilus spent
the day on the surface, churning the waves with its powerful propeller
and making them spurt to great heights. Under these conditions, who
wouldn’t have mistaken it for a gigantic cetacean? I spent
three-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the
sea. Nothing on the horizon, except near four o’clock in the afternoon
a long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack. Its masting
was visible for an instant, but it couldn’t have seen the Nautilus
because we were lying too low in the water. I imagine that steamboat
belonged to the Peninsular & Oriental line, which provides service
from the island of Ceylon to Sidney, also calling at King George Sound
and Melbourne.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, just before that brief twilight that
links day with night in tropical zones, Conseil and I marveled at an
unusual sight.

It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients,
is a sign of good luck. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppian
studied its habits and lavished on its behalf all the scientific
poetry of Greece and Italy. They called it “nautilus” and “pompilius.”
But modern science has not endorsed these designations, and this
mollusk is now known by the name argonaut.

Anyone consulting Conseil would soon learn from the gallant lad that
the branch Mollusca is divided into five classes; that the first class
features the Cephalopoda (whose members are sometimes naked, sometimes
covered with a shell), which consists of two families, the
Dibranchiata and the Tetrabranchiata, which are distinguished by their
number of gills; that the family Dibranchiata includes three genera,
the argonaut, the squid, and the cuttlefish, and that the family
Tetrabranchiata contains only one genus, the nautilus. After this
catalog, if some recalcitrant listener confuses the argonaut, which is
acetabuliferous (in other words, a bearer of suction tubes), with the
nautilus, which is tentaculiferous (a bearer of tentacles), it will be
simply unforgivable.

Now, it was a school of argonauts then voyaging on the surface of the
ocean. We could count several hundred of them. They belonged to that
species of argonaut covered with protuberances and exclusive to the
seas near India.

These graceful mollusks were swimming backward by means of their
locomotive tubes, sucking water into these tubes and then expelling
it. Six of their eight tentacles were long, thin, and floated on the
water, while the other two were rounded into palms and spread to the
wind like light sails. I could see perfectly their undulating,
spiral-shaped shells, which Cuvier aptly compared to an elegant
cockleboat. It’s an actual boat indeed. It transports the animal that
secretes it without the animal sticking to it.

“The argonaut is free to leave its shell,” I told Conseil, “but it
never does.”

“Not unlike Captain Nemo,” Conseil replied sagely. “Which is why he
should have christened his ship the Argonaut.”

For about an hour the Nautilus cruised in the midst of this school of
mollusks. Then, lord knows why, they were gripped with a sudden
fear. As if at a signal, every sail was abruptly lowered; arms folded,
bodies contracted, shells turned over by changing their center of
gravity, and the whole flotilla disappeared under the waves. It was
instantaneous, and no squadron of ships ever maneuvered with greater
togetherness.

Just then night fell suddenly, and the waves barely surged in the
breeze, spreading placidly around the Nautilus’s side plates.

The next day, January 26, we cut the equator on the 82nd meridian and
we reentered the northern hemisphere.

During that day a fearsome school of sharks provided us with an
escort. Dreadful animals that teem in these seas and make them
extremely dangerous. There were Port Jackson sharks with a brown back,
a whitish belly, and eleven rows of teeth, bigeye sharks with necks
marked by a large black spot encircled in white and resembling an eye,
and Isabella sharks whose rounded snouts were strewn with dark
speckles. Often these powerful animals rushed at the lounge window
with a violence less than comforting. By this point Ned Land had lost
all self-control. He wanted to rise to the surface of the waves and
harpoon the monsters, especially certain smooth-hound sharks whose
mouths were paved with teeth arranged like a mosaic, and some big
five-meter tiger sharks that insisted on personally provoking him. But
the Nautilus soon picked up speed and easily left astern the fastest
of these man-eaters.

On January 27, at the entrance to the huge Bay of Bengal, we
repeatedly encountered a gruesome sight: human corpses floating on the
surface of the waves! Carried by the Ganges to the high seas, these
were deceased Indian villagers who hadn’t been fully devoured by
vultures, the only morticians in these parts. But there was no
shortage of sharks to assist them with their undertaking chores.

Near seven o’clock in the evening, the Nautilus lay half submerged,
navigating in the midst of milky white waves. As far as the eye could
see, the ocean seemed lactified. Was it an effect of the moon’s rays?
No, because the new moon was barely two days old and was still lost
below the horizon in the sun’s rays. The entire sky, although lit up
by stellar radiation, seemed pitch-black in comparison with the
whiteness of these waters.

Conseil couldn’t believe his eyes, and he questioned me about the
causes of this odd phenomenon. Luckily I was in a position to answer
him.

“That’s called a milk sea,” I told him, “a vast expanse of white waves
often seen along the coasts of Amboina and in these waterways.”

“But,” Conseil asked, “could master tell me the cause of this effect,
because I presume this water hasn’t really changed into milk!”

“No, my boy, and this whiteness that amazes you is merely due to the
presence of myriads of tiny creatures called infusoria, a sort of
diminutive glowworm that’s colorless and gelatinous in appearance, as
thick as a strand of hair, and no longer than one-fifth of a
millimeter. Some of these tiny creatures stick together over an area
of several leagues.”

“Several leagues!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Yes, my boy, and don’t even try to compute the number of these
infusoria. You won’t pull it off, because if I’m not mistaken, certain
navigators have cruised through milk seas for more than forty miles.”

I’m not sure that Conseil heeded my recommendation, because he seemed
to be deep in thought, no doubt trying to calculate how many
one-fifths of a millimeter are found in forty square miles. As for me,
I continued to observe this phenomenon. For several hours the
Nautilus’s spur sliced through these whitish waves, and I watched it
glide noiselessly over this soapy water, as if it were cruising
through those foaming eddies that a bay’s currents and countercurrents
sometimes leave between each other.

Near midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual hue, but behind us
all the way to the horizon, the skies kept mirroring the whiteness of
those waves and for a good while seemed imbued with the hazy glow of
an aurora borealis.


CHAPTER 2

A New Proposition from Captain Nemo


ON JANUARY 28, in latitude 9 degrees 4’ north, when the Nautilus
returned at noon to the surface of the sea, it lay in sight of land
some eight miles to the west. Right off, I observed a cluster of
mountains about 2,000 feet high, whose shapes were very whimsically
sculpted. After our position fix, I reentered the lounge, and when our
bearings were reported on the chart, I saw that we were off the island
of Ceylon, that pearl dangling from the lower lobe of the Indian
peninsula.

I went looking in the library for a book about this island, one of the
most fertile in the world. Sure enough, I found a volume entitled
Ceylon and the Singhalese by H. C. Sirr, Esq. Reentering the lounge, I
first noted the bearings of Ceylon, on which antiquity lavished so
many different names. It was located between latitude 5 degrees 55’
and 9 degrees 49’ north, and between longitude 79 degrees 42’ and 82
degrees 4’ east of the meridian of Greenwich; its length is 275 miles;
its maximum width, 150 miles; its circumference, 900 miles; its
surface area, 24,448 square miles, in other words, a little smaller
than that of Ireland.

Just then Captain Nemo and his chief officer appeared.

The captain glanced at the chart. Then, turning to me:

“The island of Ceylon,” he said, “is famous for its pearl
fisheries. Would you be interested, Professor Aronnax, in visiting one
of those fisheries?”

“Certainly, captain.”

“Fine. It’s easily done. Only, when we see the fisheries, we’ll see no
fishermen. The annual harvest hasn’t yet begun. No matter. I’ll give
orders to make for the Gulf of Mannar, and we’ll arrive there late
tonight.”

The captain said a few words to his chief officer who went out
immediately. Soon the Nautilus reentered its liquid element, and the
pressure gauge indicated that it was staying at a depth of thirty
feet.

With the chart under my eyes, I looked for the Gulf of Mannar. I found
it by the 9th parallel off the northwestern shores of Ceylon. It was
formed by the long curve of little Mannar Island. To reach it we had
to go all the way up Ceylon’s west coast.

“Professor,” Captain Nemo then told me, “there are pearl fisheries in
the Bay of Bengal, the seas of the East Indies, the seas of China and
Japan, plus those seas south of the United States, the Gulf of Panama
and the Gulf of California; but it’s off Ceylon that such fishing
reaps its richest rewards. No doubt we’ll be arriving a little
early. Fishermen gather in the Gulf of Mannar only during the month of
March, and for thirty days some 300 boats concentrate on the lucrative
harvest of these treasures from the sea. Each boat is manned by ten
oarsmen and ten fishermen. The latter divide into two groups, dive in
rotation, and descend to a depth of twelve meters with the help of a
heavy stone clutched between their feet and attached by a rope to
their boat.”

“You mean,” I said, “that such primitive methods are still all that
they use?”

“All,” Captain Nemo answered me, “although these fisheries belong to
the most industrialized people in the world, the English, to whom the
Treaty of Amiens granted them in 1802.”

“Yet it strikes me that diving suits like yours could perform yeoman
service in such work.”

“Yes, since those poor fishermen can’t stay long underwater. On his
voyage to Ceylon, the Englishman Percival made much of a Kaffir who
stayed under five minutes without coming up to the surface, but I find
that hard to believe. I know that some divers can last up to
fifty-seven seconds, and highly skillful ones to eighty-seven; but
such men are rare, and when the poor fellows climb back on board, the
water coming out of their noses and ears is tinted with blood. I
believe the average time underwater that these fishermen can tolerate
is thirty seconds, during which they hastily stuff their little nets
with all the pearl oysters they can tear loose. But these fishermen
generally don’t live to advanced age: their vision weakens, ulcers
break out on their eyes, sores form on their bodies, and some are even
stricken with apoplexy on the ocean floor.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a sad occupation, and one that exists only to
gratify the whims of fashion. But tell me, captain, how many oysters
can a boat fish up in a workday?”

“About 40,000 to 50,000. It’s even said that in 1814, when the English
government went fishing on its own behalf, its divers worked just
twenty days and brought up 76,000,000 oysters.”

“At least,” I asked, “the fishermen are well paid, aren’t they?”

“Hardly, professor. In Panama they make just $1.00 per week. In most
places they earn only a penny for each oyster that has a pearl, and
they bring up so many that have none!”

“Only one penny to those poor people who make their employers rich!
That’s atrocious!”

“On that note, professor,” Captain Nemo told me, “you and your
companions will visit the Mannar oysterbank, and if by chance some
eager fisherman arrives early, well, we can watch him at work.”

“That suits me, captain.”

“By the way, Professor Aronnax, you aren’t afraid of sharks, are you?”

“Sharks?” I exclaimed.

This struck me as a pretty needless question, to say the least.

“Well?” Captain Nemo went on.

“I admit, captain, I’m not yet on very familiar terms with that genus
of fish.”

“We’re used to them, the rest of us,” Captain Nemo answered. “And in
time you will be too. Anyhow, we’ll be armed, and on our way we might
hunt a man-eater or two. It’s a fascinating sport. So, professor, I’ll
see you tomorrow, bright and early.”

This said in a carefree tone, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

If you’re invited to hunt bears in the Swiss mountains, you might say:
“Oh good, I get to go bear hunting tomorrow!” If you’re invited to
hunt lions on the Atlas plains or tigers in the jungles of India, you
might say: “Ha! Now’s my chance to hunt lions and tigers!” But if
you’re invited to hunt sharks in their native element, you might want
to think it over before accepting.

As for me, I passed a hand over my brow, where beads of cold sweat
were busy forming.

“Let’s think this over,” I said to myself, “and let’s take our
time. Hunting otters in underwater forests, as we did in the forests
of Crespo Island, is an acceptable activity. But to roam the bottom of
the sea when you’re almost certain to meet man-eaters in the
neighborhood, that’s another story! I know that in certain countries,
particularly the Andaman Islands, Negroes don’t hesitate to attack
sharks, dagger in one hand and noose in the other; but I also know
that many who face those fearsome animals don’t come back
alive. Besides, I’m not a Negro, and even if I were a Negro, in this
instance I don’t think a little hesitation on my part would be out of
place.”

And there I was, fantasizing about sharks, envisioning huge jaws armed
with multiple rows of teeth and capable of cutting a man in half. I
could already feel a definite pain around my pelvic girdle. And how I
resented the offhand manner in which the captain had extended his
deplorable invitation! You would have thought it was an issue of going
into the woods on some harmless fox hunt!

“Thank heavens!” I said to myself. “Conseil will never want to come
along, and that’ll be my excuse for not going with the captain.”

As for Ned Land, I admit I felt less confident of his wisdom. Danger,
however great, held a perennial attraction for his aggressive nature.

I went back to reading Sirr’s book, but I leafed through it
mechanically. Between the lines I kept seeing fearsome, wide-open
jaws.

Just then Conseil and the Canadian entered with a calm, even gleeful
air. Little did they know what was waiting for them.

“Ye gods, sir!” Ned Land told me. “Your Captain Nemo—the devil take
him—has just made us a very pleasant proposition!”

“Oh!” I said “You know about—”

“With all due respect to master,” Conseil replied, “the Nautilus’s
commander has invited us, together with master, for a visit tomorrow
to Ceylon’s magnificent pearl fisheries. He did so in the most cordial
terms and conducted himself like a true gentleman.”

“He didn’t tell you anything else?”

“Nothing, sir,” the Canadian replied. “He said you’d already discussed
this little stroll.”

“Indeed,” I said. “But didn’t he give you any details on—”

“Not a one, Mr. Naturalist. You will be going with us, right?”

“Me? Why yes, certainly, of course! I can see that you like the idea,
Mr. Land.”

“Yes! It will be a really unusual experience!”

“And possibly dangerous!” I added in an insinuating tone.

“Dangerous?” Ned Land replied. “A simple trip to an oysterbank?”

Assuredly, Captain Nemo hadn’t seen fit to plant the idea of sharks in
the minds of my companions. For my part, I stared at them with anxious
eyes, as if they were already missing a limb or two. Should I alert
them? Yes, surely, but I hardly knew how to go about it.

“Would master,” Conseil said to me, “give us some background on pearl
fishing?”

“On the fishing itself?” I asked. “Or on the occupational hazards
that—”

“On the fishing,” the Canadian replied. “Before we tackle the terrain,
it helps to be familiar with it.”

“All right, sit down, my friends, and I’ll teach you everything I
myself have just been taught by the Englishman H. C. Sirr!”

Ned and Conseil took seats on a couch, and right off the Canadian said
to me:

“Sir, just what is a pearl exactly?”

“My gallant Ned,” I replied, “for poets a pearl is a tear from the
sea; for Orientals it’s a drop of solidified dew; for the ladies it’s
a jewel they can wear on their fingers, necks, and ears that’s oblong
in shape, glassy in luster, and formed from mother-of-pearl; for
chemists it’s a mixture of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate
with a little gelatin protein; and finally, for naturalists it’s a
simple festering secretion from the organ that produces
mother-of-pearl in certain bivalves.”

“Branch Mollusca,” Conseil said, “class Acephala, order Testacea.”

“Correct, my scholarly Conseil. Now then, those Testacea capable of
producing pearls include rainbow abalone, turbo snails, giant clams,
and saltwater scallops—briefly, all those that secrete
mother-of-pearl, in other words, that blue, azure, violet, or white
substance lining the insides of their valves.”

“Are mussels included too?” the Canadian asked.

“Yes! The mussels of certain streams in Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
Saxony, Bohemia, and France.”

“Good!” the Canadian replied. “From now on we’ll pay closer attention
to ‘em.”

“But,” I went on, “for secreting pearls, the ideal mollusk is the
pearl oyster Meleagrina margaritifera, that valuable shellfish. Pearls
result simply from mother-of-pearl solidifying into a globular
shape. Either they stick to the oyster’s shell, or they become
embedded in the creature’s folds. On the valves a pearl sticks fast;
on the flesh it lies loose. But its nucleus is always some small, hard
object, say a sterile egg or a grain of sand, around which the
mother-of-pearl is deposited in thin, concentric layers over several
years in succession.”

“Can one find several pearls in the same oyster?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, my boy. There are some shellfish that turn into real jewel
coffers. They even mention one oyster, about which I remain dubious,
that supposedly contained at least 150 sharks.”

“150 sharks!” Ned Land yelped.

“Did I say sharks?” I exclaimed hastily. “I meant 150 pearls. Sharks
wouldn’t make sense.”

“Indeed,” Conseil said. “But will master now tell us how one goes
about extracting these pearls?”

“One proceeds in several ways, and often when pearls stick to the
valves, fishermen even pull them loose with pliers. But usually the
shellfish are spread out on mats made from the esparto grass that
covers the beaches. Thus they die in the open air, and by the end of
ten days they’ve rotted sufficiently. Next they’re immersed in huge
tanks of salt water, then they’re opened up and washed. At this point
the sorters begin their twofold task. First they remove the layers of
mother-of-pearl, which are known in the industry by the names
legitimate silver, bastard white, or bastard black, and these are
shipped out in cases weighing 125 to 150 kilograms. Then they remove
the oyster’s meaty tissue, boil it, and finally strain it, in order to
extract even the smallest pearls.”

“Do the prices of these pearls differ depending on their size?”
Conseil asked.

“Not only on their size,” I replied, “but also according to their
shape, their water—in other words, their color—and their orient—in
other words, that dappled, shimmering glow that makes them so
delightful to the eye. The finest pearls are called virgin pearls, or
paragons; they form in isolation within the mollusk’s tissue. They’re
white, often opaque but sometimes of opalescent transparency, and
usually spherical or pear-shaped. The spherical ones are made into
bracelets; the pear-shaped ones into earrings, and since they’re the
most valuable, they’re priced individually. The other pearls that
stick to the oyster’s shell are more erratically shaped and are priced
by weight. Finally, classed in the lowest order, the smallest pearls
are known by the name seed pearls; they’re priced by the measuring cup
and are used mainly in the creation of embroidery for church
vestments.”

“But it must be a long, hard job, sorting out these pearls by size,”
the Canadian said.

“No, my friend. That task is performed with eleven strainers, or
sieves, that are pierced with different numbers of holes. Those pearls
staying in the strainers with twenty to eighty holes are in the first
order. Those not slipping through the sieves pierced with 100 to 800
holes are in the second order. Finally, those pearls for which one
uses strainers pierced with 900 to 1,000 holes make up the seed
pearls.”

“How ingenious,” Conseil said, “to reduce dividing and classifying
pearls to a mechanical operation. And could master tell us the profits
brought in by harvesting these banks of pearl oysters?”

“According to Sirr’s book,” I replied, “these Ceylon fisheries are
farmed annually for a total profit of 3,000,000 man-eaters.”

“Francs!” Conseil rebuked.

“Yes, francs! 3,000,000 francs!” I went on. “But I don’t think these
fisheries bring in the returns they once did. Similarly, the Central
American fisheries used to make an annual profit of 4,000,000 francs
during the reign of King Charles V, but now they bring in only
two-thirds of that amount. All in all, it’s estimated that 9,000,000
francs is the current yearly return for the whole pearl-harvesting
industry.”

“But,” Conseil asked, “haven’t certain famous pearls been quoted at
extremely high prices?”

“Yes, my boy. They say Julius Caesar gave Servilia a pearl worth
120,000 francs in our currency.”

“I’ve even heard stories,” the Canadian said, “about some lady in
ancient times who drank pearls in vinegar.”

“Cleopatra,” Conseil shot back.

“It must have tasted pretty bad,” Ned Land added.

“Abominable, Ned my friend,” Conseil replied. “But when a little glass
of vinegar is worth 1,500,000 francs, its taste is a small price to
pay.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t marry the gal,” the Canadian said, throwing up his
hands with an air of discouragement.

“Ned Land married to Cleopatra?” Conseil exclaimed.

“But I was all set to tie the knot, Conseil,” the Canadian replied in
all seriousness, “and it wasn’t my fault the whole business fell
through. I even bought a pearl necklace for my fiancΘe, Kate Tender,
but she married somebody else instead. Well, that necklace cost me
only $1.50, but you can absolutely trust me on this, professor, its
pearls were so big, they wouldn’t have gone through that strainer with
twenty holes.”

“My gallant Ned,” I replied, laughing, “those were artificial pearls,
ordinary glass beads whose insides were coated with Essence of
Orient.”

“Wow!” the Canadian replied. “That Essence of Orient must sell for
quite a large sum.”

“As little as zero! It comes from the scales of a European carp, it’s
nothing more than a silver substance that collects in the water and is
preserved in ammonia. It’s worthless.”

“Maybe that’s why Kate Tender married somebody else,” replied Mr. Land
philosophically.

“But,” I said, “getting back to pearls of great value, I don’t think
any sovereign ever possessed one superior to the pearl owned by
Captain Nemo.”

“This one?” Conseil said, pointing to a magnificent jewel in its glass
case.

“Exactly. And I’m certainly not far off when I estimate its value at
2,000,000 . . . uh . . .”

“Francs!” Conseil said quickly.

“Yes,” I said, “2,000,000 francs, and no doubt all it cost our captain
was the effort to pick it up.”

“Ha!” Ned Land exclaimed. “During our stroll tomorrow, who says we
won’t run into one just like it?”

“Bah!” Conseil put in.

“And why not?”

“What good would a pearl worth millions do us here on the Nautilus?”

“Here, no,” Ned Land said. “But elsewhere. . . .”

“Oh! Elsewhere!” Conseil put in, shaking his head.

“In fact,” I said, “Mr. Land is right. And if we ever brought back to
Europe or America a pearl worth millions, it would make the story of
our adventures more authentic—and much more rewarding.”

“That’s how I see it,” the Canadian said.

“But,” said Conseil, who perpetually returned to the didactic side of
things, “is this pearl fishing ever dangerous?”

“No,” I replied quickly, “especially if one takes certain
precautions.”

“What risks would you run in a job like that?” Ned Land
said. “Swallowing a few gulps of salt water?”

“Whatever you say, Ned.” Then, trying to imitate Captain Nemo’s
carefree tone, I asked, “By the way, gallant Ned, are you afraid of
sharks?”

“Me?” the Canadian replied. “I’m a professional harpooner! It’s my job
to make a mockery of them!”

“It isn’t an issue,” I said, “of fishing for them with a swivel hook,
hoisting them onto the deck of a ship, chopping off the tail with a
sweep of the ax, opening the belly, ripping out the heart, and tossing
it into the sea.”

“So it’s an issue of . . . ?”

“Yes, precisely.”

“In the water?”

“In the water.”

“Ye gods, just give me a good harpoon! You see, sir, these sharks are
badly designed. They have to roll their bellies over to snap you up,
and in the meantime . . .”

Ned Land had a way of pronouncing the word “snap” that sent chills
down the spine.

“Well, how about you, Conseil? What are your feelings about these
man-eaters?”

“Me?” Conseil said. “I’m afraid I must be frank with master.”

Good for you, I thought.

“If master faces these sharks,” Conseil said, “I think his loyal
manservant should face them with him!”


CHAPTER 3

A Pearl Worth Ten Million


NIGHT FELL. I went to bed. I slept pretty poorly. Man-eaters played a
major role in my dreams. And I found it more or less appropriate that
the French word for shark, requin, has its linguistic roots in the
word requiem.

The next day at four o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the
steward whom Captain Nemo had placed expressly at my service. I got up
quickly, dressed, and went into the lounge.

Captain Nemo was waiting for me.

“Professor Aronnax,” he said to me, “are you ready to start?”

“I’m ready.”

“Kindly follow me.”

“What about my companions, captain?”

“They’ve been alerted and are waiting for us.”

“Aren’t we going to put on our diving suits?” I asked.

“Not yet. I haven’t let the Nautilus pull too near the coast, and
we’re fairly well out from the Mannar oysterbank. But I have the skiff
ready, and it will take us to the exact spot where we’ll disembark,
which will save us a pretty long trek. It’s carrying our diving
equipment, and we’ll suit up just before we begin our underwater
exploring.”

Captain Nemo took me to the central companionway whose steps led to
the platform. Ned and Conseil were there, enraptured with the
“pleasure trip” getting under way. Oars in position, five of the
Nautilus’s sailors were waiting for us aboard the skiff, which was
moored alongside. The night was still dark. Layers of clouds cloaked
the sky and left only a few stars in view. My eyes flew to the side
where land lay, but I saw only a blurred line covering three-quarters
of the horizon from southwest to northwest. Going up Ceylon’s west
coast during the night, the Nautilus lay west of the bay, or rather
that gulf formed by the mainland and Mannar Island. Under these dark
waters there stretched the bank of shellfish, an inexhaustible field
of pearls more than twenty miles long.

Captain Nemo, Conseil, Ned Land, and I found seats in the stern of the
skiff. The longboat’s coxswain took the tiller; his four companions
leaned into their oars; the moorings were cast off and we pulled
clear.

The skiff headed southward. The oarsmen took their time. I watched
their strokes vigorously catch the water, and they always waited ten
seconds before rowing again, following the practice used in most
navies. While the longboat coasted, drops of liquid flicked from the
oars and hit the dark troughs of the waves, pitter-pattering like
splashes of molten lead. Coming from well out, a mild swell made the
skiff roll gently, and a few cresting billows lapped at its bow.

We were silent. What was Captain Nemo thinking? Perhaps that this
approaching shore was too close for comfort, contrary to the
Canadian’s views in which it still seemed too far away. As for
Conseil, he had come along out of simple curiosity.

Near 5:30 the first glimmers of light on the horizon defined the upper
lines of the coast with greater distinctness. Fairly flat to the east,
it swelled a little toward the south. Five miles still separated it
from us, and its beach merged with the misty waters. Between us and
the shore, the sea was deserted. Not a boat, not a diver. Profound
solitude reigned over this gathering place of pearl fishermen. As
Captain Nemo had commented, we were arriving in these waterways a
month too soon.

At six o’clock the day broke suddenly, with that speed unique to
tropical regions, which experience no real dawn or dusk. The sun’s
rays pierced the cloud curtain gathered on the easterly horizon, and
the radiant orb rose swiftly.

I could clearly see the shore, which featured a few sparse trees here
and there.

The skiff advanced toward Mannar Island, which curved to the
south. Captain Nemo stood up from his thwart and studied the sea.

At his signal the anchor was lowered, but its chain barely ran because
the bottom lay no more than a meter down, and this locality was one of
the shallowest spots near the bank of shellfish. Instantly the skiff
wheeled around under the ebb tide’s outbound thrust.

“Here we are, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo then said. “You observe
this confined bay? A month from now in this very place, the numerous
fishing boats of the harvesters will gather, and these are the waters
their divers will ransack so daringly. This bay is felicitously laid
out for their type of fishing. It’s sheltered from the strongest
winds, and the sea is never very turbulent here, highly favorable
conditions for diving work. Now let’s put on our underwater suits, and
we’ll begin our stroll.”

I didn’t reply, and while staring at these suspicious waves, I began
to put on my heavy aquatic clothes, helped by the longboat’s
sailors. Captain Nemo and my two companions suited up as well. None of
the Nautilus’s men were to go with us on this new excursion.

Soon we were imprisoned up to the neck in india-rubber clothing, and
straps fastened the air devices onto our backs. As for the Ruhmkorff
device, it didn’t seem to be in the picture. Before inserting my head
into its copper capsule, I commented on this to the captain.

“Our lighting equipment would be useless to us,” the captain answered
me. “We won’t be going very deep, and the sun’s rays will be
sufficient to light our way. Besides, it’s unwise to carry electric
lanterns under these waves. Their brightness might unexpectedly
attract certain dangerous occupants of these waterways.”

As Captain Nemo pronounced these words, I turned to Conseil and Ned
Land. But my two friends had already encased their craniums in their
metal headgear, and they could neither hear nor reply.

I had one question left to address to Captain Nemo.

“What about our weapons?” I asked him. “Our rifles?”

“Rifles! What for? Don’t your mountaineers attack bears dagger in
hand? And isn’t steel surer than lead? Here’s a sturdy blade. Slip it
under your belt and let’s be off.”

I stared at my companions. They were armed in the same fashion, and
Ned Land was also brandishing an enormous harpoon he had stowed in the
skiff before leaving the Nautilus.

Then, following the captain’s example, I let myself be crowned with my
heavy copper sphere, and our air tanks immediately went into action.

An instant later, the longboat’s sailors helped us overboard one after
the other, and we set foot on level sand in a meter and a half of
water. Captain Nemo gave us a hand signal. We followed him down a
gentle slope and disappeared under the waves.

There the obsessive fears in my brain left me. I became surprisingly
calm again. The ease with which I could move increased my confidence,
and the many strange sights captivated my imagination.

The sun was already sending sufficient light under these waves. The
tiniest objects remained visible. After ten minutes of walking, we
were in five meters of water, and the terrain had become almost flat.

Like a covey of snipe over a marsh, there rose underfoot schools of
unusual fish from the genus Monopterus, whose members have no fin but
their tail. I recognized the Javanese eel, a genuine eight-decimeter
serpent with a bluish gray belly, which, without the gold lines over
its flanks, could easily be confused with the conger eel. From the
butterfish genus, whose oval bodies are very flat, I observed several
adorned in brilliant colors and sporting a dorsal fin like a sickle,
edible fish that, when dried and marinated, make an excellent dish
known by the name “karawade”; then some sea poachers, fish belonging
to the genus Aspidophoroides, whose bodies are covered with scaly
armor divided into eight lengthwise sections.

Meanwhile, as the sun got progressively higher, it lit up the watery
mass more and more. The seafloor changed little by little. Its
fine-grained sand was followed by a genuine causeway of smooth crags
covered by a carpet of mollusks and zoophytes. Among other specimens
in these two branches, I noted some windowpane oysters with thin
valves of unequal size, a type of ostracod unique to the Red Sea and
the Indian Ocean, then orange-hued lucina with circular shells,
awl-shaped auger shells, some of those Persian murex snails that
supply the Nautilus with such wonderful dye, spiky periwinkles fifteen
centimeters long that rose under the waves like hands ready to grab
you, turban snails with shells made of horn and bristling all over
with spines, lamp shells, edible duck clams that feed the Hindu
marketplace, subtly luminous jellyfish of the species Pelagia
panopyra, and finally some wonderful Oculina flabelliforma,
magnificent sea fans that fashion one of the most luxuriant tree forms
in this ocean.

In the midst of this moving vegetation, under arbors of water plants,
there raced legions of clumsy articulates, in particular some fanged
frog crabs whose carapaces form a slightly rounded triangle, robber
crabs exclusive to these waterways, and horrible parthenope crabs
whose appearance was repulsive to the eye. One animal no less hideous,
which I encountered several times, was the enormous crab that
Mr. Darwin observed, to which nature has given the instinct and
requisite strength to eat coconuts; it scrambles up trees on the beach
and sends the coconuts tumbling; they fracture in their fall and are
opened by its powerful pincers. Here, under these clear waves, this
crab raced around with matchless agility, while green turtles from the
species frequenting the Malabar coast moved sluggishly among the
crumbling rocks.

Near seven o’clock we finally surveyed the bank of shellfish, where
pearl oysters reproduce by the millions. These valuable mollusks stick
to rocks, where they’re strongly attached by a mass of brown filaments
that forbids their moving about. In this respect oysters are inferior
even to mussels, to whom nature has not denied all talent for
locomotion.

The shellfish Meleagrina, that womb for pearls whose valves are nearly
equal in size, has the shape of a round shell with thick walls and a
very rough exterior. Some of these shells were furrowed with flaky,
greenish bands that radiated down from the top. These were the young
oysters. The others had rugged black surfaces, measured up to fifteen
centimeters in width, and were ten or more years old.

Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw
that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature’s creative
powers are greater than man’s destructive instincts. True to those
instincts, Ned Land greedily stuffed the finest of these mollusks into
a net he carried at his side.

But we couldn’t stop. We had to follow the captain, who headed down
trails seemingly known only to himself. The seafloor rose noticeably,
and when I lifted my arms, sometimes they would pass above the surface
of the sea. Then the level of the oysterbank would lower
unpredictably. Often we went around tall, pointed rocks rising like
pyramids. In their dark crevices huge crustaceans, aiming their long
legs like heavy artillery, watched us with unblinking eyes, while
underfoot there crept millipedes, bloodworms, aricia worms, and
annelid worms, whose antennas and tubular tentacles were incredibly
long.

Just then a huge cave opened up in our path, hollowed from a
picturesque pile of rocks whose smooth heights were completely hung
with underwater flora. At first this cave looked pitch-black to
me. Inside, the sun’s rays seemed to diminish by degrees. Their hazy
transparency was nothing more than drowned light.

Captain Nemo went in. We followed him. My eyes soon grew accustomed to
this comparative gloom. I distinguished the unpredictably contoured
springings of a vault, supported by natural pillars firmly based on a
granite foundation, like the weighty columns of Tuscan
architecture. Why had our incomprehensible guide taken us into the
depths of this underwater crypt? I would soon find out.

After going down a fairly steep slope, our feet trod the floor of a
sort of circular pit. There Captain Nemo stopped, and his hand
indicated an object that I hadn’t yet noticed.

It was an oyster of extraordinary dimensions, a titanic giant clam, a
holy-water font that could have held a whole lake, a basin more than
two meters wide, hence even bigger than the one adorning the
Nautilus’s lounge.

I approached this phenomenal mollusk. Its mass of filaments attached
it to a table of granite, and there it grew by itself in the midst of
the cave’s calm waters. I estimated the weight of this giant clam at
300 kilograms. Hence such an oyster held fifteen kilos of meat, and
you’d need the stomach of King Gargantua to eat a couple dozen.

Captain Nemo was obviously familiar with this bivalve’s
existence. This wasn’t the first time he’d paid it a visit, and I
thought his sole reason for leading us to this locality was to show us
a natural curiosity. I was mistaken. Captain Nemo had an explicit
personal interest in checking on the current condition of this giant
clam.

The mollusk’s two valves were partly open. The captain approached and
stuck his dagger vertically between the shells to discourage any ideas
about closing; then with his hands he raised the fringed,
membrane-filled tunic that made up the animal’s mantle.

There, between its leaflike folds, I saw a loose pearl as big as a
coconut. Its globular shape, perfect clarity, and wonderful orient
made it a jewel of incalculable value. Carried away by curiosity, I
stretched out my hand to take it, weigh it, fondle it! But the captain
stopped me, signaled no, removed his dagger in one swift motion, and
let the two valves snap shut.

I then understood Captain Nemo’s intent. By leaving the pearl buried
beneath the giant clam’s mantle, he allowed it to grow
imperceptibly. With each passing year the mollusk’s secretions added
new concentric layers. The captain alone was familiar with the cave
where this wonderful fruit of nature was “ripening”; he alone reared
it, so to speak, in order to transfer it one day to his dearly beloved
museum. Perhaps, following the examples of oyster farmers in China and
India, he had even predetermined the creation of this pearl by
sticking under the mollusk’s folds some piece of glass or metal that
was gradually covered with mother-of-pearl. In any case, comparing
this pearl to others I already knew about, and to those shimmering in
the captain’s collection, I estimated that it was worth at least
10,000,000 francs. It was a superb natural curiosity rather than a
luxurious piece of jewelry, because I don’t know of any female ear
that could handle it.

Our visit to this opulent giant clam came to an end. Captain Nemo left
the cave, and we climbed back up the bank of shellfish in the midst of
these clear waters not yet disturbed by divers at work.

We walked by ourselves, genuine loiterers stopping or straying as our
fancies dictated. For my part, I was no longer worried about those
dangers my imagination had so ridiculously exaggerated. The shallows
drew noticeably closer to the surface of the sea, and soon, walking in
only a meter of water, my head passed well above the level of the
ocean. Conseil rejoined me, and gluing his huge copper capsule to
mine, his eyes gave me a friendly greeting. But this lofty plateau
measured only a few fathoms, and soon we reentered Our Element. I
think I’ve now earned the right to dub it that.

Ten minutes later, Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. I thought he’d
called a halt so that we could turn and start back. No. With a gesture
he ordered us to crouch beside him at the foot of a wide crevice. His
hand motioned toward a spot within the liquid mass, and I looked
carefully.

Five meters away a shadow appeared and dropped to the seafloor. The
alarming idea of sharks crossed my mind. But I was mistaken, and once
again we didn’t have to deal with monsters of the deep.

It was a man, a living man, a black Indian fisherman, a poor devil who
no doubt had come to gather what he could before harvest time. I saw
the bottom of his dinghy, moored a few feet above his head. He would
dive and go back up in quick succession. A stone cut in the shape of a
sugar loaf, which he gripped between his feet while a rope connected
it to his boat, served to lower him more quickly to the ocean
floor. This was the extent of his equipment. Arriving on the seafloor
at a depth of about five meters, he fell to his knees and stuffed his
sack with shellfish gathered at random. Then he went back up, emptied
his sack, pulled up his stone, and started all over again, the whole
process lasting only thirty seconds.

This diver didn’t see us. A shadow cast by our crag hid us from his
view. And besides, how could this poor Indian ever have guessed that
human beings, creatures like himself, were near him under the waters,
eavesdropping on his movements, not missing a single detail of his
fishing!

So he went up and down several times. He gathered only about ten
shellfish per dive, because he had to tear them from the banks where
each clung with its tough mass of filaments. And how many of these
oysters for which he risked his life would have no pearl in them!

I observed him with great care. His movements were systematically
executed, and for half an hour no danger seemed to threaten him. So I
had gotten used to the sight of this fascinating fishing when all at
once, just as the Indian was kneeling on the seafloor, I saw him make
a frightened gesture, stand, and gather himself to spring back to the
surface of the waves.

I understood his fear. A gigantic shadow appeared above the poor
diver. It was a shark of huge size, moving in diagonally, eyes ablaze,
jaws wide open!

I was speechless with horror, unable to make a single movement.

With one vigorous stroke of its fins, the voracious animal shot toward
the Indian, who jumped aside and avoided the shark’s bite but not the
thrashing of its tail, because that tail struck him across the chest
and stretched him out on the seafloor.

This scene lasted barely a few seconds. The shark returned, rolled
over on its back, and was getting ready to cut the Indian in half,
when Captain Nemo, who was stationed beside me, suddenly stood
up. Then he strode right toward the monster, dagger in hand, ready to
fight it at close quarters.

Just as it was about to snap up the poor fisherman, the man-eater saw
its new adversary, repositioned itself on its belly, and headed
swiftly toward him.

I can see Captain Nemo’s bearing to this day. Bracing himself, he
waited for the fearsome man-eater with wonderful composure, and when
the latter rushed at him, the captain leaped aside with prodigious
quickness, avoided a collision, and sank his dagger into its
belly. But that wasn’t the end of the story. A dreadful battle was
joined.

The shark bellowed, so to speak. Blood was pouring into the waves from
its wounds. The sea was dyed red, and through this opaque liquid I
could see nothing else.

Nothing else until the moment when, through a rift in the clouds, I
saw the daring captain clinging to one of the animal’s fins, fighting
the monster at close quarters, belaboring his enemy’s belly with stabs
of the dagger yet unable to deliver the deciding thrust, in other
words, a direct hit to the heart. In its struggles the man-eater
churned the watery mass so furiously, its eddies threatened to knock
me over.

I wanted to run to the captain’s rescue. But I was transfixed with
horror, unable to move.

I stared, wild-eyed. I saw the fight enter a new phase. The captain
fell to the seafloor, toppled by the enormous mass weighing him
down. Then the shark’s jaws opened astoundingly wide, like a pair of
industrial shears, and that would have been the finish of Captain Nemo
had not Ned Land, quick as thought, rushed forward with his harpoon
and driven its dreadful point into the shark’s underside.

The waves were saturated with masses of blood. The waters shook with
the movements of the man-eater, which thrashed about with
indescribable fury. Ned Land hadn’t missed his target. This was the
monster’s death rattle. Pierced to the heart, it was struggling with
dreadful spasms whose aftershocks knocked Conseil off his feet.

Meanwhile Ned Land pulled the captain clear. Uninjured, the latter
stood up, went right to the Indian, quickly cut the rope binding the
man to his stone, took the fellow in his arms, and with a vigorous
kick of the heel, rose to the surface of the sea.

The three of us followed him, and a few moments later, miraculously
safe, we reached the fisherman’s longboat.

Captain Nemo’s first concern was to revive this unfortunate man. I
wasn’t sure he would succeed. I hoped so, since the poor devil hadn’t
been under very long. But that stroke from the shark’s tail could have
been his deathblow.

Fortunately, after vigorous massaging by Conseil and the captain, I
saw the nearly drowned man regain consciousness little by little. He
opened his eyes. How startled he must have felt, how frightened even,
at seeing four huge, copper craniums leaning over him!

And above all, what must he have thought when Captain Nemo pulled a
bag of pearls from a pocket in his diving suit and placed it in the
fisherman’s hands? This magnificent benefaction from the Man of the
Waters to the poor Indian from Ceylon was accepted by the latter with
trembling hands. His bewildered eyes indicated that he didn’t know to
what superhuman creatures he owed both his life and his fortune.

At the captain’s signal we returned to the bank of shellfish, and
retracing our steps, we walked for half an hour until we encountered
the anchor connecting the seafloor with the Nautilus’s skiff.

Back on board, the sailors helped divest us of our heavy copper
carapaces.

Captain Nemo’s first words were spoken to the Canadian.

“Thank you, Mr. Land,” he told him.

“Tit for tat, captain,” Ned Land replied. “I owed it to you.”

The ghost of a smile glided across the captain’s lips, and that was
all.

“To the Nautilus,” he said.

The longboat flew over the waves. A few minutes later we encountered
the shark’s corpse again, floating.

From the black markings on the tips of its fins, I recognized the
dreadful Squalus melanopterus from the seas of the East Indies, a
variety in the species of sharks proper. It was more than twenty-five
feet long; its enormous mouth occupied a third of its body. It was an
adult, as could be seen from the six rows of teeth forming an
isosceles triangle in its upper jaw.

Conseil looked at it with purely scientific fascination, and I’m sure
he placed it, not without good reason, in the class of cartilaginous
fish, order Chondropterygia with fixed gills, family Selacia, genus
Squalus.

While I was contemplating this inert mass, suddenly a dozen of these
voracious melanoptera appeared around our longboat; but, paying no
attention to us, they pounced on the corpse and quarreled over every
scrap of it.

By 8:30 we were back on board the Nautilus.

There I fell to thinking about the incidents that marked our excursion
over the Mannar oysterbank. Two impressions inevitably stood out. One
concerned Captain Nemo’s matchless bravery, the other his devotion to
a human being, a representative of that race from which he had fled
beneath the seas. In spite of everything, this strange man hadn’t yet
succeeded in completely stifling his heart.

When I shared these impressions with him, he answered me in a tone
touched with emotion:

“That Indian, professor, lives in the land of the oppressed, and I am
to this day, and will be until my last breath, a native of that same
land!”


CHAPTER 4

The Red Sea


DURING THE DAY of January 29, the island of Ceylon disappeared below
the horizon, and at a speed of twenty miles per hour, the Nautilus
glided into the labyrinthine channels that separate the Maldive and
Laccadive Islands. It likewise hugged Kiltan Island, a shore of
madreporic origin discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1499 and one of
nineteen chief islands in the island group of the Laccadives, located
between latitude 10 degrees and 14 degrees 30’ north, and between
longitude 50 degrees 72’ and 69 degrees east.

By then we had fared 16,220 miles, or 7,500 leagues, from our starting
point in the seas of Japan.

The next day, January 30, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the
ocean, there was no more land in sight. Setting its course to the
north-northwest, the ship headed toward the Gulf of Oman, carved out
between Arabia and the Indian peninsula and providing access to the
Persian Gulf.

This was obviously a blind alley with no possible outlet. So where was
Captain Nemo taking us? I was unable to say. Which didn’t satisfy the
Canadian, who that day asked me where we were going.

“We’re going, Mr. Ned, where the captain’s fancy takes us.”

“His fancy,” the Canadian replied, “won’t take us very far. The
Persian Gulf has no outlet, and if we enter those waters, it won’t be
long before we return in our tracks.”

“All right, we’ll return, Mr. Land, and after the Persian Gulf, if the
Nautilus wants to visit the Red Sea, the Strait of Bab el Mandeb is
still there to let us in!”

“I don’t have to tell you, sir,” Ned Land replied, “that the Red Sea
is just as landlocked as the gulf, since the Isthmus of Suez hasn’t
been cut all the way through yet; and even if it was, a boat as
secretive as ours wouldn’t risk a canal intersected with locks. So the
Red Sea won’t be our way back to Europe either.”

“But I didn’t say we’d return to Europe.”

“What do you figure, then?”

“I figure that after visiting these unusual waterways of Arabia and
Egypt, the Nautilus will go back down to the Indian Ocean, perhaps
through Mozambique Channel, perhaps off the Mascarene Islands, and
then make for the Cape of Good Hope.”

“And once we’re at the Cape of Good Hope?” the Canadian asked with
typical persistence.

“Well then, we’ll enter that Atlantic Ocean with which we aren’t yet
familiar. What’s wrong, Ned my friend? Are you tired of this voyage
under the seas? Are you bored with the constantly changing sight of
these underwater wonders? Speaking for myself, I’ll be extremely
distressed to see the end of a voyage so few men will ever have a
chance to make.”

“But don’t you realize, Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied,
“that soon we’ll have been imprisoned for three whole months aboard
this Nautilus?”

“No, Ned, I didn’t realize it, I don’t want to realize it, and I don’t
keep track of every day and every hour.”

“But when will it be over?”

“In its appointed time. Meanwhile there’s nothing we can do about it,
and our discussions are futile. My gallant Ned, if you come and tell
me, ‘A chance to escape is available to us,’ then I’ll discuss it with
you. But that isn’t the case, and in all honesty, I don’t think
Captain Nemo ever ventures into European seas.”

This short dialogue reveals that in my mania for the Nautilus, I was
turning into the spitting image of its commander.

As for Ned Land, he ended our talk in his best speechifying style:
“That’s all fine and dandy. But in my humble opinion, a life in jail
is a life without joy.”

For four days until February 3, the Nautilus inspected the Gulf of
Oman at various speeds and depths. It seemed to be traveling at
random, as if hesitating over which course to follow, but it never
crossed the Tropic of Cancer.

After leaving this gulf we raised Muscat for an instant, the most
important town in the country of Oman. I marveled at its strange
appearance in the midst of the black rocks surrounding it, against
which the white of its houses and forts stood out sharply. I spotted
the rounded domes of its mosques, the elegant tips of its minarets,
and its fresh, leafy terraces. But it was only a fleeting vision, and
the Nautilus soon sank beneath the dark waves of these waterways.

Then our ship went along at a distance of six miles from the Arabic
coasts of Mahra and Hadhramaut, their undulating lines of mountains
relieved by a few ancient ruins. On February 5 we finally put into the
Gulf of Aden, a genuine funnel stuck into the neck of Bab el Mandeb
and bottling these Indian waters in the Red Sea.

On February 6 the Nautilus cruised in sight of the city of Aden,
perched on a promontory connected to the continent by a narrow
isthmus, a sort of inaccessible Gibraltar whose fortifications the
English rebuilt after capturing it in 1839. I glimpsed the octagonal
minarets of this town, which used to be one of the wealthiest, busiest
commercial centers along this coast, as the Arab historian Idrisi
tells it.

