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

“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 Macé, 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 Réunion 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 Pérouse.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 Pérouse.

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 Queirós 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 Pérouse 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 Pérouse.

“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 Pérouse 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 Pérouse’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 Pérouse, 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 Pérouse 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 Pérouse’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 Pérouse.

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 Pérouse 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 Pérouse.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 Pérouse, 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 Pérouse’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.