As I expected, during the night a new block a yard square was carried away, and still further sank the immense hollow. But in the morning when, dressed in my cork-jacket, I traversed the slushy mass at a temperature of six or seven degrees below zero, I remarked that the side walls were gradually closing in. The beds of water furthest from the trench, that were not warmed by the men’s mere work, showed a tendency to solidification. In presence of this new and imminent danger, what would become of our chances of safety, and how hinder the solidification of this liquid medium, that would burst the partitions of the Nautilus like glass?
I did not tell my companions of this new danger. What was the good of damping the energy they displayed in the painful work of escape? But when I went on board again, I told Captain Nemo of this grave complication.
“I know it,” he said, in that calm tone which could counteract the most terrible apprehensions. “It is one danger more; but I see no way of escaping it; the only chance of safety is to go quicker than solidification. We must be beforehand with it, that is all.”
On this day for several hours I used my pickaxe vigorously. The work kept me up. Besides, to work was to quit the Nautilus, and breathe directly the pure air drawn from the reservoirs, and supplied by our apparatus, and to quit the impoverished and vitiated atmosphere. Toward evening the trench was dug one yard deeper. When I returned on board, I was nearly suffocated by the carbonic acid with which the air was filled—ah! if we had only the chemical means to drive away this deleterious gas! We had plenty of oxygen; all this water contained a considerable quantity, and by dissolving it with our powerful piles, it would restore the vivifying fluid. I had thought well over it; but of what good was that, since the carbonic acid produced by our respiration had invaded every part of the vessel? To absorb it, it was necessary to fill some jars with caustic potash, and to shake them incessantly. Now this substance was wanting on board, and nothing could replace it. On that evening, Captain Nemo ought to open the taps of his reservoirs, and let some pure air into the interior of the Nautilus; without this precaution, we could not get rid of the sense of suffocation. The next day, March 26th, I resumed my miner’s work in beginning the fifth yard. The side walls and the lower surface of the iceberg thickened visibly. It was evident that they would meet before the Nautilus was able to disengage itself. Despair seized me for an instant, my pickaxe nearly fell from my hands. What was the good of digging if I must be suffocated, crushed by the water that was turning into stone—a punishment that the ferocity of the savages even would not have invented! Just then Captain Nemo passed near me. I touched his hand and showed him the walls of our prison. The wall to port had advanced to at least four yards from the hull of the Nautilus. The captain understood me, and signed to me to follow him. We went on board. I took off my cork-jacket, and accompanied him into the drawing-room.
“M. Aronnax, we must attempt some desperate means, or we shall be sealed up in this solidified water as in cement.”
“Yes; but what is to be done?”
“Ah! if my Nautilus were strong enough to bear this pressure without being crushed!”
“Well?” I asked, not catching the captain’s idea.
“Do you not understand,” he replied, “that this congelation of water will help us? Do you not see that, by its solidification, it would burst through this field of ice that imprisons us, as, when it freezes, it bursts the hardest stones? Do you not perceive that it would be an agent of safety instead of destruction?”
“Yes, captain, perhaps. But whatever resistance to crushing the Nautilus possesses, it could not support this terrible pressure, and would be flattened like an iron plate.”
“I know it, sir. Therefore we must not reckon on the aid of nature, but on our own exertions. We must stop this solidification. Not only will the side walls be pressed together; but there is not ten feet of water before or behind the Nautilus. The congelation gains on us on all sides.”
“How long will the air in the reservoirs last for us to breathe on board?”
The captain looked in my face. “After to-morrow they will be empty!”
A cold sweat came over me. However, ought I to have been astonished at the answer? On March 22, the Nautilus was in the open polar seas. We were at 26°. For five days we had lived on the reserve on board. And what was left of the respirable air must be kept for the workers. Even now, as I write, my recollection is still so vivid that an involuntary terror seizes me, and my lungs seem to be without air. Meanwhile Captain Nemo reflected silently, and evidently an idea had struck him; but he seemed to reject it. At last, these words escaped his lips:
“Boiling water!” he muttered.
“Boiling water?” I cried.
“Yes, sir. We are inclosed in a space that is relatively confined. Would not jets of boiling water, constantly injected by the pumps, raise the temperature in this part, and stay the congelation?”
“Let us try it,” I said resolutely.
“Let us try, professor.”