I was convinced that when Captain Nemo reached this point, he would
back out again; but I was mistaken, and much to my surprise, he did
nothing of the sort.

The next day, February 7, we entered the Strait of Bab el Mandeb,
whose name means “Gate of Tears” in the Arabic language. Twenty miles
wide, it’s only fifty-two kilometers long, and with the Nautilus
launched at full speed, clearing it was the work of barely an
hour. But I didn’t see a thing, not even Perim Island where the
British government built fortifications to strengthen Aden’s
position. There were many English and French steamers plowing this
narrow passageway, liners going from Suez to Bombay, Calcutta,
Melbourne, RΘunion Island, and Mauritius; far too much traffic for the
Nautilus to make an appearance on the surface. So it wisely stayed in
midwater.

Finally, at noon, we were plowing the waves of the Red Sea.

The Red Sea: that great lake so famous in biblical traditions, seldom
replenished by rains, fed by no important rivers, continually drained
by a high rate of evaporation, its water level dropping a meter and a
half every year! If it were fully landlocked like a lake, this odd
gulf might dry up completely; on this score it’s inferior to its
neighbors, the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea, whose levels lower only
to the point where their evaporation exactly equals the amounts of
water they take to their hearts.

This Red Sea is 2,600 kilometers long with an average width of 240. In
the days of the

Ptolemies and the Roman emperors, it was a great commercial artery for
the world, and when its isthmus has been cut through, it will
completely regain that bygone importance that the Suez railways have
already brought back in part.

I would not even attempt to understand the whim that induced Captain
Nemo to take us into this gulf. But I wholeheartedly approved of the
Nautilus’s entering it. It adopted a medium pace, sometimes staying on
the surface, sometimes diving to avoid some ship, and so I could
observe both the inside and topside of this highly unusual sea.

On February 8, as early as the first hours of daylight, Mocha appeared
before us: a town now in ruins, whose walls would collapse at the mere
sound of a cannon, and which shelters a few leafy date trees here and
there. This once-important city used to contain six public
marketplaces plus twenty-six mosques, and its walls, protected by
fourteen forts, fashioned a three-kilometer girdle around it.

Then the Nautilus drew near the beaches of Africa, where the sea is
considerably deeper. There, through the open panels and in a midwater
of crystal clarity, our ship enabled us to study wonderful bushes of
shining coral and huge chunks of rock wrapped in splendid green furs
of algae and fucus. What an indescribable sight, and what a variety of
settings and scenery where these reefs and volcanic islands leveled
off by the Libyan coast! But soon the Nautilus hugged the eastern
shore where these tree forms appeared in all their glory. This was off
the coast of Tihama, and there such zoophyte displays not only
flourished below sea level but they also fashioned picturesque
networks that unreeled as high as ten fathoms above it; the latter
were more whimsical but less colorful than the former, which kept
their bloom thanks to the moist vitality of the waters.

How many delightful hours I spent in this way at the lounge window!
How many new specimens of underwater flora and fauna I marveled at
beneath the light of our electric beacon! Mushroom-shaped fungus
coral, some slate-colored sea anemone including the species
Thalassianthus aster among others, organ-pipe coral arranged like
flutes and just begging for a puff from the god Pan, shells unique to
this sea that dwell in madreporic cavities and whose bases are twisted
into squat spirals, and finally a thousand samples of a polypary I
hadn’t observed until then: the common sponge.

First division in the polyp group, the class Spongiaria has been
created by scientists precisely for this unusual exhibit whose
usefulness is beyond dispute. The sponge is definitely not a plant, as
some naturalists still believe, but an animal of the lowest order, a
polypary inferior even to coral. Its animal nature isn’t in doubt, and
we can’t accept even the views of the ancients, who regarded it as
halfway between plant and animal. But I must say that naturalists are
not in agreement on the structural mode of sponges. For some it’s a
polypary, and for others, such as Professor Milne-Edwards, it’s a
single, solitary individual.

The class Spongiaria contains about 300 species that are encountered
in a large number of seas and even in certain streams, where they’ve
been given the name freshwater sponges. But their waters of choice are
the Red Sea and the Mediterranean near the Greek Islands or the coast
of Syria. These waters witness the reproduction and growth of soft,
delicate bath sponges whose prices run as high as 150 francs apiece:
the yellow sponge from Syria, the horn sponge from Barbary, etc. But
since I had no hope of studying these zoophytes in the seaports of the
Levant, from which we were separated by the insuperable Isthmus of
Suez, I had to be content with observing them in the waters of the Red
Sea.

So I called Conseil to my side, while at an average depth of eight to
nine meters, the Nautilus slowly skimmed every beautiful rock on the
easterly coast.

There sponges grew in every shape, globular, stalklike, leaflike,
fingerlike. With reasonable accuracy, they lived up to their nicknames
of basket sponges, chalice sponges, distaff sponges, elkhorn sponges,
lion’s paws, peacock’s tails, and Neptune’s gloves—designations
bestowed on them by fishermen, more poetically inclined than
scientists. A gelatinous, semifluid substance coated the fibrous
tissue of these sponges, and from this tissue there escaped a steady
trickle of water that, after carrying sustenance to each cell, was
being expelled by a contracting movement. This jellylike substance
disappears when the polyp dies, emitting ammonia as it rots. Finally
nothing remains but the fibers, either gelatinous or made of horn,
that constitute your household sponge, which takes on a russet hue and
is used for various tasks depending on its degree of elasticity,
permeability, or resistance to saturation.

These polyparies were sticking to rocks, shells of mollusks, and even
the stalks of water plants. They adorned the smallest crevices, some
sprawling, others standing or hanging like coral outgrowths. I told
Conseil that sponges are fished up in two ways, either by dragnet or
by hand. The latter method calls for the services of a diver, but it’s
preferable because it spares the polypary’s tissue, leaving it with a
much higher market value.

Other zoophytes swarming near the sponges consisted chiefly of a very
elegant species of jellyfish; mollusks were represented by varieties
of squid that, according to Professor Orbigny, are unique to the Red
Sea; and reptiles by virgata turtles belonging to the genus Chelonia,
which furnished our table with a dainty but wholesome dish.

As for fish, they were numerous and often remarkable. Here are the
ones that the Nautilus’s nets most frequently hauled on board: rays,
including spotted rays that were oval in shape and brick red in color,
their bodies strewn with erratic blue speckles and identifiable by
their jagged double stings, silver-backed skates, common stingrays
with stippled tails, butterfly rays that looked like huge two-meter
cloaks flapping at middepth, toothless guitarfish that were a type of
cartilaginous fish closer to the shark, trunkfish known as dromedaries
that were one and a half feet long and had humps ending in
backward-curving stings, serpentine moray eels with silver tails and
bluish backs plus brown pectorals trimmed in gray piping, a species of
butterfish called the fiatola decked out in thin gold stripes and the
three colors of the French flag, Montague blennies four decimeters
long, superb jacks handsomely embellished by seven black crosswise
streaks with blue and yellow fins plus gold and silver scales, snooks,
standard mullet with yellow heads, parrotfish, wrasse, triggerfish,
gobies, etc., plus a thousand other fish common to the oceans we had
already crossed.

On February 9 the Nautilus cruised in the widest part of the Red Sea,
measuring 190 miles straight across from Suakin on the west coast to
Qunfidha on the east coast.

At noon that day after our position fix, Captain Nemo climbed onto the
platform, where I happened to be. I vowed not to let him go below
again without at least sounding him out on his future plans. As soon
as he saw me, he came over, graciously offered me a cigar, and said to
me:

“Well, professor, are you pleased with this Red Sea? Have you seen
enough of its hidden wonders, its fish and zoophytes, its gardens of
sponges and forests of coral? Have you glimpsed the towns built on its
shores?”

“Yes, Captain Nemo,” I replied, “and the Nautilus is wonderfully
suited to this whole survey. Ah, it’s a clever boat!”

“Yes, sir, clever, daring, and invulnerable! It fears neither the Red
Sea’s dreadful storms nor its currents and reefs.”

“Indeed,” I said, “this sea is mentioned as one of the worst, and in
the days of the ancients, if I’m not mistaken, it had an abominable
reputation.”

“Thoroughly abominable, Professor Aronnax. The Greek and Latin
historians can find nothing to say in its favor, and the Greek
geographer Strabo adds that it’s especially rough during the rainy
season and the period of summer prevailing winds. The Arab Idrisi,
referring to it by the name Gulf of Colzoum, relates that ships
perished in large numbers on its sandbanks and that no one risked
navigating it by night. This, he claims, is a sea subject to fearful
hurricanes, strewn with inhospitable islands, and ‘with nothing good
to offer,’ either on its surface or in its depths. As a matter of
fact, the same views can also be found in Arrian, Agatharchides, and
Artemidorus.”

“One can easily see,” I answered, “that those historians didn’t
navigate aboard the Nautilus.”

“Indeed,” the captain replied with a smile, “and in this respect, the
moderns aren’t much farther along than the ancients. It took many
centuries to discover the mechanical power of steam! Who knows whether
we’ll see a second Nautilus within the next 100 years! Progress is
slow, Professor Aronnax.”

“It’s true,” I replied. “Your ship is a century ahead of its time,
perhaps several centuries. It would be most unfortunate if such a
secret were to die with its inventor!”

Captain Nemo did not reply. After some minutes of silence:

“We were discussing,” he said, “the views of ancient historians on the
dangers of navigating this Red Sea?”

“True,” I replied. “But weren’t their fears exaggerated?”

“Yes and no, Professor Aronnax,” answered Captain Nemo, who seemed to
know “his Red Sea” by heart. “To a modern ship, well rigged, solidly
constructed, and in control of its course thanks to obedient steam,
some conditions are no longer hazardous that offered all sorts of
dangers to the vessels of the ancients. Picture those early navigators
venturing forth in sailboats built from planks lashed together with
palm-tree ropes, caulked with powdered resin, and coated with dogfish
grease. They didn’t even have instruments for taking their bearings,
they went by guesswork in the midst of currents they barely
knew. Under such conditions, shipwrecks had to be numerous. But
nowadays steamers providing service between Suez and the South Seas
have nothing to fear from the fury of this gulf, despite the contrary
winds of its monsoons. Their captains and passengers no longer prepare
for departure with sacrifices to placate the gods, and after
returning, they don’t traipse in wreaths and gold ribbons to say
thanks at the local temple.”

“Agreed,” I said. “And steam seems to have killed off all gratitude in
seamen’s hearts. But since you seem to have made a special study of
this sea, captain, can you tell me how it got its name?”

“Many explanations exist on the subject, Professor Aronnax. Would you
like to hear the views of one chronicler in the 14th century?”

“Gladly.”

“This fanciful fellow claims the sea was given its name after the
crossing of the Israelites, when the Pharaoh perished in those waves
that came together again at Moses’ command:

To mark that miraculous sequel, the sea turned a red without equal.

Thus no other course would do but to name it for its hue.”

“An artistic explanation, Captain Nemo,” I replied, “but I’m unable to
rest content with it. So I’ll ask you for your own personal views.”

“Here they come. To my thinking, Professor Aronnax, this ‘Red Sea’
designation must be regarded as a translation of the Hebrew word
‘Edrom,’ and if the ancients gave it that name, it was because of the
unique color of its waters.”

“Until now, however, I’ve seen only clear waves, without any unique
hue.”

“Surely, but as we move ahead to the far end of this gulf, you’ll note
its odd appearance. I recall seeing the bay of El Tur completely red,
like a lake of blood.”

“And you attribute this color to the presence of microscopic algae?”

“Yes. It’s a purplish, mucilaginous substance produced by those tiny
buds known by the name trichodesmia, 40,000 of which are needed to
occupy the space of one square millimeter. Perhaps you’ll encounter
them when we reach El Tur.”

“Hence, Captain Nemo, this isn’t the first time you’ve gone through
the Red Sea aboard the Nautilus?”

“No, sir.”

“Then, since you’ve already mentioned the crossing of the Israelites
and the catastrophe that befell the Egyptians, I would ask if you’ve
ever discovered any traces under the waters of that great historic
event?”

“No, professor, and for an excellent reason.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s because that same locality where Moses crossed with all his
people is now so clogged with sand, camels can barely get their legs
wet. You can understand that my Nautilus wouldn’t have enough water
for itself.”

“And that locality is . . . ?” I asked.

“That locality lies a little above Suez in a sound that used to form a
deep estuary when the Red Sea stretched as far as the Bitter
Lakes. Now, whether or not their crossing was literally miraculous,
the Israelites did cross there in returning to the Promised Land, and
the Pharaoh’s army did perish at precisely that locality. So I think
that excavating those sands would bring to light a great many weapons
and tools of Egyptian origin.”

“Obviously,” I replied. “And for the sake of archaeology, let’s hope
that sooner or later such excavations do take place, once new towns
are settled on the isthmus after the Suez Canal has been cut through—a
canal, by the way, of little use to a ship such as the Nautilus!”

“Surely, but of great use to the world at large,” Captain Nemo
said. “The ancients well understood the usefulness to commerce of
connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, but they never dreamed
of cutting a canal between the two, and instead they picked the Nile
as their link. If we can trust tradition, it was probably Egypt’s King
Sesostris who started digging the canal needed to join the Nile with
the Red Sea. What’s certain is that in 615 B.C. King Necho II was hard
at work on a canal that was fed by Nile water and ran through the
Egyptian plains opposite Arabia. This canal could be traveled in four
days, and it was so wide, two triple-tiered galleys could pass through
it abreast. Its construction was continued by Darius the Great, son of
Hystaspes, and probably completed by King Ptolemy II. Strabo saw it
used for shipping; but the weakness of its slope between its starting
point, near Bubastis, and the Red Sea left it navigable only a few
months out of the year. This canal served commerce until the century
of Rome’s Antonine emperors; it was then abandoned and covered with
sand, subsequently reinstated by Arabia’s Caliph Omar I, and finally
filled in for good in 761 or 762 A.D. by Caliph Al-Mansur, in an
effort to prevent supplies from reaching Mohammed ibn Abdullah, who
had rebelled against him. During his Egyptian campaign, your General
Napoleon Bonaparte discovered traces of this old canal in the Suez
desert, and when the tide caught him by surprise, he wellnigh perished
just a few hours before rejoining his regiment at Hadjaroth, the very
place where Moses had pitched camp 3,300 years before him.”

“Well, captain, what the ancients hesitated to undertake, Mr. de
Lesseps is now finishing up; his joining of these two seas will
shorten the route from Cadiz to the East Indies by 9,000 kilometers,
and he’ll soon change Africa into an immense island.”

“Yes, Professor Aronnax, and you have every right to be proud of your
fellow countryman. Such a man brings a nation more honor than the
greatest commanders! Like so many others, he began with difficulties
and setbacks, but he triumphed because he has the volunteer
spirit. And it’s sad to think that this deed, which should have been
an international deed, which would have insured that any
administration went down in history, will succeed only through the
efforts of one man. So all hail to Mr. de Lesseps!”

“Yes, all hail to that great French citizen,” I replied, quite
startled by how emphatically Captain Nemo had just spoken.

“Unfortunately,” he went on, “I can’t take you through that Suez
Canal, but the day after tomorrow, you’ll be able to see the long
jetties of Port Said when we’re in the Mediterranean.”

“In the Mediterranean!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, professor. Does that amaze you?”

“What amazes me is thinking we’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, captain, although since I’ve been aboard your vessel, I should
have formed the habit of not being amazed by anything!”

“But what is it that startles you?”

“The thought of how hideously fast the Nautilus will need to go, if
it’s to double the Cape of Good Hope, circle around Africa, and lie in
the open Mediterranean by the day after tomorrow.”

“And who says it will circle Africa, professor? What’s this talk about
doubling the Cape of Good Hope?”

“But unless the Nautilus navigates on dry land and crosses over the
isthmus—”

“Or under it, Professor Aronnax.”

“Under it?”

“Surely,” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “Under that tongue of land,
nature long ago made what man today is making on its surface.”

“What! There’s a passageway?”

“Yes, an underground passageway that I’ve named the Arabian Tunnel. It
starts below Suez and leads to the Bay of Pelusium.”

“But isn’t that isthmus only composed of quicksand?”

“To a certain depth. But at merely fifty meters, one encounters a firm
foundation of rock.”

“And it’s by luck that you discovered this passageway?” I asked, more
and more startled.

“Luck plus logic, professor, and logic even more than luck.”

“Captain, I hear you, but I can’t believe my ears.”

“Oh, sir! The old saying still holds good: Aures habent et non
audient!* Not only does this passageway exist, but I’ve taken
advantage of it on several occasions. Without it, I wouldn’t have
ventured today into such a blind alley as the Red Sea.”

*Latin: “They have ears but hear not.” Ed.

“Is it indiscreet to ask how you discovered this tunnel?”

“Sir,” the captain answered me, “there can be no secrets between men
who will never leave each other.”

I ignored this innuendo and waited for Captain Nemo’s explanation.

“Professor,” he told me, “the simple logic of the naturalist led me to
discover this passageway, and I alone am familiar with it. I’d noted
that in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean there exist a number of
absolutely identical species of fish: eels, butterfish, greenfish,
bass, jewelfish, flying fish. Certain of this fact, I wondered if
there weren’t a connection between the two seas. If there were, its
underground current had to go from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean
simply because of their difference in level. So I caught a large
number of fish in the vicinity of Suez. I slipped copper rings around
their tails and tossed them back into the sea. A few months later off
the coast of Syria, I recaptured a few specimens of my fish, adorned
with their telltale rings. So this proved to me that some connection
existed between the two seas. I searched for it with my Nautilus, I
discovered it, I ventured into it; and soon, professor, you also will
have cleared my Arabic tunnel!”


CHAPTER 5

Arabian Tunnel


THE SAME DAY, I reported to Conseil and Ned Land that part of the
foregoing conversation directly concerning them. When I told them we
would be lying in Mediterranean waters within two days, Conseil
clapped his hands, but the Canadian shrugged his shoulders.

“An underwater tunnel!” he exclaimed. “A connection between two seas!
Who ever heard of such malarkey!”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “had you ever heard of the Nautilus?
No, yet here it is! So don’t shrug your shoulders so blithely, and
don’t discount something with the feeble excuse that you’ve never
heard of it.”

“We’ll soon see!” Ned Land shot back, shaking his head. “After all,
I’d like nothing better than to believe in your captain’s little
passageway, and may Heaven grant it really does take us to the
Mediterranean.”

The same evening, at latitude 21 degrees 30’ north, the Nautilus was
afloat on the surface of the sea and drawing nearer to the Arab
coast. I spotted Jidda, an important financial center for Egypt,
Syria, Turkey, and the East Indies. I could distinguish with
reasonable clarity the overall effect of its buildings, the ships made
fast along its wharves, and those bigger vessels whose draft of water
required them to drop anchor at the port’s offshore mooring. The sun,
fairly low on the horizon, struck full force on the houses in this
town, accenting their whiteness. Outside the city limits, some wood or
reed huts indicated the quarter where the bedouins lived.

Soon Jidda faded into the shadows of evening, and the Nautilus went
back beneath the mildly phosphorescent waters.

The next day, February 10, several ships appeared, running on our
opposite tack. The Nautilus resumed its underwater navigating; but at
the moment of our noon sights, the sea was deserted and the ship rose
again to its waterline.

With Ned and Conseil, I went to sit on the platform. The coast to the
east looked like a slightly blurred mass in a damp fog.

Leaning against the sides of the skiff, we were chatting of one thing
and another, when Ned Land stretched his hand toward a point in the
water, saying to me:

“See anything out there, professor?”

“No, Ned,” I replied, “but you know I don’t have your eyes.”

“Take a good look,” Ned went on. “There, ahead to starboard, almost
level with the beacon! Don’t you see a mass that seems to be moving
around?”

“Right,” I said after observing carefully, “I can make out something
like a long, blackish object on the surface of the water.”

“A second Nautilus?” Conseil said.

“No,” the Canadian replied, “unless I’m badly mistaken, that’s some
marine animal.”

“Are there whales in the Red Sea?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, my boy,” I replied, “they’re sometimes found here.”

“That’s no whale,” continued Ned Land, whose eyes never strayed from
the object they had sighted. “We’re old chums, whales and I, and I
couldn’t mistake their little ways.”

“Let’s wait and see,” Conseil said. “The Nautilus is heading that
direction, and we’ll soon know what we’re in for.”

In fact, that blackish object was soon only a mile away from us. It
looked like a huge reef stranded in midocean. What was it? I still
couldn’t make up my mind.

“Oh, it’s moving off! It’s diving!” Ned Land exclaimed. “Damnation!
What can that animal be? It doesn’t have a forked tail like baleen
whales or sperm whales, and its fins look like sawed-off limbs.”

“But in that case—” I put in.

“Good lord,” the Canadian went on, “it’s rolled over on its back, and
it’s raising its breasts in the air!”

“It’s a siren!” Conseil exclaimed. “With all due respect to master,
it’s an actual mermaid!”

That word “siren” put me back on track, and I realized that the animal
belonged to the order Sirenia: marine creatures that legends have
turned into mermaids, half woman, half fish.

“No,” I told Conseil, “that’s no mermaid, it’s an unusual creature of
which only a few specimens are left in the Red Sea. That’s a dugong.”

“Order Sirenia, group Pisciforma, subclass Monodelphia, class
Mammalia, branch Vertebrata,” Conseil replied.

And when Conseil has spoken, there’s nothing else to be said.

Meanwhile Ned Land kept staring. His eyes were gleaming with desire at
the sight of that animal. His hands were ready to hurl a harpoon. You
would have thought he was waiting for the right moment to jump
overboard and attack the creature in its own element.

“Oh, sir,” he told me in a voice trembling with excitement, “I’ve
never killed anything like that!”

His whole being was concentrated in this last word.

Just then Captain Nemo appeared on the platform. He spotted the
dugong. He understood the Canadian’s frame of mind and addressed him
directly:

“If you held a harpoon, Mr. Land, wouldn’t your hands be itching to
put it to work?”

“Positively, sir.”

“And just for one day, would it displease you to return to your
fisherman’s trade and add this cetacean to the list of those you’ve
already hunted down?”

“It wouldn’t displease me one bit.”

“All right, you can try your luck!”

“Thank you, sir,” Ned Land replied, his eyes ablaze.

“Only,” the captain went on, “I urge you to aim carefully at this
animal, in your own personal interest.”

“Is the dugong dangerous to attack?” I asked, despite the Canadian’s
shrug of the shoulders.

“Yes, sometimes,” the captain replied. “These animals have been known
to turn on their assailants and capsize their longboats. But with
Mr. Land that danger isn’t to be feared. His eye is sharp, his arm is
sure. If I recommend that he aim carefully at this dugong, it’s
because the animal is justly regarded as fine game, and I know
Mr. Land doesn’t despise a choice morsel.”

“Aha!” the Canadian put in. “This beast offers the added luxury of
being good to eat?”

“Yes, Mr. Land. Its flesh is actual red meat, highly prized, and set
aside throughout Malaysia for the tables of aristocrats. Accordingly,
this excellent animal has been hunted so bloodthirstily that, like its
manatee relatives, it has become more and more scarce.”

“In that case, captain,” Conseil said in all seriousness, “on the
offchance that this creature might be the last of its line, wouldn’t
it be advisable to spare its life, in the interests of science?”

“Maybe,” the Canadian answered, “it would be better to hunt it down,
in the interests of mealtime.”

“Then proceed, Mr. Land,” Captain Nemo replied.

Just then, as mute and emotionless as ever, seven crewmen climbed onto
the platform. One carried a harpoon and line similar to those used in
whale fishing. Its deck paneling opened, the skiff was wrenched from
its socket and launched to sea. Six rowers sat on the thwarts, and the
coxswain took the tiller. Ned, Conseil, and I found seats in the
stern.

“Aren’t you coming, captain?” I asked.

“No, sir, but I wish you happy hunting.”

The skiff pulled clear, and carried off by its six oars, it headed
swiftly toward the dugong, which by then was floating two miles from
the Nautilus.

Arriving within a few cable lengths of the cetacean, our longboat
slowed down, and the sculls dipped noiselessly into the tranquil
waters. Harpoon in hand, Ned Land went to take his stand in the
skiff’s bow. Harpoons used for hunting whales are usually attached to
a very long rope that pays out quickly when the wounded animal drags
it with him. But this rope measured no more than about ten fathoms,
and its end had simply been fastened to a small barrel that, while
floating, would indicate the dugong’s movements beneath the waters.

I stood up and could clearly observe the Canadian’s adversary. This
dugong—which also boasts the name halicore—closely resembled a
manatee. Its oblong body ended in a very long caudal fin and its
lateral fins in actual fingers. It differs from the manatee in that
its upper jaw is armed with two long, pointed teeth that form
diverging tusks on either side.

This dugong that Ned Land was preparing to attack was of colossal
dimensions, easily exceeding seven meters in length. It didn’t stir
and seemed to be sleeping on the surface of the waves, a circumstance
that should have made it easier to capture.

The skiff approached cautiously to within three fathoms of the
animal. The oars hung suspended above their rowlocks. I was
crouching. His body leaning slightly back, Ned Land brandished his
harpoon with expert hands.

Suddenly a hissing sound was audible, and the dugong
disappeared. Although the harpoon had been forcefully hurled, it
apparently had hit only water.

“Damnation!” exclaimed the furious Canadian. “I missed it!”

“No,” I said, “the animal’s wounded, there’s its blood; but your
weapon didn’t stick in its body.”

“My harpoon! Get my harpoon!” Ned Land exclaimed.

The sailors went back to their sculling, and the coxswain steered the
longboat toward the floating barrel. We fished up the harpoon, and the
skiff started off in pursuit of the animal.

The latter returned from time to time to breathe at the surface of the
sea. Its wound hadn’t weakened it because it went with tremendous
speed. Driven by energetic arms, the longboat flew on its
trail. Several times we got within a few fathoms of it, and the
Canadian hovered in readiness to strike; but then the dugong would
steal away with a sudden dive, and it proved impossible to overtake
the beast.

I’ll let you assess the degree of anger consuming our impatient Ned
Land. He hurled at the hapless animal the most potent swearwords in
the English language. For my part, I was simply distressed to see this
dugong outwit our every scheme.

We chased it unflaggingly for a full hour, and I’d begun to think it
would prove too difficult to capture, when the animal got the untimely
idea of taking revenge on us, a notion it would soon have cause to
regret. It wheeled on the skiff, to assault us in its turn.

This maneuver did not escape the Canadian.

“Watch out!” he said.

The coxswain pronounced a few words in his bizarre language, and no
doubt he alerted his men to keep on their guard.

Arriving within twenty feet of the skiff, the dugong stopped, sharply
sniffing the air with its huge nostrils, pierced not at the tip of its
muzzle but on its topside. Then it gathered itself and sprang at us.

The skiff couldn’t avoid the collision. Half overturned, it shipped a
ton or two of water that we had to bail out. But thanks to our
skillful coxswain, we were fouled on the bias rather than broadside,
so we didn’t capsize. Clinging to the stempost, Ned Land thrust his
harpoon again and again into the gigantic animal, which imbedded its
teeth in our gunwale and lifted the longboat out of the water as a
lion would lift a deer. We were thrown on top of each other, and I
have no idea how the venture would have ended had not the Canadian,
still thirsting for the beast’s blood, finally pierced it to the
heart.

I heard its teeth grind on sheet iron, and the dugong disappeared,
taking our harpoon along with it. But the barrel soon popped up on the
surface, and a few moments later the animal’s body appeared and rolled
over on its back. Our skiff rejoined it, took it in tow, and headed to
the Nautilus.

It took pulleys of great strength to hoist this dugong onto the
platform. The beast weighed 5,000 kilograms. It was carved up in sight
of the Canadian, who remained to watch every detail of the
operation. At dinner the same day, my steward served me some slices of
this flesh, skillfully dressed by the ship’s cook. I found it
excellent, even better than veal if not beef.

The next morning, February 11, the Nautilus’s pantry was enriched by
more dainty game. A covey of terns alighted on the Nautilus. They were
a species of Sterna nilotica unique to Egypt: beak black, head gray
and stippled, eyes surrounded by white dots, back, wings, and tail
grayish, belly and throat white, feet red. Also caught were a couple
dozen Nile duck, superior-tasting wildfowl whose neck and crown of the
head are white speckled with black.

By then the Nautilus had reduced speed. It moved ahead at a saunter,
so to speak. I observed that the Red Sea’s water was becoming less
salty the closer we got to Suez.

Near five o’clock in the afternoon, we sighted Cape Ras Mohammed to
the north. This cape forms the tip of Arabia Petraea, which lies
between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Aqaba.

The Nautilus entered the Strait of Jubal, which leads to the Gulf of
Suez. I could clearly make out a high mountain crowning Ras Mohammed
between the two gulfs. It was Mt. Horeb, that biblical Mt. Sinai on
whose summit Moses met God face to face, that summit the mind’s eye
always pictures as wreathed in lightning.

At six o’clock, sometimes afloat and sometimes submerged, the Nautilus
passed well out from El Tur, which sat at the far end of a bay whose
waters seemed to be dyed red, as Captain Nemo had already
mentioned. Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence
occasionally broken by the calls of pelicans and nocturnal birds, by
the sound of surf chafing against rocks, or by the distant moan of a
steamer churning the waves of the gulf with noisy blades.

From eight to nine o’clock, the Nautilus stayed a few meters beneath
the waters. According to my calculations, we had to be quite close to
Suez. Through the panels in the lounge, I spotted rocky bottoms
brightly lit by our electric rays. It seemed to me that the strait was
getting narrower and narrower.

At 9:15 when our boat returned to the surface, I climbed onto the
platform. I was quite impatient to clear Captain Nemo’s tunnel,
couldn’t sit still, and wanted to breathe the fresh night air.

Soon, in the shadows, I spotted a pale signal light glimmering a mile
away, half discolored by mist.

“A floating lighthouse,” said someone next to me.

I turned and discovered the captain.

“That’s the floating signal light of Suez,” he went on. “It won’t be
long before we reach the entrance to the tunnel.”

“It can’t be very easy to enter it.”

“No, sir. Accordingly, I’m in the habit of staying in the pilothouse
and directing maneuvers myself. And now if you’ll kindly go below,
Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus is about to sink beneath the waves,
and it will only return to the surface after we’ve cleared the Arabian
Tunnel.”

I followed Captain Nemo. The hatch closed, the ballast tanks filled
with water, and the submersible sank some ten meters down.

Just as I was about to repair to my stateroom, the captain stopped me.

“Professor,” he said to me, “would you like to go with me to the
wheelhouse?”

“I was afraid to ask,” I replied.

“Come along, then. This way, you’ll learn the full story about this
combination underwater and underground navigating.”

Captain Nemo led me to the central companionway. In midstair he opened
a door, went along the upper gangways, and arrived at the wheelhouse,
which, as you know, stands at one end of the platform.

It was a cabin measuring six feet square and closely resembling those
occupied by the helmsmen of steamboats on the Mississippi or Hudson
rivers. In the center stood an upright wheel geared to rudder cables
running to the Nautilus’s stern. Set in the cabin’s walls were four
deadlights, windows of biconvex glass that enabled the man at the helm
to see in every direction.

The cabin was dark; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to its darkness
and I saw the pilot, a muscular man whose hands rested on the pegs of
the wheel. Outside, the sea was brightly lit by the beacon shining
behind the cabin at the other end of the platform.

“Now,” Captain Nemo said, “let’s look for our passageway.”

Electric wires linked the pilothouse with the engine room, and from
this cabin the captain could simultaneously signal heading and speed
to his Nautilus. He pressed a metal button and at once the propeller
slowed down significantly.

I stared in silence at the high, sheer wall we were skirting just
then, the firm base of the sandy mountains on the coast. For an hour
we went along it in this fashion, staying only a few meters
away. Captain Nemo never took his eyes off the two concentric circles
of the compass hanging in the cabin. At a mere gesture from him, the
helmsman would instantly change the Nautilus’s heading.

Standing by the port deadlight, I spotted magnificent coral
substructures, zoophytes, algae, and crustaceans with enormous
quivering claws that stretched forth from crevices in the rock.

At 10:15 Captain Nemo himself took the helm. Dark and deep, a wide
gallery opened ahead of us. The Nautilus was brazenly swallowed
up. Strange rumblings were audible along our sides. It was the water
of the Red Sea, hurled toward the Mediterranean by the tunnel’s
slope. Our engines tried to offer resistance by churning the waves
with propeller in reverse, but the Nautilus went with the torrent, as
swift as an arrow.

Along the narrow walls of this passageway, I saw only brilliant
streaks, hard lines, fiery furrows, all scrawled by our speeding
electric light. With my hand I tried to curb the pounding of my heart.

At 10:35 Captain Nemo left the steering wheel and turned to me:

“The Mediterranean,” he told me.

In less than twenty minutes, swept along by the torrent, the Nautilus
had just cleared the Isthmus of Suez.


CHAPTER 6

The Greek Islands


AT SUNRISE the next morning, February 12, the Nautilus rose to the
surface of the waves.

I rushed onto the platform. The hazy silhouette of Pelusium was
outlined three miles to the south. A torrent had carried us from one
sea to the other. But although that tunnel was easy to descend, going
back up must have been impossible.

Near seven o’clock Ned and Conseil joined me. Those two inseparable
companions had slept serenely, utterly unaware of the Nautilus’s feat.

“Well, Mr. Naturalist,” the Canadian asked in a gently mocking tone,
“and how about that Mediterranean?”

“We’re floating on its surface, Ned my friend.”

“What!” Conseil put in. “Last night . . . ?”

“Yes, last night, in a matter of minutes, we cleared that insuperable
isthmus.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” the Canadian replied.

“And you’re in the wrong, Mr. Land,” I went on. “That flat coastline
curving southward is the coast of Egypt.”

“Tell it to the marines, sir,” answered the stubborn Canadian.

“But if master says so,” Conseil told him, “then so be it.”

“What’s more, Ned,” I said, “Captain Nemo himself did the honors in
his tunnel, and I stood beside him in the pilothouse while he steered
the Nautilus through that narrow passageway.”

“You hear, Ned?” Conseil said.

“And you, Ned, who have such good eyes,” I added, “you can spot the
jetties of Port Said stretching out to sea.”

The Canadian looked carefully.

“Correct,” he said. “You’re right, professor, and your captain’s a
superman. We’re in the Mediterranean. Fine. So now let’s have a chat
about our little doings, if you please, but in such a way that nobody
overhears.”

I could easily see what the Canadian was driving at. In any event, I
thought it best to let him have his chat, and we all three went to sit
next to the beacon, where we were less exposed to the damp spray from
the billows.

“Now, Ned, we’re all ears,” I said. “What have you to tell us?”

“What I’ve got to tell you is very simple,” the Canadian
replied. “We’re in Europe, and before Captain Nemo’s whims take us
deep into the polar seas or back to Oceania, I say we should leave
this Nautilus.”

I confess that such discussions with the Canadian always baffled me. I
didn’t want to restrict my companions’ freedom in any way, and yet I
had no desire to leave Captain Nemo. Thanks to him and his
submersible, I was finishing my undersea research by the day, and I
was rewriting my book on the great ocean depths in the midst of its
very element. Would I ever again have such an opportunity to observe
the ocean’s wonders? Absolutely not! So I couldn’t entertain this idea
of leaving the Nautilus before completing our course of inquiry.

“Ned my friend,” I said, “answer me honestly. Are you bored with this
ship? Are you sorry that fate has cast you into Captain Nemo’s hands?”

The Canadian paused for a short while before replying. Then, crossing
his arms:

“Honestly,” he said, “I’m not sorry about this voyage under the
seas. I’ll be glad to have done it, but in order to have done it, it
has to finish. That’s my feeling.”

“It will finish, Ned.”

“Where and when?”

“Where? I don’t know. When? I can’t say. Or, rather, I suppose it will
be over when these seas have nothing more to teach us. Everything that
begins in this world must inevitably come to an end.”

“I think as master does,” Conseil replied, “and it’s extremely
possible that after crossing every sea on the globe, Captain Nemo will
bid the three of us a fond farewell.”

“Bid us a fond farewell?” the Canadian exclaimed. “You mean beat us to
a fare-thee-well!”

“Let’s not exaggerate, Mr. Land,” I went on. “We have nothing to fear
from the captain, but neither do I share Conseil’s views. We’re privy
to the Nautilus’s secrets, and I don’t expect that its commander, just
to set us free, will meekly stand by while we spread those secrets all
over the world.”

“But in that case what do you expect?” the Canadian asked.

“That we’ll encounter advantageous conditions for escaping just as
readily in six months as now.”

“Great Scott!” Ned Land put in. “And where, if you please, will we be
in six months, Mr. Naturalist?”

“Perhaps here, perhaps in China. You know how quickly the Nautilus
moves. It crosses oceans like swallows cross the air or express trains
continents. It doesn’t fear heavily traveled seas. Who can say it
won’t hug the coasts of France, England, or America, where an escape
attempt could be carried out just as effectively as here.”

“Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied, “your arguments are rotten
to the core. You talk way off in the future: ‘We’ll be here, we’ll be
there!’ Me, I’m talking about right now: we are here, and we must take
advantage of it!”

I was hard pressed by Ned Land’s common sense, and I felt myself
losing ground. I no longer knew what arguments to put forward on my
behalf.

“Sir,” Ned went on, “let’s suppose that by some impossibility, Captain
Nemo offered your freedom to you this very day. Would you accept?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“And suppose he adds that this offer he’s making you today won’t ever
be repeated, then would you accept?”

I did not reply.

“And what thinks our friend Conseil?” Ned Land asked.

“Your friend Conseil,” the fine lad replied serenely, “has nothing to
say for himself. He’s a completely disinterested party on this
question. Like his master, like his comrade Ned, he’s a
bachelor. Neither wife, parents, nor children are waiting for him back
home. He’s in master’s employ, he thinks like master, he speaks like
master, and much to his regret, he can’t be counted on to form a
majority. Only two persons face each other here: master on one side,
Ned Land on the other. That said, your friend Conseil is listening,
and he’s ready to keep score.”

I couldn’t help smiling as Conseil wiped himself out of
existence. Deep down, the Canadian must have been overjoyed at not
having to contend with him.

“Then, sir,” Ned Land said, “since Conseil is no more, we’ll have this
discussion between just the two of us. I’ve talked, you’ve
listened. What’s your reply?”

It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were
distasteful to me.

“Ned my friend,” I said, “here’s my reply. You have right on your side
and my arguments can’t stand up to yours. It will never do to count on
Captain Nemo’s benevolence. The most ordinary good sense would forbid
him to set us free. On the other hand, good sense decrees that we take
advantage of our first opportunity to leave the Nautilus.”

“Fine, Professor Aronnax, that’s wisely said.”

“But one proviso,” I said, “just one. The opportunity must be the real
thing. Our first attempt to escape must succeed, because if it
misfires, we won’t get a second chance, and Captain Nemo will never
forgive us.”

“That’s also well put,” the Canadian replied. “But your proviso
applies to any escape attempt, whether it happens in two years or two
days. So this is still the question: if a promising opportunity comes
up, we have to grab it.”

“Agreed. And now, Ned, will you tell me what you mean by a promising
opportunity?”

“One that leads the Nautilus on a cloudy night within a short distance
of some European coast.”

“And you’ll try to get away by swimming?”

“Yes, if we’re close enough to shore and the ship’s afloat on the
surface. No, if we’re well out and the ship’s navigating under the
waters.”

“And in that event?”

“In that event I’ll try to get hold of the skiff. I know how to handle
it. We’ll stick ourselves inside, undo the bolts, and rise to the
surface, without the helmsman in the bow seeing a thing.”

“Fine, Ned. Stay on the lookout for such an opportunity, but don’t
forget, one slipup will finish us.”

“I won’t forget, sir.”

“And now, Ned, would you like to know my overall thinking on your
plan?”

“Gladly, Professor Aronnax.”

“Well then, I think—and I don’t mean ‘I hope’—that your promising
opportunity won’t ever arise.”

“Why not?”

“Because Captain Nemo recognizes that we haven’t given up all hope of
recovering our freedom, and he’ll keep on his guard, above all in seas
within sight of the coasts of Europe.”

“I’m of master’s opinion,” Conseil said.

“We’ll soon see,” Ned Land replied, shaking his head with a determined
expression.

“And now, Ned Land,” I added, “let’s leave it at that. Not another
word on any of this. The day you’re ready, alert us and we’re with
you. I turn it all over to you.”

That’s how we ended this conversation, which later was to have such
serious consequences. At first, I must say, events seemed to confirm
my forecasts, much to the Canadian’s despair. Did Captain Nemo view us
with distrust in these heavily traveled seas, or did he simply want to
hide from the sight of those ships of every nation that plowed the
Mediterranean? I have no idea, but usually he stayed in midwater and
well out from any coast. Either the Nautilus surfaced only enough to
let its pilothouse emerge, or it slipped away to the lower depths,
although, between the Greek Islands and Asia Minor, we didn’t find
bottom even at 2,000 meters down.

Accordingly, I became aware of the isle of Karpathos, one of the
Sporades Islands, only when Captain Nemo placed his finger over a spot
on the world map and quoted me this verse from Virgil:

Est in Carpathio Neptuni gurgite vates

Caeruleus Proteus . . .*

*Latin: “There in King Neptune’s domain by Karpathos, his spokesman /
 is azure-hued Proteus . . . ” Ed.

It was indeed that bygone abode of Proteus, the old shepherd of King
Neptune’s flocks: an island located between Rhodes and Crete, which
Greeks now call Karpathos, Italians Scarpanto. Through the lounge
window I could see only its granite bedrock.

The next day, February 14, I decided to spend a few hours studying the
fish of this island group; but for whatever reason, the panels
remained hermetically sealed. After determining the Nautilus’s
heading, I noted that it was proceeding toward the ancient island of
Crete, also called Candia. At the time I had shipped aboard the
Abraham Lincoln, this whole island was in rebellion against its
tyrannical rulers, the Ottoman Empire of Turkey. But since then I had
absolutely no idea what happened to this revolution, and Captain Nemo,
deprived of all contact with the shore, was hardly the man to keep me
informed.

So I didn’t allude to this event when, that evening, I chanced to be
alone with the captain in the lounge. Besides, he seemed silent and
preoccupied. Then, contrary to custom, he ordered that both panels in
the lounge be opened, and going from the one to the other, he
carefully observed the watery mass. For what purpose? I hadn’t a
guess, and for my part, I spent my time studying the fish that passed
before my eyes.

Among others I noted that sand goby mentioned by Aristotle and
commonly known by the name sea loach, which is encountered exclusively
in the salty waters next to the Nile Delta. Near them some
semiphosphorescent red porgy rolled by, a variety of gilthead that the
Egyptians ranked among their sacred animals, lauding them in religious
ceremonies when their arrival in the river’s waters announced the
fertile flood season. I also noticed some wrasse known as the tapiro,
three decimeters long, bony fish with transparent scales whose bluish
gray color is mixed with red spots; they’re enthusiastic eaters of
marine vegetables, which gives them an exquisite flavor; hence these
tapiro were much in demand by the epicures of ancient Rome, and their
entrails were dressed with brains of peacock, tongue of flamingo, and
testes of moray to make that divine platter that so enraptured the
Roman emperor Vitellius.

Another resident of these seas caught my attention and revived all my
memories of antiquity. This was the remora, which travels attached to
the bellies of sharks; as the ancients tell it, when these little fish
cling to the undersides of a ship, they can bring it to a halt, and by
so impeding

Mark Antony’s vessel during the Battle of Actium, one of them
facilitated the victory of Augustus Caesar. From such slender threads
hang the destinies of nations! I also observed some wonderful snappers
belonging to the order Lutianida, sacred fish for the Greeks, who
claimed they could drive off sea monsters from the waters they
frequent; their Greek name anthias means “flower,” and they live up to
it in the play of their colors and in those fleeting reflections that
turn their dorsal fins into watered silk; their hues are confined to a
gamut of reds, from the pallor of pink to the glow of ruby. I couldn’t
take my eyes off these marine wonders, when I was suddenly jolted by
an unexpected apparition.

In the midst of the waters, a man appeared, a diver carrying a little
leather bag at his belt. It was no corpse lost in the waves. It was a
living man, swimming vigorously, sometimes disappearing to breathe at
the surface, then instantly diving again.

I turned to Captain Nemo, and in an agitated voice:

“A man! A castaway!” I exclaimed. “We must rescue him at all cost!”

The captain didn’t reply but went to lean against the window.

The man drew near, and gluing his face to the panel, he stared at us.

To my deep astonishment, Captain Nemo gave him a signal. The diver
answered with his hand, immediately swam up to the surface of the sea,
and didn’t reappear.

“Don’t be alarmed,” the captain told me. “That’s Nicolas from Cape
Matapan, nicknamed ‘Il Pesce.’* He’s well known throughout the
Cyclades Islands. A bold diver! Water is his true element, and he
lives in the sea more than on shore, going constantly from one island
to another, even to Crete.”

*Italian: “The Fish.” Ed.

“You know him, captain?”

“Why not, Professor Aronnax?”

This said, Captain Nemo went to a cabinet standing near the lounge’s
left panel. Next to this cabinet I saw a chest bound with hoops of
iron, its lid bearing a copper plaque that displayed the Nautilus’s
monogram with its motto Mobilis in Mobili.

Just then, ignoring my presence, the captain opened this cabinet, a
sort of safe that contained a large number of ingots.

They were gold ingots. And they represented an enormous sum of
money. Where had this precious metal come from? How had the captain
amassed this gold, and what was he about to do with it?

I didn’t pronounce a word. I gaped. Captain Nemo took out the ingots
one by one and arranged them methodically inside the chest, filling it
to the top. At which point I estimate that it held more than 1,000
kilograms of gold, in other words, close to 5,000,000 francs.

After securely fastening the chest, Captain Nemo wrote an address on
its lid in characters that must have been modern Greek.

This done, the captain pressed a button whose wiring was in
communication with the crew’s quarters. Four men appeared and, not
without difficulty, pushed the chest out of the lounge. Then I heard
them hoist it up the iron companionway by means of pulleys.

Just then Captain Nemo turned to me:

“You were saying, professor?” he asked me.

“I wasn’t saying a thing, captain.”

“Then, sir, with your permission, I’ll bid you good evening.”

And with that, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

I reentered my stateroom, very puzzled, as you can imagine. I tried in
vain to fall asleep. I kept searching for a relationship between the
appearance of the diver and that chest filled with gold. Soon, from
certain rolling and pitching movements, I sensed that the Nautilus had
left the lower strata and was back on the surface of the water.

Then I heard the sound of footsteps on the platform. I realized that
the skiff was being detached and launched to sea. For an instant it
bumped the Nautilus’s side, then all sounds ceased.

Two hours later, the same noises, the same comings and goings, were
repeated. Hoisted on board, the longboat was readjusted into its
socket, and the Nautilus plunged back beneath the waves.

So those millions had been delivered to their address. At what spot on
the continent? Who was the recipient of Captain Nemo’s gold?

The next day I related the night’s events to Conseil and the Canadian,
events that had aroused my curiosity to a fever pitch. My companions
were as startled as I was.

“But where does he get those millions?” Ned Land asked.

To this no reply was possible. After breakfast I made my way to the
lounge and went about my work. I wrote up my notes until five o’clock
in the afternoon. Just then—was it due to some personal
indisposition?—I felt extremely hot and had to take off my jacket made
of fan mussel fabric. A perplexing circumstance because we weren’t in
the low latitudes, and besides, once the Nautilus was submerged, it
shouldn’t be subject to any rise in temperature. I looked at the
pressure gauge. It marked a depth of sixty feet, a depth beyond the
reach of atmospheric heat.

I kept on working, but the temperature rose to the point of becoming
unbearable.

“Could there be a fire on board?” I wondered.

I was about to leave the lounge when Captain Nemo entered. He
approached the thermometer, consulted it, and turned to me:

“42 degrees centigrade,” he said.

“I’ve detected as much, captain,” I replied, “and if it gets even
slightly hotter, we won’t be able to stand it.”

“Oh, professor, it won’t get any hotter unless we want it to!”

“You mean you can control this heat?”

“No, but I can back away from the fireplace producing it.”

“So it’s outside?”

“Surely. We’re cruising in a current of boiling water.”

“It can’t be!” I exclaimed.

“Look.”

The panels had opened, and I could see a completely white sea around
the Nautilus. Steaming sulfurous fumes uncoiled in the midst of waves
bubbling like water in a boiler. I leaned my hand against one of the
windows, but the heat was so great, I had to snatch it back.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Near the island of Santorini, professor,” the captain answered me,
“and right in the channel that separates the volcanic islets of Nea
Kameni and Palea Kameni. I wanted to offer you the unusual sight of an
underwater eruption.”

“I thought,” I said, “that the formation of such new islands had come
to an end.”

“Nothing ever comes to an end in these volcanic waterways,” Captain
Nemo replied, “and thanks to its underground fires, our globe is
continuously under construction in these regions. According to the
Latin historians Cassiodorus and Pliny, by the year 19 of the
Christian era, a new island, the divine Thera, had already appeared in
the very place these islets have more recently formed. Then Thera sank
under the waves, only to rise and sink once more in the year 69
A.D. From that day to this, such plutonic construction work has been
in abeyance. But on February 3, 1866, a new islet named George Island
emerged in the midst of sulfurous steam near Nea Kameni and was fused
to it on the 6th of the same month. Seven days later, on February 13,
the islet of Aphroessa appeared, leaving a ten-meter channel between
itself and Nea Kameni. I was in these seas when that phenomenon
occurred and I was able to observe its every phase. The islet of
Aphroessa was circular in shape, measuring 300 feet in diameter and
thirty feet in height. It was made of black, glassy lava mixed with
bits of feldspar. Finally, on March 10, a smaller islet called Reka
appeared next to Nea Kameni, and since then, these three islets have
fused to form one single, selfsame island.”

“What about this channel we’re in right now?” I asked.

“Here it is,” Captain Nemo replied, showing me a chart of the Greek
Islands. “You observe that I’ve entered the new islets in their
place.”

“But will this channel fill up one day?”

“Very likely, Professor Aronnax, because since 1866 eight little lava
islets have surged up in front of the port of St. Nicolas on Palea
Kameni. So it’s obvious that Nea and Palea will join in days to
come. In the middle of the Pacific, tiny infusoria build continents,
but here they’re built by volcanic phenomena. Look, sir! Look at the
construction work going on under these waves.”

I returned to the window. The Nautilus was no longer moving. The heat
had become unbearable. From the white it had recently been, the sea
was turning red, a coloration caused by the presence of iron
salts. Although the lounge was hermetically sealed, it was filling
with an intolerable stink of sulfur, and I could see scarlet flames of
such brightness, they overpowered our electric light.

I was swimming in perspiration, I was stifling, I was about to be
cooked. Yes, I felt myself cooking in actual fact!

“We can’t stay any longer in this boiling water,” I told the captain.

“No, it wouldn’t be advisable,” replied Nemo the Emotionless.

He gave an order. The Nautilus tacked about and retreated from this
furnace it couldn’t brave with impunity. A quarter of an hour later,
we were breathing fresh air on the surface of the waves.

It then occurred to me that if Ned had chosen these waterways for our
escape attempt, we wouldn’t have come out alive from this sea of fire.

The next day, February 16, we left this basin, which tallies depths of
3,000 meters between Rhodes and Alexandria, and passing well out from
Cerigo Island after doubling Cape Matapan, the Nautilus left the Greek
Islands behind.


CHAPTER 7

The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours


THE MEDITERRANEAN, your ideal blue sea: to Greeks simply “the sea,” to
Hebrews “the great sea,” to Romans mare nostrum.* Bordered by orange
trees, aloes, cactus, and maritime pine trees, perfumed with the scent
of myrtle, framed by rugged mountains, saturated with clean,
transparent air but continuously under construction by fires in the
earth, this sea is a genuine battlefield where Neptune and Pluto still
struggle for world domination. Here on these beaches and waters, says
the French historian Michelet, a man is revived by one of the most
invigorating climates in the world.

*Latin: “our sea.” Ed.

But as beautiful as it was, I could get only a quick look at this
basin whose surface area comprises 2,000,000 square kilometers. Even
Captain Nemo’s personal insights were denied me, because that
mystifying individual didn’t appear one single time during our
high-speed crossing. I estimate that the Nautilus covered a track of
some 600 leagues under the waves of this sea, and this voyage was
accomplished in just twenty-four hours times two. Departing from the
waterways of Greece on the morning of February 16, we cleared the
Strait of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.

It was obvious to me that this Mediterranean, pinned in the middle of
those shores he wanted to avoid, gave Captain Nemo no pleasure. Its
waves and breezes brought back too many memories, if not too many
regrets. Here he no longer had the ease of movement and freedom of
maneuver that the oceans allowed him, and his Nautilus felt cramped so
close to the coasts of both Africa and Europe.

Accordingly, our speed was twenty-five miles (that is, twelve
four-kilometer leagues) per hour. Needless to say, Ned Land had to
give up his escape plans, much to his distress. Swept along at the
rate of twelve to thirteen meters per second, he could hardly make use
of the skiff. Leaving the Nautilus under these conditions would have
been like jumping off a train racing at this speed, a rash move if
there ever was one. Moreover, to renew our air supply, the submersible
rose to the surface of the waves only at night, and relying solely on
compass and log, it steered by dead reckoning.

Inside the Mediterranean, then, I could catch no more of its
fast-passing scenery than a traveler might see from an express train;
in other words, I could view only the distant horizons because the
foregrounds flashed by like lightning. But Conseil and I were able to
observe those Mediterranean fish whose powerful fins kept pace for a
while in the Nautilus’s waters. We stayed on watch before the lounge
windows, and our notes enable me to reconstruct, in a few words, the
ichthyology of this sea.

Among the various fish inhabiting it, some I viewed, others I
glimpsed, and the rest I missed completely because of the Nautilus’s
speed. Kindly allow me to sort them out using this whimsical system of
classification. It will at least convey the quickness of my
observations.

In the midst of the watery mass, brightly lit by our electric beams,
there snaked past those one-meter lampreys that are common to nearly
every clime. A type of ray from the genus Oxyrhynchus, five feet wide,
had a white belly with a spotted, ash-gray back and was carried along
by the currents like a huge, wide-open shawl. Other rays passed by so
quickly I couldn’t tell if they deserved that name “eagle ray” coined
by the ancient Greeks, or those designations of “rat ray,” “bat ray,”
and “toad ray” that modern fishermen have inflicted on them. Dogfish
known as topes, twelve feet long and especially feared by divers, were
racing with each other. Looking like big bluish shadows, thresher
sharks went by, eight feet long and gifted with an extremely acute
sense of smell. Dorados from the genus Sparus, some measuring up to
thirteen decimeters, appeared in silver and azure costumes encircled
with ribbons, which contrasted with the dark color of their fins; fish
sacred to the goddess Venus, their eyes set in brows of gold; a
valuable species that patronizes all waters fresh or salt, equally at
home in rivers, lakes, and oceans, living in every clime, tolerating
any temperature, their line dating back to prehistoric times on this
earth yet preserving all its beauty from those far-off
days. Magnificent sturgeons, nine to ten meters long and extremely
fast, banged their powerful tails against the glass of our panels,
showing bluish backs with small brown spots; they resemble sharks,
without equaling their strength, and are encountered in every sea; in
the spring they delight in swimming up the great rivers, fighting the
currents of the Volga, Danube, Po, Rhine, Loire, and Oder, while
feeding on herring, mackerel, salmon, and codfish; although they
belong to the class of cartilaginous fish, they rate as a delicacy;
they’re eaten fresh, dried, marinated, or salt-preserved, and in olden
times they were borne in triumph to the table of the Roman epicure
Lucullus.

But whenever the Nautilus drew near the surface, those denizens of the
Mediterranean I could observe most productively belonged to the
sixty-third genus of bony fish. These were tuna from the genus
Scomber, blue-black on top, silver on the belly armor, their dorsal
stripes giving off a golden gleam. They are said to follow ships in
search of refreshing shade from the hot tropical sun, and they did
just that with the Nautilus, as they had once done with the vessels of
the Count de La PΘrouse. For long hours they competed in speed with
our submersible. I couldn’t stop marveling at these animals so
perfectly cut out for racing, their heads small, their bodies sleek,
spindle-shaped, and in some cases over three meters long, their
pectoral fins gifted with remarkable strength, their caudal fins
forked. Like certain flocks of birds, whose speed they equal, these
tuna swim in triangle formation, which prompted the ancients to say
they’d boned up on geometry and military strategy. And yet they can’t
escape the Provenτal fishermen, who prize them as highly as did the
ancient inhabitants of Turkey and Italy; and these valuable animals,
as oblivious as if they were deaf and blind, leap right into the
Marseilles tuna nets and perish by the thousands.

Just for the record, I’ll mention those Mediterranean fish that
Conseil and I barely glimpsed. There were whitish eels of the species
Gymnotus fasciatus that passed like elusive wisps of steam, conger
eels three to four meters long that were tricked out in green, blue,
and yellow, three-foot hake with a liver that makes a dainty morsel,
wormfish drifting like thin seaweed, sea robins that poets call
lyrefish and seamen pipers and whose snouts have two jagged triangular
plates shaped like old Homer’s lyre, swallowfish swimming as fast as
the bird they’re named after, redheaded groupers whose dorsal fins are
trimmed with filaments, some shad (spotted with black, gray, brown,
blue, yellow, and green) that actually respond to tinkling handbells,
splendid diamond-shaped turbot that were like aquatic pheasants with
yellowish fins stippled in brown and the left topside mostly marbled
in brown and yellow, finally schools of wonderful red mullet, real
oceanic birds of paradise that ancient Romans bought for as much as
10,000 sesterces apiece, and which they killed at the table, so they
could heartlessly watch it change color from cinnabar red when alive
to pallid white when dead.

And as for other fish common to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, I was
unable to observe miralets, triggerfish, puffers, seahorses,
jewelfish, trumpetfish, blennies, gray mullet, wrasse, smelt, flying
fish, anchovies, sea bream, porgies, garfish, or any of the chief
representatives of the order Pleuronecta, such as sole, flounder,
plaice, dab, and brill, simply because of the dizzying speed with
which the Nautilus hustled through these opulent waters.

As for marine mammals, on passing by the mouth of the Adriatic Sea, I
thought I recognized two or three sperm whales equipped with the
single dorsal fin denoting the genus Physeter, some pilot whales from
the genus Globicephalus exclusive to the Mediterranean, the forepart
of the head striped with small distinct lines, and also a dozen seals
with white bellies and black coats, known by the name monk seals and
just as solemn as if they were three-meter Dominicans.

For his part, Conseil thought he spotted a turtle six feet wide and
adorned with three protruding ridges that ran lengthwise. I was sorry
to miss this reptile, because from Conseil’s description, I believe I
recognized the leatherback turtle, a pretty rare species. For my part,
I noted only some loggerhead turtles with long carapaces.

As for zoophytes, for a few moments I was able to marvel at a
wonderful, orange-hued hydra from the genus Galeolaria that clung to
the glass of our port panel; it consisted of a long, lean filament
that spread out into countless branches and ended in the most delicate
lace ever spun by the followers of Arachne. Unfortunately I couldn’t
fish up this wonderful specimen, and surely no other Mediterranean
zoophytes would have been offered to my gaze, if, on the evening of
the 16th, the Nautilus hadn’t slowed down in an odd fashion. This was
the situation.

By then we were passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia. In
the cramped space between Cape Bon and the Strait of Messina, the sea
bottom rises almost all at once. It forms an actual ridge with only
seventeen meters of water remaining above it, while the depth on
either side is 170 meters. Consequently, the Nautilus had to maneuver
with caution so as not to bump into this underwater barrier.

I showed Conseil the position of this long reef on our chart of the
Mediterranean.

“But with all due respect to master,” Conseil ventured to observe,
“it’s like an actual isthmus connecting Europe to Africa.”

“Yes, my boy,” I replied, “it cuts across the whole Strait of Sicily,
and Smith’s soundings prove that in the past, these two continents
were genuinely connected between Cape Boeo and Cape Farina.”

“I can easily believe it,” Conseil said.

“I might add,” I went on, “that there’s a similar barrier between
Gibraltar and Ceuta, and in prehistoric times it closed off the
Mediterranean completely.”

“Gracious!” Conseil put in. “Suppose one day some volcanic upheaval
raises these two barriers back above the waves!”

“That’s most unlikely, Conseil.”

“If master will allow me to finish, I mean that if this phenomenon
occurs, it might prove distressing to Mr. de Lesseps, who has gone to
such pains to cut through his isthmus!”

“Agreed, but I repeat, Conseil: such a phenomenon won’t occur. The
intensity of these underground forces continues to diminish. Volcanoes
were quite numerous in the world’s early days, but they’re going
extinct one by one; the heat inside the earth is growing weaker, the
temperature in the globe’s lower strata is cooling appreciably every
century, and to our globe’s detriment, because its heat is its life.”

“But the sun—”

“The sun isn’t enough, Conseil. Can it restore heat to a corpse?”

“Not that I’ve heard.”

“Well, my friend, someday the earth will be just such a cold
corpse. Like the moon, which long ago lost its vital heat, our globe
will become lifeless and unlivable.”

“In how many centuries?” Conseil asked.

“In hundreds of thousands of years, my boy.”

“Then we have ample time to finish our voyage,” Conseil replied, “if
Ned Land doesn’t mess things up!”

Thus reassured, Conseil went back to studying the shallows that the
Nautilus was skimming at moderate speed.

On the rocky, volcanic seafloor, there bloomed quite a collection of
moving flora: sponges, sea cucumbers, jellyfish called sea
gooseberries that were adorned with reddish tendrils and gave off a
subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Beroe that are commonly
known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the
whole solar spectrum, free-swimming crinoids one meter wide that
reddened the waters with their crimson hue, treelike basket stars of
the greatest beauty, sea fans from the genus Pavonacea with long
stems, numerous edible sea urchins of various species, plus green sea
anemones with a grayish trunk and a brown disk lost beneath the
olive-colored tresses of their tentacles.

Conseil kept especially busy observing mollusks and articulates, and
although his catalog is a little dry, I wouldn’t want to wrong the
gallant lad by leaving out his personal observations.

From the branch Mollusca, he mentions numerous comb-shaped scallops,
hooflike spiny oysters piled on top of each other, triangular coquina,
three-pronged glass snails with yellow fins and transparent shells,
orange snails from the genus Pleurobranchus that looked like eggs
spotted or speckled with greenish dots, members of the genus Aplysia
also known by the name sea hares, other sea hares from the genus
Dolabella, plump paper-bubble shells, umbrella shells exclusive to the
Mediterranean, abalone whose shell produces a mother-of-pearl much in
demand, pilgrim scallops, saddle shells that diners in the French
province of Languedoc are said to like better than oysters, some of
those cockleshells so dear to the citizens of Marseilles, fat white
venus shells that are among the clams so abundant off the coasts of
North America and eaten in such quantities by New Yorkers, variously
colored comb shells with gill covers, burrowing date mussels with a
peppery flavor I relish, furrowed heart cockles whose shells have
riblike ridges on their arching summits, triton shells pocked with
scarlet bumps, carniaira snails with backward-curving tips that make
them resemble flimsy gondolas, crowned ferola snails, atlanta snails
with spiral shells, gray nudibranchs from the genus Tethys that were
spotted with white and covered by fringed mantles, nudibranchs from
the suborder Eolidea that looked like small slugs, sea butterflies
crawling on their backs, seashells from the genus Auricula including
the oval-shaped Auricula myosotis, tan wentletrap snails, common
periwinkles, violet snails, cineraira snails, rock borers, ear shells,
cabochon snails, pandora shells, etc.

As for the articulates, in his notes Conseil has very appropriately
divided them into six classes, three of which belong to the marine
world. These classes are the Crustacea, Cirripedia, and Annelida.

Crustaceans are subdivided into nine orders, and the first of these
consists of the decapods, in other words, animals whose head and
thorax are usually fused, whose cheek-and-mouth mechanism is made up
of several pairs of appendages, and whose thorax has four, five, or
six pairs of walking legs. Conseil used the methods of our mentor
Professor Milne-Edwards, who puts the decapods in three divisions:
Brachyura, Macrura, and Anomura. These names may look a tad fierce,
but they’re accurate and appropriate. Among the Brachyura, Conseil
mentions some amanthia crabs whose fronts were armed with two big
diverging tips, those inachus scorpions that—lord knows why—symbolized
wisdom to the ancient Greeks, spider crabs of the massena and
spinimane varieties that had probably gone astray in these shallows
because they usually live in the lower depths, xanthid crabs, pilumna
crabs, rhomboid crabs, granular box crabs (easy on the digestion, as
Conseil ventured to observe), toothless masked crabs, ebalia crabs,
cymopolia crabs, woolly-handed crabs, etc. Among the Macrura (which
are subdivided into five families: hardshells, burrowers, crayfish,
prawns, and ghost crabs) Conseil mentions some common spiny lobsters
whose females supply a meat highly prized, slipper lobsters or common
shrimp, waterside gebia shrimp, and all sorts of edible species, but
he says nothing of the crayfish subdivision that includes the true
lobster, because spiny lobsters are the only type in the
Mediterranean. Finally, among the Anomura, he saw common drocina crabs
dwelling inside whatever abandoned seashells they could take over,
homola crabs with spiny fronts, hermit crabs, hairy porcelain crabs,
etc.

There Conseil’s work came to a halt. He didn’t have time to finish off
the class Crustacea through an examination of its stomatopods,
amphipods, homopods, isopods, trilobites, branchiopods, ostracods, and
entomostraceans. And in order to complete his study of marine
articulates, he needed to mention the class Cirripedia, which contains
water fleas and carp lice, plus the class Annelida, which he would
have divided without fail into tubifex worms and dorsibranchian
worms. But having gone past the shallows of the Strait of Sicily, the
Nautilus resumed its usual deep-water speed. From then on, no more
mollusks, no more zoophytes, no more articulates. Just a few large
fish sweeping by like shadows.

During the night of February 16-17, we entered the second
Mediterranean basin, whose maximum depth we found at 3,000 meters. The
Nautilus, driven downward by its propeller and slanting fins,
descended to the lowest strata of this sea.

There, in place of natural wonders, the watery mass offered some
thrilling and dreadful scenes to my eyes. In essence, we were then
crossing that part of the whole Mediterranean so fertile in
casualties. From the coast of Algiers to the beaches of Provence, how
many ships have wrecked, how many vessels have vanished! Compared to
the vast liquid plains of the Pacific, the Mediterranean is a mere
lake, but it’s an unpredictable lake with fickle waves, today kindly
and affectionate to those frail single-masters drifting between a
double ultramarine of sky and water, tomorrow bad-tempered and
turbulent, agitated by the winds, demolishing the strongest ships
beneath sudden waves that smash down with a headlong wallop.

So, in our swift cruise through these deep strata, how many vessels I
saw lying on the seafloor, some already caked with coral, others clad
only in a layer of rust, plus anchors, cannons, shells, iron fittings,
propeller blades, parts of engines, cracked cylinders, staved-in
boilers, then hulls floating in midwater, here upright, there
overturned.

Some of these wrecked ships had perished in collisions, others from
hitting granite reefs. I saw a few that had sunk straight down, their
masting still upright, their rigging stiffened by the water. They
looked like they were at anchor by some immense, open, offshore
mooring where they were waiting for their departure time. When the
Nautilus passed between them, covering them with sheets of
electricity, they seemed ready to salute us with their colors and send
us their serial numbers! But no, nothing but silence and death filled
this field of catastrophes!

I observed that these Mediterranean depths became more and more
cluttered with such gruesome wreckage as the Nautilus drew nearer to
the Strait of Gibraltar. By then the shores of Africa and Europe were
converging, and in this narrow space collisions were
commonplace. There I saw numerous iron undersides, the phantasmagoric
ruins of steamers, some lying down, others rearing up like fearsome
animals. One of these boats made a dreadful first impression: sides
torn open, funnel bent, paddle wheels stripped to the mountings,
rudder separated from the sternpost and still hanging from an iron
chain, the board on its stern eaten away by marine salts! How many
lives were dashed in this shipwreck! How many victims were swept under
the waves! Had some sailor on board lived to tell the story of this
dreadful disaster, or do the waves still keep this casualty a secret?
It occurred to me, lord knows why, that this boat buried under the sea
might have been the Atlas, lost with all hands some twenty years ago
and never heard from again! Oh, what a gruesome tale these
Mediterranean depths could tell, this huge boneyard where so much
wealth has been lost, where so many victims have met their deaths!

Meanwhile, briskly unconcerned, the Nautilus ran at full propeller
through the midst of these ruins. On February 18, near three o’clock
in the morning, it hove before the entrance to the Strait of
Gibraltar.

There are two currents here: an upper current, long known to exist,
that carries the ocean’s waters into the Mediterranean basin; then a
lower countercurrent, the only present-day proof of its existence
being logic. In essence, the Mediterranean receives a continual influx
of water not only from the Atlantic but from rivers emptying into it;
since local evaporation isn’t enough to restore the balance, the total
amount of added water should make this sea’s level higher every
year. Yet this isn’t the case, and we’re naturally forced to believe
in the existence of some lower current that carries the
Mediterranean’s surplus through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the
Atlantic basin.

And so it turned out. The Nautilus took full advantage of this
countercurrent. It advanced swiftly through this narrow
passageway. For an instant I could glimpse the wonderful ruins of the
Temple of Hercules, buried undersea, as Pliny and Avianus have
mentioned, together with the flat island they stand on; and a few
minutes later, we were floating on the waves of the Atlantic.


CHAPTER 8

The Bay of Vigo


THE ATLANTIC! A vast expanse of water whose surface area is 25,000,000
square miles, with a length of 9,000 miles and an average width of
2,700. A major sea nearly unknown to the ancients, except perhaps the
Carthaginians, those Dutchmen of antiquity who went along the west
coasts of Europe and Africa on their commercial junkets! An ocean
whose parallel winding shores form an immense perimeter fed by the
world’s greatest rivers: the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Amazon, Plata,
Orinoco, Niger, Senegal, Elbe, Loire, and Rhine, which bring it waters
from the most civilized countries as well as the most undeveloped
areas! A magnificent plain of waves plowed continuously by ships of
every nation, shaded by every flag in the world, and ending in those
two dreadful headlands so feared by navigators, Cape Horn and the Cape
of Tempests!

The Nautilus broke these waters with the edge of its spur after doing
nearly 10,000 leagues in three and a half months, a track longer than
a great circle of the earth. Where were we heading now, and what did
the future have in store for us?

Emerging from the Strait of Gibraltar, the Nautilus took to the high
seas. It returned to the surface of the waves, so our daily strolls on
the platform were restored to us.

I climbed onto it instantly, Ned Land and Conseil along with
me. Twelve miles away, Cape St. Vincent was hazily visible, the
southwestern tip of the Hispanic peninsula. The wind was blowing a
pretty strong gust from the south. The sea was swelling and
surging. Its waves made the Nautilus roll and jerk violently. It was
nearly impossible to stand up on the platform, which was continuously
buffeted by this enormously heavy sea. After inhaling a few breaths of
air, we went below once more.

I repaired to my stateroom. Conseil returned to his cabin; but the
Canadian, looking rather worried, followed me. Our quick trip through
the Mediterranean hadn’t allowed him to put his plans into execution,
and he could barely conceal his disappointment.

After the door to my stateroom was closed, he sat and stared at me
silently.

“Ned my friend,” I told him, “I know how you feel, but you mustn’t
blame yourself. Given the way the Nautilus was navigating, it would
have been sheer insanity to think of escaping!”

Ned Land didn’t reply. His pursed lips and frowning brow indicated
that he was in the grip of his monomania.

“Look here,” I went on, “as yet there’s no cause for despair. We’re
going up the coast of Portugal. France and England aren’t far off, and
there we’ll easily find refuge. Oh, I grant you, if the Nautilus had
emerged from the Strait of Gibraltar and made for that cape in the
south, if it were taking us toward those regions that have no
continents, then I’d share your alarm. But we now know that Captain
Nemo doesn’t avoid the seas of civilization, and in a few days I think
we can safely take action.”

Ned Land stared at me still more intently and finally unpursed his
lips:

“We’ll do it this evening,” he said.

I straightened suddenly. I admit that I was less than ready for this
announcement. I wanted to reply to the Canadian, but words failed me.

“We agreed to wait for the right circumstances,” Ned Land went
on. “Now we’ve got those circumstances. This evening we’ll be just a
few miles off the coast of Spain. It’ll be cloudy tonight. The wind’s
blowing toward shore. You gave me your promise, Professor Aronnax, and
I’m counting on you.”

Since I didn’t say anything, the Canadian stood up and approached me:

“We’ll do it this evening at nine o’clock,” he said. “I’ve alerted
Conseil. By that time Captain Nemo will be locked in his room and
probably in bed. Neither the mechanics or the crewmen will be able to
see us. Conseil and I will go to the central companionway. As for you,
Professor Aronnax, you’ll stay in the library two steps away and wait
for my signal. The oars, mast, and sail are in the skiff. I’ve even
managed to stow some provisions inside. I’ve gotten hold of a monkey
wrench to unscrew the nuts bolting the skiff to the Nautilus’s
hull. So everything’s ready. I’ll see you this evening.”

“The sea is rough,” I said.

“Admitted,” the Canadian replied, “but we’ve got to risk it. Freedom
is worth paying for. Besides, the longboat’s solidly built, and a few
miles with the wind behind us is no big deal. By tomorrow, who knows
if this ship won’t be 100 leagues out to sea? If circumstances are in
our favor, between ten and eleven this evening we’ll be landing on
some piece of solid ground, or we’ll be dead. So we’re in God’s hands,
and I’ll see you this evening!”

This said, the Canadian withdrew, leaving me close to dumbfounded. I
had imagined that if it came to this, I would have time to think about
it, to talk it over. My stubborn companion hadn’t granted me this
courtesy. But after all, what would I have said to him? Ned Land was
right a hundred times over. These were near-ideal circumstances, and
he was taking full advantage of them. In my selfish personal
interests, could I go back on my word and be responsible for ruining
the future lives of my companions? Tomorrow, might not Captain Nemo
take us far away from any shore?

Just then a fairly loud hissing told me that the ballast tanks were
filling, and the Nautilus sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic.

I stayed in my stateroom. I wanted to avoid the captain, to hide from
his eyes the agitation overwhelming me. What an agonizing day I spent,
torn between my desire to regain my free will and my regret at
abandoning this marvelous Nautilus, leaving my underwater research
incomplete! How could I relinquish this ocean—“my own Atlantic,” as I
liked to call it—without observing its lower strata, without wresting
from it the kinds of secrets that had been revealed to me by the seas
of the East Indies and the Pacific! I was putting down my novel half
read, I was waking up as my dream neared its climax! How painfully the
hours passed, as I sometimes envisioned myself safe on shore with my
companions, or, despite my better judgment, as I sometimes wished that
some unforeseen circumstances would prevent Ned Land from carrying out
his plans.

Twice I went to the lounge. I wanted to consult the compass. I wanted
to see if the Nautilus’s heading was actually taking us closer to the
coast or spiriting us farther away. But no. The Nautilus was still in
Portuguese waters. Heading north, it was cruising along the ocean’s
beaches.

So I had to resign myself to my fate and get ready to escape. My
baggage wasn’t heavy. My notes, nothing more.

As for Captain Nemo, I wondered what he would make of our escaping,
what concern or perhaps what distress it might cause him, and what he
would do in the twofold event of our attempt either failing or being
found out! Certainly I had no complaints to register with him, on the
contrary. Never was hospitality more wholehearted than his. Yet in
leaving him I couldn’t be accused of ingratitude. No solemn promises
bound us to him. In order to keep us captive, he had counted only on
the force of circumstances and not on our word of honor. But his
avowed intention to imprison us forever on his ship justified our
every effort.

I hadn’t seen the captain since our visit to the island of
Santorini. Would fate bring me into his presence before our departure?
I both desired and dreaded it. I listened for footsteps in the
stateroom adjoining mine. Not a sound reached my ear. His stateroom
had to be deserted.

Then I began to wonder if this eccentric individual was even on
board. Since that night when the skiff had left the Nautilus on some
mysterious mission, my ideas about him had subtly changed. In spite of
everything, I thought that Captain Nemo must have kept up some type of
relationship with the shore. Did he himself never leave the Nautilus?
Whole weeks had often gone by without my encountering him. What was he
doing all the while? During all those times I’d thought he was
convalescing in the grip of some misanthropic fit, was he instead far
away from the ship, involved in some secret activity whose nature
still eluded me?

All these ideas and a thousand others assaulted me at the same
time. In these strange circumstances the scope for conjecture was
unlimited. I felt an unbearable queasiness. This day of waiting seemed
endless. The hours struck too slowly to keep up with my impatience.

As usual, dinner was served me in my stateroom. Full of anxiety, I ate
little. I left the table at seven o’clock. 120 minutes—I was keeping
track of them—still separated me from the moment I was to rejoin Ned
Land. My agitation increased. My pulse was throbbing violently. I
couldn’t stand still. I walked up and down, hoping to calm my troubled
mind with movement. The possibility of perishing in our reckless
undertaking was the least of my worries; my heart was pounding at the
thought that our plans might be discovered before we had left the
Nautilus, at the thought of being hauled in front of Captain Nemo and
finding him angered, or worse, saddened by my deserting him.

I wanted to see the lounge one last time. I went down the gangways and
arrived at the museum where I had spent so many pleasant and
productive hours. I stared at all its wealth, all its treasures, like
a man on the eve of his eternal exile, a man departing to return no
more. For so many days now, these natural wonders and artistic
masterworks had been central to my life, and I was about to leave them
behind forever. I wanted to plunge my eyes through the lounge window
and into these Atlantic waters; but the panels were hermetically
sealed, and a mantle of sheet iron separated me from this ocean with
which I was still unfamiliar.

Crossing through the lounge, I arrived at the door, contrived in one
of the canted corners, that opened into the captain’s stateroom. Much
to my astonishment, this door was ajar. I instinctively recoiled. If
Captain Nemo was in his stateroom, he might see me. But, not hearing
any sounds, I approached. The stateroom was deserted. I pushed the
door open. I took a few steps inside. Still the same austere, monastic
appearance.

Just then my eye was caught by some etchings hanging on the wall,
which I hadn’t noticed during my first visit. They were portraits of
great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion
to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words
had been Finis Poloniae;* Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the
reincarnation of Sparta’s King Leonidas; Daniel O’Connell, Ireland’s
defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele
Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a
believer in slavery; and finally, that martyr for the redemption of
the black race, John Brown, hanging from his gallows as Victor Hugo’s
pencil has so terrifyingly depicted.

*Latin: “Save Poland’s borders.” Ed.

What was the bond between these heroic souls and the soul of Captain
Nemo? From this collection of portraits could I finally unravel the
mystery of his existence? Was he a fighter for oppressed peoples, a
liberator of enslaved races? Had he figured in the recent political or
social upheavals of this century? Was he a hero of that dreadful civil
war in America, a war lamentable yet forever glorious . . . ?

Suddenly the clock struck eight. The first stroke of its hammer on the
chime snapped me out of my musings. I shuddered as if some invisible
eye had plunged into my innermost thoughts, and I rushed outside the
stateroom.

There my eyes fell on the compass. Our heading was still
northerly. The log indicated a moderate speed, the pressure gauge a
depth of about sixty feet. So circumstances were in favor of the
Canadian’s plans.

I stayed in my stateroom. I dressed warmly: fishing boots, otter cap,
coat of fan-mussel fabric lined with sealskin. I was ready. I was
waiting. Only the propeller’s vibrations disturbed the deep silence
reigning on board. I cocked an ear and listened. Would a sudden
outburst of voices tell me that Ned Land’s escape plans had just been
detected? A ghastly uneasiness stole through me. I tried in vain to
recover my composure.

A few minutes before nine o’clock, I glued my ear to the captain’s
door. Not a sound. I left my stateroom and returned to the lounge,
which was deserted and plunged in near darkness.

I opened the door leading to the library. The same inadequate light,
the same solitude. I went to man my post near the door opening into
the well of the central companionway. I waited for Ned Land’s signal.

At this point the propeller’s vibrations slowed down appreciably, then
they died out altogether. Why was the Nautilus stopping? Whether this
layover would help or hinder Ned Land’s schemes I couldn’t have said.

The silence was further disturbed only by the pounding of my heart.

Suddenly I felt a mild jolt. I realized the Nautilus had come to rest
on the ocean floor. My alarm increased. The Canadian’s signal hadn’t
reached me. I longed to rejoin Ned Land and urge him to postpone his
attempt. I sensed that we were no longer navigating under normal
conditions.

Just then the door to the main lounge opened and Captain Nemo
appeared. He saw me, and without further preamble:

“Ah, professor,” he said in an affable tone, “I’ve been looking for
you. Do you know your Spanish history?”

Even if he knew it by heart, a man in my disturbed, befuddled
condition couldn’t have quoted a syllable of his own country’s
history.

“Well?” Captain Nemo went on. “Did you hear my question? Do you know
the history of Spain?”

“Very little of it,” I replied.

“The most learned men,” the captain said, “still have much to
learn. Have a seat,” he added, “and I’ll tell you about an unusual
episode in this body of history.”

The captain stretched out on a couch, and I mechanically took a seat
near him, but half in the shadows.

“Professor,” he said, “listen carefully. This piece of history
concerns you in one definite respect, because it will answer a
question you’ve no doubt been unable to resolve.”

“I’m listening, captain,” I said, not knowing what my partner in this
dialogue was driving at, and wondering if this incident related to our
escape plans.

“Professor,” Captain Nemo went on, “if you’re amenable, we’ll go back
in time to 1702. You’re aware of the fact that in those days your King
Louis XIV thought an imperial gesture would suffice to humble the
Pyrenees in the dust, so he inflicted his grandson, the Duke of Anjou,
on the Spaniards. Reigning more or less poorly under the name King
Philip V, this aristocrat had to deal with mighty opponents abroad.

“In essence, the year before, the royal houses of Holland, Austria,
and England had signed a treaty of alliance at The Hague, aiming to
wrest the Spanish crown from King Philip V and to place it on the head
of an archduke whom they prematurely dubbed King Charles III.

“Spain had to withstand these allies. But the country had practically
no army or navy. Yet it wasn’t short of money, provided that its
galleons, laden with gold and silver from America, could enter its
ports. Now then, late in 1702 Spain was expecting a rich convoy, which
France ventured to escort with a fleet of twenty-three vessels under
the command of Admiral de Chateau-Renault, because by that time the
allied navies were roving the Atlantic.

“This convoy was supposed to put into Cadiz, but after learning that
the English fleet lay across those waterways, the admiral decided to
make for a French port.

“The Spanish commanders in the convoy objected to this decision. They
wanted to be taken to a Spanish port, if not to Cadiz, then to the Bay
of Vigo, located on Spain’s northwest coast and not blockaded.

“Admiral de Chateau-Renault was so indecisive as to obey this
directive, and the galleons entered the Bay of Vigo.

“Unfortunately this bay forms an open, offshore mooring that’s
impossible to defend. So it was essential to hurry and empty the
galleons before the allied fleets arrived, and there would have been
ample time for this unloading, if a wretched question of trade
agreements hadn’t suddenly come up.

“Are you clear on the chain of events?” Captain Nemo asked me.

“Perfectly clear,” I said, not yet knowing why I was being given this
history lesson.

“Then I’ll continue. Here’s what came to pass. The tradesmen of Cadiz
had negotiated a charter whereby they were to receive all merchandise
coming from the West Indies. Now then, unloading the ingots from those
galleons at the port of Vigo would have been a violation of their
rights. So they lodged a complaint in Madrid, and they obtained an
order from the indecisive King Philip V: without unloading, the convoy
would stay in custody at the offshore mooring of Vigo until the enemy
fleets had retreated.

“Now then, just as this decision was being handed down, English
vessels arrived in the Bay of Vigo on October 22, 1702. Despite his
inferior forces, Admiral de Chateau-Renault fought courageously. But
when he saw that the convoy’s wealth was about to fall into enemy
hands, he burned and scuttled the galleons, which went to the bottom
with their immense treasures.”

Captain Nemo stopped. I admit it: I still couldn’t see how this piece
of history concerned me.

“Well?” I asked him.

“Well, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo answered me, “we’re actually
in that Bay of Vigo, and all that’s left is for you to probe the
mysteries of the place.”

The captain stood up and invited me to follow him. I’d had time to
collect myself. I did so. The lounge was dark, but the sea’s waves
sparkled through the transparent windows. I stared.

Around the Nautilus for a half-mile radius, the waters seemed
saturated with electric light. The sandy bottom was clear and
bright. Dressed in diving suits, crewmen were busy clearing away
half-rotted barrels and disemboweled trunks in the midst of the dingy
hulks of ships. Out of these trunks and kegs spilled ingots of gold
and silver, cascades of jewels, pieces of eight. The sand was heaped
with them. Then, laden with these valuable spoils, the men returned to
the Nautilus, dropped off their burdens inside, and went to resume
this inexhaustible fishing for silver and gold.

I understood. This was the setting of that battle on October 22,
1702. Here, in this very place, those galleons carrying treasure to
the Spanish government had gone to the bottom. Here, whenever he
needed, Captain Nemo came to withdraw these millions to ballast his
Nautilus. It was for him, for him alone, that America had yielded up
its precious metals. He was the direct, sole heir to these treasures
wrested from the Incas and those peoples conquered by Hernando Cortez!

“Did you know, professor,” he asked me with a smile, “that the sea
contained such wealth?”

“I know it’s estimated,” I replied, “that there are 2,000,000 metric
tons of silver held in suspension in seawater.”

“Surely, but in extracting that silver, your expenses would outweigh
your profits. Here, by contrast, I have only to pick up what other men
have lost, and not only in this Bay of Vigo but at a thousand other
sites where ships have gone down, whose positions are marked on my
underwater chart. Do you understand now that I’m rich to the tune of
billions?”

“I understand, captain. Nevertheless, allow me to inform you that by
harvesting this very Bay of Vigo, you’re simply forestalling the
efforts of a rival organization.”

“What organization?”

“A company chartered by the Spanish government to search for these
sunken galleons. The company’s investors were lured by the bait of
enormous gains, because this scuttled treasure is estimated to be
worth 500,000,000 francs.”

“It was 500,000,000 francs,” Captain Nemo replied, “but no more!”

“Right,” I said. “Hence a timely warning to those investors would be
an act of charity. Yet who knows if it would be well received? Usually
what gamblers regret the most isn’t the loss of their money so much as
the loss of their insane hopes. But ultimately I feel less sorry for
them than for the thousands of unfortunate people who would have
benefited from a fair distribution of this wealth, whereas now it will
be of no help to them!”

No sooner had I voiced this regret than I felt it must have wounded
Captain Nemo.

“No help!” he replied with growing animation. “Sir, what makes you
assume this wealth goes to waste when I’m the one amassing it? Do you
think I toil to gather this treasure out of selfishness? Who says I
don’t put it to good use? Do you think I’m unaware of the suffering
beings and oppressed races living on this earth, poor people to
comfort, victims to avenge? Don’t you understand . . . ?”

Captain Nemo stopped on these last words, perhaps sorry that he had
said too much. But I had guessed. Whatever motives had driven him to
seek independence under the seas, he remained a human being before all
else! His heart still throbbed for suffering humanity, and his immense
philanthropy went out both to downtrodden races and to individuals!

And now I knew where Captain Nemo had delivered those millions, when
the Nautilus navigated the waters where Crete was in rebellion against
the Ottoman Empire!


CHAPTER 9

A Lost Continent


THE NEXT MORNING, February 19, I beheld the Canadian entering my
stateroom. I was expecting this visit. He wore an expression of great
disappointment.

“Well, sir?” he said to me.

“Well, Ned, the fates were against us yesterday.”

“Yes! That damned captain had to call a halt just as we were going to
escape from his boat.”

“Yes, Ned, he had business with his bankers.”

“His bankers?”

“Or rather his bank vaults. By which I mean this ocean, where his
wealth is safer than in any national treasury.”

I then related the evening’s incidents to the Canadian, secretly
hoping he would come around to the idea of not deserting the captain;
but my narrative had no result other than Ned’s voicing deep regret
that he hadn’t strolled across the Vigo battlefield on his own behalf.

“Anyhow,” he said, “it’s not over yet! My first harpoon missed, that’s
all! We’ll succeed the next time, and as soon as this evening, if need
be . . .”

“What’s the Nautilus’s heading?” I asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Ned replied.

“All right, at noon we’ll find out what our position is!”

The Canadian returned to Conseil’s side. As soon as I was dressed, I
went into the lounge. The compass wasn’t encouraging. The Nautilus’s
course was south-southwest. We were turning our backs on Europe.

I could hardly wait until our position was reported on the chart. Near
11:30 the ballast tanks emptied, and the submersible rose to the
surface of the ocean. I leaped onto the platform. Ned Land was already
there.

No more shore in sight. Nothing but the immenseness of the sea. A few
sails were on the horizon, no doubt ships going as far as Cape São
Roque to find favorable winds for doubling the Cape of Good Hope. The
sky was overcast. A squall was on the way.

Furious, Ned tried to see through the mists on the horizon. He still
hoped that behind all that fog there lay those shores he longed for.

At noon the sun made a momentary appearance. Taking advantage of this
rift in the clouds, the chief officer took the orb’s altitude. Then
the sea grew turbulent, we went below again, and the hatch closed once
more.

When I consulted the chart an hour later, I saw that the Nautilus’s
position was marked at longitude 16 degrees 17’ and latitude 33
degrees 22’, a good 150 leagues from the nearest coast. It wouldn’t do
to even dream of escaping, and I’ll let the reader decide how promptly
the Canadian threw a tantrum when I ventured to tell him our
situation.

As for me, I wasn’t exactly grief-stricken. I felt as if a heavy
weight had been lifted from me, and I was able to resume my regular
tasks in a state of comparative calm.

Near eleven o’clock in the evening, I received a most unexpected visit
from Captain Nemo. He asked me very graciously if I felt exhausted
from our vigil the night before. I said no.

“Then, Professor Aronnax, I propose an unusual excursion.”

“Propose away, captain.”

“So far you’ve visited the ocean depths only by day and under
sunlight. Would you like to see these depths on a dark night?”

“Very much.”

“I warn you, this will be an exhausting stroll. We’ll need to walk
long hours and scale a mountain. The roads aren’t terribly well kept
up.”

“Everything you say, captain, just increases my curiosity. I’m ready
to go with you.”

“Then come along, professor, and we’ll go put on our diving suits.”

Arriving at the wardrobe, I saw that neither my companions nor any
crewmen would be coming with us on this excursion. Captain Nemo hadn’t
even suggested my fetching Ned or Conseil.

In a few moments we had put on our equipment. Air tanks, abundantly
charged, were placed on our backs, but the electric lamps were not in
readiness. I commented on this to the captain.

“They’ll be useless to us,” he replied.

I thought I hadn’t heard him right, but I couldn’t repeat my comment
because the captain’s head had already disappeared into its metal
covering. I finished harnessing myself, I felt an alpenstock being
placed in my hand, and a few minutes later, after the usual
procedures, we set foot on the floor of the Atlantic, 300 meters down.

Midnight was approaching. The waters were profoundly dark, but Captain
Nemo pointed to a reddish spot in the distance, a sort of wide glow
shimmering about two miles from the Nautilus. What this fire was, what
substances fed it, how and why it kept burning in the liquid mass, I
couldn’t say. Anyhow it lit our way, although hazily, but I soon grew
accustomed to this unique gloom, and in these circumstances I
understood the uselessness of the Ruhmkorff device.

Side by side, Captain Nemo and I walked directly toward this
conspicuous flame. The level seafloor rose imperceptibly. We took long
strides, helped by our alpenstocks; but in general our progress was
slow, because our feet kept sinking into a kind of slimy mud mixed
with seaweed and assorted flat stones.

As we moved forward, I heard a kind of pitter-patter above my
head. Sometimes this noise increased and became a continuous
crackle. I soon realized the cause. It was a heavy rainfall rattling
on the surface of the waves. Instinctively I worried that I might get
soaked! By water in the midst of water! I couldn’t help smiling at
this outlandish notion. But to tell the truth, wearing these heavy
diving suits, you no longer feel the liquid element, you simply think
you’re in the midst of air a little denser than air on land, that’s
all.

After half an hour of walking, the seafloor grew rocky. Jellyfish,
microscopic crustaceans, and sea-pen coral lit it faintly with their
phosphorescent glimmers. I glimpsed piles of stones covered by a
couple million zoophytes and tangles of algae. My feet often slipped
on this viscous seaweed carpet, and without my alpenstock I would have
fallen more than once. When I turned around, I could still see the
Nautilus’s whitish beacon, which was starting to grow pale in the
distance.

Those piles of stones just mentioned were laid out on the ocean floor
with a distinct but inexplicable symmetry. I spotted gigantic furrows
trailing off into the distant darkness, their length
incalculable. There also were other peculiarities I couldn’t make
sense of. It seemed to me that my heavy lead soles were crushing a
litter of bones that made a dry crackling noise. So what were these
vast plains we were now crossing? I wanted to ask the captain, but I
still didn’t grasp that sign language that allowed him to chat with
his companions when they went with him on his underwater excursions.