The thermometer then stood at seven degrees outside. Captain Nemo took me to the galleys, where the vast distillatory machines stood that furnished the drinkable water by evaporation. They filled these with water, and all the electric heat from the piles was thrown through the worms bathed in the liquid. In a few minutes this water reached a hundred degrees. It was directed toward the pumps, while fresh water replaced it in proportion. The heat developed by the troughs was such that cold water, drawn up from the sea, after only having gone through the machines, came boiling into the body of the pump. The injection was begun, and three hours after the thermometer marked six degrees below zero outside. One degree was gained. Two hours later, the thermometer only marked four degrees.
“We shall succeed,” I said to the captain, after having anxiously watched the result of the operation.
“I think,” he answered, “that we shall not be crushed. We have no more suffocation to fear.”
During the night the temperature of the water rose to one degree below zero. The injections could not carry it to a higher point. But as the congelation of the sea-water produces at least two degrees, I was at last reassured against the dangers of solidification.
The next day, March 27, six yards of ice had been cleared, four yards only remaining to be cleared away. There was yet forty-eight hours’ work, The air could not be renewed in the interior of the Nautilus. And this day would make it worse. An intolerable weight oppressed me. Toward three o’clock in the evening, this feeling rose to a violent degree. Yawns dislocated my jaws. My lungs panted as they inhaled this burning fluid, which became rarefied more and more. A moral torpor took hold of me. I was powerless, almost unconscious. My brave Conseil, though exhibiting the same symptoms and suffering in the same manner, never left me. He took my hand and encouraged me, and I heard him murmur, “Oh, if I could only not breathe, so as to leave more air for my master!”
Tears came into my eyes on hearing him speak thus. If our situation to all was intolerable in the interior, with what haste and gladness would we put on our cork-jackets to work in our turn! Pickaxes sounded on the frozen ice-beds. Our arms ached, the skin was torn off our hands. But what were these fatigues, what did the wounds matter? Vital air came to the lungs! We breathed! We breathed!
All this time no one prolonged his voluntary task beyond the prescribed time. His task accomplished, each one handed in turn to his panting companions the apparatus that supplied him with life. Captain Nemo set the example, and submitted first to this severe discipline. When the time came he gave up his apparatus to another, and returned to the vitiated air on board, calm, unflinching, unmurmuring.
On that day the ordinary work was accomplished with unusual vigor. Only two yards remained to be raised from the surface. Two yards only separated us from the open sea. But the reservoirs were nearly emptied of air. The little that remained ought to be kept for the workers; not a particle for the Nautilus. When I went back on board, I was half-suffocated. What a night! I know not how to describe it. The next day my breathing was oppressed. Dizziness accompanied the pain in my head, and made me like a drunken man. My companions showed the same symptoms. Some of the crew had rattling in the throat.
On that day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo, finding the pickaxes work too slowly, resolved to crush the ice-bed that still separated us from the liquid sheet. This man’s coolness and energy never forsook him. He subdued his physical pains by moral force.
By his orders the vessel was lightened, that is to say, raised from the ice-bed by a change of specific gravity. When it floated they towed it so as to bring it above the immense trench made on the level of the water-line. Then filling his reservoirs of water, he descended and shut himself up in the hole.
Just then all the crew came on board, and the double door of communication was shut. The Nautilus then rested on the bed of ice, which was not one yard thick, and which the sounding leads had perforated in a thousand places. The taps of the reservoirs were then opened, and a hundred cubic yards of water was let in, increasing the weight of the Nautilus to 1,800 tons. We waited, we listened, forgetting our sufferings in hope. Our safety depended on this last chance. Notwithstanding the buzzing in my head, I soon heard the humming sound under the hull of the Nautilus. The ice cracked with a singular noise, like tearing paper, and the Nautilus sank.
“We are off!” murmured Conseil in my ear.
I could not answer him. I seized his hand, and pressed it convulsively. All at once, carried away by its frightful overcharge, the Nautilus sank like a bullet under the waters, that is to say, it fell as if it was in a vacuum. Then all the electric force was put on the pumps, that soon began to let the water out of the reservoirs. After some minutes, our fall was stopped. Soon, too, the manometer indicated an ascending movement. The screw, going at full speed, made the iron hull tremble to its very bolts, and drew us toward the north. But if this floating under the iceberg is to last another day before we reach the open sea, I shall be dead first.