Meanwhile the reddish light guiding us had expanded and inflamed the
horizon. The presence of this furnace under the waters had me
extremely puzzled. Was it some sort of electrical discharge? Was I
approaching some natural phenomenon still unknown to scientists on
shore? Or, rather (and this thought did cross my mind), had the hand
of man intervened in that blaze? Had human beings fanned those flames?
In these deep strata would I meet up with more of Captain Nemo’s
companions, friends he was about to visit who led lives as strange as
his own? Would I find a whole colony of exiles down here, men tired of
the world’s woes, men who had sought and found independence in the
ocean’s lower depths? All these insane, inadmissible ideas dogged me,
and in this frame of mind, continually excited by the series of
wonders passing before my eyes, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find
on this sea bottom one of those underwater towns Captain Nemo dreamed
about!

Our path was getting brighter and brighter. The red glow had turned
white and was radiating from a mountain peak about 800 feet high. But
what I saw was simply a reflection produced by the crystal waters of
these strata. The furnace that was the source of this inexplicable
light occupied the far side of the mountain.

In the midst of the stone mazes furrowing this Atlantic seafloor,
Captain Nemo moved forward without hesitation. He knew this dark
path. No doubt he had often traveled it and was incapable of losing
his way. I followed him with unshakeable confidence. He seemed like
some Spirit of the Sea, and as he walked ahead of me, I marveled at
his tall figure, which stood out in black against the glowing
background of the horizon.

It was one o’clock in the morning. We arrived at the mountain’s lower
gradients. But in grappling with them, we had to venture up difficult
trails through a huge thicket.

Yes, a thicket of dead trees! Trees without leaves, without sap,
turned to stone by the action of the waters, and crowned here and
there by gigantic pines. It was like a still-erect coalfield, its
roots clutching broken soil, its boughs clearly outlined against the
ceiling of the waters like thin, black, paper cutouts. Picture a
forest clinging to the sides of a peak in the Harz Mountains, but a
submerged forest. The trails were cluttered with algae and fucus
plants, hosts of crustaceans swarming among them. I plunged on,
scaling rocks, straddling fallen tree trunks, snapping marine creepers
that swayed from one tree to another, startling the fish that flitted
from branch to branch. Carried away, I didn’t feel exhausted any
more. I followed a guide who was immune to exhaustion.

What a sight! How can I describe it! How can I portray these woods and
rocks in this liquid setting, their lower parts dark and sullen, their
upper parts tinted red in this light whose intensity was doubled by
the reflecting power of the waters! We scaled rocks that crumbled
behind us, collapsing in enormous sections with the hollow rumble of
an avalanche. To our right and left there were carved gloomy galleries
where the eye lost its way. Huge glades opened up, seemingly cleared
by the hand of man, and I sometimes wondered whether some residents of
these underwater regions would suddenly appear before me.

But Captain Nemo kept climbing. I didn’t want to fall behind. I
followed him boldly. My alpenstock was a great help. One wrong step
would have been disastrous on the narrow paths cut into the sides of
these chasms, but I walked along with a firm tread and without the
slightest feeling of dizziness. Sometimes I leaped over a crevasse
whose depth would have made me recoil had I been in the midst of
glaciers on shore; sometimes I ventured out on a wobbling tree trunk
fallen across a gorge, without looking down, having eyes only for
marveling at the wild scenery of this region. There, leaning on
erratically cut foundations, monumental rocks seemed to defy the laws
of balance. From between their stony knees, trees sprang up like jets
under fearsome pressure, supporting other trees that supported them in
turn. Next, natural towers with wide, steeply carved battlements
leaned at angles that, on dry land, the laws of gravity would never
have authorized.

And I too could feel the difference created by the water’s powerful
density—despite my heavy clothing, copper headpiece, and metal soles,
I climbed the most impossibly steep gradients with all the nimbleness,
I swear it, of a chamois or a Pyrenees mountain goat!

As for my account of this excursion under the waters, I’m well aware
that it sounds incredible! I’m the chronicler of deeds seemingly
impossible and yet incontestably real. This was no fantasy. This was
what I saw and felt!

Two hours after leaving the Nautilus, we had cleared the timberline,
and 100 feet above our heads stood the mountain peak, forming a dark
silhouette against the brilliant glare that came from its far
slope. Petrified shrubs rambled here and there in sprawling
zigzags. Fish rose in a body at our feet like birds startled in tall
grass. The rocky mass was gouged with impenetrable crevices, deep
caves, unfathomable holes at whose far ends I could hear fearsome
things moving around. My blood would curdle as I watched some enormous
antenna bar my path, or saw some frightful pincer snap shut in the
shadow of some cavity! A thousand specks of light glittered in the
midst of the gloom. They were the eyes of gigantic crustaceans
crouching in their lairs, giant lobsters rearing up like spear
carriers and moving their claws with a scrap-iron clanking, titanic
crabs aiming their bodies like cannons on their carriages, and hideous
devilfish intertwining their tentacles like bushes of writhing snakes.

What was this astounding world that I didn’t yet know? In what order
did these articulates belong, these creatures for which the rocks
provided a second carapace? Where had nature learned the secret of
their vegetating existence, and for how many centuries had they lived
in the ocean’s lower strata?

But I couldn’t linger. Captain Nemo, on familiar terms with these
dreadful animals, no longer minded them. We arrived at a preliminary
plateau where still other surprises were waiting for me. There
picturesque ruins took shape, betraying the hand of man, not our
Creator. They were huge stacks of stones in which you could
distinguish the indistinct forms of palaces and temples, now arrayed
in hosts of blossoming zoophytes, and over it all, not ivy but a heavy
mantle of algae and fucus plants.

But what part of the globe could this be, this land swallowed by
cataclysms? Who had set up these rocks and stones like the dolmens of
prehistoric times? Where was I, where had Captain Nemo’s fancies taken
me?

I wanted to ask him. Unable to, I stopped him. I seized his arm. But
he shook his head, pointed to the mountain’s topmost peak, and seemed
to tell me:

“Come on! Come with me! Come higher!”

I followed him with one last burst of energy, and in a few minutes I
had scaled the peak, which crowned the whole rocky mass by some ten
meters.

I looked back down the side we had just cleared. There the mountain
rose only 700 to 800 feet above the plains; but on its far slope it
crowned the receding bottom of this part of the Atlantic by a height
twice that. My eyes scanned the distance and took in a vast area lit
by intense flashes of light. In essence, this mountain was a
volcano. Fifty feet below its peak, amid a shower of stones and slag,
a wide crater vomited torrents of lava that were dispersed in fiery
cascades into the heart of the liquid mass. So situated, this volcano
was an immense torch that lit up the lower plains all the way to the
horizon.

As I said, this underwater crater spewed lava, but not flames. Flames
need oxygen from the air and are unable to spread underwater; but a
lava flow, which contains in itself the principle of its
incandescence, can rise to a white heat, overpower the liquid element,
and turn it into steam on contact. Swift currents swept away all this
diffuse gas, and torrents of lava slid to the foot of the mountain,
like the disgorgings of a Mt. Vesuvius over the city limits of a
second Torre del Greco.

In fact, there beneath my eyes was a town in ruins, demolished,
overwhelmed, laid low, its roofs caved in, its temples pulled down,
its arches dislocated, its columns stretching over the earth; in these
ruins you could still detect the solid proportions of a sort of Tuscan
architecture; farther off, the remains of a gigantic aqueduct; here,
the caked heights of an acropolis along with the fluid forms of a
Parthenon; there, the remnants of a wharf, as if some bygone port had
long ago harbored merchant vessels and triple-tiered war galleys on
the shores of some lost ocean; still farther off, long rows of
collapsing walls, deserted thoroughfares, a whole Pompeii buried under
the waters, which Captain Nemo had resurrected before my eyes!

Where was I? Where was I? I had to find out at all cost, I wanted to
speak, I wanted to rip off the copper sphere imprisoning my head.

But Captain Nemo came over and stopped me with a gesture. Then,
picking up a piece of chalky stone, he advanced to a black basaltic
rock and scrawled this one word:

ATLANTIS

What lightning flashed through my mind! Atlantis, that ancient land of
Meropis mentioned by the historian Theopompus; Plato’s Atlantis; the
continent whose very existence has been denied by such philosophers
and scientists as Origen, Porphyry, Iamblichus, d’Anville, Malte-Brun,
and Humboldt, who entered its disappearance in the ledger of myths and
folk tales; the country whose reality has nevertheless been accepted
by such other thinkers as Posidonius, Pliny, Ammianus Marcellinus,
Tertullian, Engel, Scherer, Tournefort, Buffon, and d’Avezac; I had
this land right under my eyes, furnishing its own unimpeachable
evidence of the catastrophe that had overtaken it! So this was the
submerged region that had existed outside Europe, Asia, and Libya,
beyond the Pillars of Hercules, home of those powerful Atlantean
people against whom ancient Greece had waged its earliest wars!

The writer whose narratives record the lofty deeds of those heroic
times is Plato himself. His dialogues Timaeus and Critias were drafted
with the poet and legislator Solon as their inspiration, as it were.

One day Solon was conversing with some elderly wise men in the
Egyptian capital of Sais, a town already 8,000 years of age, as
documented by the annals engraved on the sacred walls of its
temples. One of these elders related the history of another town 1,000
years older still. This original city of Athens, ninety centuries old,
had been invaded and partly destroyed by the Atlanteans. These
Atlanteans, he said, resided on an immense continent greater than
Africa and

Asia combined, taking in an area that lay between latitude 12 degrees
and 40 degrees north. Their dominion extended even to Egypt. They
tried to enforce their rule as far as Greece, but they had to retreat
before the indomitable resistance of the Hellenic people. Centuries
passed. A cataclysm occurred—floods, earthquakes. A single night and
day were enough to obliterate this Atlantis, whose highest peaks
(Madeira, the Azores, the Canaries, the Cape Verde Islands) still
emerge above the waves.

These were the historical memories that Captain Nemo’s scrawl sent
rushing through my mind. Thus, led by the strangest of fates, I was
treading underfoot one of the mountains of that continent! My hands
were touching ruins many thousands of years old, contemporary with
prehistoric times! I was walking in the very place where
contemporaries of early man had walked! My heavy soles were crushing
the skeletons of animals from the age of fable, animals that used to
take cover in the shade of these trees now turned to stone!

Oh, why was I so short of time! I would have gone down the steep
slopes of this mountain, crossed this entire immense continent, which
surely connects Africa with America, and visited its great prehistoric
cities. Under my eyes there perhaps lay the warlike town of Makhimos
or the pious village of Eusebes, whose gigantic inhabitants lived for
whole centuries and had the strength to raise blocks of stone that
still withstood the action of the waters. One day perhaps, some
volcanic phenomenon will bring these sunken ruins back to the surface
of the waves! Numerous underwater volcanoes have been sighted in this
part of the ocean, and many ships have felt terrific tremors when
passing over these turbulent depths. A few have heard hollow noises
that announced some struggle of the elements far below, others have
hauled in volcanic ash hurled above the waves. As far as the equator
this whole seafloor is still under construction by plutonic
forces. And in some remote epoch, built up by volcanic disgorgings and
successive layers of lava, who knows whether the peaks of these
fire-belching mountains may reappear above the surface of the
Atlantic!

As I mused in this way, trying to establish in my memory every detail
of this impressive landscape, Captain Nemo was leaning his elbows on a
moss-covered monument, motionless as if petrified in some mute
trance. Was he dreaming of those lost generations, asking them for the
secret of human destiny? Was it here that this strange man came to
revive himself, basking in historical memories, reliving that bygone
life, he who had no desire for our modern one? I would have given
anything to know his thoughts, to share them, understand them!

We stayed in this place an entire hour, contemplating its vast plains
in the lava’s glow, which sometimes took on a startling
intensity. Inner boilings sent quick shivers running through the
mountain’s crust. Noises from deep underneath, clearly transmitted by
the liquid medium, reverberated with majestic amplitude.

Just then the moon appeared for an instant through the watery mass,
casting a few pale rays over this submerged continent. It was only a
fleeting glimmer, but its effect was indescribable. The captain stood
up and took one last look at these immense plains; then his hand
signaled me to follow him.

We went swiftly down the mountain. Once past the petrified forest, I
could see the Nautilus’s beacon twinkling like a star. The captain
walked straight toward it, and we were back on board just as the first
glimmers of dawn were whitening the surface of the ocean.


CHAPTER 10

The Underwater Coalfields


THE NEXT DAY, February 20, I overslept. I was so exhausted from the
night before, I didn’t get up until eleven o’clock. I dressed
quickly. I hurried to find out the Nautilus’s heading. The instruments
indicated that it was running southward at a speed of twenty miles per
hour and a depth of 100 meters.

Conseil entered. I described our nocturnal excursion to him, and since
the panels were open, he could still catch a glimpse of this submerged
continent.

In fact, the Nautilus was skimming only ten meters over the soil of
these Atlantis plains. The ship scudded along like an air balloon
borne by the wind over some prairie on land; but it would be more
accurate to say that we sat in the lounge as if we were riding in a
coach on an express train. As for the foregrounds passing before our
eyes, they were fantastically carved rocks, forests of trees that had
crossed over from the vegetable kingdom into the mineral kingdom,
their motionless silhouettes sprawling beneath the waves. There also
were stony masses buried beneath carpets of axidia and sea anemone,
bristling with long, vertical water plants, then strangely contoured
blocks of lava that testified to all the fury of those plutonic
developments.

While this bizarre scenery was glittering under our electric beams, I
told Conseil the story of the Atlanteans, who had inspired the old
French scientist Jean Bailly to write so many entertaining—albeit
utterly fictitious—pages.* I told the lad about the wars of these
heroic people. I discussed the question of Atlantis with the fervor of
a man who no longer had any doubts. But Conseil was so distracted he
barely heard me, and his lack of interest in any commentary on this
historical topic was soon explained.

*Bailly believed that Atlantis was located at the North Pole! Ed.

In essence, numerous fish had caught his eye, and when fish pass by,
Conseil vanishes into his world of classifying and leaves real life
behind. In which case I could only tag along and resume our
ichthyological research.

Even so, these Atlantic fish were not noticeably different from those
we had observed earlier. There were rays of gigantic size, five meters
long and with muscles so powerful they could leap above the waves,
sharks of various species including a fifteen-foot glaucous shark with
sharp triangular teeth and so transparent it was almost invisible amid
the waters, brown lantern sharks, prism-shaped humantin sharks armored
with protuberant hides, sturgeons resembling their relatives in the
Mediterranean, trumpet-snouted pipefish a foot and a half long,
yellowish brown with small gray fins and no teeth or tongue, unreeling
like slim, supple snakes.

Among bony fish, Conseil noticed some blackish marlin three meters
long with a sharp sword jutting from the upper jaw, bright-colored
weevers known in Aristotle’s day as sea dragons and whose dorsal
stingers make them quite dangerous to pick up, then dolphinfish with
brown backs striped in blue and edged in gold, handsome dorados,
moonlike opahs that look like azure disks but which the sun’s rays
turn into spots of silver, finally eight-meter swordfish from the
genus Xiphias, swimming in schools, sporting yellowish sickle-shaped
fins and six-foot broadswords, stalwart animals, plant eaters rather
than fish eaters, obeying the tiniest signals from their females like
henpecked husbands.

But while observing these different specimens of marine fauna, I
didn’t stop examining the long plains of Atlantis. Sometimes an
unpredictable irregularity in the seafloor would force the Nautilus to
slow down, and then it would glide into the narrow channels between
the hills with a cetacean’s dexterity. If the labyrinth became
hopelessly tangled, the submersible would rise above it like an
airship, and after clearing the obstacle, it would resume its speedy
course just a few meters above the ocean floor. It was an enjoyable
and impressive way of navigating that did indeed recall the maneuvers
of an airship ride, with the major difference that the Nautilus
faithfully obeyed the hands of its helmsman.

The terrain consisted mostly of thick slime mixed with petrified
branches, but it changed little by little near four o’clock in the
afternoon; it grew rockier and seemed to be strewn with pudding stones
and a basaltic gravel called “tuff,” together with bits of lava and
sulfurous obsidian. I expected these long plains to change into
mountain regions, and in fact, as the Nautilus was executing certain
turns, I noticed that the southerly horizon was blocked by a high wall
that seemed to close off every exit. Its summit obviously poked above
the level of the ocean. It had to be a continent or at least an
island, either one of the Canaries or one of the Cape Verde
Islands. Our bearings hadn’t been marked on the chart—perhaps
deliberately—and I had no idea what our position was. In any case this
wall seemed to signal the end of Atlantis, of which, all in all, we
had crossed only a small part.

Nightfall didn’t interrupt my observations. I was left to
myself. Conseil had repaired to his cabin. The Nautilus slowed down,
hovering above the muddled masses on the seafloor, sometimes grazing
them as if wanting to come to rest, sometimes rising unpredictably to
the surface of the waves. Then I glimpsed a few bright constellations
through the crystal waters, specifically five or six of those zodiacal
stars trailing from the tail end of Orion.

I would have stayed longer at my window, marveling at these beauties
of sea and sky, but the panels closed. Just then the Nautilus had
arrived at the perpendicular face of that high wall. How the ship
would maneuver I hadn’t a guess. I repaired to my stateroom. The
Nautilus did not stir. I fell asleep with the firm intention of waking
up in just a few hours.

But it was eight o’clock the next day when I returned to the lounge. I
stared at the pressure gauge. It told me that the Nautilus was afloat
on the surface of the ocean. Furthermore, I heard the sound of
footsteps on the platform. Yet there were no rolling movements to
indicate the presence of waves undulating above me.

I climbed as far as the hatch. It was open. But instead of the broad
daylight I was expecting, I found that I was surrounded by total
darkness. Where were we? Had I been mistaken? Was it still night? No!
Not one star was twinkling, and nighttime is never so utterly black.

I wasn’t sure what to think, when a voice said to me:

“Is that you, professor?”

“Ah, Captain Nemo!” I replied. “Where are we?”

“Underground, professor.”

“Underground!” I exclaimed. “And the Nautilus is still floating?”

“It always floats.”

“But I don’t understand!”

“Wait a little while. Our beacon is about to go on, and if you want
some light on the subject, you’ll be satisfied.”

I set foot on the platform and waited. The darkness was so profound I
couldn’t see even Captain Nemo. However, looking at the zenith
directly overhead, I thought I caught sight of a feeble glimmer, a
sort of twilight filtering through a circular hole. Just then the
beacon suddenly went on, and its intense brightness made that hazy
light vanish.

This stream of electricity dazzled my eyes, and after momentarily
shutting them, I looked around. The Nautilus was stationary. It was
floating next to an embankment shaped like a wharf. As for the water
now buoying the ship, it was a lake completely encircled by an inner
wall about two miles in diameter, hence six miles around. Its level—as
indicated by the pressure gauge—would be the same as the outside
level, because some connection had to exist between this lake and the
sea. Slanting inward over their base, these high walls converged to
form a vault shaped like an immense upside-down funnel that measured
500 or 600 meters in height. At its summit there gaped the circular
opening through which I had detected that faint glimmer, obviously
daylight.

Before more carefully examining the interior features of this enormous
cavern, and before deciding if it was the work of nature or humankind,
I went over to Captain Nemo.

“Where are we?” I said.

“In the very heart of an extinct volcano,” the captain answered me, “a
volcano whose interior was invaded by the sea after some convulsion in
the earth. While you were sleeping, professor, the Nautilus entered
this lagoon through a natural channel that opens ten meters below the
surface of the ocean. This is our home port, secure, convenient,
secret, and sheltered against winds from any direction! Along the
coasts of your continents or islands, show me any offshore mooring
that can equal this safe refuge for withstanding the fury of
hurricanes.”

“Indeed,” I replied, “here you’re in perfect safety, Captain Nemo. Who
could reach you in the heart of a volcano? But don’t I see an opening
at its summit?”

“Yes, its crater, a crater formerly filled with lava, steam, and
flames, but which now lets in this life-giving air we’re breathing.”

“But which volcanic mountain is this?” I asked.

“It’s one of the many islets with which this sea is strewn. For ships
a mere reef, for us an immense cavern. I discovered it by chance, and
chance served me well.”

“But couldn’t someone enter through the mouth of its crater?”

“No more than I could exit through it. You can climb about 100 feet up
the inner base of this mountain, but then the walls overhang, they
lean too far in to be scaled.”

“I can see, captain, that nature is your obedient servant, any time or
any place. You’re safe on this lake, and nobody else can visit its
waters. But what’s the purpose of this refuge? The Nautilus doesn’t
need a harbor.”

“No, professor, but it needs electricity to run, batteries to generate
its electricity, sodium to feed its batteries, coal to make its
sodium, and coalfields from which to dig its coal. Now then, right at
this spot the sea covers entire forests that sank underwater in
prehistoric times; today, turned to stone, transformed into carbon
fuel, they offer me inexhaustible coal mines.”

“So, captain, your men practice the trade of miners here?”

“Precisely. These mines extend under the waves like the coalfields at
Newcastle. Here, dressed in diving suits, pick and mattock in hand, my
men go out and dig this carbon fuel for which I don’t need a single
mine on land. When I burn this combustible to produce sodium, the
smoke escaping from the mountain’s crater gives it the appearance of a
still-active volcano.”

“And will we see your companions at work?”

“No, at least not this time, because I’m eager to continue our
underwater tour of the world. Accordingly, I’ll rest content with
drawing on my reserve stock of sodium. We’ll stay here long enough to
load it on board, in other words, a single workday, then we’ll resume
our voyage. So, Professor Aronnax, if you’d like to explore this
cavern and circle its lagoon, seize the day.”

I thanked the captain and went to look for my two companions, who
hadn’t yet left their cabin. I invited them to follow me, not telling
them where we were.

They climbed onto the platform. Conseil, whom nothing could startle,
saw it as a perfectly natural thing to fall asleep under the waves and
wake up under a mountain. But Ned Land had no idea in his head other
than to see if this cavern offered some way out.

After breakfast near ten o’clock, we went down onto the embankment.

“So here we are, back on shore,” Conseil said.

“I’d hardly call this shore,” the Canadian replied. “And besides, we
aren’t on it but under it.”

A sandy beach unfolded before us, measuring 500 feet at its widest
point between the waters of the lake and the foot of the mountain’s
walls. Via this strand you could easily circle the lake. But the base
of these high walls consisted of broken soil over which there lay
picturesque piles of volcanic blocks and enormous pumice stones. All
these crumbling masses were covered with an enamel polished by the
action of underground fires, and they glistened under the stream of
electric light from our beacon. Stirred up by our footsteps, the
mica-rich dust on this beach flew into the air like a cloud of sparks.

The ground rose appreciably as it moved away from the sand flats by
the waves, and we soon arrived at some long, winding gradients,
genuinely steep paths that allowed us to climb little by little; but
we had to tread cautiously in the midst of pudding stones that weren’t
cemented together, and our feet kept skidding on glassy trachyte, made
of feldspar and quartz crystals.

The volcanic nature of this enormous pit was apparent all around us. I
ventured to comment on it to my companions.

“Can you picture,” I asked them, “what this funnel must have been like
when it was filled with boiling lava, and the level of that
incandescent liquid rose right to the mountain’s mouth, like cast iron
up the insides of a furnace?”

“I can picture it perfectly,” Conseil replied. “But will master tell
me why this huge smelter suspended operations, and how it is that an
oven was replaced by the tranquil waters of a lake?”

“In all likelihood, Conseil, because some convulsion created an
opening below the surface of the ocean, the opening that serves as a
passageway for the Nautilus. Then the waters of the Atlantic rushed
inside the mountain. There ensued a dreadful struggle between the
elements of fire and water, a struggle ending in King Neptune’s
favor. But many centuries have passed since then, and this submerged
volcano has changed into a peaceful cavern.”

“That’s fine,” Ned Land answered. “I accept the explanation, but in
our personal interests, I’m sorry this opening the professor mentions
wasn’t made above sea level.”

“But Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “if it weren’t an underwater
passageway, the Nautilus couldn’t enter it!”

“And I might add, Mr. Land,” I said, “that the waters wouldn’t have
rushed under the mountain, and the volcano would still be a
volcano. So you have nothing to be sorry about.”

Our climb continued. The gradients got steeper and narrower. Sometimes
they were cut across by deep pits that had to be cleared. Masses of
overhanging rock had to be gotten around. You slid on your knees, you
crept on your belly. But helped by the Canadian’s strength and
Conseil’s dexterity, we overcame every obstacle.

At an elevation of about thirty meters, the nature of the terrain
changed without becoming any easier. Pudding stones and trachyte gave
way to black basaltic rock: here, lying in slabs all swollen with
blisters; there, shaped like actual prisms and arranged into a series
of columns that supported the springings of this immense vault, a
wonderful sample of natural architecture. Then, among this basaltic
rock, there snaked long, hardened lava flows inlaid with veins of
bituminous coal and in places covered by wide carpets of sulfur. The
sunshine coming through the crater had grown stronger, shedding a hazy
light over all the volcanic waste forever buried in the heart of this
extinct mountain.

But when we had ascended to an elevation of about 250 feet, we were
stopped by insurmountable obstacles. The converging inside walls
changed into overhangs, and our climb into a circular stroll. At this
topmost level the vegetable kingdom began to challenge the mineral
kingdom. Shrubs, and even a few trees, emerged from crevices in the
walls. I recognized some spurges that let their caustic, purgative sap
trickle out. There were heliotropes, very remiss at living up to their
sun-worshipping reputations since no sunlight ever reached them; their
clusters of flowers drooped sadly, their colors and scents were
faded. Here and there chrysanthemums sprouted timidly at the feet of
aloes with long, sad, sickly leaves. But between these lava flows I
spotted little violets that still gave off a subtle fragrance, and I
confess that I inhaled it with delight. The soul of a flower is its
scent, and those splendid water plants, flowers of the sea, have no
souls!

We had arrived at the foot of a sturdy clump of dragon trees, which
were splitting the rocks with exertions of their muscular roots, when
Ned Land exclaimed:

“Oh, sir, a hive!”

“A hive?” I answered, with a gesture of utter disbelief.

“Yes, a hive,” the Canadian repeated, “with bees buzzing around!”

I went closer and was forced to recognize the obvious. At the mouth of
a hole cut in the trunk of a dragon tree, there swarmed thousands of
these ingenious insects so common to all the Canary Islands, where
their output is especially prized.

Naturally enough, the Canadian wanted to lay in a supply of honey, and
it would have been ill-mannered of me to say no. He mixed sulfur with
some dry leaves, set them on fire with a spark from his tinderbox, and
proceeded to smoke the bees out. Little by little the buzzing died
down and the disemboweled hive yielded several pounds of sweet
honey. Ned Land stuffed his haversack with it.

“When I’ve mixed this honey with our breadfruit batter,” he told us,
“I’ll be ready to serve you a delectable piece of cake.”

“But of course,” Conseil put in, “it will be gingerbread!”

“I’m all for gingerbread,” I said, “but let’s resume this fascinating
stroll.”

At certain turns in the trail we were going along, the lake appeared
in its full expanse. The ship’s beacon lit up that whole placid
surface, which experienced neither ripples nor undulations. The
Nautilus lay perfectly still. On its platform and on the embankment,
crewmen were bustling around, black shadows that stood out clearly in
the midst of the luminous air.

Just then we went around the highest ridge of these rocky foothills
that supported the vault. Then I saw that bees weren’t the animal
kingdom’s only representatives inside this volcano. Here and in the
shadows, birds of prey soared and whirled, flying away from nests
perched on tips of rock. There were sparrow hawks with white bellies,
and screeching kestrels. With all the speed their stiltlike legs could
muster, fine fat bustards scampered over the slopes. I’ll let the
reader decide whether the Canadian’s appetite was aroused by the sight
of this tasty game, and whether he regretted having no rifle in his
hands. He tried to make stones do the work of bullets, and after
several fruitless attempts, he managed to wound one of these
magnificent bustards. To say he risked his life twenty times in order
to capture this bird is simply the unadulterated truth; but he fared
so well, the animal went into his sack to join the honeycombs.

By then we were forced to go back down to the beach because the ridge
had become impossible. Above us, the yawning crater looked like the
wide mouth of a well. From where we stood, the sky was pretty easy to
see, and I watched clouds race by, disheveled by the west wind,
letting tatters of mist trail over the mountain’s summit. Proof
positive that those clouds kept at a moderate altitude, because this
volcano didn’t rise more than 1,800 feet above the level of the ocean.

Half an hour after the Canadian’s latest exploits, we were back on the
inner beach. There the local flora was represented by a wide carpet of
samphire, a small umbelliferous plant that keeps quite nicely, which
also boasts the names glasswort, saxifrage, and sea fennel. Conseil
picked a couple bunches. As for the local fauna, it included thousands
of crustaceans of every type: lobsters, hermit crabs, prawns, mysid
shrimps, daddy longlegs, rock crabs, and a prodigious number of
seashells, such as cowries, murex snails, and limpets.

In this locality there gaped the mouth of a magnificent cave. My
companions and I took great pleasure in stretching out on its
fine-grained sand. Fire had polished the sparkling enamel of its inner
walls, sprinkled all over with mica-rich dust. Ned Land tapped these
walls and tried to probe their thickness. I couldn’t help smiling. Our
conversation then turned to his everlasting escape plans, and without
going too far, I felt I could offer him this hope: Captain Nemo had
gone down south only to replenish his sodium supplies. So I hoped he
would now hug the coasts of Europe and America, which would allow the
Canadian to try again with a greater chance of success.

We were stretched out in this delightful cave for an hour. Our
conversation, lively at the outset, then languished. A definite
drowsiness overcame us. Since I saw no good reason to resist the call
of sleep, I fell into a heavy doze. I dreamed—one doesn’t choose his
dreams—that my life had been reduced to the vegetating existence of a
simple mollusk. It seemed to me that this cave made up my
double-valved shell. . . .

Suddenly Conseil’s voice startled me awake.

“Get up! Get up!” shouted the fine lad.

“What is it?” I asked, in a sitting position.

“The water’s coming up to us!”

I got back on my feet. Like a torrent the sea was rushing into our
retreat, and since we definitely were not mollusks, we had to clear
out.

In a few seconds we were safe on top of the cave.

“What happened?” Conseil asked. “Some new phenomenon?”

“Not quite, my friends!” I replied. “It was the tide, merely the tide,
which wellnigh caught us by surprise just as it did Sir Walter Scott’s
hero! The ocean outside is rising, and by a perfectly natural law of
balance, the level of this lake is also rising. We’ve gotten off with
a mild dunking. Let’s go change clothes on the Nautilus.”

Three-quarters of an hour later, we had completed our circular stroll
and were back on board. Just then the crewmen finished loading the
sodium supplies, and the Nautilus could have departed immediately.

But Captain Nemo gave no orders. Would he wait for nightfall and exit
through his underwater passageway in secrecy? Perhaps.

Be that as it may, by the next day the Nautilus had left its home port
and was navigating well out from any shore, a few meters beneath the
waves of the Atlantic.


CHAPTER 11

The Sargasso Sea


THE NAUTILUS didn’t change direction. For the time being, then, we had
to set aside any hope of returning to European seas. Captain Nemo kept
his prow pointing south. Where was he taking us? I was afraid to
guess.

That day the Nautilus crossed an odd part of the Atlantic Ocean. No
one is unaware of the existence of that great warm-water current known
by name as the Gulf Stream. After emerging from channels off Florida,
it heads toward Spitzbergen. But before entering the Gulf of Mexico
near latitude 44 degrees north, this current divides into two arms;
its chief arm makes for the shores of Ireland and Norway while the
second flexes southward at the level of the Azores; then it hits the
coast of Africa, sweeps in a long oval, and returns to the Caribbean
Sea.

Now then, this second arm—more accurately, a collar—forms a ring of
warm water around a section of cool, tranquil, motionless ocean called
the Sargasso Sea. This is an actual lake in the open Atlantic, and the
great current’s waters take at least three years to circle it.

Properly speaking, the Sargasso Sea covers every submerged part of
Atlantis. Certain authors have even held that the many weeds strewn
over this sea were torn loose from the prairies of that ancient
continent. But it’s more likely that these grasses, algae, and fucus
plants were carried off from the beaches of Europe and America, then
taken as far as this zone by the Gulf Stream. This is one of the
reasons why Christopher Columbus assumed the existence of a New
World. When the ships of that bold investigator arrived in the
Sargasso Sea, they had great difficulty navigating in the midst of
these weeds, which, much to their crews’ dismay, slowed them down to a
halt; and they wasted three long weeks crossing this sector.

Such was the region our Nautilus was visiting just then: a genuine
prairie, a tightly woven carpet of algae, gulfweed, and bladder wrack
so dense and compact a craft’s stempost couldn’t tear through it
without difficulty. Accordingly, not wanting to entangle his propeller
in this weed-choked mass, Captain Nemo stayed at a depth some meters
below the surface of the waves.

The name Sargasso comes from the Spanish word “sargazo,” meaning
gulfweed. This gulfweed, the swimming gulfweed or berry carrier, is
the chief substance making up this immense shoal. And here’s why these
water plants collect in this placid Atlantic basin, according to the
expert on the subject, Commander Maury, author of The Physical
Geography of the Sea.

The explanation he gives seems to entail a set of conditions that
everybody knows: “Now,” Maury says, “if bits of cork or chaff, or any
floating substance, be put into a basin, and a circular motion be
given to the water, all the light substances will be found crowding
together near the center of the pool, where there is the least
motion. Just such a basin is the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf Stream,
and the Sargasso Sea is the center of the whirl.”

I share Maury’s view, and I was able to study the phenomenon in this
exclusive setting where ships rarely go. Above us, huddled among the
brown weeds, there floated objects originating from all over: tree
trunks ripped from the Rocky Mountains or the Andes and sent floating
down the Amazon or the Mississippi, numerous pieces of wreckage,
remnants of keels or undersides, bulwarks staved in and so weighed
down with seashells and barnacles, they couldn’t rise to the surface
of the ocean. And the passing years will someday bear out Maury’s
other view that by collecting in this way over the centuries, these
substances will be turned to stone by the action of the waters and
will then form inexhaustible coalfields. Valuable reserves prepared by
farseeing nature for that time when man will have exhausted his mines
on the continents.

In the midst of this hopelessly tangled fabric of weeds and fucus
plants, I noted some delightful pink-colored, star-shaped alcyon
coral, sea anemone trailing the long tresses of their tentacles, some
green, red, and blue jellyfish, and especially those big rhizostome
jellyfish that Cuvier described, whose bluish parasols are trimmed
with violet festoons.

We spent the whole day of February 22 in the Sargasso Sea, where fish
that dote on marine plants and crustaceans find plenty to eat. The
next day the ocean resumed its usual appearance.

From this moment on, for nineteen days from February 23 to March 12,
the Nautilus stayed in the middle of the Atlantic, hustling us along
at a constant speed of 100 leagues every twenty-four hours. It was
obvious that Captain Nemo wanted to carry out his underwater program,
and I had no doubt that he intended, after doubling Cape Horn, to
return to the Pacific South Seas.

So Ned Land had good reason to worry. In these wide seas empty of
islands, it was no longer feasible to jump ship. Nor did we have any
way to counter Captain Nemo’s whims. We had no choice but to
acquiesce; but if we couldn’t attain our end through force or cunning,
I liked to think we might achieve it through persuasion. Once this
voyage was over, might not Captain Nemo consent to set us free in
return for our promise never to reveal his existence? Our word of
honor, which we sincerely would have kept. However, this delicate
question would have to be negotiated with the captain. But how would
he receive our demands for freedom? At the very outset and in no
uncertain terms, hadn’t he declared that the secret of his life
required that we be permanently imprisoned on board the Nautilus?
Wouldn’t he see my four-month silence as a tacit acceptance of this
situation? Would my returning to this subject arouse suspicions that
could jeopardize our escape plans, if we had promising circumstances
for trying again later on? I weighed all these considerations, turned
them over in my mind, submitted them to Conseil, but he was as baffled
as I was. In short, although I’m not easily discouraged, I realized
that my chances of ever seeing my fellow men again were shrinking by
the day, especially at a time when Captain Nemo was recklessly racing
toward the south Atlantic!

During those nineteen days just mentioned, no unique incidents
distinguished our voyage. I saw little of the captain. He was at
work. In the library I often found books he had left open, especially
books on natural history. He had thumbed through my work on the great
ocean depths, and the margins were covered with his notes, which
sometimes contradicted my theories and formulations. But the captain
remained content with this method of refining my work, and he rarely
discussed it with me. Sometimes I heard melancholy sounds
reverberating from the organ, which he played very expressively, but
only at night in the midst of the most secretive darkness, while the
Nautilus slumbered in the wilderness of the ocean.

During this part of our voyage, we navigated on the surface of the
waves for entire days. The sea was nearly deserted. A few sailing
ships, laden for the East Indies, were heading toward the Cape of Good
Hope. One day we were chased by the longboats of a whaling vessel,
which undoubtedly viewed us as some enormous baleen whale of great
value. But Captain Nemo didn’t want these gallant gentlemen wasting
their time and energy, so he ended the hunt by diving beneath the
waters. This incident seemed to fascinate Ned Land intensely. I’m sure
the Canadian was sorry that these fishermen couldn’t harpoon our
sheet-iron cetacean and mortally wound it.

During this period the fish Conseil and I observed differed little
from those we had already studied in other latitudes. Chief among them
were specimens of that dreadful cartilaginous genus that’s divided
into three subgenera numbering at least thirty-two species: striped
sharks five meters long, the head squat and wider than the body, the
caudal fin curved, the back with seven big, black, parallel lines
running lengthwise; then perlon sharks, ash gray, pierced with seven
gill openings, furnished with a single dorsal fin placed almost
exactly in the middle of the body.

Some big dogfish also passed by, a voracious species of shark if there
ever was one. With some justice, fishermen’s yarns aren’t to be
trusted, but here’s what a few of them relate. Inside the corpse of
one of these animals there were found a buffalo head and a whole calf;
in another, two tuna and a sailor in uniform; in yet another, a
soldier with his saber; in another, finally, a horse with its
rider. In candor, none of these sounds like divinely inspired
truth. But the fact remains that not a single dogfish let itself get
caught in the Nautilus’s nets, so I can’t vouch for their voracity.

Schools of elegant, playful dolphin swam alongside for entire
days. They went in groups of five or six, hunting in packs like wolves
over the countryside; moreover, they’re just as voracious as dogfish,
if I can believe a certain Copenhagen professor who says that from one
dolphin’s stomach, he removed thirteen porpoises and fifteen
seals. True, it was a killer whale, belonging to the biggest known
species, whose length sometimes exceeds twenty-four feet. The family
Delphinia numbers ten genera, and the dolphins I saw were akin to the
genus Delphinorhynchus, remarkable for an extremely narrow muzzle four
times as long as the cranium. Measuring three meters, their bodies
were black on top, underneath a pinkish white strewn with small, very
scattered spots.

From these seas I’ll also mention some unusual specimens of croakers,
fish from the order Acanthopterygia, family Scienidea. Some
authors—more artistic than scientific—claim that these fish are
melodious singers, that their voices in unison put on concerts
unmatched by human choristers. I don’t say nay, but to my regret these
croakers didn’t serenade us as we passed.

Finally, to conclude, Conseil classified a large number of flying
fish. Nothing could have made a more unusual sight than the marvelous
timing with which dolphins hunt these fish. Whatever the range of its
flight, however evasive its trajectory (even up and over the
Nautilus), the hapless flying fish always found a dolphin to welcome
it with open mouth. These were either flying gurnards or kitelike sea
robins, whose lips glowed in the dark, at night scrawling fiery
streaks in the air before plunging into the murky waters like so many
shooting stars.

Our navigating continued under these conditions until March 13. That
day the Nautilus was put to work in some depth-sounding experiments
that fascinated me deeply.

By then we had fared nearly 13,000 leagues from our starting point in
the Pacific high seas. Our position fix placed us in latitude 45
degrees 37’ south and longitude 37 degrees 53’ west. These were the
same waterways where Captain Denham, aboard the Herald, payed out
14,000 meters of sounding line without finding bottom. It was here too
that Lieutenant Parker, aboard the American frigate Congress, was
unable to reach the underwater soil at 15,149 meters.

Captain Nemo decided to take his Nautilus down to the lowest depths in
order to double-check these different soundings. I got ready to record
the results of this experiment. The panels in the lounge opened, and
maneuvers began for reaching those strata so prodigiously far removed.

It was apparently considered out of the question to dive by filling
the ballast tanks. Perhaps they wouldn’t sufficiently increase the
Nautilus’s specific gravity. Moreover, in order to come back up, it
would be necessary to expel the excess water, and our pumps might not
have been strong enough to overcome the outside pressure.

Captain Nemo decided to make for the ocean floor by submerging on an
appropriately gradual diagonal with the help of his side fins, which
were set at a 45 degrees angle to the Nautilus’s waterline. Then the
propeller was brought to its maximum speed, and its four blades
churned the waves with indescribable violence.

Under this powerful thrust the Nautilus’s hull quivered like a
resonating chord, and the ship sank steadily under the
waters. Stationed in the lounge, the captain and I watched the needle
swerving swiftly over the pressure gauge. Soon we had gone below the
livable zone where most fish reside. Some of these animals can thrive
only at the surface of seas or rivers, but a minority can dwell at
fairly great depths. Among the latter I observed a species of dogfish
called the cow shark that’s equipped with six respiratory slits, the
telescope fish with its enormous eyes, the armored gurnard with gray
thoracic fins plus black pectoral fins and a breastplate protected by
pale red slabs of bone, then finally the grenadier, living at a depth
of 1,200 meters, by that point tolerating a pressure of 120
atmospheres.

I asked Captain Nemo if he had observed any fish at more considerable
depths.

“Fish? Rarely!” he answered me. “But given the current state of marine
science, who are we to presume, what do we really know of these
depths?”

“Just this, captain. In going toward the ocean’s lower strata, we know
that vegetable life disappears more quickly than animal life. We know
that moving creatures can still be encountered where water plants no
longer grow. We know that oysters and pilgrim scallops live in 2,000
meters of water, and that Admiral McClintock, England’s hero of the
polar seas, pulled in a live sea star from a depth of 2,500 meters. We
know that the crew of the Royal Navy’s Bulldog fished up a starfish
from 2,620 fathoms, hence from a depth of more than one vertical
league. Would you still say, Captain Nemo, that we really know
nothing?”

“No, professor,” the captain replied, “I wouldn’t be so
discourteous. Yet I’ll ask you to explain how these creatures can live
at such depths?”

“I explain it on two grounds,” I replied. “In the first place, because
vertical currents, which are caused by differences in the water’s
salinity and density, can produce enough motion to sustain the
rudimentary lifestyles of sea lilies and starfish.”

“True,” the captain put in.

“In the second place, because oxygen is the basis of life, and we know
that the amount of oxygen dissolved in salt water increases rather
than decreases with depth, that the pressure in these lower strata
helps to concentrate their oxygen content.”

“Oho! We know that, do we?” Captain Nemo replied in a tone of mild
surprise. “Well, professor, we have good reason to know it because
it’s the truth. I might add, in fact, that the air bladders of fish
contain more nitrogen than oxygen when these animals are caught at the
surface of the water, and conversely, more oxygen than nitrogen when
they’re pulled up from the lower depths. Which bears out your
formulation. But let’s continue our observations.”

My eyes flew back to the pressure gauge. The instrument indicated a
depth of 6,000 meters. Our submergence had been going on for an
hour. The Nautilus slid downward on its slanting fins, still
sinking. These deserted waters were wonderfully clear, with a
transparency impossible to convey. An hour later we were at 13,000
meters—about three and a quarter vertical leagues—and the ocean floor
was nowhere in sight.

However, at 14,000 meters I saw blackish peaks rising in the midst of
the waters. But these summits could have belonged to mountains as high
or even higher than the Himalayas or Mt. Blanc, and the extent of
these depths remained incalculable.

Despite the powerful pressures it was undergoing, the Nautilus sank
still deeper. I could feel its sheet-iron plates trembling down to
their riveted joins; metal bars arched; bulkheads groaned; the lounge
windows seemed to be warping inward under the water’s pressure. And
this whole sturdy mechanism would surely have given way, if, as its
captain had said, it weren’t capable of resisting like a solid block.

While grazing these rocky slopes lost under the waters, I still
spotted some seashells, tube worms, lively annelid worms from the
genus Spirorbis, and certain starfish specimens.

But soon these last representatives of animal life vanished, and three
vertical leagues down, the Nautilus passed below the limits of
underwater existence just as an air balloon rises above the breathable
zones in the sky. We reached a depth of 16,000 meters—four vertical
leagues—and by then the Nautilus’s plating was tolerating a pressure
of 1,600 atmospheres, in other words, 1,600 kilograms per each square
centimeter on its surface!

“What an experience!” I exclaimed. “Traveling these deep regions where
no man has ever ventured before! Look, captain! Look at these
magnificent rocks, these uninhabited caves, these last global haunts
where life is no longer possible! What unheard-of scenery, and why are
we reduced to preserving it only as a memory?”

“Would you like,” Captain Nemo asked me, “to bring back more than just
a memory?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that nothing could be easier than taking a photograph of this
underwater region!”

Before I had time to express the surprise this new proposition caused
me, a camera was carried into the lounge at Captain Nemo’s
request. The liquid setting, electrically lit, unfolded with perfect
clarity through the wide-open panels. No shadows, no blurs, thanks to
our artificial light. Not even sunshine could have been better for our
purposes. With the thrust of its propeller curbed by the slant of its
fins, the Nautilus stood still. The camera was aimed at the scenery on
the ocean floor, and in a few seconds we had a perfect negative.

I attach a print of the positive. In it you can view these primordial
rocks that have never seen the light of day, this nether granite that
forms the powerful foundation of our globe, the deep caves cut into
the stony mass, the outlines of incomparable distinctness whose far
edges stand out in black as if from the brush of certain Flemish
painters. In the distance is a mountainous horizon, a wondrously
undulating line that makes up the background of this landscape. The
general effect of these smooth rocks is indescribable: black,
polished, without moss or other blemish, carved into strange shapes,
sitting firmly on a carpet of sand that sparkled beneath our streams
of electric light.

Meanwhile, his photographic operations over, Captain Nemo told me:

“Let’s go back up, professor. We mustn’t push our luck and expose the
Nautilus too long to these pressures.”

“Let’s go back up!” I replied.

“Hold on tight.”

Before I had time to realize why the captain made this recommendation,
I was hurled to the carpet.

Its fins set vertically, its propeller thrown in gear at the captain’s
signal, the Nautilus rose with lightning speed, shooting upward like
an air balloon into the sky. Vibrating resonantly, it knifed through
the watery mass. Not a single detail was visible. In four minutes it
had cleared the four vertical leagues separating it from the surface
of the ocean, and after emerging like a flying fish, it fell back into
the sea, making the waves leap to prodigious heights.


CHAPTER 12

Sperm Whales and Baleen Whales


DURING THE NIGHT of March 13-14, the Nautilus resumed its southward
heading. Once it was abreast of Cape Horn, I thought it would strike
west of the cape, make for Pacific seas, and complete its tour of the
world. It did nothing of the sort and kept moving toward the
southernmost regions. So where was it bound? The pole? That was
insanity. I was beginning to think that the captain’s recklessness
more than justified Ned Land’s worst fears.

For a good while the Canadian had said nothing more to me about his
escape plans. He had become less sociable, almost sullen. I could see
how heavily this protracted imprisonment was weighing on him. I could
feel the anger building in him. Whenever he encountered the captain,
his eyes would flicker with dark fire, and I was in constant dread
that his natural vehemence would cause him to do something rash.

That day, March 14, he and Conseil managed to find me in my
stateroom. I asked them the purpose of their visit.

“To put a simple question to you, sir,” the Canadian answered me.

“Go on, Ned.”

“How many men do you think are on board the Nautilus?”

“I’m unable to say, my friend.”

“It seems to me,” Ned Land went on, “that it wouldn’t take much of a
crew to run a ship like this one.”

“Correct,” I replied. “Under existing conditions some ten men at the
most should be enough to operate it.”

“All right,” the Canadian said, “then why should there be any more
than that?”

“Why?” I answered.

I stared at Ned Land, whose motives were easy to guess.

“Because,” I said, “if I can trust my hunches, if I truly understand
the captain’s way of life, his Nautilus isn’t simply a ship. It’s
meant to be a refuge for people like its commander, people who have
severed all ties with the shore.”

“Perhaps,” Conseil said, “but in a nutshell, the Nautilus can hold
only a certain number of men, so couldn’t master estimate their
maximum?”

“How, Conseil?”

“By calculating it. Master is familiar with the ship’s capacity, hence
the amount of air it contains; on the other hand, master knows how
much air each man consumes in the act of breathing, and he can compare
this data with the fact that the Nautilus must rise to the surface
every twenty-four hours . . .”

Conseil didn’t finish his sentence, but I could easily see what he was
driving at.

“I follow you,” I said. “But while they’re simple to do, such
calculations can give only a very uncertain figure.”

“No problem,” the Canadian went on insistently.

“Then here’s how to calculate it,” I replied. “In one hour each man
consumes the oxygen contained in 100 liters of air, hence during
twenty-four hours the oxygen contained in 2,400 liters. Therefore, we
must look for the multiple of 2,400 liters of air that gives us the
amount found in the Nautilus.”

“Precisely,” Conseil said.

“Now then,” I went on, “the Nautilus’s capacity is 1,500 metric tons,
and that of a ton is 1,000 liters, so the Nautilus holds 1,500,000
liters of air, which, divided by 2,400 . . .”

I did a quick pencil calculation.

“. . . gives us the quotient of 625. Which is tantamount to saying
that the air contained in the Nautilus would be exactly enough for 625
men over twenty-four hours.”

“625!” Ned repeated.

“But rest assured,” I added, “that between passengers, seamen, or
officers, we don’t total one-tenth of that figure.”

“Which is still too many for three men!” Conseil muttered.

“So, my poor Ned, I can only counsel patience.”

“And,” Conseil replied, “even more than patience, resignation.”

Conseil had said the true word.

“Even so,” he went on, “Captain Nemo can’t go south forever! He’ll
surely have to stop, if only at the Ice Bank, and he’ll return to the
seas of civilization! Then it will be time to resume Ned Land’s
plans.”

The Canadian shook his head, passed his hand over his brow, made no
reply, and left us.

“With master’s permission, I’ll make an observation to him,” Conseil
then told me. “Our poor Ned broods about all the things he can’t
have. He’s haunted by his former life. He seems to miss everything
that’s denied us. He’s obsessed by his old memories and it’s breaking
his heart. We must understand him. What does he have to occupy him
here? Nothing. He isn’t a scientist like master, and he doesn’t share
our enthusiasm for the sea’s wonders. He would risk anything just to
enter a tavern in his own country!”

To be sure, the monotony of life on board must have seemed unbearable
to the Canadian, who was accustomed to freedom and activity. It was a
rare event that could excite him. That day, however, a development
occurred that reminded him of his happy years as a harpooner.

Near eleven o’clock in the morning, while on the surface of the ocean,
the Nautilus fell in with a herd of baleen whales. This encounter
didn’t surprise me, because I knew these animals were being hunted so
relentlessly that they took refuge in the ocean basins of the high
latitudes.

In the maritime world and in the realm of geographic exploration,
whales have played a major role. This is the animal that first dragged
the Basques in its wake, then Asturian Spaniards, Englishmen, and
Dutchmen, emboldening them against the ocean’s perils, and leading
them to the ends of the earth. Baleen whales like to frequent the
southernmost and northernmost seas. Old legends even claim that these
cetaceans led fishermen to within a mere seven leagues of the North
Pole. Although this feat is fictitious, it will someday come true,
because it’s likely that by hunting whales in the Arctic or Antarctic
regions, man will finally reach this unknown spot on the globe.

We were seated on the platform next to a tranquil sea. The month of
March, since it’s the equivalent of October in these latitudes, was
giving us some fine autumn days. It was the Canadian—on this topic he
was never mistaken—who sighted a baleen whale on the eastern
horizon. If you looked carefully, you could see its blackish back
alternately rise and fall above the waves, five miles from the
Nautilus.

“Wow!” Ned Land exclaimed. “If I were on board a whaler, there’s an
encounter that would be great fun! That’s one big animal! Look how
high its blowholes are spouting all that air and steam! Damnation! Why
am I chained to this hunk of sheet iron!”

“Why, Ned!” I replied. “You still aren’t over your old fishing urges?”

“How could a whale fisherman forget his old trade, sir? Who could ever
get tired of such exciting hunting?”

“You’ve never fished these seas, Ned?”

“Never, sir. Just the northernmost seas, equally in the Bering Strait
and the Davis Strait.”

“So the southern right whale is still unknown to you. Until now it’s
the bowhead whale you’ve hunted, and it won’t risk going past the warm
waters of the equator.”

“Oh, professor, what are you feeding me?” the Canadian answered in a
tolerably skeptical tone.

“I’m feeding you the facts.”

“By thunder! In ’65, just two and a half years ago, I to whom you
speak, I myself stepped onto the carcass of a whale near Greenland,
and its flank still carried the marked harpoon of a whaling ship from
the Bering Sea. Now I ask you, after it had been wounded west of
America, how could this animal be killed in the east, unless it had
cleared the equator and doubled Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope?”

“I agree with our friend Ned,” Conseil said, “and I’m waiting to hear
how master will reply to him.”

“Master will reply, my friends, that baleen whales are localized,
according to species, within certain seas that they never leave. And
if one of these animals went from the Bering Strait to the Davis
Strait, it’s quite simply because there’s some passageway from the one
sea to the other, either along the coasts of Canada or Siberia.”

“You expect us to fall for that?” the Canadian asked, tipping me a
wink.

“If master says so,” Conseil replied.

“Which means,” the Canadian went on, “since I’ve never fished these
waterways, I don’t know the whales that frequent them?”

“That’s what I’ve been telling you, Ned.”

“All the more reason to get to know them,” Conseil answered.

“Look! Look!” the Canadian exclaimed, his voice full of
excitement. “It’s approaching! It’s coming toward us! It’s thumbing
its nose at me! It knows I can’t do a blessed thing to it!”

Ned stamped his foot. Brandishing an imaginary harpoon, his hands
positively trembled.

“These cetaceans,” he asked, “are they as big as the ones in the
northernmost seas?”

“Pretty nearly, Ned.”

“Because I’ve seen big baleen whales, sir, whales measuring up to 100
feet long! I’ve even heard that those rorqual whales off the Aleutian
Islands sometimes get over 150 feet.”

“That strikes me as exaggerated,” I replied. “Those animals are only
members of the genus Balaenoptera furnished with dorsal fins, and like
sperm whales, they’re generally smaller than the bowhead whale.”

“Oh!” exclaimed the Canadian, whose eyes hadn’t left the ocean. “It’s
getting closer, it’s coming into the Nautilus’s waters!”

Then, going on with his conversation:

“You talk about sperm whales,” he said, “as if they were little
beasts! But there are stories of gigantic sperm whales. They’re shrewd
cetaceans. I hear that some will cover themselves with algae and fucus
plants. People mistake them for islets. They pitch camp on top, make
themselves at home, light a fire—”

“Build houses,” Conseil said.

“Yes, funny man,” Ned Land replied. “Then one fine day the animal
dives and drags all its occupants down into the depths.”

“Like in the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor,” I answered, laughing. “Oh,
Mr. Land, you’re addicted to tall tales! What sperm whales you’re
handing us! I hope you don’t really believe in them!”

“Mr. Naturalist,” the Canadian replied in all seriousness, “when it
comes to whales, you can believe anything! (Look at that one move!
Look at it stealing away!) People claim these animals can circle
around the world in just fifteen days.”

“I don’t say nay.”

“But what you undoubtedly don’t know, Professor Aronnax, is that at
the beginning of the world, whales traveled even quicker.”

“Oh really, Ned! And why so?”

“Because in those days their tails moved side to side, like those on
fish, in other words, their tails were straight up, thrashing the
water from left to right, right to left. But spotting that they swam
too fast, our Creator twisted their tails, and ever since they’ve been
thrashing the waves up and down, at the expense of their speed.”

“Fine, Ned,” I said, then resurrected one of the Canadian’s
expressions. “You expect us to fall for that?”

“Not too terribly,” Ned Land replied, “and no more than if I told you
there are whales that are 300 feet long and weigh 1,000,000 pounds.”

“That’s indeed considerable,” I said. “But you must admit that certain
cetaceans do grow to significant size, since they’re said to supply as
much as 120 metric tons of oil.”

“That I’ve seen,” the Canadian said.

“I can easily believe it, Ned, just as I can believe that certain
baleen whales equal 100 elephants in bulk. Imagine the impact of such
a mass if it were launched at full speed!”

“Is it true,” Conseil asked, “that they can sink ships?”

“Ships? I doubt it,” I replied. “However, they say that in 1820, right
in these southern seas, a baleen whale rushed at the Essex and pushed
it backward at a speed of four meters per second. Its stern was
flooded, and the Essex went down fast.”

Ned looked at me with a bantering expression.

“Speaking for myself,” he said, “I once got walloped by a whale’s
tail—in my longboat, needless to say. My companions and I were
launched to an altitude of six meters. But next to the professor’s
whale, mine was just a baby.”

“Do these animals live a long time?” Conseil asked.

“A thousand years,” the Canadian replied without hesitation.

“And how, Ned,” I asked, “do you know that’s so?”

“Because people say so.”

“And why do people say so?”

“Because people know so.”

“No, Ned! People don’t know so, they suppose so, and here’s the logic
with which they back up their beliefs. When fishermen first hunted
whales 400 years ago, these animals grew to bigger sizes than they do
today. Reasonably enough, it’s assumed that today’s whales are smaller
because they haven’t had time to reach their full growth. That’s why
the Count de Buffon’s encyclopedia says that cetaceans can live, and
even must live, for a thousand years. You understand?”

Ned Land didn’t understand. He no longer even heard me. That baleen
whale kept coming closer. His eyes devoured it.

“Oh!” he exclaimed. “It’s not just one whale, it’s ten, twenty, a
whole gam! And I can’t do a thing! I’m tied hand and foot!”

“But Ned my friend,” Conseil said, “why not ask Captain Nemo for
permission to hunt—”

Before Conseil could finish his sentence, Ned Land scooted down the
hatch and ran to look for the captain. A few moments later, the two of
them reappeared on the platform.

Captain Nemo observed the herd of cetaceans cavorting on the waters a
mile from the Nautilus.

“They’re southern right whales,” he said. “There goes the fortune of a
whole whaling fleet.”

“Well, sir,” the Canadian asked, “couldn’t I hunt them, just so I
don’t forget my old harpooning trade?”

“Hunt them? What for?” Captain Nemo replied. “Simply to destroy them?
We have no use for whale oil on this ship.”

“But, sir,” the Canadian went on, “in the Red Sea you authorized us to
chase a dugong!”

“There it was an issue of obtaining fresh meat for my crew. Here it
would be killing for the sake of killing. I’m well aware that’s a
privilege reserved for mankind, but I don’t allow such murderous
pastimes. When your peers, Mr. Land, destroy decent, harmless
creatures like the southern right whale or the bowhead whale, they
commit a reprehensible offense. Thus they’ve already depopulated all
of Baffin Bay, and they’ll wipe out a whole class of useful
animals. So leave these poor cetaceans alone. They have quite enough
natural enemies, such as sperm whales, swordfish, and sawfish, without
you meddling with them.”

I’ll let the reader decide what faces the Canadian made during this
lecture on hunting ethics. Furnishing such arguments to a professional
harpooner was a waste of words. Ned Land stared at Captain Nemo and
obviously missed his meaning. But the captain was right. Thanks to the
mindless, barbaric bloodthirstiness of fishermen, the last baleen
whale will someday disappear from the ocean.

Ned Land whistled “Yankee Doodle” between his teeth, stuffed his hands
in his pockets, and turned his back on us.

Meanwhile Captain Nemo studied the herd of cetaceans, then addressed
me:

“I was right to claim that baleen whales have enough natural enemies
without counting man. These specimens will soon have to deal with
mighty opponents. Eight miles to leeward, Professor Aronnax, can you
see those blackish specks moving about?”

“Yes, captain,” I replied.

“Those are sperm whales, dreadful animals that I’ve sometimes
encountered in herds of 200 or 300! As for them, they’re cruel,
destructive beasts, and they deserve to be exterminated.”

The Canadian turned swiftly at these last words.

“Well, captain,” I said, “on behalf of the baleen whales, there’s
still time—”

“It’s pointless to run any risks, professor. The Nautilus will suffice
to disperse these sperm whales. It’s armed with a steel spur quite
equal to Mr. Land’s harpoon, I imagine.”

The Canadian didn’t even bother shrugging his shoulders. Attacking
cetaceans with thrusts from a spur! Who ever heard of such malarkey!

“Wait and see, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said. “We’ll show you
a style of hunting with which you aren’t yet familiar. We’ll take no
pity on these ferocious cetaceans. They’re merely mouth and teeth!”

Mouth and teeth! There’s no better way to describe the long-skulled
sperm whale, whose length sometimes exceeds twenty-five meters. The
enormous head of this cetacean occupies about a third of its
body. Better armed than a baleen whale, whose upper jaw is adorned
solely with whalebone, the sperm whale is equipped with twenty-five
huge teeth that are twenty centimeters high, have cylindrical, conical
summits, and weigh two pounds each. In the top part of this enormous
head, inside big cavities separated by cartilage, you’ll find 300 to
400 kilograms of that valuable oil called “spermaceti.” The sperm
whale is an awkward animal, more tadpole than fish, as Professor
FrΘdol has noted. It’s poorly constructed, being “defective,” so to
speak, over the whole left side of its frame, with good eyesight only
in its right eye.

Meanwhile that monstrous herd kept coming closer. It had seen the
baleen whales and was preparing to attack. You could tell in advance
that the sperm whales would be victorious, not only because they were
better built for fighting than their harmless adversaries, but also
because they could stay longer underwater before returning to breathe
at the surface.

There was just time to run to the rescue of the baleen whales. The
Nautilus proceeded to midwater. Conseil, Ned, and I sat in front of
the lounge windows. Captain Nemo made his way to the helmsman’s side
to operate his submersible as an engine of destruction. Soon I felt
the beats of our propeller getting faster, and we picked up speed.

The battle between sperm whales and baleen whales had already begun
when the Nautilus arrived. It maneuvered to cut into the herd of
long-skulled predators. At first the latter showed little concern at
the sight of this new monster meddling in the battle. But they soon
had to sidestep its thrusts.

What a struggle! Ned Land quickly grew enthusiastic and even ended up
applauding. Brandished in its captain’s hands, the Nautilus was simply
a fearsome harpoon. He hurled it at those fleshy masses and ran them
clean through, leaving behind two squirming animal halves. As for
those daunting strokes of the tail hitting our sides, the ship never
felt them. No more than the collisions it caused. One sperm whale
exterminated, it ran at another, tacked on the spot so as not to miss
its prey, went ahead or astern, obeyed its rudder, dived when the
cetacean sank to deeper strata, rose with it when it returned to the
surface, struck it head-on or slantwise, hacked at it or tore it, and
from every direction and at any speed, skewered it with its dreadful
spur.

What bloodshed! What a hubbub on the surface of the waves! What sharp
hisses and snorts unique to these frightened animals! Their tails
churned the normally peaceful strata into actual billows.

This Homeric slaughter dragged on for an hour, and the long-skulled
predators couldn’t get away. Several times ten or twelve of them
teamed up, trying to crush the Nautilus with their sheer mass. Through
the windows you could see their enormous mouths paved with teeth,
their fearsome eyes. Losing all self-control, Ned Land hurled threats
and insults at them. You could feel them clinging to the submersible
like hounds atop a wild boar in the underbrush. But by forcing the
pace of its propeller, the Nautilus carried them off, dragged them
under, or brought them back to the upper level of the waters,
untroubled by their enormous weight or their powerful grip.

Finally this mass of sperm whales thinned out. The waves grew tranquil
again. I felt us rising to the surface of the ocean. The hatch opened
and we rushed onto the platform.

The sea was covered with mutilated corpses. A fearsome explosion
couldn’t have slashed, torn, or shredded these fleshy masses with
greater violence. We were floating in the midst of gigantic bodies,
bluish on the back, whitish on the belly, and all deformed by enormous
protuberances. A few frightened sperm whales were fleeing toward the
horizon. The waves were dyed red over an area of several miles, and
the Nautilus was floating in the middle of a sea of blood.

Captain Nemo rejoined us.

“Well, Mr. Land?” he said.

“Well, sir,” replied the Canadian, whose enthusiasm had subsided,
“it’s a dreadful sight for sure. But I’m a hunter not a butcher, and
this is plain butchery.”

“It was a slaughter of destructive animals,” the captain replied, “and
the Nautilus is no butcher knife.”

“I prefer my harpoon,” the Canadian answered.

“To each his own,” the captain replied, staring intently at Ned Land.

I was in dread the latter would give way to some violent outburst that
might have had deplorable consequences. But his anger was diverted by
the sight of a baleen whale that the Nautilus had pulled alongside of
just then.

This animal had been unable to escape the teeth of those sperm
whales. I recognized the southern right whale, its head squat, its
body dark all over. Anatomically, it’s distinguished from the white
whale and the black right whale by the fusion of its seven cervical
vertebrae, and it numbers two more ribs than its relatives. Floating
on its side, its belly riddled with bites, the poor cetacean was
dead. Still hanging from the tip of its mutilated fin was a little
baby whale that it had been unable to rescue from the slaughter. Its
open mouth let water flow through its whalebone like a murmuring surf.

Captain Nemo guided the Nautilus next to the animal’s corpse. Two of
his men climbed onto the whale’s flank, and to my astonishment, I saw
them draw from its udders all the milk they held, in other words,
enough to fill two or three casks.

The captain offered me a cup of this still-warm milk. I couldn’t help
showing my distaste for such a beverage. He assured me that this milk
was excellent, no different from cow’s milk.

I sampled it and agreed. So this milk was a worthwhile reserve ration
for us, because in the form of salt butter or cheese, it would provide
a pleasant change of pace from our standard fare.

From that day on, I noted with some uneasiness that Ned Land’s
attitudes toward Captain Nemo grew worse and worse, and I decided to
keep a close watch on the Canadian’s movements and activities.


CHAPTER 13

The Ice Bank


THE NAUTILUS resumed its unruffled southbound heading. It went along
the 50th meridian with considerable speed. Would it go to the pole? I
didn’t think so, because every previous attempt to reach this spot on
the globe had failed. Besides, the season was already quite advanced,
since March 13 on Antarctic shores corresponds with September 13 in
the northernmost regions, which marks the beginning of the equinoctial
period.

On March 14 at latitude 55 degrees, I spotted floating ice, plain pale
bits of rubble twenty to twenty-five feet long, which formed reefs
over which the sea burst into foam. The Nautilus stayed on the surface
of the ocean. Having fished in the Arctic seas, Ned Land was already
familiar with the sight of icebergs. Conseil and I were marveling at
them for the first time.

In the sky toward the southern horizon, there stretched a dazzling
white band. English whalers have given this the name “ice blink.” No
matter how heavy the clouds may be, they can’t obscure this
phenomenon. It announces the presence of a pack, or shoal, of ice.

Indeed, larger blocks of ice soon appeared, their brilliance varying
at the whim of the mists. Some of these masses displayed green veins,
as if scrawled with undulating lines of copper sulfate. Others looked
like enormous amethysts, letting the light penetrate their
insides. The latter reflected the sun’s rays from the thousand facets
of their crystals. The former, tinted with a bright limestone sheen,
would have supplied enough building material to make a whole marble
town.

The farther down south we went, the more these floating islands grew
in numbers and prominence. Polar birds nested on them by the
thousands. These were petrels, cape pigeons, or puffins, and their
calls were deafening. Mistaking the Nautilus for the corpse of a
whale, some of them alighted on it and prodded its resonant sheet iron
with pecks of their beaks.

During this navigating in the midst of the ice, Captain Nemo often
stayed on the platform. He observed these deserted waterways
carefully. I saw his calm eyes sometimes perk up. In these polar seas
forbidden to man, did he feel right at home, the lord of these
unreachable regions? Perhaps. But he didn’t say. He stood still,
reviving only when his pilot’s instincts took over. Then, steering his
Nautilus with consummate dexterity, he skillfully dodged the masses of
ice, some of which measured several miles in length, their heights
varying from seventy to eighty meters. Often the horizon seemed
completely closed off. Abreast of latitude 60 degrees, every
passageway had disappeared. Searching with care, Captain Nemo soon
found a narrow opening into which he brazenly slipped, well aware,
however, that it would close behind him.

Guided by his skillful hands, the Nautilus passed by all these
different masses of ice, which are classified by size and shape with a
precision that enraptured Conseil: “icebergs,” or mountains; “ice
fields,” or smooth, limitless tracts; “drift ice,” or floating floes;
“packs,” or broken tracts, called “patches” when they’re circular and
“streams” when they form long strips.

The temperature was fairly low. Exposed to the outside air, the
thermometer marked -2 degrees to

-3 degrees centigrade. But we were warmly dressed in furs, for which
 seals and aquatic bears had paid the price. Evenly heated by all its
 electric equipment, the Nautilus’s interior defied the most intense
 cold. Moreover, to find a bearable temperature, the ship had only to
 sink just a few meters beneath the waves.

Two months earlier we would have enjoyed perpetual daylight in this
latitude; but night already fell for three or four hours, and later it
would cast six months of shadow over these circumpolar regions.

On March 15 we passed beyond the latitude of the South Shetland and
South Orkney Islands. The captain told me that many tribes of seals
used to inhabit these shores; but English and American whalers, in a
frenzy of destruction, slaughtered all the adults, including pregnant
females, and where life and activity once existed, those fishermen
left behind only silence and death.

Going along the 55th meridian, the Nautilus cut the Antarctic Circle
on March 16 near eight o’clock in the morning. Ice completely
surrounded us and closed off the horizon. Nevertheless, Captain Nemo
went from passageway to passageway, always proceeding south.

“But where’s he going?” I asked.

“Straight ahead,” Conseil replied. “Ultimately, when he can’t go any
farther, he’ll stop.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it!” I replied.

And in all honesty, I confess that this venturesome excursion was far
from displeasing to me. I can’t express the intensity of my amazement
at the beauties of these new regions. The ice struck superb
poses. Here, its general effect suggested an oriental town with
countless minarets and mosques. There, a city in ruins, flung to the
ground by convulsions in the earth. These views were varied
continuously by the sun’s oblique rays, or were completely swallowed
up by gray mists in the middle of blizzards. Then explosions,
cave-ins, and great iceberg somersaults would occur all around us,
altering the scenery like the changing landscape in a diorama.

If the Nautilus was submerged during these losses of balance, we heard
the resulting noises spread under the waters with frightful intensity,
and the collapse of these masses created daunting eddies down to the
ocean’s lower strata. The Nautilus then rolled and pitched like a ship
left to the fury of the elements.

Often, no longer seeing any way out, I thought we were imprisoned for
good, but Captain Nemo, guided by his instincts, discovered new
passageways from the tiniest indications. He was never wrong when he
observed slender threads of bluish water streaking through these ice
fields. Accordingly, I was sure that he had already risked his
Nautilus in the midst of the Antarctic seas.

However, during the day of March 16, these tracts of ice completely
barred our path. It wasn’t the Ice Bank as yet, just huge ice fields
cemented together by the cold. This obstacle couldn’t stop Captain
Nemo, and he launched his ship against the ice fields with hideous
violence. The Nautilus went into these brittle masses like a wedge,
splitting them with dreadful cracklings. It was an old-fashioned
battering ram propelled with infinite power. Hurled aloft, ice rubble
fell back around us like hail. Through brute force alone, the
submersible carved out a channel for itself. Carried away by its
momentum, the ship sometimes mounted on top of these tracts of ice and
crushed them with its weight, or at other times, when cooped up
beneath the ice fields, it split them with simple pitching movements,
creating wide punctures.

Violent squalls assaulted us during the daytime. Thanks to certain
heavy mists, we couldn’t see from one end of the platform to the
other. The wind shifted abruptly to every point on the compass. The
snow was piling up in such packed layers, it had to be chipped loose
with blows from picks. Even in a temperature of merely -5 degrees
centigrade, every outside part of the Nautilus was covered with ice. A
ship’s rigging would have been unusable, because all its tackle would
have jammed in the grooves of the pulleys. Only a craft without sails,
driven by an electric motor that needed no coal, could face such high
latitudes.

Under these conditions the barometer generally stayed quite low. It
fell as far as 73.5 centimeters. Our compass indications no longer
offered any guarantees. The deranged needles would mark contradictory
directions as we approached the southern magnetic pole, which doesn’t
coincide with the South Pole proper. In fact, according to the
astronomer Hansteen, this magnetic pole is located fairly close to
latitude 70 degrees and longitude 130 degrees, or abiding by the
observations of Louis-Isidore Duperrey, in longitude 135 degrees and
latitude 70 degrees 30’. Hence we had to transport compasses to
different parts of the ship, take many readings, and strike an
average. Often we could chart our course only by guesswork, a less
than satisfactory method in the midst of these winding passageways
whose landmarks change continuously.

At last on March 18, after twenty futile assaults, the Nautilus was
decisively held in check. No longer was it an ice stream, patch, or
field—it was an endless, immovable barrier formed by ice mountains
fused to each other.

“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. Here and there stood sharp peaks, lean spires that rose as
high as 200 feet; farther off, a succession of steeply cut cliffs
sporting a grayish tint, huge mirrors that reflected the sparse rays
of a sun half drowned in mist. Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this
desolate natural setting, a silence barely broken by the flapping
wings of petrels or puffins. By this point everything was frozen, even
sound.

So the Nautilus had to halt in its venturesome course among these
tracts of ice.

“Sir,” Ned Land told me that day, “if your captain goes any farther
. . .”

“Yes?”

“He’ll be a superman.”

“How so, Ned?”

“Because nobody can clear the Ice Bank. Your captain’s a powerful man,
but damnation, he isn’t more powerful than nature. If she draws a
boundary line, there you stop, like it or not!”

“Correct, Ned Land, but I still want to know what’s behind this Ice
Bank! Behold my greatest source of irritation—a wall!”

“Master is right,” Conseil said. “Walls were invented simply to
frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned.”

“Fine!” the Canadian put in. “But we already know what’s behind this
Ice Bank.”

“What?” I asked.

“Ice, ice, and more ice.”

“You may be sure of that, Ned,” I answered, “but I’m not. That’s why I
want to see for myself.”

“Well, professor,” the Canadian replied, “you can just drop that idea!
You’ve made it to the Ice Bank, which is already far enough, but you
won’t get any farther, neither your Captain Nemo or his Nautilus. And
whether he wants to or not, we’ll head north again, in other words, to
the land of sensible people.”

I had to agree that Ned Land was right, and until ships are built to
navigate over tracts of ice, they’ll have to stop at the Ice Bank.

Indeed, despite its efforts, despite the powerful methods it used to
split this ice, the Nautilus was reduced to immobility. Ordinarily,
when someone can’t go any farther, he still has the option of
returning in his tracks. But here it was just as impossible to turn
back as to go forward, because every passageway had closed behind us,
and if our submersible remained even slightly stationary, it would be
frozen in without delay. Which is exactly what happened near two
o’clock in the afternoon, and fresh ice kept forming over the ship’s
sides with astonishing speed. I had to admit that Captain Nemo’s
leadership had been most injudicious.

Just then I was on the platform. Observing the situation for some
while, the captain said to me:

“Well, professor! What think you?”

“I think we’re trapped, captain.”

“Trapped! What do you mean?”

“I mean we can’t go forward, backward, or sideways. I think that’s the
standard definition of ‘trapped,’ at least in the civilized world.”

“So, Professor Aronnax, you think the Nautilus won’t be able to float
clear?”

“Only with the greatest difficulty, captain, since the season is
already too advanced for you to depend on an ice breakup.”

“Oh, professor,” Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone, “you never
change! You see only impediments and obstacles! I promise you, not
only will the Nautilus float clear, it will go farther still!”

“Farther south?” I asked, gaping at the captain.

“Yes, sir, it will go to the pole.”

“To the pole!” I exclaimed, unable to keep back a movement of
disbelief.

“Yes,” the captain replied coolly, “the Antarctic pole, that unknown
spot crossed by every meridian on the globe. As you know, I do
whatever I like with my Nautilus.”

Yes, I did know that! I knew this man was daring to the point of being
foolhardy. But to overcome all the obstacles around the South
Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn’t
been reached by the boldest navigators—wasn’t this an absolutely
insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a
madman?

It then dawned on me to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered
this pole, which no human being had ever trod underfoot.

“No, sir,” he answered me, “but we’ll discover it together. Where
others have failed, I’ll succeed. Never before has my Nautilus cruised
so far into these southernmost seas, but I repeat: it will go farther
still.”

“I’d like to believe you, captain,” I went on in a tone of some
sarcasm. “Oh I do believe you! Let’s forge ahead! There are no
obstacles for us! Let’s shatter this Ice Bank! Let’s blow it up, and
if it still resists, let’s put wings on the Nautilus and fly over it!”

“Over it, professor?” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “No, not over it,
but under it.”

“Under it!” I exclaimed.

A sudden insight into Captain Nemo’s plans had just flashed through my
mind. I understood. The marvelous talents of his Nautilus would be put
to work once again in this superhuman undertaking!

“I can see we’re starting to understand each other, professor,”
Captain Nemo told me with a half smile. “You already glimpse the
potential—myself, I’d say the success—of this attempt. Maneuvers that
aren’t feasible for an ordinary ship are easy for the Nautilus. If a
continent emerges at the pole, we’ll stop at that continent. But on
the other hand, if open sea washes the pole, we’ll go to that very
place!”

“Right,” I said, carried away by the captain’s logic. “Even though the
surface of the sea has solidified into ice, its lower strata are still
open, thanks to that divine justice that puts the maximum density of
salt water one degree above its freezing point. And if I’m not
mistaken, the submerged part of this Ice Bank is in a four-to-one
ratio to its emerging part.”

“Very nearly, professor. For each foot of iceberg above the sea, there
are three more below. Now then, since these ice mountains don’t exceed
a height of 100 meters, they sink only to a depth of 300 meters. And
what are 300 meters to the Nautilus?”

“A mere nothing, sir.”

“We could even go to greater depths and find that temperature layer
common to all ocean water, and there we’d brave with impunity the -30
degrees or -40 degrees cold on the surface.”

“True, sir, very true,” I replied with growing excitement.

“Our sole difficulty,” Captain Nemo went on, “lies in our staying
submerged for several days without renewing our air supply.”

“That’s all?” I answered. “The Nautilus has huge air tanks; we’ll fill
them up and they’ll supply all the oxygen we need.”

“Good thinking, Professor Aronnax,” the captain replied with a
smile. “But since I don’t want to be accused of foolhardiness, I’m
giving you all my objections in advance.”

“You have more?”

“Just one. If a sea exists at the South Pole, it’s possible this sea
may be completely frozen over, so we couldn’t come up to the surface!”

“My dear sir, have you forgotten that the Nautilus is armed with a
fearsome spur? Couldn’t it be launched diagonally against those tracts
of ice, which would break open from the impact?”

“Ah, professor, you’re full of ideas today!”

“Besides, captain,” I added with still greater enthusiasm, “why
wouldn’t we find open sea at the South Pole just as at the North Pole?
The cold-temperature poles and the geographical poles don’t coincide
in either the northern or southern hemispheres, and until proof to the
contrary, we can assume these two spots on the earth feature either a
continent or an ice-free ocean.”

“I think as you do, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied. “I’ll
only point out that after raising so many objections against my plan,
you’re now crushing me under arguments in its favor.”

Captain Nemo was right. I was outdoing him in daring! It was I who was
sweeping him to the pole. I was leading the way, I was out in front
. . . but no, you silly fool! Captain Nemo already knew the pros and
cons of this question, and it amused him to see you flying off into
impossible fantasies!

Nevertheless, he didn’t waste an instant. At his signal, the chief
officer appeared. The two men held a quick exchange in their
incomprehensible language, and either the chief officer had been
alerted previously or he found the plan feasible, because he showed no
surprise.

But as unemotional as he was, he couldn’t have been more impeccably
emotionless than Conseil when I told the fine lad our intention of
pushing on to the South Pole. He greeted my announcement with the
usual “As master wishes,” and I had to be content with that. As for
Ned Land, no human shoulders ever executed a higher shrug than the
pair belonging to our Canadian.

“Honestly, sir,” he told me. “You and your Captain Nemo, I pity you
both!”

“But we will go to the pole, Mr. Land.”

“Maybe, but you won’t come back!”

And Ned Land reentered his cabin, “to keep from doing something
desperate,” he said as he left me.

Meanwhile preparations for this daring attempt were getting under
way. The Nautilus’s powerful pumps forced air down into the tanks and
stored it under high pressure. Near four o’clock Captain Nemo informed
me that the platform hatches were about to be closed. I took a last
look at the dense Ice Bank we were going to conquer. The weather was
fair, the skies reasonably clear, the cold quite brisk, namely -12
degrees centigrade; but after the wind had lulled, this temperature
didn’t seem too unbearable.

Equipped with picks, some ten men climbed onto the Nautilus’s sides
and cracked loose the ice around the ship’s lower plating, which was
soon set free. This operation was swiftly executed because the fresh
ice was still thin. We all reentered the interior. The main ballast
tanks were filled with the water that hadn’t yet congealed at our line
of flotation. The Nautilus submerged without delay.

I took a seat in the lounge with Conseil. Through the open window we
stared at the lower strata of this southernmost ocean. The thermometer
rose again. The needle on the pressure gauge swerved over its dial.

About 300 meters down, just as Captain Nemo had predicted, we cruised
beneath the undulating surface of the Ice Bank. But the Nautilus sank
deeper still. It reached a depth of 800 meters. At the surface this
water gave a temperature of -12 degrees centigrade, but now it gave no
more than -10 degrees. Two degrees had already been gained. Thanks to
its heating equipment, the Nautilus’s temperature, needless to say,
stayed at a much higher degree. Every maneuver was accomplished with
extraordinary precision.

“With all due respect to master,” Conseil told me, “we’ll pass it by.”

“I fully expect to!” I replied in a tone of deep conviction.

Now in open water, the Nautilus took a direct course to the pole
without veering from the 52nd meridian. From 67 degrees 30’ to 90
degrees, twenty-two and a half degrees of latitude were left to cross,
in other words, slightly more than 500 leagues. The Nautilus adopted
an average speed of twenty-six miles per hour, the speed of an express
train. If it kept up this pace, forty hours would do it for reaching
the pole.

For part of the night, the novelty of our circumstances kept Conseil
and me at the lounge window. The sea was lit by our beacon’s electric
rays. But the depths were deserted. Fish didn’t linger in these
imprisoned waters. Here they found merely a passageway for going from
the Antarctic Ocean to open sea at the pole. Our progress was
swift. You could feel it in the vibrations of the long steel hull.

Near two o’clock in the morning, I went to snatch a few hours of
sleep. Conseil did likewise. I didn’t encounter Captain Nemo while
going down the gangways. I assumed that he was keeping to the
pilothouse.

The next day, March 19, at five o’clock in the morning, I was back at
my post in the lounge. The electric log indicated that the Nautilus
had reduced speed. By then it was rising to the surface, but
cautiously, while slowly emptying its ballast tanks.

My heart was pounding. Would we emerge into the open and find the
polar air again?

No. A jolt told me that the Nautilus had bumped the underbelly of the
Ice Bank, still quite thick to judge from the hollowness of the
accompanying noise. Indeed, we had “struck bottom,” to use nautical
terminology, but in the opposite direction and at a depth of 3,000
feet. That gave us 4,000 feet of ice overhead, of which 1,000 feet
emerged above water. So the Ice Bank was higher here than we had found
it on the outskirts. A circumstance less than encouraging.

Several times that day, the Nautilus repeated the same experiment and
always it bumped against this surface that formed a ceiling above
it. At certain moments the ship encountered ice at a depth of 900
meters, denoting a thickness of 1,200 meters, of which 300 meters rose
above the level of the ocean. This height had tripled since the moment
the Nautilus had dived beneath the waves.

I meticulously noted these different depths, obtaining the underwater
profile of this upside-down mountain chain that stretched beneath the
sea.

By evening there was still no improvement in our situation. The ice
stayed between 400 and 500 meters deep. It was obviously shrinking,
but what a barrier still lay between us and the surface of the ocean!

By then it was eight o’clock. The air inside the Nautilus should have
been renewed four hours earlier, following daily practice on
board. But I didn’t suffer very much, although Captain Nemo hadn’t yet
made demands on the supplementary oxygen in his air tanks.

That night my sleep was fitful. 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.

My eyes didn’t leave the pressure gauge. We kept rising on a diagonal,
going along this shiny surface that sparkled beneath our electric
rays. Above and below, the Ice Bank was subsiding in long
gradients. Mile after mile it was growing thinner.

Finally, at six o’clock in the morning on that memorable day of March
19, the lounge door opened. Captain Nemo appeared.

“Open sea!” he told me.


CHAPTER 14

The South Pole


I RUSHED UP onto the platform. Yes, open sea! Barely a few sparse
floes, some moving icebergs; a sea stretching into the distance; hosts
of birds in the air and myriads of fish under the waters, which varied
from intense blue to olive green depending on the depth. The
thermometer marked 3 degrees centigrade. It was as if a comparative
springtime had been locked up behind that Ice Bank, whose distant
masses were outlined on the northern horizon.

“Are we at the pole?” I asked the captain, my heart pounding.

“I’ve no idea,” he answered me. “At noon we’ll fix our position.”

“But will the sun show through this mist?” I said, staring at the
grayish sky.

“No matter how faintly it shines, it will be enough for me,” the
captain replied.

To the south, ten miles from the Nautilus, a solitary islet rose to a
height of 200 meters. We proceeded toward it, but cautiously, because
this sea could have been strewn with reefs.

In an hour we had reached the islet. Two hours later we had completed
a full circle around it. It measured four to five miles in
circumference. A narrow channel separated it from a considerable
shore, perhaps a continent whose limits we couldn’t see. The existence
of this shore seemed to bear out Commander Maury’s hypotheses. In
essence, this ingenious American has noted that between the South Pole
and the 60th parallel, the sea is covered with floating ice of
dimensions much greater than any found in the north Atlantic. From
this fact he drew the conclusion that the Antarctic Circle must
contain considerable shores, since icebergs can’t form on the high
seas but only along coastlines. According to his calculations, this
frozen mass enclosing the southernmost pole forms a vast ice cap whose
width must reach 4,000 kilometers.

Meanwhile, to avoid running aground, the Nautilus halted three cable
lengths from a strand crowned by superb piles of rocks. The skiff was
launched to sea. Two crewmen carrying instruments, the captain,
Conseil, and I were on board. It was ten o’clock in the morning. I
hadn’t seen Ned Land. No doubt, in the presence of the South Pole, the
Canadian hated having to eat his words.

A few strokes of the oar brought the skiff to the sand, where it ran
aground. Just as Conseil was about to jump ashore, I held him back.

“Sir,” I told Captain Nemo, “to you belongs the honor of first setting
foot on this shore.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain replied, “and if I have no hesitation in
treading this polar soil, it’s because no human being until now has
left a footprint here.”

So saying, he leaped lightly onto the sand. His heart must have been
throbbing with intense excitement. He scaled an overhanging rock that
ended in a small promontory and there, mute and motionless, with
crossed arms and blazing eyes, he seemed to be laying claim to these
southernmost regions. After spending five minutes in this trance, he
turned to us.

“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he called to me.

I got out, Conseil at my heels, leaving the two men in the skiff.

Over an extensive area, the soil consisted of that igneous gravel
called “tuff,” reddish in color as if made from crushed bricks. The
ground was covered with slag, lava flows, and pumice stones. Its
volcanic origin was unmistakable. In certain localities thin smoke
holes gave off a sulfurous odor, showing that the inner fires still
kept their wide-ranging power. Nevertheless, when I scaled a high
escarpment, I could see no volcanoes within a radius of several
miles. In these Antarctic districts, as is well known, Sir James Clark
Ross had found the craters of Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror in fully
active condition on the 167th meridian at latitude 77 degrees 32’.

The vegetation on this desolate continent struck me as quite
limited. A few lichens of the species Usnea melanoxanthra sprawled
over the black rocks. The whole meager flora of this region consisted
of certain microscopic buds, rudimentary diatoms made up of a type of
cell positioned between two quartz-rich shells, plus long purple and
crimson fucus plants, buoyed by small air bladders and washed up on
the coast by the surf.

The beach was strewn with mollusks: small mussels, limpets, smooth
heart-shaped cockles, and especially some sea butterflies with oblong,
membrane-filled bodies whose heads are formed from two rounded
lobes. I also saw myriads of those northernmost sea butterflies three
centimeters long, which a baleen whale can swallow by the thousands in
one gulp. The open waters at the shoreline were alive with these
delightful pteropods, true butterflies of the sea.

Among other zoophytes present in these shallows, there were a few
coral tree forms that, according to Sir James Clark Ross, live in
these Antarctic seas at depths as great as 1,000 meters; then small
alcyon coral belonging to the species Procellaria pelagica, also a
large number of starfish unique to these climes, plus some feather
stars spangling the sand.

But it was in the air that life was superabundant. There various
species of birds flew and fluttered by the thousands, deafening us
with their calls. Crowding the rocks, other fowl watched without fear
as we passed and pressed familiarly against our feet. These were auks,
as agile and supple in water, where they are sometimes mistaken for
fast bonito, as they are clumsy and heavy on land. They uttered
outlandish calls and participated in numerous public assemblies that
featured much noise but little action.

Among other fowl I noted some sheathbills from the wading-bird family,
the size of pigeons, white in color, the beak short and conical, the
eyes framed by red circles. Conseil laid in a supply of them, because
when they’re properly cooked, these winged creatures make a pleasant
dish. In the air there passed sooty albatross with four-meter
wingspans, birds aptly dubbed “vultures of the ocean,” also gigantic
petrels including several with arching wings, enthusiastic eaters of
seal that are known as quebrantahuesos,* and cape pigeons, a sort of
small duck, the tops of their bodies black and white—in short, a whole
series of petrels, some whitish with wings trimmed in brown, others
blue and exclusive to these Antarctic seas, the former “so oily,” I
told Conseil, “that inhabitants of the Faroe Islands simply fit the
bird with a wick, then light it up.”

*Spanish: “ospreys.” Ed.

“With that minor addition,” Conseil replied, “these fowl would make
perfect lamps! After this, we should insist that nature equip them
with wicks in advance!”

Half a mile farther on, the ground was completely riddled with penguin
nests, egg-laying burrows from which numerous birds emerged. Later
Captain Nemo had hundreds of them hunted because their black flesh is
highly edible. They brayed like donkeys. The size of a goose with
slate-colored bodies, white undersides, and lemon-colored neck bands,
these animals let themselves be stoned to death without making any
effort to get away.

Meanwhile the mists didn’t clear, and by eleven o’clock the sun still
hadn’t made an appearance. Its absence disturbed me. Without it, no
sights were possible. Then how could we tell whether we had reached
the pole?

When I rejoined Captain Nemo, I found him leaning silently against a
piece of rock and staring at the sky. He seemed impatient,
baffled. But what could we do? This daring and powerful man couldn’t
control the sun as he did the sea.

Noon arrived without the orb of day appearing for a single
instant. You couldn’t even find its hiding place behind the curtain of
mist. And soon this mist began to condense into snow.

“Until tomorrow,” the captain said simply; and we went back to the
Nautilus, amid flurries in the air.

During our absence the nets had been spread, and I observed with
fascination the fish just hauled on board. The Antarctic seas serve as
a refuge for an extremely large number of migratory fish that flee
from storms in the subpolar zones, in truth only to slide down the
gullets of porpoises and seals. I noted some one-decimeter southern
bullhead, a species of whitish cartilaginous fish overrun with bluish
gray stripes and armed with stings, then some Antarctic rabbitfish
three feet long, the body very slender, the skin a smooth silver
white, the head rounded, the topside furnished with three fins, the
snout ending in a trunk that curved back toward the mouth. I sampled
its flesh but found it tasteless, despite Conseil’s views, which were
largely approving.

The blizzard lasted until the next day. It was impossible to stay on
the platform. From the lounge, where I was writing up the incidents of
this excursion to the polar continent, I could hear the calls of
petrel and albatross cavorting in the midst of the turmoil. The
Nautilus didn’t stay idle, and cruising along the coast, it advanced
some ten miles farther south amid the half light left by the sun as it
skimmed the edge of the horizon.

The next day, March 20, it stopped snowing. The cold was a little more
brisk. The thermometer marked -2 degrees centigrade. The mist had
cleared, and on that day I hoped our noon sights could be
accomplished.

Since Captain Nemo hadn’t yet appeared, only Conseil and I were taken
ashore by the skiff. The soil’s nature was still the same:
volcanic. Traces of lava, slag, and basaltic rock were everywhere, but
I couldn’t find the crater that had vomited them up. There as yonder,
myriads of birds enlivened this part of the polar continent. But they
had to share their dominion with huge herds of marine mammals that
looked at us with gentle eyes. These were seals of various species,
some stretched out on the ground, others lying on drifting ice floes,
several leaving or reentering the sea. Having never dealt with man,
they didn’t run off at our approach, and I counted enough of them
thereabouts to provision a couple hundred ships.

“Ye gods,” Conseil said, “it’s fortunate that Ned Land didn’t come
with us!”

“Why so, Conseil?”

“Because that madcap hunter would kill every animal here.”

“Every animal may be overstating it, but in truth I doubt we could
keep our Canadian friend from harpooning some of these magnificent
cetaceans. Which would be an affront to Captain Nemo, since he hates
to slay harmless beasts needlessly.”

“He’s right.”

“Certainly, Conseil. But tell me, haven’t you finished classifying
these superb specimens of marine fauna?”