Half stretched upon a divan in the library, I was suffocating. My face was purple, my lips blue, my faculties suspended. I neither saw nor heard. All notion of time had gone from my mind. My muscles could not contract. I do not know how many hours passed thus, but I was conscious of the agony that was coming over me. I felt as if I was going to die. Suddenly I came to. Some breaths of air penetrated my lungs. Had we risen to the surface of the waves? Were we free of the iceberg? No; Ned and Conseil, my two brave friends, were sacrificing themselves to save me. Some particles of air still remained at the bottom of one apparatus. Instead of using it, they had kept it for me, and while they were being suffocated, they gave me life drop by drop. I wanted to push back the thing; they held my hands, and for some moments I breathed freely. I looked at the clock; it was eleven in the morning. It ought to be the 28th of March. The Nautilus went at a frightful pace, forty miles an hour. It literally tore through the water. Where was Captain Nemo? Had he succumbed? Were his companions dead with him? At the moment, the manometer indicated that we were not more than twenty feet from the surface. A mere plate of ice separated us from the atmosphere; could we not break it? Perhaps. In any case the Nautilus was going to attempt it. I felt that it was in an oblique position, lowering the stern, and raising the bows. The introduction of water had been the means of disturbing its equilibrium. Then, impelled by its powerful screw, it attacked the ice-field from beneath like a formidable battering-ram. It broke it by backing and then rushing forward against the field, which gradually gave way; and at last, dashing suddenly against it, shot forward on the icy field, that crushed beneath its weight. The panel was opened—one might say torn off—and the pure air came in in abundance to all parts of the Nautilus.
Chapter XVII
From Cape Horn to the Amazon
HOW I GOT ON to the platform, I have no idea; perhaps the Canadian had carried me there. But I breathed, I inhaled the vivifying sea-air. My two companions were getting drunk with the fresh particles. The other unhappy men had been so long without food that they could not with impunity indulge in the simplest aliments that were given them. We, on the contrary, had no need to restrain ourselves; we could draw this air freely into our lungs, and it was the breeze, the breeze alone, that filled us with this keen enjoyment.
“Ah!” said Conseil. “How delightful this oxygen is! Master need not fear to breathe it. There is enough for everybody.”
Ned Land did not speak, but he opened his jaws wide enough to frighten a shark. Our strength soon returned, and when I looked round me, I saw we were alone on the platform. The foreign seamen in the Nautilus were contented with the air that circulated in the interior; none of them had come to drink in the open air.
The first words I spoke were words of gratitude and thankfulness to my two companions. Ned and Conseil had prolonged my life during the last hours of this long agony. All my gratitude could not repay such devotion.
“My friends,” said I, “we are bound one to the other forever, and I am under infinite obligations to you.”
“Which I shall take advantage of,” exclaimed the Canadian.
“What do you mean?” said Conseil.
“I mean that I shall take you with me when I leave this infernal Nautilus.”
“Well,” said Conseil, “after all this, are we going right?”
“Yes,” I replied, “for we are going the way of the sun, and here the sun is in the north.”
“No doubt,” said Ned Land; “but it remains to be seen whether he will bring the ship into the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean, that is, into frequented or deserted seas.”