“Master is well aware,” Conseil replied, “that I’m not seasoned in
practical application. When master has told me these animals’ names
. . .”

“They’re seals and walruses.”

“Two genera,” our scholarly Conseil hastened to say, “that belong to
the family Pinnipedia, order Carnivora, group Unguiculata, subclass
Monodelphia, class Mammalia, branch Vertebrata.”

“Very nice, Conseil,” I replied, “but these two genera of seals and
walruses are each divided into species, and if I’m not mistaken, we
now have a chance to actually look at them. Let’s.”

It was eight o’clock in the morning. We had four hours to ourselves
before the sun could be productively observed. I guided our steps
toward a huge bay that made a crescent-shaped incision in the granite
cliffs along the beach.

There, all about us, I swear that the shores and ice floes were
crowded with marine mammals as far as the eye could see, and I
involuntarily looked around for old Proteus, that mythological
shepherd who guarded King Neptune’s immense flocks. To be specific,
these were seals. They formed distinct male-and-female groups, the
father watching over his family, the mother suckling her little ones,
the stronger youngsters emancipated a few paces away. When these
mammals wanted to relocate, they moved in little jumps made by
contracting their bodies, clumsily helped by their imperfectly
developed flippers, which, as with their manatee relatives, form
actual forearms. In the water, their ideal element, I must say these
animals swim wonderfully thanks to their flexible backbones, narrow
pelvises, close-cropped hair, and webbed feet. Resting on shore, they
assumed extremely graceful positions. Consequently, their gentle
features, their sensitive expressions equal to those of the loveliest
women, their soft, limpid eyes, their charming poses, led the ancients
to glorify them by metamorphosing the males into sea gods and the
females into mermaids.

I drew Conseil’s attention to the considerable growth of the cerebral
lobes found in these intelligent cetaceans. No mammal except man has
more abundant cerebral matter. Accordingly, seals are quite capable of
being educated; they make good pets, and together with certain other
naturalists, I think these animals can be properly trained to perform
yeoman service as hunting dogs for fishermen.

Most of these seals were sleeping on the rocks or the sand. Among
those properly termed seals—which have no external ears, unlike sea
lions whose ears protrude—I observed several varieties of the species
stenorhynchus, three meters long, with white hair, bulldog heads, and
armed with ten teeth in each jaw: four incisors in both the upper and
lower, plus two big canines shaped like the fleur-de-lis. Among them
slithered some sea elephants, a type of seal with a short, flexible
trunk; these are the giants of the species, with a circumference of
twenty feet and a length of ten meters. They didn’t move as we
approached.

“Are these animals dangerous?” Conseil asked me.

“Only if they’re attacked,” I replied. “But when these giant seals
defend their little ones, their fury is dreadful, and it isn’t rare
for them to smash a fisherman’s longboat to bits.”

“They’re within their rights,” Conseil answered.

“I don’t say nay.”

Two miles farther on, we were stopped by a promontory that screened
the bay from southerly winds. It dropped straight down to the sea, and
surf foamed against it. From beyond this ridge there came fearsome
bellows, such as a herd of cattle might produce.

“Gracious,” Conseil put in, “a choir of bulls?”

“No,” I said, “a choir of walruses.”

“Are they fighting with each other?”

“Either fighting or playing.”

“With all due respect to master, this we must see.”

“Then see it we must, Conseil.”

And there we were, climbing these blackish rocks amid sudden
landslides and over stones slippery with ice. More than once I took a
tumble at the expense of my backside. Conseil, more cautious or more
stable, barely faltered and would help me up, saying:

“If master’s legs would kindly adopt a wider stance, master will keep
his balance.”

Arriving at the topmost ridge of this promontory, I could see vast
white plains covered with walruses. These animals were playing among
themselves. They were howling not in anger but in glee.

Walruses resemble seals in the shape of their bodies and the
arrangement of their limbs. But their lower jaws lack canines and
incisors, and as for their upper canines, they consist of two tusks
eighty centimeters long with a circumference of thirty-three
centimeters at the socket. Made of solid ivory, without striations,
harder than elephant tusks, and less prone to yellowing, these teeth
are in great demand. Accordingly, walruses are the victims of a
mindless hunting that soon will destroy them all, since their hunters
indiscriminately slaughter pregnant females and youngsters, and over
4,000 individuals are destroyed annually.

Passing near these unusual animals, I could examine them at my leisure
since they didn’t stir. Their hides were rough and heavy, a tan color
leaning toward a reddish brown; their coats were short and less than
abundant. Some were four meters long. More tranquil and less fearful
than their northern relatives, they posted no sentinels on guard duty
at the approaches to their campsite.

After examining this community of walruses, I decided to return in my
tracks. It was eleven o’clock, and if Captain Nemo found conditions
favorable for taking his sights, I wanted to be present at the
operation. But I held no hopes that the sun would make an appearance
that day. It was hidden from our eyes by clouds squeezed together on
the horizon. Apparently the jealous orb didn’t want to reveal this
inaccessible spot on the globe to any human being.

Yet I decided to return to the Nautilus. We went along a steep, narrow
path that ran over the cliff’s summit. By 11:30 we had arrived at our
landing place. The beached skiff had brought the captain ashore. I
spotted him standing on a chunk of basalt. His instruments were beside
him. His eyes were focused on the northern horizon, along which the
sun was sweeping in its extended arc.

I found a place near him and waited without speaking. Noon arrived,
and just as on the day before, the sun didn’t put in an appearance.

It was sheer bad luck. Our noon sights were still lacking. If we
couldn’t obtain them tomorrow, we would finally have to give up any
hope of fixing our position.

In essence, it was precisely March 20. Tomorrow, the 21st, was the day
of the equinox; the sun would disappear below the horizon for six
months not counting refraction, and after its disappearance the long
polar night would begin. Following the September equinox, the sun had
emerged above the northerly horizon, rising in long spirals until
December 21. At that time, the summer solstice of these southernmost
districts, the sun had started back down, and tomorrow it would cast
its last rays.

I shared my thoughts and fears with Captain Nemo.

“You’re right, Professor Aronnax,” he told me. “If I can’t take the
sun’s altitude tomorrow, I won’t be able to try again for another six
months. But precisely because sailors’ luck has led me into these seas
on March 21, it will be easy to get our bearings if the noonday sun
does appear before our eyes.”

“Why easy, captain?”

“Because when the orb of day sweeps in such long spirals, it’s
difficult to measure its exact altitude above the horizon, and our
instruments are open to committing serious errors.”

“Then what can you do?”

“I use only my chronometer,” Captain Nemo answered me. “At noon
tomorrow, March 21, if, after accounting for refraction, the sun’s
disk is cut exactly in half by the northern horizon, that will mean
I’m at the South Pole.”

“Right,” I said. “Nevertheless, it isn’t mathematically exact proof,
because the equinox needn’t fall precisely at noon.”

“No doubt, sir, but the error will be under 100 meters, and that’s
close enough for us. Until tomorrow then.”

Captain Nemo went back on board. Conseil and I stayed behind until
five o’clock, surveying the beach, observing and studying. The only
unusual object I picked up was an auk’s egg of remarkable size, for
which a collector would have paid more than 1,000 francs. Its
cream-colored tint, plus the streaks and markings that decorated it
like so many hieroglyphics, made it a rare trinket. I placed it in
Conseil’s hands, and holding it like precious porcelain from China,
that cautious, sure-footed lad got it back to the Nautilus in one
piece.

There I put this rare egg inside one of the glass cases in the
museum. I ate supper, feasting with appetite on an excellent piece of
seal liver whose flavor reminded me of pork. Then I went to bed; but
not without praying, like a good Hindu, for the favors of the radiant
orb.

The next day, March 21, bright and early at five o’clock in the
morning, I climbed onto the platform. I found Captain Nemo there.

“The weather is clearing a bit,” he told me. “I have high hopes. After
breakfast we’ll make our way ashore and choose an observation post.”

This issue settled, I went to find Ned Land. I wanted to take him with
me. The obstinate Canadian refused, and I could clearly see that his
tight-lipped mood and his bad temper were growing by the day. Under
the circumstances I ultimately wasn’t sorry that he refused. In truth,
there were too many seals ashore, and it would never do to expose this
impulsive fisherman to such temptations.

Breakfast over, I made my way ashore. The Nautilus had gone a few more
miles during the night. It lay well out, a good league from the coast,
which was crowned by a sharp peak 400 to 500 meters high. In addition
to me, the skiff carried Captain Nemo, two crewmen, and the
instruments—in other words, a chronometer, a spyglass, and a
barometer.

During our crossing I saw numerous baleen whales belonging to the
three species unique to these southernmost seas: the bowhead whale (or
“right whale,” according to the English), which has no dorsal fin; the
humpback whale from the genus Balaenoptera (in other words, “winged
whales”), beasts with wrinkled bellies and huge whitish fins that,
genus name regardless, do not yet form wings; and the finback whale,
yellowish brown, the swiftest of all cetaceans. This powerful animal
is audible from far away when it sends up towering spouts of air and
steam that resemble swirls of smoke. Herds of these different mammals
were playing about in the tranquil waters, and I could easily see that
this Antarctic polar basin now served as a refuge for those cetaceans
too relentlessly pursued by hunters.

I also noted long, whitish strings of salps, a type of mollusk found
in clusters, and some jellyfish of large size that swayed in the
eddies of the billows.

By nine o’clock we had pulled up to shore. The sky was growing
brighter. Clouds were fleeing to the south. Mists were rising from the
cold surface of the water. Captain Nemo headed toward the peak, which
he no doubt planned to make his observatory. It was an arduous climb
over sharp lava and pumice stones in the midst of air often reeking
with sulfurous fumes from the smoke holes. For a man out of practice
at treading land, the captain scaled the steepest slopes with a supple
agility I couldn’t equal, and which would have been envied by hunters
of Pyrenees mountain goats.

It took us two hours to reach the summit of this half-crystal,
half-basalt peak. From there our eyes scanned a vast sea, which
scrawled its boundary line firmly against the background of the
northern sky. At our feet: dazzling tracts of white. Over our heads: a
pale azure, clear of mists. North of us: the sun’s disk, like a ball
of fire already cut into by the edge of the horizon. From the heart of
the waters: jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent
bouquets. Far off, like a sleeping cetacean: the Nautilus. Behind us
to the south and east: an immense shore, a chaotic heap of rocks and
ice whose limits we couldn’t see.

Arriving at the summit of this peak, Captain Nemo carefully determined
its elevation by means of his barometer, since he had to take this
factor into account in his noon sights.

At 11:45 the sun, by then seen only by refraction, looked like a
golden disk, dispersing its last rays over this deserted continent and
down to these seas not yet plowed by the ships of man.

Captain Nemo had brought a spyglass with a reticular eyepiece, which
corrected the sun’s refraction by means of a mirror, and he used it to
observe the orb sinking little by little along a very extended
diagonal that reached below the horizon. I held the chronometer. My
heart was pounding mightily. If the lower half of the sun’s disk
disappeared just as the chronometer said noon, we were right at the
pole.

“Noon!” I called.

“The South Pole!” Captain Nemo replied in a solemn voice, handing me
the spyglass, which showed the orb of day cut into two exactly equal
parts by the horizon.

I stared at the last rays wreathing this peak, while shadows were
gradually climbing its gradients.

Just then, resting his hand on my shoulder, Captain Nemo said to me:

“In 1600, sir, the Dutchman Gheritk was swept by storms and currents,
reaching latitude 64 degrees south and discovering the South Shetland
Islands. On January 17, 1773, the famous Captain Cook went along the
38th meridian, arriving at latitude 67 degrees 30’; and on January 30,
1774, along the 109th meridian, he reached latitude 71 degrees 15’. In
1819 the Russian Bellinghausen lay on the 69th parallel, and in 1821
on the 66th at longitude 111 degrees west. In 1820 the Englishman
Bransfield stopped at 65 degrees. That same year the American Morrel,
whose reports are dubious, went along the 42nd meridian, finding open
sea at latitude 70 degrees 14’. In 1825 the Englishman Powell was
unable to get beyond 62 degrees. That same year a humble seal
fisherman, the Englishman Weddell, went as far as latitude 72 degrees
14’ on the 35th meridian, and as far as 74 degrees 15’ on the 36th. In
1829 the Englishman Forster, commander of the Chanticleer, laid claim
to the Antarctic continent in latitude 63 degrees 26’ and longitude 66
degrees 26’. On February 1, 1831, the Englishman Biscoe discovered
Enderby Land at latitude 68 degrees 50’, Adelaide Land at latitude 67
degrees on February 5, 1832, and Graham Land at latitude 64 degrees
45’ on February 21. In 1838 the Frenchman Dumont d’Urville stopped at
the Ice Bank in latitude 62 degrees 57’, sighting the Louis-Philippe
Peninsula; on January 21 two years later, at a new southerly position
of 66 degrees 30’, he named the Adélie Coast and eight days later, the
Clarie Coast at 64 degrees 40’. In 1838 the American Wilkes advanced
as far as the 69th parallel on the 100th meridian. In 1839 the
Englishman Balleny discovered the Sabrina Coast at the edge of the
polar circle. Lastly, on January 12, 1842, with his ships, the Erebus
and the Terror, the Englishman Sir James Clark Ross found Victoria
Land in latitude 70 degrees 56’ and longitude 171 degrees 7’ east; on
the 23rd of that same month, he reached the 74th parallel, a position
denoting the Farthest South attained until then; on the 27th he lay at
76 degrees 8’; on the 28th at 77 degrees 32’; on February 2 at 78
degrees 4’; and late in 1842 he returned to 71 degrees but couldn’t
get beyond it. Well now! In 1868, on this 21st day of March, I myself,
Captain Nemo, have reached the South Pole at 90 degrees, and I hereby
claim this entire part of the globe, equal to one-sixth of the known
continents.”

“In the name of which sovereign, captain?”

“In my own name, sir!”

So saying, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag bearing a gold “N” on
its quartered bunting. Then, turning toward the orb of day, whose last
rays were licking at the sea’s horizon:

“Farewell, O sun!” he called. “Disappear, O radiant orb! Retire
beneath this open sea, and let six months of night spread their
shadows over my new domains!”


CHAPTER 15

Accident or Incident?


THE NEXT DAY, March 22, at six o’clock in the morning, preparations
for departure began. The last gleams of twilight were melting into
night. The cold was brisk. The constellations were glittering with
startling intensity. The wonderful Southern Cross, polar star of the
Antarctic regions, twinkled at its zenith.

The thermometer marked -12 degrees centigrade, and a fresh breeze left
a sharp nip in the air. Ice floes were increasing over the open
water. The sea was starting to congeal everywhere. Numerous blackish
patches were spreading over its surface, announcing the imminent
formation of fresh ice. Obviously this southernmost basin froze over
during its six-month winter and became utterly inaccessible. What
happened to the whales during this period? No doubt they went beneath
the Ice Bank to find more feasible seas. As for seals and walruses,
they were accustomed to living in the harshest climates and stayed on
in these icy waterways. These animals know by instinct how to gouge
holes in the ice fields and keep them continually open; they go to
these holes to breathe. Once the birds have migrated northward to
escape the cold, these marine mammals remain as sole lords of the
polar continent.

Meanwhile the ballast tanks filled with water and the Nautilus sank
slowly. At a depth of 1,000 feet, it stopped. Its propeller churned
the waves and it headed due north at a speed of fifteen miles per
hour. Near the afternoon it was already cruising under the immense
frozen carapace of the Ice Bank.

As a precaution, the panels in the lounge stayed closed, because the
Nautilus’s hull could run afoul of some submerged block of ice. So I
spent the day putting my notes into final form. My mind was completely
wrapped up in my memories of the pole. We had reached that
inaccessible spot without facing exhaustion or danger, as if our
seagoing passenger carriage had glided there on railroad tracks. And
now we had actually started our return journey. Did it still have
comparable surprises in store for me? I felt sure it did, so
inexhaustible is this series of underwater wonders! As it was, in the
five and a half months since fate had brought us on board, we had
cleared 14,000 leagues, and over this track longer than the earth’s
equator, so many fascinating or frightening incidents had beguiled our
voyage: that hunting trip in the Crespo forests, our running aground
in the Torres Strait, the coral cemetery, the pearl fisheries of
Ceylon, the Arabic tunnel, the fires of Santorini, those millions in
the Bay of Vigo, Atlantis, the South Pole! During the night all these
memories crossed over from one dream to the next, not giving my brain
a moment’s rest.

At three o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by a violent
collision. I sat up in bed, listening in the darkness, and then was
suddenly hurled into the middle of my stateroom. Apparently the
Nautilus had gone aground, then heeled over sharply.

Leaning against the walls, I dragged myself down the gangways to the
lounge, whose ceiling lights were on. The furniture had been knocked
over. Fortunately the glass cases were solidly secured at the base and
had stood fast. Since we were no longer vertical, the starboard
pictures were glued to the tapestries, while those to port had their
lower edges hanging a foot away from the wall. So the Nautilus was
lying on its starboard side, completely stationary to boot.

In its interior I heard the sound of footsteps and muffled voices. But
Captain Nemo didn’t appear. Just as I was about to leave the lounge,
Ned Land and Conseil entered.

“What happened?” I instantly said to them.

“I came to ask master that,” Conseil replied.

“Damnation!” the Canadian exclaimed. “I know full well what happened!
The Nautilus has gone aground, and judging from the way it’s listing,
I don’t think it’ll pull through like that first time in the Torres
Strait.”

“But,” I asked, “are we at least back on the surface of the sea?”

“We have no idea,” Conseil replied.

“It’s easy to find out,” I answered.

I consulted the pressure gauge. Much to my surprise, it indicated a
depth of 360 meters.

“What’s the meaning of this?” I exclaimed.

“We must confer with Captain Nemo,” Conseil said.

“But where do we find him?” Ned Land asked.

“Follow me,” I told my two companions.

We left the lounge. Nobody in the library. Nobody by the central
companionway or the crew’s quarters. I assumed that Captain Nemo was
stationed in the pilothouse. Best to wait. The three of us returned to
the lounge.

I’ll skip over the Canadian’s complaints. He had good grounds for an
outburst. I didn’t answer him back, letting him blow off all the steam
he wanted.

We had been left to ourselves for twenty minutes, trying to detect the
tiniest noises inside the Nautilus, when Captain Nemo entered. He
didn’t seem to see us. His facial features, usually so emotionless,
revealed a certain uneasiness. He studied the compass and pressure
gauge in silence, then went and put his finger on the world map at a
spot in the sector depicting the southernmost seas.

I hesitated to interrupt him. But some moments later, when he turned
to me, I threw back at him a phrase he had used in the Torres Strait:

“An incident, captain?”

“No, sir,” he replied, “this time an accident.”

“Serious?”

“Perhaps.”

“Is there any immediate danger?”

“No.”

“The Nautilus has run aground?”

“Yes.”

“And this accident came about . . . ?”

“Through nature’s unpredictability not man’s incapacity. No errors
were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can’t prevent a loss
of balance from taking its toll. One may defy human laws, but no one
can withstand the laws of nature.”

Captain Nemo had picked an odd time to philosophize. All in all, this
reply told me nothing.

“May I learn, sir,” I asked him, “what caused this accident?”

“An enormous block of ice, an entire mountain, has toppled over,” he
answered me. “When an iceberg is eroded at the base by warmer waters
or by repeated collisions, its center of gravity rises. Then it
somersaults, it turns completely upside down. That’s what happened
here. When it overturned, one of these blocks hit the Nautilus as it
was cruising under the waters. Sliding under our hull, this block then
raised us with irresistible power, lifting us into less congested
strata where we now lie on our side.”

“But can’t we float the Nautilus clear by emptying its ballast tanks,
to regain our balance?”

“That, sir, is being done right now. You can hear the pumps
working. Look at the needle on the pressure gauge. It indicates that
the Nautilus is rising, but this block of ice is rising with us, and
until some obstacle halts its upward movement, our position won’t
change.”

Indeed, the Nautilus kept the same heel to starboard. No doubt it
would straighten up once the block came to a halt. But before that
happened, who knew if we might not hit the underbelly of the Ice Bank
and be hideously squeezed between two frozen surfaces?

I mused on all the consequences of this situation. Captain Nemo didn’t
stop studying the pressure gauge. Since the toppling of this iceberg,
the Nautilus had risen about 150 feet, but it still stayed at the same
angle to the perpendicular.

Suddenly a slight movement could be felt over the hull. Obviously the
Nautilus was straightening a bit. Objects hanging in the lounge were
visibly returning to their normal positions. The walls were
approaching the vertical. Nobody said a word. Hearts pounding, we
could see and feel the ship righting itself. The floor was becoming
horizontal beneath our feet. Ten minutes went by.

“Finally, we’re upright!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” Captain Nemo said, heading to the lounge door.

“But will we float off?” I asked him.

“Certainly,” he replied, “since the ballast tanks aren’t yet empty,
and when they are, the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea.”

The captain went out, and soon I saw that at his orders, the Nautilus
had halted its upward movement. In fact, it soon would have hit the
underbelly of the Ice Bank, but it had stopped in time and was
floating in midwater.

“That was a close call!” Conseil then said.

“Yes. We could have been crushed between these masses of ice, or at
least imprisoned between them. And then, with no way to renew our air
supply. . . . Yes, that was a close call!”

“If it’s over with!” Ned Land muttered.

I was unwilling to get into a pointless argument with the Canadian and
didn’t reply. Moreover, the panels opened just then, and the outside
light burst through the uncovered windows.

We were fully afloat, as I have said; but on both sides of the
Nautilus, about ten meters away, there rose dazzling walls of
ice. There also were walls above and below. Above, because the Ice
Bank’s underbelly spread over us like an immense ceiling. Below,
because the somersaulting block, shifting little by little, had found
points of purchase on both side walls and had gotten jammed between
them. The Nautilus was imprisoned in a genuine tunnel of ice about
twenty meters wide and filled with quiet water. So the ship could
easily exit by going either ahead or astern, sinking a few hundred
meters deeper, and then taking an open passageway beneath the Ice
Bank.

The ceiling lights were off, yet the lounge was still brightly
lit. This was due to the reflecting power of the walls of ice, which
threw the beams of our beacon right back at us. Words cannot describe
the effects produced by our galvanic rays on these huge, whimsically
sculpted blocks, whose every angle, ridge, and facet gave off a
different glow depending on the nature of the veins running inside the
ice. It was a dazzling mine of gems, in particular sapphires and
emeralds, whose jets of blue and green crisscrossed. Here and there,
opaline hues of infinite subtlety raced among sparks of light that
were like so many fiery diamonds, their brilliance more than any eye
could stand. The power of our beacon was increased a hundredfold, like
a lamp shining through the biconvex lenses of a world-class
lighthouse.

“How beautiful!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a wonderful sight! Isn’t it, Ned?”

“Oh damnation, yes!” Ned Land shot back. “It’s superb! I’m furious
that I have to admit it. Nobody has ever seen the like. But this sight
could cost us dearly. And in all honesty, I think we’re looking at
things God never intended for human eyes.”

Ned was right. It was too beautiful. All at once a yell from Conseil
made me turn around.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Master must close his eyes! Master mustn’t look!”

With that, Conseil clapped his hands over his eyes.

“But what’s wrong, my boy?”

“I’ve been dazzled, struck blind!”

Involuntarily my eyes flew to the window, but I couldn’t stand the
fire devouring it.

I realized what had happened. The Nautilus had just started off at
great speed. All the tranquil glimmers of the ice walls had then
changed into blazing streaks. The sparkles from these myriads of
diamonds were merging with each other. Swept along by its propeller,
the Nautilus was traveling through a sheath of flashing light.

Then the panels in the lounge closed. We kept our hands over our eyes,
which were utterly saturated with those concentric gleams that swirl
before the retina when sunlight strikes it too intensely. It took some
time to calm our troubled vision.

Finally we lowered our hands.

“Ye gods, I never would have believed it,” Conseil said.

“And I still don’t believe it!” the Canadian shot back.

“When we return to shore, jaded from all these natural wonders,”
Conseil added, “think how we’ll look down on those pitiful land
masses, those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won’t be good
enough for us!”

Such words from the lips of this emotionless Flemish boy showed that
our enthusiasm was near the boiling point. But the Canadian didn’t
fail to throw his dram of cold water over us.

“The civilized world!” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry,
Conseil my friend, we’re never going back to that world!”

By this point it was five o’clock in the morning. Just then there was
a collision in the Nautilus’s bow. I realized that its spur had just
bumped a block of ice. It must have been a faulty maneuver because
this underwater tunnel was obstructed by such blocks and didn’t make
for easy navigating. So I had assumed that Captain Nemo, in adjusting
his course, would go around each obstacle or would hug the walls and
follow the windings of the tunnel. In either case our forward motion
wouldn’t receive an absolute check. Nevertheless, contrary to my
expectations, the Nautilus definitely began to move backward.

“We’re going astern?” Conseil said.

“Yes,” I replied. “Apparently the tunnel has no way out at this end.”

“And so . . . ?”

“So,” I said, “our maneuvers are quite simple. We’ll return in our
tracks and go out the southern opening. That’s all.”

As I spoke, I tried to sound more confident than I really
felt. Meanwhile the Nautilus accelerated its backward movement, and
running with propeller in reverse, it swept us along at great speed.

“This’ll mean a delay,” Ned said.

“What are a few hours more or less, so long as we get out.”

“Yes,” Ned Land repeated, “so long as we get out!”

I strolled for a little while from the lounge into the library. My
companions kept their seats and didn’t move. Soon I threw myself down
on a couch and picked up a book, which my eyes skimmed mechanically.

A quarter of an hour later, Conseil approached me, saying:

“Is it deeply fascinating, this volume master is reading?”

“Tremendously fascinating,” I replied.

“I believe it. Master is reading his own book!”

“My own book?”

Indeed, my hands were holding my own work on the great ocean depths. I
hadn’t even suspected. I closed the book and resumed my strolling. Ned
and Conseil stood up to leave.

“Stay here, my friends,” I said, stopping them. “Let’s stay together
until we’re out of this blind alley.”

“As master wishes,” Conseil replied.

The hours passed. I often studied the instruments hanging on the
lounge wall. The pressure gauge indicated that the Nautilus stayed at
a constant depth of 300 meters, the compass that it kept heading
south, the log that it was traveling at a speed of twenty miles per
hour, an excessive speed in such a cramped area. But Captain Nemo knew
that by this point there was no such thing as too fast, since minutes
were now worth centuries.

At 8:25 a second collision took place. This time astern. I grew
pale. My companions came over. I clutched Conseil’s hand. Our eyes
questioned each other, and more directly than if our thoughts had been
translated into words.

Just then the captain entered the lounge. I went to him.

“Our path is barred to the south?” I asked him.

“Yes, sir. When it overturned, that iceberg closed off every exit.”

“We’re boxed in?”

“Yes.”


CHAPTER 16

Shortage of Air


CONSEQUENTLY, above, below, and around the Nautilus, there were
impenetrable frozen walls. We were the Ice Bank’s prisoners! The
Canadian banged a table with his fearsome fist. Conseil kept still. I
stared at the captain. His face had resumed its usual
emotionlessness. He crossed his arms. He pondered. The Nautilus did
not stir.

The captain then broke into speech:

“Gentlemen,” he said in a calm voice, “there are two ways of dying
under the conditions in which we’re placed.”

This inexplicable individual acted like a mathematics professor
working out a problem for his pupils.

“The first way,” he went on, “is death by crushing. The second is
death by asphyxiation. I don’t mention the possibility of death by
starvation because the Nautilus’s provisions will certainly last
longer than we will. Therefore, let’s concentrate on our chances of
being crushed or asphyxiated.”

“As for asphyxiation, captain,” I replied, “that isn’t a cause for
alarm, because the air tanks are full.”

“True,” Captain Nemo went on, “but they’ll supply air for only two
days. Now then, we’ve been buried beneath the waters for thirty-six
hours, and the Nautilus’s heavy atmosphere already needs renewing. In
another forty-eight hours, our reserve air will be used up.”

“Well then, captain, let’s free ourselves within forty-eight hours!”

“We’ll try to at least, by cutting through one of these walls
surrounding us.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Borings will tell us that. I’m going to ground the Nautilus on the
lower shelf, then my men will put on their diving suits and attack the
thinnest of these ice walls.”

“Can the panels in the lounge be left open?”

“Without ill effect. We’re no longer in motion.”

Captain Nemo went out. Hissing sounds soon told me that water was
being admitted into the ballast tanks. The Nautilus slowly settled and
rested on the icy bottom at a depth of 350 meters, the depth at which
the lower shelf of ice lay submerged.

“My friends,” I said, “we’re in a serious predicament, but I’m
counting on your courage and energy.”

“Sir,” the Canadian replied, “this is no time to bore you with my
complaints. I’m ready to do anything I can for the common good.”

“Excellent, Ned,” I said, extending my hand to the Canadian.

“I might add,” he went on, “that I’m as handy with a pick as a
harpoon. If I can be helpful to the captain, he can use me any way he
wants.”

“He won’t turn down your assistance. Come along, Ned.”

I led the Canadian to the room where the Nautilus’s men were putting
on their diving suits. I informed the captain of Ned’s proposition,
which was promptly accepted. The Canadian got into his underwater
costume and was ready as soon as his fellow workers. Each of them
carried on his back a Rouquayrol device that the air tanks had
supplied with a generous allowance of fresh oxygen. A considerable but
necessary drain on the Nautilus’s reserves. As for the Ruhmkorff
lamps, they were unnecessary in the midst of these brilliant waters
saturated with our electric rays.

After Ned was dressed, I reentered the lounge, whose windows had been
uncovered; stationed next to Conseil, I examined the strata
surrounding and supporting the Nautilus.

Some moments later, we saw a dozen crewmen set foot on the shelf of
ice, among them Ned Land, easily recognized by his tall
figure. Captain Nemo was with them.

Before digging into the ice, the captain had to obtain borings, to
insure working in the best direction. Long bores were driven into the
side walls; but after fifteen meters, the instruments were still
impeded by the thickness of those walls. It was futile to attack the
ceiling since that surface was the Ice Bank itself, more than 400
meters high. Captain Nemo then bored into the lower surface. There we
were separated from the sea by a ten-meter barrier. That’s how thick
the iceberg was. From this point on, it was an issue of cutting out a
piece equal in surface area to the Nautilus’s waterline. This meant
detaching about 6,500 cubic meters, to dig a hole through which the
ship could descend below this tract of ice.

Work began immediately and was carried on with tireless
tenacity. Instead of digging all around the Nautilus, which would have
entailed even greater difficulties, Captain Nemo had an immense trench
outlined on the ice, eight meters from our port quarter. Then his men
simultaneously staked it off at several points around its
circumference. Soon their picks were vigorously attacking this compact
matter, and huge chunks were loosened from its mass. These chunks
weighed less than the water, and by an unusual effect of specific
gravity, each chunk took wing, as it were, to the roof of the tunnel,
which thickened above by as much as it diminished below. But this
hardly mattered so long as the lower surface kept growing thinner.

After two hours of energetic work, Ned Land reentered, exhausted. He
and his companions were replaced by new workmen, including Conseil and
me. The Nautilus’s chief officer supervised us.

The water struck me as unusually cold, but I warmed up promptly while
wielding my pick. My movements were quite free, although they were
executed under a pressure of thirty atmospheres.

After two hours of work, reentering to snatch some food and rest, I
found a noticeable difference between the clean elastic fluid supplied
me by the Rouquayrol device and the Nautilus’s atmosphere, which was
already charged with carbon dioxide. The air hadn’t been renewed in
forty-eight hours, and its life-giving qualities were considerably
weakened. Meanwhile, after twelve hours had gone by, we had removed
from the outlined surface area a slice of ice only one meter thick,
hence about 600 cubic meters. Assuming the same work would be
accomplished every twelve hours, it would still take five nights and
four days to see the undertaking through to completion.

“Five nights and four days!” I told my companions. “And we have oxygen
in the air tanks for only two days.”

“Without taking into account,” Ned answered, “that once we’re out of
this damned prison, we’ll still be cooped up beneath the Ice Bank,
without any possible contact with the open air!”

An apt remark. For who could predict the minimum time we would need to
free ourselves? Before the Nautilus could return to the surface of the
waves, couldn’t we all die of asphyxiation? Were this ship and
everyone on board doomed to perish in this tomb of ice? It was a
dreadful state of affairs. But we faced it head-on, each one of us
determined to do his duty to the end.

During the night, in line with my forecasts, a new one-meter slice was
removed from this immense socket. But in the morning, wearing my
diving suit, I was crossing through the liquid mass in a temperature
of -6 degrees to -7 degrees centigrade, when I noted that little by
little the side walls were closing in on each other. The liquid strata
farthest from the trench, not warmed by the movements of workmen and
tools, were showing a tendency to solidify. In the face of this
imminent new danger, what would happen to our chances for salvation,
and how could we prevent this liquid medium from solidifying, then
cracking the Nautilus’s hull like glass?

I didn’t tell my two companions about this new danger. There was no
point in dampening the energy they were putting into our arduous
rescue work. But when I returned on board, I mentioned this serious
complication to Captain Nemo.

“I know,” he told me in that calm tone the most dreadful outlook
couldn’t change. “It’s one more danger, but I don’t know any way of
warding it off. Our sole chance for salvation is to work faster than
the water solidifies. We’ve got to get there first, that’s all.”

Get there first! By then I should have been used to this type of talk!

For several hours that day, I wielded my pick doggedly. The work kept
me going. Besides, working meant leaving the Nautilus, which meant
breathing the clean oxygen drawn from the air tanks and supplied by
our equipment, which meant leaving the thin, foul air behind.

Near evening one more meter had been dug from the trench. When I
returned on board, I was wellnigh asphyxiated by the carbon dioxide
saturating the air. Oh, if only we had the chemical methods that would
enable us to drive out this noxious gas! There was no lack of
oxygen. All this water contained a considerable amount, and after it
was decomposed by our powerful batteries, this life-giving elastic
fluid could have been restored to us. I had thought it all out, but to
no avail because the carbon dioxide produced by our breathing
permeated every part of the ship. To absorb it, we would need to fill
containers with potassium hydroxide and shake them continually. But
this substance was missing on board and nothing else could replace it.

That evening Captain Nemo was forced to open the spigots of his air
tanks and shoot a few spouts of fresh oxygen through the Nautilus’s
interior. Without this precaution we wouldn’t have awakened the
following morning.

The next day, March 26, I returned to my miner’s trade, working to
remove the fifth meter. The Ice Bank’s side walls and underbelly had
visibly thickened. Obviously they would come together before the
Nautilus could break free. For an instant I was gripped by despair. My
pick nearly slipped from my hands. What was the point of this digging
if I was to die smothered and crushed by this water turning to stone,
a torture undreamed of by even the wildest savages! I felt like I was
lying in the jaws of a fearsome monster, jaws irresistibly closing.

Supervising our work, working himself, Captain Nemo passed near me
just then. I touched him with my hand and pointed to the walls of our
prison. The starboard wall had moved forward to a point less than four
meters from the Nautilus’s hull.

The captain understood and gave me a signal to follow him. We returned
on board. My diving suit removed, I went with him to the lounge.

“Professor Aronnax,” he told me, “this calls for heroic measures, or
we’ll be sealed up in this solidified water as if it were cement.”

“Yes!” I said. “But what can we do?”

“Oh,” he exclaimed, “if only my Nautilus were strong enough to stand
that much pressure without being crushed!”

“Well?” I asked, not catching the captain’s meaning.

“Don’t you understand,” he went on, “that the congealing of this water
could come to our rescue? Don’t you see that by solidifying, it could
burst these tracts of ice imprisoning us, just as its freezing can
burst the hardest stones? Aren’t you aware that this force could be
the instrument of our salvation rather than our destruction?”

“Yes, captain, maybe so. But whatever resistance to crushing the
Nautilus may have, it still couldn’t stand such dreadful pressures,
and it would be squashed as flat as a piece of sheet iron.”

“I know it, sir. So we can’t rely on nature to rescue us, only our own
efforts. We must counteract this solidification. We must hold it in
check. Not only are the side walls closing in, but there aren’t ten
feet of water ahead or astern of the Nautilus. All around us, this
freeze is gaining fast.”

“How long,” I asked, “will the oxygen in the air tanks enable us to
breathe on board?”

The captain looked me straight in the eye.

“After tomorrow,” he said, “the air tanks will be empty!”

I broke out in a cold sweat. But why should I have been startled by
this reply? On March 22 the Nautilus had dived under the open waters
at the pole. It was now the 26th. We had lived off the ship’s stores
for five days! And all remaining breathable air had to be saved for
the workmen. Even today as I write these lines, my sensations are so
intense that an involuntary terror sweeps over me, and my lungs still
seem short of air!

Meanwhile, motionless and silent, Captain Nemo stood lost in
thought. An idea visibly crossed his mind. But he seemed to brush it
aside. He told himself no. At last these words escaped his lips:

“Boiling water!” he muttered.

“Boiling water?” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir. We’re shut up in a relatively confined area. If the
Nautilus’s pumps continually injected streams of boiling water into
this space, wouldn’t that raise its temperature and delay its
freezing?”

“It’s worth trying!” I said resolutely.

“So let’s try it, professor.”

By then the thermometer gave -7 degrees centigrade outside. Captain
Nemo led me to the galley where a huge distilling mechanism was at
work, supplying drinking water via evaporation. The mechanism was
loaded with water, and the full electric heat of our batteries was
thrown into coils awash in liquid. In a few minutes the water reached
100 degrees centigrade. It was sent to the pumps while new water
replaced it in the process. The heat generated by our batteries was so
intense that after simply going through the mechanism, water drawn
cold from the sea arrived boiling hot at the body of the pump.

The steaming water was injected into the icy water outside, and after
three hours had passed, the thermometer gave the exterior temperature
as -6 degrees centigrade. That was one degree gained. Two hours later
the thermometer gave only -4 degrees.

After I monitored the operation’s progress, double-checking it with
many inspections, I told the captain, “It’s working.”

“I think so,” he answered me. “We’ve escaped being crushed. Now we
have only asphyxiation to fear.”

During the night the water temperature rose to -1 degrees
centigrade. The injections couldn’t get it to go a single degree
higher. But since salt water freezes only at -2 degrees, I was finally
assured that there was no danger of it solidifying.

By the next day, March 27, six meters of ice had been torn from the
socket. Only four meters were left to be removed. That still meant
forty-eight hours of work. The air couldn’t be renewed in the
Nautilus’s interior. Accordingly, that day it kept getting worse.

An unbearable heaviness weighed me down. Near three o’clock in the
afternoon, this agonizing sensation affected me to an intense
degree. Yawns dislocated my jaws. My lungs were gasping in their quest
for that enkindling elastic fluid required for breathing, now growing
scarcer and scarcer. My mind was in a daze. I lay outstretched,
strength gone, nearly unconscious. My gallant Conseil felt the same
symptoms, suffered the same sufferings, yet never left my side. He
held my hand, he kept encouraging me, and I even heard him mutter:

“Oh, if only I didn’t have to breathe, to leave more air for master!”

It brought tears to my eyes to hear him say these words.

Since conditions inside were universally unbearable, how eagerly, how
happily, we put on our diving suits to take our turns working! Picks
rang out on that bed of ice. Arms grew weary, hands were rubbed raw,
but who cared about exhaustion, what difference were wounds?
Life-sustaining air reached our lungs! We could breathe! We could
breathe!

And yet nobody prolonged his underwater work beyond the time allotted
him. His shift over, each man surrendered to a gasping companion the
air tank that would revive him. Captain Nemo set the example and was
foremost in submitting to this strict discipline. When his time was
up, he yielded his equipment to another and reentered the foul air on
board, always calm, unflinching, and uncomplaining.

That day the usual work was accomplished with even greater
energy. Over the whole surface area, only two meters were left to be
removed. Only two meters separated us from the open sea. But the
ship’s air tanks were nearly empty. The little air that remained had
to be saved for the workmen. Not an atom for the Nautilus!

When I returned on board, I felt half suffocated. What a night! I’m
unable to depict it. Such sufferings are indescribable. The next day I
was short-winded. Headaches and staggering fits of dizziness made me
reel like a drunk. My companions were experiencing the same
symptoms. Some crewmen were at their last gasp.

That day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo concluded that
picks and mattocks were too slow to deal with the ice layer still
separating us from open water—and he decided to crush this layer. The
man had kept his energy and composure. He had subdued physical pain
with moral strength. He could still think, plan, and act.

At his orders the craft was eased off, in other words, it was raised
from its icy bed by a change in its specific gravity. When it was
afloat, the crew towed it, leading it right above the immense trench
outlined to match the ship’s waterline. Next the ballast tanks filled
with water, the boat sank, and was fitted into its socket.

Just then the whole crew returned on board, and the double outside
door was closed. By this point the Nautilus was resting on a bed of
ice only one meter thick and drilled by bores in a thousand places.

The stopcocks of the ballast tanks were then opened wide, and 100
cubic meters of water rushed in, increasing the Nautilus’s weight by
100,000 kilograms.

We waited, we listened, we forgot our sufferings, we hoped once
more. We had staked our salvation on this one last gamble.

Despite the buzzing in my head, I soon could hear vibrations under the
Nautilus’s hull. We tilted. The ice cracked with an odd ripping sound,
like paper tearing, and the Nautilus began settling downward.

“We’re going through!” Conseil muttered in my ear.

I couldn’t answer him. I clutched his hand. I squeezed it in an
involuntary convulsion.

All at once, carried away by its frightful excess load, the Nautilus
sank into the waters like a cannonball, in other words, dropping as if
in a vacuum!

Our full electric power was then put on the pumps, which instantly
began to expel water from the ballast tanks. After a few minutes we
had checked our fall. The pressure gauge soon indicated an ascending
movement. Brought to full speed, the propeller made the sheet-iron
hull tremble down to its rivets, and we sped northward.

But how long would it take to navigate under the Ice Bank to the open
sea? Another day? I would be dead first!

Half lying on a couch in the library, I was suffocating. My face was
purple, my lips blue, my faculties in abeyance. I could no longer see
or hear. I had lost all sense of time. My muscles had no power to
contract.

I’m unable to estimate the hours that passed in this way. But I was
aware that my death throes had begun. I realized that I was about to
die . . .

Suddenly I regained consciousness. A few whiffs of air had entered my
lungs. Had we risen to the surface of the waves? Had we cleared the
Ice Bank?

No! Ned and Conseil, my two gallant friends, were sacrificing
themselves to save me. A few atoms of air were still left in the
depths of one Rouquayrol device. Instead of breathing it themselves,
they had saved it for me, and while they were suffocating, they poured
life into me drop by drop! I tried to push the device away. They held
my hands, and for a few moments I could breathe luxuriously.

My eyes flew toward the clock. It was eleven in the morning. It had to
be March 28. The Nautilus was traveling at the frightful speed of
forty miles per hour. It was writhing in the waters.

Where was Captain Nemo? Had he perished? Had his companions died with
him?

Just then the pressure gauge indicated we were no more than twenty
feet from the surface. Separating us from the open air was a mere
tract of ice. Could we break through it?

Perhaps! In any event the Nautilus was going to try. In fact, I could
feel it assuming an oblique position, lowering its stern and raising
its spur. The admission of additional water was enough to shift its
balance. Then, driven by its powerful propeller, it attacked this ice
field from below like a fearsome battering ram. It split the barrier
little by little, backing up, then putting on full speed against the
punctured tract of ice; and finally, carried away by its supreme
momentum, it lunged through and onto this frozen surface, crushing the
ice beneath its weight.

The hatches were opened—or torn off, if you prefer—and waves of clean
air were admitted into every part of the Nautilus.


CHAPTER 17

From Cape Horn to the Amazon


HOW I GOT ONTO the platform I’m unable to say. Perhaps the Canadian
transferred me there. But I could breathe, I could inhale the
life-giving sea air. Next to me my two companions were getting tipsy
on the fresh oxygen particles. Poor souls who have suffered from long
starvation mustn’t pounce heedlessly on the first food given them. We,
on the other hand, didn’t have to practice such moderation: we could
suck the atoms from the air by the lungful, and it was the breeze, the
breeze itself, that poured into us this luxurious intoxication!

“Ahhh!” Conseil was putting in. “What fine oxygen! Let master have no
fears about breathing. There’s enough for everyone.”

As for Ned Land, he didn’t say a word, but his wide-open jaws would
have scared off a shark. And what powerful inhalations! The Canadian
“drew” like a furnace going full blast.

Our strength returned promptly, and when I looked around, I saw that
we were alone on the platform. No crewmen. Not even Captain
Nemo. Those strange seamen on the Nautilus were content with the
oxygen circulating inside. Not one of them had come up to enjoy the
open air.

The first words I pronounced were words of appreciation and gratitude
to my two companions. Ned and Conseil had kept me alive during the
final hours of our long death throes. But no expression of thanks
could repay them fully for such devotion.

“Good lord, professor,” Ned Land answered me, “don’t mention it! What
did we do that’s so praiseworthy? Not a thing. It was a question of
simple arithmetic. Your life is worth more than ours. So we had to
save it.”

“No, Ned,” I replied, “it isn’t worth more. Nobody could be better
than a kind and generous man like yourself!”

“All right, all right!” the Canadian repeated in embarrassment.

“And you, my gallant Conseil, you suffered a great deal.”

“Not too much, to be candid with master. I was lacking a few
throatfuls of air, but I would have gotten by. Besides, when I saw
master fainting, it left me without the slightest desire to
breathe. It took my breath away, in a manner of . . .”

Confounded by this lapse into banality, Conseil left his sentence
hanging.

“My friends,” I replied, very moved, “we’re bound to each other
forever, and I’m deeply indebted to you—”

“Which I’ll take advantage of,” the Canadian shot back.

“Eh?” Conseil put in.

“Yes,” Ned Land went on. “You can repay your debt by coming with me
when I leave this infernal Nautilus.”

“By the way,” Conseil said, “are we going in a favorable direction?”

“Yes,” I replied, “because we’re going in the direction of the sun,
and here the sun is due north.”

“Sure,” Ned Land went on, “but it remains to be seen whether we’ll
make for the Atlantic or the Pacific, in other words, whether we’ll
end up in well-traveled or deserted seas.”

I had no reply to this, and I feared that Captain Nemo wouldn’t take
us homeward but rather into that huge ocean washing the shores of both
Asia and America. In this way he would complete his underwater tour of
the world, going back to those seas where the Nautilus enjoyed the
greatest freedom. But if we returned to the Pacific, far from every
populated shore, what would happen to Ned Land’s plans?

We would soon settle this important point. The Nautilus traveled
swiftly. Soon we had cleared the Antarctic Circle plus the promontory
of Cape Horn. We were abreast of the tip of South America by March 31
at seven o’clock in the evening.

By then all our past sufferings were forgotten. The memory of that
imprisonment under the ice faded from our minds. We had thoughts only
of the future. Captain Nemo no longer appeared, neither in the lounge
nor on the platform. The positions reported each day on the world map
were put there by the chief officer, and they enabled me to determine
the Nautilus’s exact heading. Now then, that evening it became
obvious, much to my satisfaction, that we were returning north by the
Atlantic route.

I shared the results of my observations with the Canadian and Conseil.

“That’s good news,” the Canadian replied, “but where’s the Nautilus
going?”

“I’m unable to say, Ned.”

“After the South Pole, does our captain want to tackle the North Pole,
then go back to the Pacific by the notorious Northwest Passage?”

“I wouldn’t double dare him,” Conseil replied.

“Oh well,” the Canadian said, “we’ll give him the slip long before
then.”

“In any event,” Conseil added, “he’s a superman, that Captain Nemo,
and we’ll never regret having known him.”

“Especially once we’ve left him,” Ned Land shot back.

The next day, April 1, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the
waves a few minutes before noon, we raised land to the west. It was
Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire, a name given it by early
navigators after they saw numerous curls of smoke rising from the
natives’ huts. This Land of Fire forms a huge cluster of islands over
thirty leagues long and eighty leagues wide, extending between
latitude 53 degrees and 56 degrees south, and between longitude 67
degrees 50’ and 77 degrees 15’ west. Its coastline looked flat, but
high mountains rose in the distance. I even thought I glimpsed
Mt. Sarmiento, whose elevation is 2,070 meters above sea level: a
pyramid-shaped block of shale with a very sharp summit, which,
depending on whether it’s clear or veiled in vapor, “predicts fair
weather or foul,” as Ned Land told me.

“A first-class barometer, my friend.”

“Yes, sir, a natural barometer that didn’t let me down when I
navigated the narrows of the Strait of Magellan.”

Just then its peak appeared before us, standing out distinctly against
the background of the skies. This forecast fair weather. And so it
proved.

Going back under the waters, the Nautilus drew near the coast,
cruising along it for only a few miles. Through the lounge windows I
could see long creepers and gigantic fucus plants, bulb-bearing
seaweed of which the open sea at the pole had revealed a few
specimens; with their smooth, viscous filaments, they measured as much
as 300 meters long; genuine cables more than an inch thick and very
tough, they’re often used as mooring lines for ships. Another weed,
known by the name velp and boasting four-foot leaves, was crammed into
the coral concretions and carpeted the ocean floor. It served as both
nest and nourishment for myriads of crustaceans and mollusks, for
crabs and cuttlefish. Here seals and otters could indulge in a
sumptuous meal, mixing meat from fish with vegetables from the sea,
like the English with their Irish stews.

The Nautilus passed over these lush, luxuriant depths with tremendous
speed. Near evening it approached the Falkland Islands, whose rugged
summits I recognized the next day. The sea was of moderate depth. So
not without good reason, I assumed that these two islands, plus the
many islets surrounding them, used to be part of the Magellan
coastline. The Falkland Islands were probably discovered by the famous
navigator John Davis, who gave them the name Davis Southern
Islands. Later Sir Richard Hawkins called them the Maidenland, after
the Blessed Virgin. Subsequently, at the beginning of the 18th
century, they were named the Malouines by fishermen from Saint-Malo in
Brittany, then finally dubbed the Falklands by the English, to whom
they belong today.

In these waterways our nets brought up fine samples of algae, in
particular certain fucus plants whose roots were laden with the
world’s best mussels. Geese and duck alighted by the dozens on the
platform and soon took their places in the ship’s pantry. As for fish,
I specifically observed some bony fish belonging to the goby genus,
especially some gudgeon two decimeters long, sprinkled with whitish
and yellow spots.

I likewise marveled at the numerous medusas, including the most
beautiful of their breed, the compass jellyfish, unique to the
Falkland seas. Some of these jellyfish were shaped like very smooth,
semispheric parasols with russet stripes and fringes of twelve neat
festoons. Others looked like upside-down baskets from which wide
leaves and long red twigs were gracefully trailing. They swam with
quiverings of their four leaflike arms, letting the opulent tresses of
their tentacles dangle in the drift. I wanted to preserve a few
specimens of these delicate zoophytes, but they were merely clouds,
shadows, illusions, melting and evaporating outside their native
element.

When the last tips of the Falkland Islands had disappeared below the
horizon, the Nautilus submerged to a depth between twenty and
twenty-five meters and went along the South American coast. Captain
Nemo didn’t put in an appearance.

We didn’t leave these Patagonian waterways until April 3, sometimes
cruising under the ocean, sometimes on its surface. The Nautilus
passed the wide estuary formed by the mouth of the Rio de la Plata,
and on April 4 we lay abreast of Uruguay, albeit fifty miles
out. Keeping to its northerly heading, it followed the long windings
of South America. By then we had fared 16,000 leagues since coming on
board in the seas of Japan.

Near eleven o’clock in the morning, we cut the Tropic of Capricorn on
the 37th meridian, passing well out from Cape Frio. Much to Ned Land’s
displeasure, Captain Nemo had no liking for the neighborhood of
Brazil’s populous shores, because he shot by with dizzying speed. Not
even the swiftest fish or birds could keep up with us, and the natural
curiosities in these seas completely eluded our observation.

This speed was maintained for several days, and on the evening of
April 9, we raised South America’s easternmost tip, Cape São
Roque. But then the Nautilus veered away again and went looking for
the lowest depths of an underwater valley gouged between this cape and
Sierra Leone on the coast of Africa. Abreast of the West Indies, this
valley forks into two arms, and to the north it ends in an enormous
depression 9,000 meters deep. From this locality to the Lesser
Antilles, the ocean’s geologic profile features a steeply cut cliff
six kilometers high, and abreast of the Cape Verde Islands, there’s
another wall just as imposing; together these two barricades confine
the whole submerged continent of Atlantis. The floor of this immense
valley is made picturesque by mountains that furnish these underwater
depths with scenic views. This description is based mostly on certain
hand-drawn charts kept in the Nautilus’s library, charts obviously
rendered by Captain Nemo himself from his own personal observations.

For two days we visited these deep and deserted waters by means of our
slanting fins. The Nautilus would do long, diagonal dives that took us
to every level. But on April 11 it rose suddenly, and the shore
reappeared at the mouth of the Amazon River, a huge estuary whose
outflow is so considerable, it desalts the sea over an area of several
leagues.

We cut the Equator. Twenty miles to the west lay Guiana, French
territory where we could easily have taken refuge. But the wind was
blowing a strong gust, and the furious billows would not allow us to
face them in a mere skiff. No doubt Ned Land understood this because
he said nothing to me. For my part, I made no allusion to his escape
plans because I didn’t want to push him into an attempt that was
certain to misfire.

I was readily compensated for this delay by fascinating
research. During those two days of April 11-12, the Nautilus didn’t
leave the surface of the sea, and its trawl brought up a simply
miraculous catch of zoophytes, fish, and reptiles.

Some zoophytes were dredged up by the chain of our trawl. Most were
lovely sea anemone belonging to the family Actinidia, including among
other species, the Phyctalis protexta, native to this part of the
ocean: a small cylindrical trunk adorned with vertical lines, mottled
with red spots, and crowned by a wondrous blossoming of tentacles. As
for mollusks, they consisted of exhibits I had already observed:
turret snails, olive shells of the “tent olive” species with neatly
intersecting lines and russet spots standing out sharply against a
flesh-colored background, fanciful spider conchs that looked like
petrified scorpions, transparent glass snails, argonauts, some highly
edible cuttlefish, and certain species of squid that the naturalists
of antiquity classified with the flying fish, which are used chiefly
as bait for catching cod.

As for the fish in these waterways, I noted various species that I
hadn’t yet had the opportunity to study. Among cartilaginous fish:
some brook lamprey, a type of eel fifteen inches long, head greenish,
fins violet, back bluish gray, belly a silvery brown strewn with
bright spots, iris of the eye encircled in gold, unusual animals that
the Amazon’s current must have swept out to sea because their natural
habitat is fresh water; sting rays, the snout pointed, the tail long,
slender, and armed with an extensive jagged sting; small one-meter
sharks with gray and whitish hides, their teeth arranged in several
backward-curving rows, fish commonly known by the name carpet shark;
batfish, a sort of reddish isosceles triangle half a meter long, whose
pectoral fins are attached by fleshy extensions that make these fish
look like bats, although an appendage made of horn, located near the
nostrils, earns them the nickname of sea unicorns; lastly, a couple
species of triggerfish, the cucuyo whose stippled flanks glitter with
a sparkling gold color, and the bright purple leatherjacket whose hues
glisten like a pigeon’s throat.

I’ll finish up this catalog, a little dry but quite accurate, with the
series of bony fish I observed: eels belonging to the genus
Apteronotus whose snow-white snout is very blunt, the body painted a
handsome black and armed with a very long, slender, fleshy whip; long
sardines from the genus Odontognathus, like three-decimeter pike,
shining with a bright silver glow; Guaranian mackerel furnished with
two anal fins; black-tinted rudderfish that you catch by using
torches, fish measuring two meters and boasting white, firm, plump
meat that, when fresh, tastes like eel, when dried, like smoked
salmon; semired wrasse sporting scales only at the bases of their
dorsal and anal fins; grunts on which gold and silver mingle their
luster with that of ruby and topaz; yellow-tailed gilthead whose flesh
is extremely dainty and whose phosphorescent properties give them away
in the midst of the waters; porgies tinted orange, with slender
tongues; croakers with gold caudal fins; black surgeonfish; four-eyed
fish from Surinam, etc.

This “et cetera” won’t keep me from mentioning one more fish that
Conseil, with good reason, will long remember.

One of our nets had hauled up a type of very flat ray that weighed
some twenty kilograms; with its tail cut off, it would have formed a
perfect disk. It was white underneath and reddish on top, with big
round spots of deep blue encircled in black, its hide quite smooth and
ending in a double-lobed fin. Laid out on the platform, it kept
struggling with convulsive movements, trying to turn over, making such
efforts that its final lunge was about to flip it into the sea. But
Conseil, being very possessive of his fish, rushed at it, and before I
could stop him, he seized it with both hands.

Instantly there he was, thrown on his back, legs in the air, his body
half paralyzed, and yelling:

“Oh, sir, sir! Will you help me!”

For once in his life, the poor lad didn’t address me “in the third
person.”

The Canadian and I sat him up; we massaged his contracted arms, and
when he regained his five senses, that eternal classifier mumbled in a
broken voice:

“Class of cartilaginous fish, order Chondropterygia with fixed gills,
suborder Selacia, family Rajiiforma, genus electric ray.”

“Yes, my friend,” I answered, “it was an electric ray that put you in
this deplorable state.”

“Oh, master can trust me on this,” Conseil shot back. “I’ll be
revenged on that animal!”

“How?”

“I’ll eat it.”

Which he did that same evening, but strictly as retaliation. Because,
frankly, it tasted like leather.

Poor Conseil had assaulted an electric ray of the most dangerous
species, the cumana. Living in a conducting medium such as water, this
bizarre animal can electrocute other fish from several meters away, so
great is the power of its electric organ, an organ whose two chief
surfaces measure at least twenty-seven square feet.

During the course of the next day, April 12, the Nautilus drew near
the coast of Dutch Guiana, by the mouth of the Maroni River. There
several groups of sea cows were living in family units. These were
manatees, which belong to the order Sirenia, like the dugong and
Steller’s sea cow. Harmless and unaggressive, these fine animals were
six to seven meters long and must have weighed at least 4,000
kilograms each. I told Ned Land and Conseil that farseeing nature had
given these mammals a major role to play. In essence, manatees, like
seals, are designed to graze the underwater prairies, destroying the
clusters of weeds that obstruct the mouths of tropical rivers.

“And do you know,” I added, “what happened since man has almost
completely wiped out these beneficial races? Rotting weeds have
poisoned the air, and this poisoned air causes the yellow fever that
devastates these wonderful countries. This toxic vegetation has
increased beneath the seas of the Torrid Zone, so the disease spreads
unchecked from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Florida!”

And if Professor Toussenel is correct, this plague is nothing compared
to the scourge that will strike our descendants once the seas are
depopulated of whales and seals. By then, crowded with jellyfish,
squid, and other devilfish, the oceans will have become huge centers
of infection, because their waves will no longer possess “these huge
stomachs that God has entrusted with scouring the surface of the sea.”

Meanwhile, without scorning these theories, the Nautilus’s crew
captured half a dozen manatees. In essence, it was an issue of
stocking the larder with excellent red meat, even better than beef or
veal. Their hunting was not a fascinating sport. The manatees let
themselves be struck down without offering any resistance. Several
thousand kilos of meat were hauled below, to be dried and stored.

The same day an odd fishing practice further increased the Nautilus’s
stores, so full of game were these seas. Our trawl brought up in its
meshes a number of fish whose heads were topped by little oval slabs
with fleshy edges. These were suckerfish from the third family of the
subbrachian Malacopterygia. These flat disks on their heads consist of
crosswise plates of movable cartilage, between which the animals can
create a vacuum, enabling them to stick to objects like suction cups.

The remoras I had observed in the Mediterranean were related to this
species. But the creature at issue here was an Echeneis osteochara,
unique to this sea. Right after catching them, our seamen dropped them
in buckets of water.

Its fishing finished, the Nautilus drew nearer to the coast. In this
locality a number of sea turtles were sleeping on the surface of the
waves. It would have been difficult to capture these valuable
reptiles, because they wake up at the slightest sound, and their solid
carapaces are harpoon-proof. But our suckerfish would effect their
capture with extraordinary certainty and precision. In truth, this
animal is a living fishhook, promising wealth and happiness to the
greenest fisherman in the business.

The Nautilus’s men attached to each fish’s tail a ring that was big
enough not to hamper its movements, and to this ring a long rope whose
other end was moored on board.

Thrown into the sea, the suckerfish immediately began to play their
roles, going and fastening themselves onto the breastplates of the
turtles. Their tenacity was so great, they would rip apart rather than
let go. They were hauled in, still sticking to the turtles that came
aboard with them.

In this way we caught several loggerheads, reptiles a meter wide and
weighing 200 kilos. They’re extremely valuable because of their
carapaces, which are covered with big slabs of horn, thin, brown,
transparent, with white and yellow markings. Besides, they were
excellent from an edible viewpoint, with an exquisite flavor
comparable to the green turtle.

This fishing ended our stay in the waterways of the Amazon, and that
evening the Nautilus took to the high seas once more.


CHAPTER 18

The Devilfish


FOR SOME DAYS the Nautilus kept veering away from the American
coast. It obviously didn’t want to frequent the waves of the Gulf of
Mexico or the Caribbean Sea. Yet there was no shortage of water under
its keel, since the average depth of these seas is 1,800 meters; but
these waterways, strewn with islands and plowed by steamers, probably
didn’t agree with Captain Nemo.

On April 16 we raised Martinique and Guadalupe from a distance of
about thirty miles. For one instant I could see their lofty peaks.

The Canadian was quite disheartened, having counted on putting his
plans into execution in the gulf, either by reaching shore or by
pulling alongside one of the many boats plying a coastal trade from
one island to another. An escape attempt would have been quite
feasible, assuming Ned Land managed to seize the skiff without the
captain’s knowledge. But in midocean it was unthinkable.

The Canadian, Conseil, and I had a pretty long conversation on this
subject. For six months we had been prisoners aboard the Nautilus. We
had fared 17,000 leagues, and as Ned Land put it, there was no end in
sight. So he made me a proposition I hadn’t anticipated. We were to
ask Captain Nemo this question straight out: did the captain mean to
keep us on board his vessel permanently?

This measure was distasteful to me. To my mind it would lead
nowhere. We could hope for nothing from the Nautilus’s commander but
could depend only on ourselves. Besides, for some time now the man had
been gloomier, more withdrawn, less sociable. He seemed to be avoiding
me. I encountered him only at rare intervals. He used to take pleasure
in explaining the underwater wonders to me; now he left me to my
research and no longer entered the lounge.

What changes had come over him? From what cause? I had no reason to
blame myself. Was our presence on board perhaps a burden to him? Even
so, I cherished no hopes that the man would set us free.

So I begged Ned to let me think about it before taking action. If this
measure proved fruitless, it could arouse the captain’s suspicions,
make our circumstances even more arduous, and jeopardize the
Canadian’s plans. I might add that I could hardly use our state of
health as an argument. Except for that grueling ordeal under the Ice
Bank at the South Pole, we had never felt better, neither Ned,
Conseil, nor I. The nutritious food, life-giving air, regular routine,
and uniform temperature kept illness at bay; and for a man who didn’t
miss his past existence on land, for a Captain Nemo who was at home
here, who went where he wished, who took paths mysterious to others if
not himself in attaining his ends, I could understand such a life. But
we ourselves hadn’t severed all ties with humanity. For my part, I
didn’t want my new and unusual research to be buried with my bones. I
had now earned the right to pen the definitive book on the sea, and
sooner or later I wanted that book to see the light of day.

There once more, through the panels opening into these Caribbean
waters ten meters below the surface of the waves, I found so many
fascinating exhibits to describe in my daily notes! Among other
zoophytes there were Portuguese men-of-war known by the name Physalia
pelagica, like big, oblong bladders with a pearly sheen, spreading
their membranes to the wind, letting their blue tentacles drift like
silken threads; to the eye delightful jellyfish, to the touch actual
nettles that ooze a corrosive liquid. Among the articulates there were
annelid worms one and a half meters long, furnished with a pink
proboscis, equipped with 1,700 organs of locomotion, snaking through
the waters, and as they went, throwing off every gleam in the solar
spectrum. From the fish branch there were manta rays, enormous
cartilaginous fish ten feet long and weighing 600 pounds, their
pectoral fin triangular, their midback slightly arched, their eyes
attached to the edges of the face at the front of the head; they
floated like wreckage from a ship, sometimes fastening onto our
windows like opaque shutters. There were American triggerfish for
which nature has ground only black and white pigments, feather-shaped
gobies that were long and plump with yellow fins and jutting jaws,
sixteen-decimeter mackerel with short, sharp teeth, covered with small
scales, and related to the albacore species. Next came swarms of red
mullet corseted in gold stripes from head to tail, their shining fins
all aquiver, genuine masterpieces of jewelry, formerly sacred to the
goddess Diana, much in demand by rich Romans, and about which the old
saying goes: “He who catches them doesn’t eat them!” Finally, adorned
with emerald ribbons and dressed in velvet and silk, golden angelfish
passed before our eyes like courtiers in the paintings of Veronese;
spurred gilthead stole by with their swift thoracic fins; thread
herring fifteen inches long were wrapped in their phosphorescent
glimmers; gray mullet thrashed the sea with their big fleshy tails;
red salmon seemed to mow the waves with their slicing pectorals; and
silver moonfish, worthy of their name, rose on the horizon of the
waters like the whitish reflections of many moons.

How many other marvelous new specimens I still could have observed if,
little by little, the Nautilus hadn’t settled to the lower strata! Its
slanting fins drew it to depths of 2,000 and 3,500 meters. There
animal life was represented by nothing more than sea lilies, starfish,
delightful crinoids with bell-shaped heads like little chalices on
straight stems, top-shell snails, blood-red tooth shells, and
fissurella snails, a large species of coastal mollusk.

By April 20 we had risen to an average level of 1,500 meters. The
nearest land was the island group of the Bahamas, scattered like a
batch of cobblestones over the surface of the water. There high
underwater cliffs reared up, straight walls made of craggy chunks
arranged like big stone foundations, among which there gaped black
caves so deep our electric rays couldn’t light them to the far ends.

These rocks were hung with huge weeds, immense sea tangle, gigantic
fucus—a genuine trellis of water plants fit for a world of giants.

In discussing these colossal plants, Conseil, Ned, and I were
naturally led into mentioning the sea’s gigantic animals. The former
were obviously meant to feed the latter. However, through the windows
of our almost motionless Nautilus, I could see nothing among these
long filaments other than the chief articulates of the division
Brachyura: long-legged spider crabs, violet crabs, and sponge crabs
unique to the waters of the Caribbean.

It was about eleven o’clock when Ned Land drew my attention to a
fearsome commotion out in this huge seaweed.

“Well,” I said, “these are real devilfish caverns, and I wouldn’t be
surprised to see some of those monsters hereabouts.”

“What!” Conseil put in. “Squid, ordinary squid from the class
Cephalopoda?”

“No,” I said, “devilfish of large dimensions. But friend Land is no
doubt mistaken, because I don’t see a thing.”

“That’s regrettable,” Conseil answered. “I’d like to come face to face
with one of those devilfish I’ve heard so much about, which can drag
ships down into the depths. Those beasts go by the name of krake—”

“Fake is more like it,” the Canadian replied sarcastically.

“Krakens!” Conseil shot back, finishing his word without wincing at
his companion’s witticism.

“Nobody will ever make me believe,” Ned Land said, “that such animals
exist.”

“Why not?” Conseil replied. “We sincerely believed in master’s
narwhale.”

“We were wrong, Conseil.”

“No doubt, but there are others with no doubts who believe to this
day!”

“Probably, Conseil. But as for me, I’m bound and determined not to
accept the existence of any such monster till I’ve dissected it with
my own two hands.”

“Yet,” Conseil asked me, “doesn’t master believe in gigantic
devilfish?”

“Yikes! Who in Hades ever believed in them?” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Many people, Ned my friend,” I said.

“No fishermen. Scientists maybe!”

“Pardon me, Ned. Fishermen and scientists!”

“Why, I to whom you speak,” Conseil said with the world’s straightest
face, “I recall perfectly seeing a large boat dragged under the waves
by the arms of a cephalopod.”

“You saw that?” the Canadian asked.

“Yes, Ned.”

“With your own two eyes?”

“With my own two eyes.”

“Where, may I ask?”

“In Saint-Malo,” Conseil returned unflappably.

“In the harbor?” Ned Land said sarcastically.

“No, in a church,” Conseil replied.

“In a church!” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Yes, Ned my friend. It had a picture that portrayed the devilfish in
question.”

“Oh good!” Ned Land exclaimed with a burst of laughter. “Mr. Conseil
put one over on me!”

“Actually he’s right,” I said. “I’ve heard about that picture. But the
subject it portrays is taken from a legend, and you know how to rate
legends in matters of natural history! Besides, when it’s an issue of
monsters, the human imagination always tends to run wild. People not
only claimed these devilfish could drag ships under, but a certain
Olaus Magnus tells of a cephalopod a mile long that looked more like
an island than an animal. There’s also the story of how the Bishop of
Trondheim set up an altar one day on an immense rock. After he
finished saying mass, this rock started moving and went back into the
sea. The rock was a devilfish.”

“And that’s everything we know?” the Canadian asked.

“No,” I replied, “another bishop, Pontoppidan of Bergen, also tells of
a devilfish so large a whole cavalry regiment could maneuver on it.”

“They sure did go on, those oldtime bishops!” Ned Land said.

“Finally, the naturalists of antiquity mention some monsters with
mouths as big as a gulf, which were too huge to get through the Strait
of Gibraltar.”

“Good work, men!” the Canadian put in.

“But in all these stories, is there any truth?” Conseil asked.

“None at all, my friends, at least in those that go beyond the bounds
of credibility and fly off into fable or legend. Yet for the
imaginings of these storytellers there had to be, if not a cause, at
least an excuse. It can’t be denied that some species of squid and
other devilfish are quite large, though still smaller than
cetaceans. Aristotle put the dimensions of one squid at five cubits,
or 3.1 meters. Our fishermen frequently see specimens over 1.8 meters
long. The museums in Trieste and Montpellier have preserved some
devilfish carcasses measuring two meters. Besides, according to the
calculations of naturalists, one of these animals only six feet long
would have tentacles as long as twenty-seven. Which is enough to make
a fearsome monster.”

“Does anybody fish for ‘em nowadays?” the Canadian asked.

“If they don’t fish for them, sailors at least sight them. A friend of
mine, Captain Paul Bos of Le Havre, has often sworn to me that he
encountered one of these monsters of colossal size in the seas of the
East Indies. But the most astonishing event, which proves that these
gigantic animals undeniably exist, took place a few years ago in
1861.”

“What event was that?” Ned Land asked.

“Just this. In 1861, to the northeast of Tenerife and fairly near the
latitude where we are right now, the crew of the gunboat Alecto
spotted a monstrous squid swimming in their waters. Commander Bouguer
approached the animal and attacked it with blows from harpoons and
blasts from rifles, but without much success because bullets and
harpoons crossed its soft flesh as if it were semiliquid jelly. After
several fruitless attempts, the crew managed to slip a noose around
the mollusk’s body. This noose slid as far as the caudal fins and came
to a halt. Then they tried to haul the monster on board, but its
weight was so considerable that when they tugged on the rope, the
animal parted company with its tail; and deprived of this adornment,
it disappeared beneath the waters.”

“Finally, an actual event,” Ned Land said.

“An indisputable event, my gallant Ned. Accordingly, people have
proposed naming this devilfish Bouguer’s Squid.”

“And how long was it?” the Canadian asked.

“Didn’t it measure about six meters?” said Conseil, who was stationed
at the window and examining anew the crevices in the cliff.

“Precisely,” I replied.

“Wasn’t its head,” Conseil went on, “crowned by eight tentacles that
quivered in the water like a nest of snakes?”

“Precisely.”

“Weren’t its eyes prominently placed and considerably enlarged?”

“Yes, Conseil.”

“And wasn’t its mouth a real parrot’s beak but of fearsome size?”

“Correct, Conseil.”

“Well, with all due respect to master,” Conseil replied serenely, “if
this isn’t Bouguer’s Squid, it’s at least one of his close relatives!”

I stared at Conseil. Ned Land rushed to the window.

“What an awful animal!” he exclaimed.

I stared in my turn and couldn’t keep back a movement of
revulsion. Before my eyes there quivered a horrible monster worthy of
a place among the most farfetched teratological legends.

It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long. It was
traveling backward with tremendous speed in the same direction as the
Nautilus. It gazed with enormous, staring eyes that were tinted sea
green. Its eight arms (or more accurately, feet) were rooted in its
head, which has earned these animals the name cephalopod; its arms
stretched a distance twice the length of its body and were writhing
like the serpentine hair of the Furies. You could plainly see its 250
suckers, arranged over the inner sides of its tentacles and shaped
like semispheric capsules. Sometimes these suckers fastened onto the
lounge window by creating vacuums against it. The monster’s mouth—a
beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot—opened and closed
vertically. Its tongue, also of horn substance and armed with several
rows of sharp teeth, would flicker out from between these genuine
shears. What a freak of nature! A bird’s beak on a mollusk! Its body
was spindle-shaped and swollen in the middle, a fleshy mass that must
have weighed 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms. Its unstable color would
change with tremendous speed as the animal grew irritated, passing
successively from bluish gray to reddish brown.

What was irritating this mollusk? No doubt the presence of the
Nautilus, even more fearsome than itself, and which it couldn’t grip
with its mandibles or the suckers on its arms. And yet what monsters
these devilfish are, what vitality our Creator has given them, what
vigor in their movements, thanks to their owning a triple heart!

Sheer chance had placed us in the presence of this squid, and I didn’t
want to lose this opportunity to meticulously study such a cephalopod
specimen. I overcame the horror that its appearance inspired in me,
picked up a pencil, and began to sketch it.

“Perhaps this is the same as the Alecto’s,” Conseil said.

“Can’t be,” the Canadian replied, “because this one’s complete while
the other one lost its tail!”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” I said. “The arms and tails of
these animals grow back through regeneration, and in seven years the
tail on Bouguer’s Squid has surely had time to sprout again.”

“Anyhow,” Ned shot back, “if it isn’t this fellow, maybe it’s one of
those!”

Indeed, other devilfish had appeared at the starboard window. I
counted seven of them. They provided the Nautilus with an escort, and
I could hear their beaks gnashing on the sheet-iron hull. We couldn’t
have asked for a more devoted following.

I continued sketching. These monsters kept pace in our waters with
such precision, they seemed to be standing still, and I could have
traced their outlines in miniature on the window. But we were moving
at a moderate speed.

All at once the Nautilus stopped. A jolt made it tremble through its
entire framework.

“Did we strike bottom?” I asked.

“In any event we’re already clear,” the Canadian replied, “because
we’re afloat.”

The Nautilus was certainly afloat, but it was no longer in motion. The
blades of its propeller weren’t churning the waves. A minute
passed. Followed by his chief officer, Captain Nemo entered the
lounge.

I hadn’t seen him for a good while. He looked gloomy to me. Without
speaking to us, without even seeing us perhaps, he went to the panel,
stared at the devilfish, and said a few words to his chief officer.

The latter went out. Soon the panels closed. The ceiling lit up.

I went over to the captain.

“An unusual assortment of devilfish,” I told him, as carefree as a
collector in front of an aquarium.

“Correct, Mr. Naturalist,” he answered me, “and we’re going to fight
them at close quarters.”

I gaped at the captain. I thought my hearing had gone bad.

“At close quarters?” I repeated.

“Yes, sir. Our propeller is jammed. I think the horn-covered mandibles
of one of these squid are entangled in the blades. That’s why we
aren’t moving.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Rise to the surface and slaughter the vermin.”

“A difficult undertaking.”

“Correct. Our electric bullets are ineffective against such soft
flesh, where they don’t meet enough resistance to go off. But we’ll
attack the beasts with axes.”

“And harpoons, sir,” the Canadian said, “if you don’t turn down my
help.”

“I accept it, Mr. Land.”

“We’ll go with you,” I said. And we followed Captain Nemo, heading to
the central companionway.

There some ten men were standing by for the assault, armed with
boarding axes. Conseil and I picked up two more axes. Ned Land seized
a harpoon.

By then the Nautilus had returned to the surface of the
waves. Stationed on the top steps, one of the seamen undid the bolts
of the hatch. But he had scarcely unscrewed the nuts when the hatch
flew up with tremendous violence, obviously pulled open by the suckers
on a devilfish’s arm.

Instantly one of those long arms glided like a snake into the opening,
and twenty others were quivering above. With a sweep of the ax,
Captain Nemo chopped off this fearsome tentacle, which slid writhing
down the steps.

Just as we were crowding each other to reach the platform, two more
arms lashed the air, swooped on the seaman stationed in front of
Captain Nemo, and carried the fellow away with irresistible violence.

Captain Nemo gave a shout and leaped outside. We rushed after him.

What a scene! Seized by the tentacle and glued to its suckers, the
unfortunate man was swinging in the air at the mercy of this enormous
appendage. He gasped, he choked, he yelled: “Help! Help!” These words,
pronounced in French, left me deeply stunned! So I had a fellow
countryman on board, perhaps several! I’ll hear his harrowing plea the
rest of my life!

The poor fellow was done for. Who could tear him from such a powerful
grip? Even so, Captain Nemo rushed at the devilfish and with a sweep
of the ax hewed one more of its arms. His chief officer struggled
furiously with other monsters crawling up the Nautilus’s sides. The
crew battled with flailing axes. The Canadian, Conseil, and I sank our
weapons into these fleshy masses. An intense, musky odor filled the
air. It was horrible.

For an instant I thought the poor man entwined by the devilfish might
be torn loose from its powerful suction. Seven arms out of eight had
been chopped off. Brandishing its victim like a feather, one lone
tentacle was writhing in the air. But just as Captain Nemo and his
chief officer rushed at it, the animal shot off a spout of blackish
liquid, secreted by a pouch located in its abdomen. It blinded
us. When this cloud had dispersed, the squid was gone, and so was my
poor fellow countryman!

What rage then drove us against these monsters! We lost all
self-control. Ten or twelve devilfish had overrun the Nautilus’s
platform and sides. We piled helter-skelter into the thick of these
sawed-off snakes, which darted over the platform amid waves of blood
and sepia ink. It seemed as if these viscous tentacles grew back like
the many heads of Hydra. At every thrust Ned Land’s harpoon would
plunge into a squid’s sea-green eye and burst it. But my daring
companion was suddenly toppled by the tentacles of a monster he could
not avoid.

Oh, my heart nearly exploded with excitement and horror! The squid’s
fearsome beak was wide open over Ned Land. The poor man was about to
be cut in half. I ran to his rescue. But Captain Nemo got there
first. His ax disappeared between the two enormous mandibles, and the
Canadian, miraculously saved, stood and plunged his harpoon all the
way into the devilfish’s triple heart.

“Tit for tat,” Captain Nemo told the Canadian. “I owed it to myself!”

Ned bowed without answering him.

This struggle had lasted a quarter of an hour. Defeated, mutilated,
battered to death, the monsters finally yielded to us and disappeared
beneath the waves.

Red with blood, motionless by the beacon, Captain Nemo stared at the
sea that had swallowed one of his companions, and large tears streamed
from his eyes.


CHAPTER 19

The Gulf Stream


THIS DREADFUL SCENE on April 20 none of us will ever be able to
forget. I wrote it up in a state of intense excitement. Later I
reviewed my narrative. I read it to Conseil and the Canadian. They
found it accurate in detail but deficient in impact. To convey such
sights, it would take the pen of our most famous poet, Victor Hugo,
author of The Toilers of the Sea.

As I said, Captain Nemo wept while staring at the waves. His grief was
immense. This was the second companion he had lost since we had come
aboard. And what a way to die! Smashed, strangled, crushed by the
fearsome arms of a devilfish, ground between its iron mandibles, this
friend would never rest with his companions in the placid waters of
their coral cemetery!

As for me, what had harrowed my heart in the thick of this struggle
was the despairing yell given by this unfortunate man. Forgetting his
regulation language, this poor Frenchman had reverted to speaking his
own mother tongue to fling out one supreme plea! Among the Nautilus’s
crew, allied body and soul with Captain Nemo and likewise fleeing from
human contact, I had found a fellow countryman! Was he the only
representative of France in this mysterious alliance, obviously made
up of individuals from different nationalities? This was just one more
of those insoluble problems that kept welling up in my mind!

Captain Nemo reentered his stateroom, and I saw no more of him for a
good while. But how sad, despairing, and irresolute he must have felt,
to judge from this ship whose soul he was, which reflected his every
mood! The Nautilus no longer kept to a fixed heading. It drifted back
and forth, riding with the waves like a corpse. Its propeller had been
disentangled but was barely put to use. It was navigating at
random. It couldn’t tear itself away from the setting of this last
struggle, from this sea that had devoured one of its own!

Ten days went by in this way. It was only on May 1 that the Nautilus
openly resumed its northbound course, after raising the Bahamas at the
mouth of Old Bahama Channel. We then went with the current of the
sea’s greatest river, which has its own banks, fish, and
temperature. I mean the Gulf Stream.

It is indeed a river that runs independently through the middle of the
Atlantic, its waters never mixing with the ocean’s waters. It’s a
salty river, saltier than the sea surrounding it. Its average depth is
3,000 feet, its average width sixty miles. In certain localities its
current moves at a speed of four kilometers per hour. The unchanging
volume of its waters is greater than that of all the world’s rivers
combined.

As discovered by Commander Maury, the true source of the Gulf Stream,
its starting point, if you prefer, is located in the Bay of
Biscay. There its waters, still weak in temperature and color, begin
to form. It goes down south, skirts equatorial Africa, warms its waves
in the rays of the Torrid Zone, crosses the Atlantic, reaches Cape São
Roque on the coast of Brazil, and forks into two branches, one going
to the Caribbean Sea for further saturation with heat particles. Then,
entrusted with restoring the balance between hot and cold temperatures
and with mixing tropical and northern waters, the Gulf Stream begins
to play its stabilizing role. Attaining a white heat in the Gulf of
Mexico, it heads north up the American coast, advances as far as
Newfoundland, swerves away under the thrust of a cold current from the
Davis Strait, and resumes its ocean course by going along a great
circle of the earth on a rhumb line; it then divides into two arms
near the 43rd parallel; one, helped by the northeast trade winds,
returns to the Bay of Biscay and the Azores; the other washes the
shores of Ireland and Norway with lukewarm water, goes beyond
Spitzbergen, where its temperature falls to 4 degrees centigrade, and
fashions the open sea at the pole.

It was on this oceanic river that the Nautilus was then
navigating. Leaving Old Bahama Channel, which is fourteen leagues wide
by 350 meters deep, the Gulf Stream moves at the rate of eight
kilometers per hour. Its speed steadily decreases as it advances
northward, and we must pray that this steadiness continues, because,
as experts agree, if its speed and direction were to change, the
climates of Europe would undergo disturbances whose consequences are
incalculable.

Near noon I was on the platform with Conseil. I shared with him the
relevant details on the Gulf Stream. When my explanation was over, I
invited him to dip his hands into its current.

Conseil did so, and he was quite astonished to experience no sensation
of either hot or cold.

“That comes,” I told him, “from the water temperature of the Gulf
Stream, which, as it leaves the Gulf of Mexico, is barely different
from your blood temperature. This Gulf Stream is a huge heat generator
that enables the coasts of Europe to be decked in eternal
greenery. And if Commander Maury is correct, were one to harness the
full warmth of this current, it would supply enough heat to keep
molten a river of iron solder as big as the Amazon or the Missouri.”

Just then the Gulf Stream’s speed was 2.25 meters per second. So
distinct is its current from the surrounding sea, its confined waters
stand out against the ocean and operate on a different level from the
colder waters. Murky as well, and very rich in saline material, their
pure indigo contrasts with the green waves surrounding them. Moreover,
their line of demarcation is so clear that abreast of the Carolinas,
the Nautilus’s spur cut the waves of the Gulf Stream while its
propeller was still churning those belonging to the ocean.

This current swept along with it a whole host of moving
creatures. Argonauts, so common in the Mediterranean, voyaged here in
schools of large numbers. Among cartilaginous fish, the most
remarkable were rays whose ultra slender tails made up nearly a third
of the body, which was shaped like a huge diamond twenty-five feet
long; then little one-meter sharks, the head large, the snout short
and rounded, the teeth sharp and arranged in several rows, the body
seemingly covered with scales.

Among bony fish, I noted grizzled wrasse unique to these seas,
deep-water gilthead whose iris has a fiery gleam, one-meter croakers
whose large mouths bristle with small teeth and which let out thin
cries, black rudderfish like those I’ve already discussed, blue
dorados accented with gold and silver, rainbow-hued parrotfish that
can rival the loveliest tropical birds in coloring, banded blennies
with triangular heads, bluish flounder without scales, toadfish
covered with a crosswise yellow band in the shape of a Greek t, swarms
of little freckled gobies stippled with brown spots, lungfish with
silver heads and yellow tails, various specimens of salmon, mullet
with slim figures and a softly glowing radiance that Lacépède
dedicated to the memory of his wife, and finally the American cavalla,
a handsome fish decorated by every honorary order, bedizened with
their every ribbon, frequenting the shores of this great nation where
ribbons and orders are held in such low esteem.

I might add that during the night, the Gulf Stream’s phosphorescent
waters rivaled the electric glow of our beacon, especially in the
stormy weather that frequently threatened us.

On May 8, while abreast of North Carolina, we were across from Cape
Hatteras once more. There the Gulf Stream is seventy-five miles wide
and 210 meters deep. The Nautilus continued to wander at
random. Seemingly, all supervision had been jettisoned. Under these
conditions I admit that we could easily have gotten away. In fact, the
populous shores offered ready refuge everywhere. The sea was plowed
continuously by the many steamers providing service between the Gulf
of Mexico and New York or Boston, and it was crossed night and day by
little schooners engaged in coastal trade over various points on the
American shore. We could hope to be picked up. So it was a promising
opportunity, despite the thirty miles that separated the Nautilus from
these Union coasts.

But one distressing circumstance totally thwarted the Canadian’s
plans. The weather was thoroughly foul. We were approaching waterways
where storms are commonplace, the very homeland of tornadoes and
cyclones specifically engendered by the Gulf Stream’s current. To face
a frequently raging sea in a frail skiff was a race to certain
disaster. Ned Land conceded this himself. So he champed at the bit, in
the grip of an intense homesickness that could be cured only by our
escape.

“Sir,” he told me that day, “it’s got to stop. I want to get to the
bottom of this. Your Nemo’s veering away from shore and heading up
north. But believe you me, I had my fill at the South Pole and I’m not
going with him to the North Pole.”

“What can we do, Ned, since it isn’t feasible to escape right now?”

“I keep coming back to my idea. We’ve got to talk to the captain. When
we were in your own country’s seas, you didn’t say a word. Now that
we’re in mine, I intend to speak up. Before a few days are out, I
figure the Nautilus will lie abreast of Nova Scotia, and from there to
Newfoundland is the mouth of a large gulf, and the St. Lawrence
empties into that gulf, and the St. Lawrence is my own river, the
river running by Quebec, my hometown—and when I think about all this,
my gorge rises and my hair stands on end! Honestly, sir, I’d rather
jump overboard! I can’t stay here any longer! I’m suffocating!”

The Canadian was obviously at the end of his patience. His vigorous
nature couldn’t adapt to this protracted imprisonment. His facial
appearance was changing by the day. His moods grew gloomier and
gloomier. I had a sense of what he was suffering because I also was
gripped by homesickness. Nearly seven months had gone by without our
having any news from shore. Moreover, Captain Nemo’s reclusiveness,
his changed disposition, and especially his total silence since the
battle with the devilfish all made me see things in a different
light. I no longer felt the enthusiasm of our first days on board. You
needed to be Flemish like Conseil to accept these circumstances,
living in a habitat designed for cetaceans and other denizens of the
deep. Truly, if that gallant lad had owned gills instead of lungs, I
think he would have made an outstanding fish!

“Well, sir?” Ned Land went on, seeing that I hadn’t replied.

“Well, Ned, you want me to ask Captain Nemo what he intends to do with
us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though he has already made that clear?”

“Yes. I want it settled once and for all. Speak just for me, strictly
on my behalf, if you want.”

“But I rarely encounter him. He positively avoids me.”

“All the more reason you should go look him up.”

“I’ll confer with him, Ned.”

“When?” the Canadian asked insistently.

“When I encounter him.”

“Professor Aronnax, would you like me to go find him myself?”

“No, let me do it. Tomorrow—”

“Today,” Ned Land said.

“So be it. I’ll see him today,” I answered the Canadian, who, if he
took action himself, would certainly have ruined everything.

I was left to myself. His request granted, I decided to dispose of it
immediately. I like things over and done with.

I reentered my stateroom. From there I could hear movements inside
Captain Nemo’s quarters. I couldn’t pass up this chance for an
encounter. I knocked on his door. I received no reply. I knocked
again, then tried the knob. The door opened.

I entered. The captain was there. He was bending over his worktable
and hadn’t heard me. Determined not to leave without questioning him,
I drew closer. He looked up sharply, with a frowning brow, and said in
a pretty stern tone:

“Oh, it’s you! What do you want?”

“To speak with you, captain.”

“But I’m busy, sir, I’m at work. I give you the freedom to enjoy your
privacy, can’t I have the same for myself?”

This reception was less than encouraging. But I was determined to give
as good as I got.

“Sir,” I said coolly, “I need to speak with you on a matter that
simply can’t wait.”

“Whatever could that be, sir?” he replied sarcastically. “Have you
made some discovery that has escaped me? Has the sea yielded up some
novel secret to you?”

We were miles apart. But before I could reply, he showed me a
manuscript open on the table and told me in a more serious tone:

“Here, Professor Aronnax, is a manuscript written in several
languages. It contains a summary of my research under the sea, and God
willing, it won’t perish with me. Signed with my name, complete with
my life story, this manuscript will be enclosed in a small, unsinkable
contrivance. The last surviving man on the Nautilus will throw this
contrivance into the sea, and it will go wherever the waves carry it.”

The man’s name! His life story written by himself! So the secret of
his existence might someday be unveiled? But just then I saw this
announcement only as a lead-in to my topic.

“Captain,” I replied, “I’m all praise for this idea you’re putting
into effect. The fruits of your research must not be lost. But the
methods you’re using strike me as primitive. Who knows where the winds
will take that contrivance, into whose hands it may fall? Can’t you
find something better? Can’t you or one of your men—”

“Never, sir,” the captain said, swiftly interrupting me.

“But my companions and I would be willing to safeguard this
manuscript, and if you give us back our freedom—”

“Your freedom!” Captain Nemo put in, standing up.

“Yes, sir, and that’s the subject on which I wanted to confer with
you. For seven months we’ve been aboard your vessel, and I ask you
today, in the name of my companions as well as myself, if you intend
to keep us here forever.”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said, “I’ll answer you today just as
I did seven months ago: whoever boards the Nautilus must never leave
it.”

“What you’re inflicting on us is outright slavery!”

“Call it anything you like.”

“But every slave has the right to recover his freedom! By any
worthwhile, available means!”

“Who has denied you that right?” Captain Nemo replied. “Did I ever try
to bind you with your word of honor?”

The captain stared at me, crossing his arms.

“Sir,” I told him, “to take up this subject a second time would be
distasteful to both of us. So let’s finish what we’ve started. I
repeat: it isn’t just for myself that I raise this issue. To me,
research is a relief, a potent diversion, an enticement, a passion
that can make me forget everything else. Like you, I’m a man neglected
and unknown, living in the faint hope that someday I can pass on to
future generations the fruits of my labors—figuratively speaking, by
means of some contrivance left to the luck of winds and waves. In
short, I can admire you and comfortably go with you while playing a
role I only partly understand; but I still catch glimpses of other
aspects of your life that are surrounded by involvements and secrets
that, alone on board, my companions and I can’t share. And even when
our hearts could beat with yours, moved by some of your griefs or
stirred by your deeds of courage and genius, we’ve had to stifle even
the slightest token of that sympathy that arises at the sight of
something fine and good, whether it comes from friend or enemy. All
right then! It’s this feeling of being alien to your deepest concerns
that makes our situation unacceptable, impossible, even impossible for
me but especially for Ned Land. Every man, by virtue of his very
humanity, deserves fair treatment. Have you considered how a love of
freedom and hatred of slavery could lead to plans of vengeance in a
temperament like the Canadian’s, what he might think, attempt,
endeavor . . . ?”

I fell silent. Captain Nemo stood up.

“Ned Land can think, attempt, or endeavor anything he wants, what
difference is it to me? I didn’t go looking for him! I don’t keep him
on board for my pleasure! As for you, Professor Aronnax, you’re a man
able to understand anything, even silence. I have nothing more to say
to you. Let this first time you’ve come to discuss this subject also
be the last, because a second time I won’t even listen.”

I withdrew. From that day forward our position was very strained. I
reported this conversation to my two companions.

“Now we know,” Ned said, “that we can’t expect a thing from this
man. The Nautilus is nearing Long Island. We’ll escape, no matter what
the weather.”

But the skies became more and more threatening. There were conspicuous
signs of a hurricane on the way. The atmosphere was turning white and
milky. Slender sheaves of cirrus clouds were followed on the horizon
by layers of nimbocumulus. Other low clouds fled swiftly. The sea grew
towering, inflated by long swells. Every bird had disappeared except a
few petrels, friends of the storms. The barometer fell significantly,
indicating a tremendous tension in the surrounding haze. The mixture
in our stormglass decomposed under the influence of the electricity
charging the air. A struggle of the elements was approaching.

The storm burst during the daytime of May 13, just as the Nautilus was
cruising abreast of Long Island, a few miles from the narrows to Upper
New York Bay. I’m able to describe this struggle of the elements
because Captain Nemo didn’t flee into the ocean depths; instead, from
some inexplicable whim, he decided to brave it out on the surface.

The wind was blowing from the southwest, initially a stiff breeze, in
other words, with a speed of fifteen meters per second, which built to
twenty-five meters near three o’clock in the afternoon. This is the
figure for major storms.

Unshaken by these squalls, Captain Nemo stationed himself on the
platform. He was lashed around the waist to withstand the monstrous
breakers foaming over the deck. I hoisted and attached myself to the
same place, dividing my wonderment between the storm and this
incomparable man who faced it head-on.

The raging sea was swept with huge tattered clouds drenched by the
waves. I saw no more of the small intervening billows that form in the
troughs of the big crests. Just long, soot-colored undulations with
crests so compact they didn’t foam. They kept growing taller. They
were spurring each other on. The Nautilus, sometimes lying on its
side, sometimes standing on end like a mast, rolled and pitched
frightfully.

Near five o’clock a torrential rain fell, but it lulled neither wind
nor sea. The hurricane was unleashed at a speed of forty-five meters
per second, hence almost forty leagues per hour. Under these
conditions houses topple, roof tiles puncture doors, iron railings
snap in two, and twenty-four-pounder cannons relocate. And yet in the
midst of this turmoil, the Nautilus lived up to that saying of an
expert engineer: “A well-constructed hull can defy any sea!” This
submersible was no resisting rock that waves could demolish; it was a
steel spindle, obediently in motion, without rigging or masting, and
able to brave their fury with impunity.

Meanwhile I was carefully examining these unleashed breakers. They
measured up to fifteen meters in height over a length of 150 to 175
meters, and the speed of their propagation (half that of the wind) was
fifteen meters per second. Their volume and power increased with the
depth of the waters. I then understood the role played by these waves,
which trap air in their flanks and release it in the depths of the sea
where its oxygen brings life. Their utmost pressure—it has been
calculated—can build to 3,000 kilograms on every square foot of
surface they strike. It was such waves in the Hebrides that
repositioned a stone block weighing 84,000 pounds. It was their
relatives in the tidal wave on December 23, 1854, that toppled part of
the Japanese city of Tokyo, then went that same day at 700 kilometers
per hour to break on the beaches of America.

After nightfall the storm grew in intensity. As in the 1860 cyclone on
RΘunion Island, the barometer fell to 710 millimeters. At the close of
day, I saw a big ship passing on the horizon, struggling painfully. It
lay to at half steam in an effort to hold steady on the waves. It must
have been a steamer on one of those lines out of New York to Liverpool
or Le Havre. It soon vanished into the shadows.

At ten o’clock in the evening, the skies caught on fire. The air was
streaked with violent flashes of lightning. I couldn’t stand this
brightness, but Captain Nemo stared straight at it, as if to inhale
the spirit of the storm. A dreadful noise filled the air, a
complicated noise made up of the roar of crashing breakers, the howl
of the wind, claps of thunder. The wind shifted to every point of the
horizon, and the cyclone left the east to return there after passing
through north, west, and south, moving in the opposite direction of
revolving storms in the southern hemisphere.

Oh, that Gulf Stream! It truly lives up to its nickname, the Lord of
Storms! All by itself it creates these fearsome cyclones through the
difference in temperature between its currents and the superimposed
layers of air.

The rain was followed by a downpour of fire. Droplets of water changed
into exploding tufts. You would have thought Captain Nemo was courting
a death worthy of himself, seeking to be struck by lightning. In one
hideous pitching movement, the Nautilus reared its steel spur into the
air like a lightning rod, and I saw long sparks shoot down it.

Shattered, at the end of my strength, I slid flat on my belly to the
hatch. I opened it and went below to the lounge. By then the storm had
reached its maximum intensity. It was impossible to stand upright
inside the Nautilus.

Captain Nemo reentered near midnight. I could hear the ballast tanks
filling little by little, and the Nautilus sank gently beneath the
surface of the waves.

Through the lounge’s open windows, I saw large, frightened fish
passing like phantoms in the fiery waters. Some were struck by
lightning right before my eyes!

The Nautilus kept descending. I thought it would find calm again at
fifteen meters down. No. The upper strata were too violently
agitated. It needed to sink to fifty meters, searching for a resting
place in the bowels of the sea.

But once there, what tranquility we found, what silence, what peace
all around us! Who would have known that a dreadful hurricane was then
unleashed on the surface of this ocean?


CHAPTER 20

In Latitude 47° 24’ and Longitude 17° 28’


IN THE AFTERMATH of this storm, we were thrown back to the east. Away
went any hope of escaping to the landing places of New York or the
St. Lawrence. In despair, poor Ned went into seclusion like Captain
Nemo. Conseil and I no longer left each other.

As I said, the Nautilus veered to the east. To be more accurate, I
should have said to the northeast. Sometimes on the surface of the
waves, sometimes beneath them, the ship wandered for days amid these
mists so feared by navigators. These are caused chiefly by melting
ice, which keeps the air extremely damp. How many ships have perished
in these waterways as they tried to get directions from the hazy
lights on the coast! How many casualties have been caused by these
opaque mists! How many collisions have occurred with these reefs,
where the breaking surf is covered by the noise of the wind! How many
vessels have rammed each other, despite their running lights, despite
the warnings given by their bosun’s pipes and alarm bells!

So the floor of this sea had the appearance of a battlefield where
every ship defeated by the ocean still lay, some already old and
encrusted, others newer and reflecting our beacon light on their
ironwork and copper undersides. Among these vessels, how many went
down with all hands, with their crews and hosts of immigrants, at
these trouble spots so prominent in the statistics: Cape Race,
St. Paul Island, the Strait of Belle Isle, the St. Lawrence estuary!
And in only a few years, how many victims have been furnished to the
obituary notices by the Royal Mail, Inman, and Montreal lines; by
vessels named the Solway, the Isis, the Paramatta, the Hungarian, the
Canadian, the Anglo-Saxon, the Humboldt, and the United States, all
run aground; by the Arctic and the Lyonnais, sunk in collisions; by
the President, the Pacific, and the City of Glasgow, lost for reasons
unknown; in the midst of their gloomy rubble, the Nautilus navigated
as if passing the dead in review!

By May 15 we were off the southern tip of the Grand Banks of
Newfoundland. These banks are the result of marine sedimentation, an
extensive accumulation of organic waste brought either from the
equator by the Gulf Stream’s current, or from the North Pole by the
countercurrent of cold water that skirts the American coast. Here,
too, erratically drifting chunks collect from the ice breakup. Here a
huge boneyard forms from fish, mollusks, and zoophytes dying over it
by the billions.

The sea is of no great depth at the Grand Banks. A few hundred fathoms
at best. But to the south there is a deep, suddenly occurring
depression, a 3,000-meter pit. Here the Gulf Stream widens. Its waters
come to full bloom. It loses its speed and temperature, but it turns
into a sea.

Among the fish that the Nautilus startled on its way, I’ll mention a
one-meter lumpfish, blackish on top with orange on the belly and rare
among its brethren in that it practices monogamy, a good-sized
eelpout, a type of emerald moray whose flavor is excellent, wolffish
with big eyes in a head somewhat resembling a canine’s, viviparous
blennies whose eggs hatch inside their bodies like those of snakes,
bloated gobio (or black gudgeon) measuring two decimeters, grenadiers
with long tails and gleaming with a silvery glow, speedy fish
venturing far from their High Arctic seas.

Our nets also hauled in a bold, daring, vigorous, and muscular fish
armed with prickles on its head and stings on its fins, a real
scorpion measuring two to three meters, the ruthless enemy of cod,
blennies, and salmon; it was the bullhead of the northerly seas, a
fish with red fins and a brown body covered with nodules. The
Nautilus’s fishermen had some trouble getting a grip on this animal,
which, thanks to the formation of its gill covers, can protect its
respiratory organs from any parching contact with the air and can live
out of water for a good while.

And I’ll mention—for the record—some little banded blennies that
follow ships into the northernmost seas, sharp-snouted carp exclusive
to the north Atlantic, scorpionfish, and lastly the gadoid family,
chiefly the cod species, which I detected in their waters of choice
over these inexhaustible Grand Banks.

Because Newfoundland is simply an underwater peak, you could call
these cod mountain fish. While the Nautilus was clearing a path
through their tight ranks, Conseil couldn’t refrain from making this
comment:

“Mercy, look at these cod!” he said. “Why, I thought cod were flat,
like dab or sole!”

“Innocent boy!” I exclaimed. “Cod are flat only at the grocery store,
where they’re cut open and spread out on display. But in the water
they’re like mullet, spindle-shaped and perfectly built for speed.”

“I can easily believe master,” Conseil replied. “But what crowds of
them! What swarms!”

“Bah! My friend, there’d be many more without their enemies,
scorpionfish and human beings! Do you know how many eggs have been
counted in a single female?”

“I’ll go all out,” Conseil replied. “500,000.”

“11,000,000, my friend.”

“11,000,000! I refuse to accept that until I count them myself.”

“So count them, Conseil. But it would be less work to believe
me. Besides, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Danes, and Norwegians
catch these cod by the thousands. They’re eaten in prodigious
quantities, and without the astonishing fertility of these fish, the
seas would soon be depopulated of them. Accordingly, in England and
America alone, 5,000 ships manned by 75,000 seamen go after cod. Each
ship brings back an average catch of 4,400 fish, making
22,000,000. Off the coast of Norway, the total is the same.”

“Fine,” Conseil replied, “I’ll take master’s word for it. I won’t
count them.”

“Count what?”

“Those 11,000,000 eggs. But I’ll make one comment.”

“What’s that?”

“If all their eggs hatched, just four codfish could feed England,
America, and Norway.”

As we skimmed the depths of the Grand Banks, I could see perfectly
those long fishing lines, each armed with 200 hooks, that every boat
dangled by the dozens. The lower end of each line dragged the bottom
by means of a small grappling iron, and at the surface it was secured
to the buoy-rope of a cork float. The Nautilus had to maneuver
shrewdly in the midst of this underwater spiderweb.

But the ship didn’t stay long in these heavily traveled waterways. It
went up to about latitude 42 degrees. This brought it abreast of
St. John’s in Newfoundland and Heart’s Content, where the Atlantic
Cable reaches its end point.

Instead of continuing north, the Nautilus took an easterly heading, as
if to go along this plateau on which the telegraph cable rests, where
multiple soundings have given the contours of the terrain with the
utmost accuracy.

It was on May 17, about 500 miles from Heart’s Content and 2,800
meters down, that I spotted this cable lying on the seafloor. Conseil,
whom I hadn’t alerted, mistook it at first for a gigantic sea snake
and was gearing up to classify it in his best manner. But I
enlightened the fine lad and let him down gently by giving him various
details on the laying of this cable.

The first cable was put down during the years 1857-1858; but after
transmitting about 400 telegrams, it went dead. In 1863 engineers
built a new cable that measured 3,400 kilometers, weighed 4,500 metric
tons, and was shipped aboard the Great Eastern. This attempt also
failed.

Now then, on May 25 while submerged to a depth of 3,836 meters, the
Nautilus lay in precisely the locality where this second cable
suffered the rupture that ruined the undertaking. It happened 638
miles from the coast of Ireland. At around two o’clock in the
afternoon, all contact with Europe broke off. The electricians on
board decided to cut the cable before fishing it up, and by eleven
o’clock that evening they had retrieved the damaged part. They
repaired the joint and its splice; then the cable was resubmerged. But
a few days later it snapped again and couldn’t be recovered from the
ocean depths.

These Americans refused to give up. The daring Cyrus Field, who had
risked his whole fortune to promote this undertaking, called for a new
bond issue. It sold out immediately. Another cable was put down under
better conditions. Its sheaves of conducting wire were insulated
within a gutta-percha covering, which was protected by a padding of
textile material enclosed in a metal sheath. The Great Eastern put
back to sea on July 13, 1866.

The operation proceeded apace. Yet there was one hitch. As they
gradually unrolled this third cable, the electricians observed on
several occasions that someone had recently driven nails into it,
trying to damage its core. Captain Anderson, his officers, and the
engineers put their heads together, then posted a warning that if the
culprit were detected, he would be thrown overboard without a
trial. After that, these villainous attempts were not repeated.

By July 23 the Great Eastern was lying no farther than 800 kilometers
from Newfoundland when it received telegraphed news from Ireland of an
armistice signed between Prussia and Austria after the Battle of
Sadova. Through the mists on the 27th, it sighted the port of Heart’s
Content. The undertaking had ended happily, and in its first dispatch,
young America addressed old Europe with these wise words so rarely
understood: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of
good will.”

I didn’t expect to find this electric cable in mint condition, as it
looked on leaving its place of manufacture. The long snake was covered
with seashell rubble and bristling with foraminifera; a crust of caked
gravel protected it from any mollusks that might bore into it. It
rested serenely, sheltered from the sea’s motions, under a pressure
favorable to the transmission of that electric spark that goes from
America to Europe in 32/100 of a second. This cable will no doubt last
indefinitely because, as observers note, its gutta-percha casing is
improved by a stay in salt water.

Besides, on this well-chosen plateau, the cable never lies at depths
that could cause a break. The Nautilus followed it to its lowest
reaches, located 4,431 meters down, and even there it rested without
any stress or strain. Then we returned to the locality where the 1863
accident had taken place.

There the ocean floor formed a valley 120 kilometers wide, into which
you could fit Mt. Blanc without its summit poking above the surface of
the waves. This valley is closed off to the east by a sheer wall 2,000
meters high. We arrived there on May 28, and the Nautilus lay no
farther than 150 kilometers from Ireland.

Would Captain Nemo head up north and beach us on the British Isles?
No. Much to my surprise, he went back down south and returned to
European seas. As we swung around the Emerald Isle, I spotted Cape
Clear for an instant, plus the lighthouse on Fastnet Rock that guides
all those thousands of ships setting out from Glasgow or Liverpool.

An important question then popped into my head. Would the Nautilus
dare to tackle the English Channel? Ned Land (who promptly reappeared
after we hugged shore) never stopped questioning me. What could I
answer him? Captain Nemo remained invisible. After giving the Canadian
a glimpse of American shores, was he about to show me the coast of
France?

But the Nautilus kept gravitating southward. On May 30, in sight of
Land’s End, it passed between the lowermost tip of England and the
Scilly Islands, which it left behind to starboard.

If it was going to enter the English Channel, it clearly needed to
head east. It did not.

All day long on May 31, the Nautilus swept around the sea in a series
of circles that had me deeply puzzled. It seemed to be searching for a
locality that it had some trouble finding. At noon Captain Nemo
himself came to take our bearings. He didn’t address a word to me. He
looked gloomier than ever. What was filling him with such sadness? Was
it our proximity to these European shores? Was he reliving his
memories of that country he had left behind? If so, what did he feel?
Remorse or regret? For a good while these thoughts occupied my mind,
and I had a hunch that fate would soon give away the captain’s
secrets.

The next day, June 1, the Nautilus kept to the same tack. It was
obviously trying to locate some precise spot in the ocean. Just as on
the day before, Captain Nemo came to take the altitude of the sun. The
sea was smooth, the skies clear. Eight miles to the east, a big
steamship was visible on the horizon line. No flag was flapping from
the gaff of its fore-and-aft sail, and I couldn’t tell its
nationality.

A few minutes before the sun passed its zenith, Captain Nemo raised
his sextant and took his sights with the utmost precision. The
absolute calm of the waves facilitated this operation. The Nautilus
lay motionless, neither rolling nor pitching.

I was on the platform just then. After determining our position, the
captain pronounced only these words:

“It’s right here!”

He went down the hatch. Had he seen that vessel change course and
seemingly head toward us? I’m unable to say.

I returned to the lounge. The hatch closed, and I heard water hissing
in the ballast tanks. The Nautilus began to sink on a vertical line,
because its propeller was in check and no longer furnished any forward
motion.

Some minutes later it stopped at a depth of 833 meters and came to
rest on the seafloor.

The ceiling lights in the lounge then went out, the panels opened, and
through the windows I saw, for a half-mile radius, the sea brightly
lit by the beacon’s rays.

I looked to port and saw nothing but the immenseness of these tranquil
waters.

To starboard, a prominent bulge on the sea bottom caught my
attention. You would have thought it was some ruin enshrouded in a
crust of whitened seashells, as if under a mantle of snow. Carefully
examining this mass, I could identify the swollen outlines of a ship
shorn of its masts, which must have sunk bow first. This casualty
certainly dated from some far-off time. To be so caked with the
limestone of these waters, this wreckage must have spent many a year
on the ocean floor.

What ship was this? Why had the Nautilus come to visit its grave? Was
it something other than a maritime accident that had dragged this
craft under the waters?

I wasn’t sure what to think, but next to me I heard Captain Nemo’s
voice slowly say:

“Originally this ship was christened the Marseillais. It carried
seventy-four cannons and was launched in 1762. On August 13, 1778,
commanded by La Poype-Vertrieux, it fought valiantly against the
Preston. On July 4, 1779, as a member of the squadron under Admiral
d’Estaing, it assisted in the capture of the island of Grenada. On
September 5, 1781, under the Count de Grasse, it took part in the
Battle of Chesapeake Bay. In 1794 the new Republic of France changed
the name of this ship. On April 16 of that same year, it joined the
squadron at Brest under Rear Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse, who was
entrusted with escorting a convoy of wheat coming from America under
the command of Admiral Van Stabel. In this second year of the French
Revolutionary Calendar, on the 11th and 12th days in the Month of
Pasture, this squadron fought an encounter with English vessels. Sir,
today is June 1, 1868, or the 13th day in the Month of
Pasture. Seventy-four years ago to the day, at this very spot in
latitude 47 degrees 24’ and longitude 17 degrees 28’, this ship sank
after a heroic battle; its three masts gone, water in its hold, a
third of its crew out of action, it preferred to go to the bottom with
its 356 seamen rather than surrender; and with its flag nailed up on
the afterdeck, it disappeared beneath the waves to shouts of ‘Long
live the Republic!’”

“This is the Avenger!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir! The Avenger! A splendid name!” Captain Nemo murmured,
crossing his arms.


CHAPTER 21

A Mass Execution


THE WAY HE SAID THIS, the unexpectedness of this scene, first the
biography of this patriotic ship, then the excitement with which this
eccentric individual pronounced these last words—the name Avenger
whose significance could not escape me—all this, taken together, had a
profound impact on my mind. My eyes never left the captain. Hands
outstretched toward the sea, he contemplated the proud wreck with
blazing eyes. Perhaps I would never learn who he was, where he came
from or where he was heading, but more and more I could see a
distinction between the man and the scientist. It was no ordinary
misanthropy that kept Captain Nemo and his companions sequestered
inside the Nautilus’s plating, but a hate so monstrous or so sublime
that the passing years could never weaken it.

Did this hate also hunger for vengeance? Time would soon tell.

Meanwhile the Nautilus rose slowly to the surface of the sea, and I
watched the Avenger’s murky shape disappearing little by little. Soon
a gentle rolling told me that we were afloat in the open air.

Just then a hollow explosion was audible. I looked at the captain. The
captain did not stir.

“Captain?” I said.

He didn’t reply.

I left him and climbed onto the platform. Conseil and the Canadian
were already there.

“What caused that explosion?” I asked.

“A cannon going off,” Ned Land replied.

I stared in the direction of the ship I had spotted. It was heading
toward the Nautilus, and you could tell it had put on steam. Six miles
separated it from us.

“What sort of craft is it, Ned?”

“From its rigging and its low masts,” the Canadian replied, “I bet
it’s a warship. Here’s hoping it pulls up and sinks this damned
Nautilus!”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “what harm could it do the Nautilus?
Will it attack us under the waves? Will it cannonade us at the bottom
of the sea?”

“Tell me, Ned,” I asked, “can you make out the nationality of that
craft?”

Creasing his brow, lowering his lids, and puckering the corners of his
eyes, the Canadian focused the full power of his gaze on the ship for
a short while.

“No, sir,” he replied. “I can’t make out what nation it’s from. It’s
flying no flag. But I’ll swear it’s a warship, because there’s a long
pennant streaming from the peak of its mainmast.”

For a quarter of an hour, we continued to watch the craft bearing down
on us. But it was inconceivable to me that it had discovered the
Nautilus at such a distance, still less that it knew what this
underwater machine really was.

Soon the Canadian announced that the craft was a big battleship, a
double-decker ironclad complete with ram. Dark, dense smoke burst from
its two funnels. Its furled sails merged with the lines of its
yardarms. The gaff of its fore-and-aft sail flew no flag. Its distance
still kept us from distinguishing the colors of its pennant, which was
fluttering like a thin ribbon.

It was coming on fast. If Captain Nemo let it approach, a chance for
salvation might be available to us.

“Sir,” Ned Land told me, “if that boat gets within a mile of us, I’m
jumping overboard, and I suggest you follow suit.”

I didn’t reply to the Canadian’s proposition but kept watching the
ship, which was looming larger on the horizon. Whether it was English,
French, American, or Russian, it would surely welcome us aboard if we
could just get to it.

“Master may recall,” Conseil then said, “that we have some experience
with swimming. He can rely on me to tow him to that vessel, if he’s
agreeable to going with our friend Ned.”

Before I could reply, white smoke streamed from the battleship’s
bow. Then, a few seconds later, the waters splashed astern of the
Nautilus, disturbed by the fall of a heavy object. Soon after, an
explosion struck my ears.

“What’s this? They’re firing at us!” I exclaimed.

“Good lads!” the Canadian muttered.

“That means they don’t see us as castaways clinging to some wreckage!”

“With all due respect to master—gracious!” Conseil put in, shaking off
the water that had sprayed over him from another shell. “With all due
respect to master, they’ve discovered the narwhale and they’re
cannonading the same.”

“But it must be clear to them,” I exclaimed, “that they’re dealing
with human beings.”

“Maybe that’s why!” Ned Land replied, staring hard at me.

The full truth dawned on me. Undoubtedly people now knew where they
stood on the existence of this so-called monster. Undoubtedly the
latter’s encounter with the Abraham Lincoln, when the Canadian hit it
with his harpoon, had led Commander Farragut to recognize the narwhale
as actually an underwater boat, more dangerous than any unearthly
cetacean!

Yes, this had to be the case, and undoubtedly they were now chasing
this dreadful engine of destruction on every sea!

Dreadful indeed, if, as we could assume, Captain Nemo had been using
the Nautilus in works of vengeance! That night in the middle of the
Indian Ocean, when he imprisoned us in the cell, hadn’t he attacked
some ship? That man now buried in the coral cemetery, wasn’t he the
victim of some collision caused by the Nautilus? Yes, I repeat: this
had to be the case. One part of Captain Nemo’s secret life had been
unveiled. And now, even though his identity was still unknown, at
least the nations allied against him knew they were no longer hunting
some fairy-tale monster, but a man who had sworn an implacable hate
toward them!

This whole fearsome sequence of events appeared in my mind’s
eye. Instead of encountering friends on this approaching ship, we
would find only pitiless enemies.

Meanwhile shells fell around us in increasing numbers. Some, meeting
the liquid surface, would ricochet and vanish into the sea at
considerable distances. But none of them reached the Nautilus.

By then the ironclad was no more than three miles off. Despite its
violent cannonade, Captain Nemo hadn’t appeared on the platform. And
yet if one of those conical shells had scored a routine hit on the
Nautilus’s hull, it could have been fatal to him.

The Canadian then told me:

“Sir, we’ve got to do everything we can to get out of this jam! Let’s
signal them! Damnation! Maybe they’ll realize we’re decent people!”

Ned Land pulled out his handkerchief to wave it in the air. But he had
barely unfolded it when he was felled by an iron fist, and despite his
great strength, he tumbled to the deck.

“Scum!” the captain shouted. “Do you want to be nailed to the
Nautilus’s spur before it charges that ship?”

Dreadful to hear, Captain Nemo was even more dreadful to see. His face
was pale from some spasm of his heart, which must have stopped beating
for an instant. His pupils were hideously contracted. His voice was no
longer speaking, it was bellowing. Bending from the waist, he shook
the Canadian by the shoulders.

Then, dropping Ned and turning to the battleship, whose shells were
showering around him:

“O ship of an accursed nation, you know who I am!” he shouted in his
powerful voice. “And I don’t need your colors to recognize you! Look!
I’ll show you mine!”

And in the bow of the platform, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag,
like the one he had left planted at the South Pole.

Just then a shell hit the Nautilus’s hull obliquely, failed to breach
it, ricocheted near the captain, and vanished into the sea.

Captain Nemo shrugged his shoulders. Then, addressing me:

“Go below!” he told me in a curt tone. “You and your companions, go
below!”

“Sir,” I exclaimed, “are you going to attack this ship?”

“Sir, I’m going to sink it.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I will,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “You’re ill-advised to pass
judgment on me, sir. Fate has shown you what you weren’t meant to
see. The attack has come. Our reply will be dreadful. Get back
inside!”

“From what country is that ship?”

“You don’t know? Fine, so much the better! At least its nationality
will remain a secret to you. Go below!”

The Canadian, Conseil, and I could only obey. Some fifteen of the
Nautilus’s seamen surrounded their captain and stared with a feeling
of implacable hate at the ship bearing down on them. You could feel
the same spirit of vengeance enkindling their every soul.

I went below just as another projectile scraped the Nautilus’s hull,
and I heard the captain exclaim:

“Shoot, you demented vessel! Shower your futile shells! You won’t
escape the Nautilus’s spur! But this isn’t the place where you’ll
perish! I don’t want your wreckage mingling with that of the Avenger!”

I repaired to my stateroom. The captain and his chief officer stayed
on the platform. The propeller was set in motion. The Nautilus swiftly
retreated, putting us outside the range of the vessel’s shells. But
the chase continued, and Captain Nemo was content to keep his
distance.

Near four o’clock in the afternoon, unable to control the impatience
and uneasiness devouring me, I went back to the central
companionway. The hatch was open. I ventured onto the platform. The
captain was still strolling there, his steps agitated. He stared at
the ship, which stayed to his leeward five or six miles off. He was
circling it like a wild beast, drawing it eastward, letting it chase
after him. Yet he didn’t attack. Was he, perhaps, still undecided?

I tried to intervene one last time. But I had barely queried Captain
Nemo when the latter silenced me:

“I’m the law, I’m the tribunal! I’m the oppressed, and there are my
oppressors! Thanks to them, I’ve witnessed the destruction of
everything I loved, cherished, and venerated—homeland, wife, children,
father, and mother! There lies everything I hate! Not another word out
of you!”

I took a last look at the battleship, which was putting on steam. Then
I rejoined Ned and Conseil.

“We’ll escape!” I exclaimed.

“Good,” Ned put in. “Where’s that ship from?”

“I’ve no idea. But wherever it’s from, it will sink before
nightfall. In any event, it’s better to perish with it than be
accomplices in some act of revenge whose merits we can’t gauge.”

“That’s my feeling,” Ned Land replied coolly. “Let’s wait for
nightfall.”

Night fell. A profound silence reigned on board. The compass indicated
that the Nautilus hadn’t changed direction. I could hear the beat of
its propeller, churning the waves with steady speed. Staying on the
surface of the water, it rolled gently, sometimes to one side,
sometimes to the other.

My companions and I had decided to escape as soon as the vessel came
close enough for us to be heard—or seen, because the moon would wax
full in three days and was shining brightly. Once we were aboard that
ship, if we couldn’t ward off the blow that threatened it, at least we
could do everything that circumstances permitted. Several times I
thought the Nautilus was about to attack. But it was content to let
its adversary approach, and then it would quickly resume its
retreating ways.

Part of the night passed without incident. We kept watch for an
opportunity to take action. We talked little, being too keyed up. Ned
Land was all for jumping overboard. I forced him to wait. As I saw it,
the Nautilus would attack the double-decker on the surface of the
waves, and then it would be not only possible but easy to escape.

At three o’clock in the morning, full of uneasiness, I climbed onto
the platform. Captain Nemo hadn’t left it. He stood in the bow next to
his flag, which a mild breeze was unfurling above his head. His eyes
never left that vessel. The extraordinary intensity of his gaze seemed
to attract it, beguile it, and draw it more surely than if he had it
in tow!

The moon then passed its zenith. Jupiter was rising in the east. In
the midst of this placid natural setting, sky and ocean competed with
each other in tranquility, and the sea offered the orb of night the
loveliest mirror ever to reflect its image.

And when I compared this deep calm of the elements with all the fury
seething inside the plating of this barely perceptible Nautilus, I
shivered all over.

The vessel was two miles off. It drew nearer, always moving toward the
phosphorescent glow that signaled the Nautilus’s presence. I saw its
green and red running lights, plus the white lantern hanging from the
large stay of its foremast. Hazy flickerings were reflected on its
rigging and indicated that its furnaces were pushed to the
limit. Showers of sparks and cinders of flaming coal escaped from its
funnels, spangling the air with stars.

I stood there until six o’clock in the morning, Captain Nemo never
seeming to notice me. The vessel lay a mile and a half off, and with
the first glimmers of daylight, it resumed its cannonade. The time
couldn’t be far away when the Nautilus would attack its adversary, and
my companions and I would leave forever this man I dared not judge.

I was about to go below to alert them, when the chief officer climbed
onto the platform. Several seamen were with him. Captain Nemo didn’t
see them, or didn’t want to see them. They carried out certain
procedures that, on the Nautilus, you could call “clearing the decks
for action.” They were quite simple. The manropes that formed a
handrail around the platform were lowered. Likewise the pilothouse and
the beacon housing were withdrawn into the hull until they lay exactly
flush with it. The surface of this long sheet-iron cigar no longer
offered a single protrusion that could hamper its maneuvers.

I returned to the lounge. The Nautilus still emerged above the
surface. A few morning gleams infiltrated the liquid strata. Beneath
the undulations of the billows, the windows were enlivened by the
blushing of the rising sun. That dreadful day of June 2 had dawned.

At seven o’clock the log told me that the Nautilus had reduced
speed. I realized that it was letting the warship approach. Moreover,
the explosions grew more intensely audible. Shells furrowed the water
around us, drilling through it with an odd hissing sound.

“My friends,” I said, “it’s time. Let’s shake hands, and may God be
with us!”

Ned Land was determined, Conseil calm, I myself nervous and barely in
control.

We went into the library. Just as I pushed open the door leading to
the well of the central companionway, I heard the hatch close sharply
overhead.

The Canadian leaped up the steps, but I stopped him. A well-known
hissing told me that water was entering the ship’s ballast
tanks. Indeed, in a few moments the Nautilus had submerged some meters
below the surface of the waves.

I understood this maneuver. It was too late to take action. The
Nautilus wasn’t going to strike the double-decker where it was clad in
impenetrable iron armor, but below its waterline, where the metal
carapace no longer protected its planking.

We were prisoners once more, unwilling spectators at the performance
of this gruesome drama. But we barely had time to think. Taking refuge
in my stateroom, we stared at each other without pronouncing a
word. My mind was in a total daze. My mental processes came to a dead
stop. I hovered in that painful state that predominates during the
period of anticipation before some frightful explosion. I waited, I
listened, I lived only through my sense of hearing!

Meanwhile the Nautilus’s speed had increased appreciably. So it was
gathering momentum. Its entire hull was vibrating.

Suddenly I let out a yell. There had been a collision, but it was
comparatively mild. I could feel the penetrating force of the steel
spur. I could hear scratchings and scrapings. Carried away with its
driving power, the Nautilus had passed through the vessel’s mass like
a sailmaker’s needle through canvas!

I couldn’t hold still. Frantic, going insane, I leaped out of my
stateroom and rushed into the lounge.

Captain Nemo was there. Mute, gloomy, implacable, he was staring
through the port panel.

An enormous mass was sinking beneath the waters, and the Nautilus,
missing none of its death throes, was descending into the depths with
it. Ten meters away, I could see its gaping hull, into which water was
rushing with a sound of thunder, then its double rows of cannons and
railings. Its deck was covered with dark, quivering shadows.

The water was rising. Those poor men leaped up into the shrouds, clung
to the masts, writhed beneath the waters. It was a human anthill that
an invading sea had caught by surprise!

Paralyzed, rigid with anguish, my hair standing on end, my eyes
popping out of my head, short of breath, suffocating, speechless, I
stared—I too! I was glued to the window by an irresistible allure!

The enormous vessel settled slowly. Following it down, the Nautilus
kept watch on its every movement. Suddenly there was an eruption. The
air compressed inside the craft sent its decks flying, as if the
powder stores had been ignited. The thrust of the waters was so great,
the Nautilus swerved away.

The poor ship then sank more swiftly. Its mastheads appeared, laden
with victims, then its crosstrees bending under clusters of men,
finally the peak of its mainmast. Then the dark mass disappeared, and
with it a crew of corpses dragged under by fearsome eddies. . . .

I turned to Captain Nemo. This dreadful executioner, this true
archangel of hate, was still staring. When it was all over, Captain
Nemo headed to the door of his stateroom, opened it, and entered. I
followed him with my eyes.

On the rear paneling, beneath the portraits of his heroes, I saw the
portrait of a still-youthful woman with two little children. Captain
Nemo stared at them for a few moments, stretched out his arms to them,
sank to his knees, and melted into sobs.


CHAPTER 22

The Last Words of Captain Nemo


THE PANELS CLOSED over this frightful view, but the lights didn’t go
on in the lounge. Inside the Nautilus all was gloom and silence. It
left this place of devastation with prodigious speed, 100 feet beneath
the waters. Where was it going? North or south? Where would the man
flee after this horrible act of revenge?

I reentered my stateroom, where Ned and Conseil were waiting
silently. Captain Nemo filled me with insurmountable horror. Whatever
he had once suffered at the hands of humanity, he had no right to mete
out such punishment. He had made me, if not an accomplice, at least an
eyewitness to his vengeance! Even this was intolerable.

At eleven o’clock the electric lights came back on. I went into the
lounge. It was deserted. I consulted the various instruments. The
Nautilus was fleeing northward at a speed of twenty-five miles per
hour, sometimes on the surface of the sea, sometimes thirty feet
beneath it.

After our position had been marked on the chart, I saw that we were
passing into the mouth of the English Channel, that our heading would
take us to the northernmost seas with incomparable speed.

I could barely glimpse the swift passing of longnose sharks,
hammerhead sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters, big
eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard,
eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fled
obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally
schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus. But
by this point observing, studying, and classifying were out of the
question.

By evening we had cleared 200 leagues up the Atlantic. Shadows
gathered and gloom overran the sea until the moon came up.

I repaired to my stateroom. I couldn’t sleep. I was assaulted by
nightmares. That horrible scene of destruction kept repeating in my
mind’s eye.

From that day forward, who knows where the Nautilus took us in the
north Atlantic basin? Always at incalculable speed! Always amid the
High Arctic mists! Did it call at the capes of Spitzbergen or the
shores of Novaya Zemlya? Did it visit such uncharted seas as the White
Sea, the Kara Sea, the Gulf of Ob, the Lyakhov Islands, or those
unknown beaches on the Siberian coast? I’m unable to say. I lost track
of the passing hours. Time was in abeyance on the ship’s clocks. As
happens in the polar regions, it seemed that night and day no longer
followed their normal sequence. I felt myself being drawn into that
strange domain where the overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe
was at home. Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment
to see that “shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions
than any dweller among men,” thrown across the cataract that protects
the outskirts of the pole!

I estimate—but perhaps I’m mistaken—that the Nautilus’s haphazard
course continued for fifteen or twenty days, and I’m not sure how long
this would have gone on without the catastrophe that ended our
voyage. As for Captain Nemo, he was no longer in the picture. As for
his chief officer, the same applied. Not one crewman was visible for a
single instant. The Nautilus cruised beneath the waters almost
continuously. When it rose briefly to the surface to renew our air,
the hatches opened and closed as if automated. No more positions were
reported on the world map. I didn’t know where we were.

I’ll also mention that the Canadian, at the end of his strength and
patience, made no further appearances. Conseil couldn’t coax a single
word out of him and feared that, in a fit of delirium while under the
sway of a ghastly homesickness, Ned would kill himself. So he kept a
devoted watch on his friend every instant.

You can appreciate that under these conditions, our situation had
become untenable.

One morning—whose date I’m unable to specify—I was slumbering near the
first hours of daylight, a painful, sickly slumber. Waking up, I saw
Ned Land leaning over me, and I heard him tell me in a low voice:

“We’re going to escape!”

I sat up.

“When?” I asked.

“Tonight. There doesn’t seem to be any supervision left on the
Nautilus. You’d think a total daze was reigning on board. Will you be
ready, sir?”

“Yes. Where are we?”

“In sight of land. I saw it through the mists just this morning,
twenty miles to the east.”

“What land is it?”

“I’ve no idea, but whatever it is, there we’ll take refuge.”

“Yes, Ned! We’ll escape tonight even if the sea swallows us up!”

“The sea’s rough, the wind’s blowing hard, but a twenty-mile run in
the Nautilus’s nimble longboat doesn’t scare me. Unknown to the crew,
I’ve stowed some food and flasks of water inside.”

“I’m with you.”

“What’s more,” the Canadian added, “if they catch me, I’ll defend
myself, I’ll fight to the death.”

“Then we’ll die together, Ned my friend.”

My mind was made up. The Canadian left me. I went out on the platform,
where I could barely stand upright against the jolts of the
billows. The skies were threatening, but land lay inside those dense
mists, and we had to escape. Not a single day, or even a single hour,
could we afford to lose.

I returned to the lounge, dreading yet desiring an encounter with
Captain Nemo, wanting yet not wanting to see him. What would I say to
him? How could I hide the involuntary horror he inspired in me? No! It
was best not to meet him face to face! Best to try and forget him! And
yet . . . !

How long that day seemed, the last I would spend aboard the Nautilus!
I was left to myself. Ned Land and Conseil avoided speaking to me,
afraid they would give themselves away.

At six o’clock I ate supper, but I had no appetite. Despite my
revulsion, I forced it down, wanting to keep my strength up.

At 6:30 Ned Land entered my stateroom. He told me:

“We won’t see each other again before we go. At ten o’clock the moon
won’t be up yet. We’ll take advantage of the darkness. Come to the
skiff. Conseil and I will be inside waiting for you.”

The Canadian left without giving me time to answer him.

I wanted to verify the Nautilus’s heading. I made my way to the
lounge. We were racing north-northeast with frightful speed, fifty
meters down.

I took one last look at the natural wonders and artistic treasures
amassed in the museum, this unrivaled collection doomed to perish
someday in the depths of the seas, together with its curator. I wanted
to establish one supreme impression in my mind. I stayed there an
hour, basking in the aura of the ceiling lights, passing in review the
treasures shining in their glass cases. Then I returned to my
stateroom.

There I dressed in sturdy seafaring clothes. I gathered my notes and
packed them tenderly about my person. My heart was pounding
mightily. I couldn’t curb its pulsations. My anxiety and agitation
would certainly have given me away if Captain Nemo had seen me.

What was he doing just then? I listened at the door to his
stateroom. I heard the sound of footsteps. Captain Nemo was inside. He
hadn’t gone to bed. With his every movement I imagined he would appear
and ask me why I wanted to escape! I felt in a perpetual state of
alarm. My imagination magnified this sensation. The feeling became so
acute, I wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to enter the captain’s
stateroom, dare him face to face, brave it out with word and deed!

It was an insane idea. Fortunately I controlled myself and stretched
out on the bed to soothe my bodily agitation. My nerves calmed a
little, but with my brain so aroused, I did a swift review of my whole
existence aboard the Nautilus, every pleasant or unpleasant incident
that had crossed my path since I went overboard from the Abraham
Lincoln: the underwater hunting trip, the Torres Strait, our running
aground, the savages of Papua, the coral cemetery, the Suez
passageway, the island of Santorini, the Cretan diver, the Bay of
Vigo, Atlantis, the Ice Bank, the South Pole, our imprisonment in the
ice, the battle with the devilfish, the storm in the Gulf Stream, the
Avenger, and that horrible scene of the vessel sinking with its crew
. . . ! All these events passed before my eyes like backdrops
unrolling upstage in a theater. In this strange setting Captain Nemo
then grew fantastically. His features were accentuated, taking on
superhuman proportions. He was no longer my equal, he was the Man of
the Waters, the Spirit of the Seas.

By then it was 9:30. I held my head in both hands to keep it from
bursting. I closed my eyes. I no longer wanted to think. A half hour
still to wait! A half hour of nightmares that could drive me insane!

Just then I heard indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy
harmonies from some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul
trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at
once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical
trance that was drawing him beyond the bounds of this world.

Then a sudden thought terrified me. Captain Nemo had left his
stateroom. He was in the same lounge I had to cross in order to
escape. There I would encounter him one last time. He would see me,
perhaps speak to me! One gesture from him could obliterate me, a
single word shackle me to his vessel!

Even so, ten o’clock was about to strike. It was time to leave my
stateroom and rejoin my companions.

I dared not hesitate, even if Captain Nemo stood before me. I opened
the door cautiously, but as it swung on its hinges, it seemed to make
a frightful noise. This noise existed, perhaps, only in my
imagination!

I crept forward through the Nautilus’s dark gangways, pausing after
each step to curb the pounding of my heart.

I arrived at the corner door of the lounge. I opened it gently. The
lounge was plunged in profound darkness. Chords from the organ were
reverberating faintly. Captain Nemo was there. He didn’t see me. Even
in broad daylight I doubt that he would have noticed me, so completely
was he immersed in his trance.

I inched over the carpet, avoiding the tiniest bump whose noise might
give me away. It took me five minutes to reach the door at the far
end, which led into the library.

I was about to open it when a gasp from Captain Nemo nailed me to the
spot. I realized that he was standing up. I even got a glimpse of him
because some rays of light from the library had filtered into the
lounge. He was coming toward me, arms crossed, silent, not walking but
gliding like a ghost. His chest was heaving, swelling with sobs. And I
heard him murmur these words, the last of his to reach my ears:

“O almighty God! Enough! Enough!”

Was it a vow of repentance that had just escaped from this man’s
conscience . . . ?

Frantic, I rushed into the library. I climbed the central
companionway, and going along the upper gangway, I arrived at the
skiff. I went through the opening that had already given access to my
two companions.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” I exclaimed.

“Right away!” the Canadian replied.

First, Ned Land closed and bolted the opening cut into the Nautilus’s
sheet iron, using the monkey wrench he had with him. After likewise
closing the opening in the skiff, the Canadian began to unscrew the
nuts still bolting us to the underwater boat.

Suddenly a noise from the ship’s interior became audible. Voices were
answering each other hurriedly. What was it? Had they spotted our
escape? I felt Ned Land sliding a dagger into my hand.

“Yes,” I muttered, “we know how to die!”

The Canadian paused in his work. But one word twenty times repeated,
one dreadful word, told me the reason for the agitation spreading
aboard the Nautilus. We weren’t the cause of the crew’s concern.

“Maelstrom! Maelstrom!” they were shouting.

The Maelstrom! Could a more frightening name have rung in our ears
under more frightening circumstances? Were we lying in the dangerous
waterways off the Norwegian coast? Was the Nautilus being dragged into
this whirlpool just as the skiff was about to detach from its plating?

As you know, at the turn of the tide, the waters confined between the
Faroe and Lofoten Islands rush out with irresistible violence. They
form a vortex from which no ship has ever been able to
escape. Monstrous waves race together from every point of the
horizon. They form a whirlpool aptly called “the ocean’s navel,” whose
attracting power extends a distance of fifteen kilometers. It can suck
down not only ships but whales, and even polar bears from the
northernmost regions.

This was where the Nautilus had been sent accidentally—or perhaps
deliberately—by its captain. It was sweeping around in a spiral whose
radius kept growing smaller and smaller. The skiff, still attached to
the ship’s plating, was likewise carried around at dizzying speed. I
could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea
that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in
the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our
nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying!
And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from
several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against
sharp rocks on the seafloor, where the hardest objects are smashed,
where tree trunks are worn down and worked into “a shaggy fur,” as
Norwegians express it!

What a predicament! We were rocking frightfully. The Nautilus defended
itself like a human being. Its steel muscles were cracking. Sometimes
it stood on end, the three of us along with it!

“We’ve got to hold on tight,” Ned said, “and screw the nuts down
again! If we can stay attached to the Nautilus, we can still make it
. . . !”

He hadn’t finished speaking when a cracking sound occurred. The nuts
gave way, and ripped out of its socket, the skiff was hurled like a
stone from a sling into the midst of the vortex.

My head struck against an iron timber, and with this violent shock I
lost consciousness.


CHAPTER 23

Conclusion


WE COME TO the conclusion of this voyage under the seas. What happened
that night, how the skiff escaped from the Maelstrom’s fearsome
eddies, how Ned Land, Conseil, and I got out of that whirlpool, I’m
unable to say. But when I regained consciousness, I was lying in a
fisherman’s hut on one of the Lofoten Islands. My two companions, safe
and sound, were at my bedside clasping my hands. We embraced each
other heartily.

Just now we can’t even dream of returning to France. Travel between
upper Norway and the south is limited. So I have to wait for the
arrival of a steamboat that provides bimonthly service from North
Cape.

So it is here, among these gallant people who have taken us in, that
I’m reviewing my narrative of these adventures. It is accurate. Not a
fact has been omitted, not a detail has been exaggerated. It’s the
faithful record of this inconceivable expedition into an element now
beyond human reach, but where progress will someday make great
inroads.

Will anyone believe me? I don’t know. Ultimately it’s
unimportant. What I can now assert is that I’ve earned the right to
speak of these seas, beneath which in less than ten months, I’ve
cleared 20,000 leagues in this underwater tour of the world that has
shown me so many wonders across the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Red
Sea, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the southernmost and
northernmost seas!

But what happened to the Nautilus? Did it withstand the Maelstrom’s
clutches? Is Captain Nemo alive? Is he still under the ocean pursuing
his frightful program of revenge, or did he stop after that latest
mass execution? Will the waves someday deliver that manuscript that
contains his full life story? Will I finally learn the man’s name?
Will the nationality of the stricken warship tell us the nationality
of Captain Nemo?

I hope so. I likewise hope that his powerful submersible has defeated
the sea inside its most dreadful whirlpool, that the Nautilus has
survived where so many ships have perished! If this is the case and
Captain Nemo still inhabits the ocean—his adopted country—may the hate
be appeased in that fierce heart! May the contemplation of so many
wonders extinguish the spirit of vengeance in him! May the executioner
pass away, and the scientist continue his peaceful exploration of the
seas! If his destiny is strange, it’s also sublime. Haven’t I
encompassed it myself? Didn’t I lead ten months of this otherworldly
existence? Thus to that question asked 6,000 years ago in the Book of
Ecclesiastes—“Who can fathom the soundless depths?”—two men out of all
humanity have now earned the right to reply. Captain Nemo and I.


END OF THE SECOND PART



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