I could not answer that question, and I feared that Captain Nemo would rather take us to the vast ocean that touches the coasts of Asia and America at the same time. He would thus complete the tour round the submarine world, and return to those waters in which the Nautilus could sail freely. We ought, before long, to settle this important point. The Nautilus went at a rapid pace. The polar circle was soon passed, and the course shaped for Cape Horn. We were off the American point, March 31, at seven o’clock in the evening. Then all our past sufferings were forgotten. The remembrance of that imprisonment in the ice was effaced from our minds. We only thought of the future. Captain Nemo did not appear again either in the drawing-room or on the platform. The point shown each day on the planisphere, and marked by the lieutenant, showed me the exact direction of the Nautilus. Now, on that evening, it was evident, to my great satisfaction, that we were going back to the north by the Atlantic. The next day, April 1, when the Nautilus ascended to the surface, some minutes before noon, we sighted land to the west. It was Terra del Fuego, which the first navigators named thus from seeing the quantity of smoke that rose from the natives’ huts. The coast seemed low to me, but in the distance rose high mountains. I even thought I had a glimpse of Mount Sarmiento, that rises 2,070 yards above the level of the sea, with a very pointed summit, which, according as it is misty or clear, is a sign of fine or of wet weather. At this moment, the peak was clearly defined against the sky. The Nautilus, diving again under the water, approached the coast, which was only some few miles off. From the glass windows in the drawing-room, I saw long seaweeds, and gigantic fuci, and varech, of which the open polar sea contains so many specimens, with their sharp polished filaments; they measured about 300 yards in length—real cables, thicker than one’s thumb; and having great tenacity, they are often used as ropes for vessels. Another weed known as velp, with leaves four feet long, buried in the coral concretions, hung at the bottom. It served as nest and food for myriads of crustacea and mollusks, crabs and cuttlefish. There seals and otters had splendid repasts, eating the flesh of fish with sea-vegetables, according to the English fashion. Over this fertile and luxuriant ground the Nautilus passed with great rapidity. Toward evening it approached the Falkland group, the rough summits of which I recognized the following day. The depth of the sea was moderate. On the shores, our nets brought in beautiful specimens of seaweed, and particularly a certain fucus, the roots of which were filled with the best mussels in the world. Geese and ducks fell by dozens on the platform, and soon took their places in the pantry on board. With regard to fish, I observed especially specimens of the goby species, some two feet long, all over white and yellow spots. I admired also numerous medusæ, and the finest of the sort, the crysaora, peculiar to the sea about the Falkland Isles. I should have liked to preserve some specimens of these delicate zoöphytes; but they are only like clouds, shadows, apparitions, that sink and evaporate, when out of their native element.
When the last heights of the Falklands had disappeared from the horizon, the Nautilus sank to between twenty and twenty-five yards, and followed the American coast. Captain Nemo did not show himself. Until the 3d of April we did not quit the shores of Patagonia, sometimes under the ocean, sometimes at the surface. The Nautilus passed beyond the large estuary formed by the mouth of the Plata, and was, on the 4th of April, fifty-six miles off Uruguay. Its direction was northward, and followed the long windings of the coast of South America. We had then made 16,000 miles since our embarkation in the seas of Japan. About eleven o’clock in the morning the Tropic of Capricorn was crossed on the thirty-seventh meridian, and we passed Cape Frio standing out to sea. Captain Nemo, to Ned Land’s great displeasure, did not like the neighborhood of the inhabited coasts of Brazil, for we went at a giddy speed. Not a fish, not a bird of the swiftest kind could follow us, and the natural curiosities of these seas escaped all observation.
This speed was kept up for several days, and in the evening of the 9th of April we sighted the most easterly point of South America that forms Cape San Roque. But then the Nautilus swerved again, and sought the lowest depth of a submarine valley, which is between this cape and Sierra Leone on the African coast. This valley bifurcates to the parallel of the Antilles, and terminates at the north by the enormous depression of 9,000 yards. In this place, the geological basin of the ocean forms, as far as the Lesser Antilles, a cliff of three and a half miles perpendicular in height, and at the parallel of the Cape Verde Islands, another wall not less considerable, that incloses thus all the sunk continent of the Atlantic. The bottom of this immense valley is dotted with some mountains, that give to these submarine places a picturesque aspect. I speak, moreover, from the manuscript charts that were in the library of the Nautilus-charts evidently due to Captain Nemo’s hand, and made after his personal observations. For two days the desert and deep waters were visited by means of the inclined planes. The Nautilus was furnished with long diagonal broadsides, which carried it to all elevations. But, on the 11th of April, it rose suddenly, and land appeared at the mouth of the Amazon River, a vast estuary, the embouchure of which is so considerable that it freshens the sea-water for the distance of several leagues.
The equator was crossed. Twenty miles to the west were the Guianas, a French territory, on which we could have found an easy refuge; but a stiff breeze was blowing, and the furious waves would not have allowed a single boat to face them. Ned Land understood that, no doubt, for he spoke not a word about it. For my part, I made no allusion to his schemes of flight, for I would not urge him to make an attempt that must inevitably fail. I made the time pass pleasantly by interesting studies. During the days of April 11 th and 12th the Nautilus did not leave the surface of the sea, and the net brought in a marvelous haul of zoöphytes, fish, and reptiles. Some zoöphytes had been fished up by the chain of the nets; they were for the most part beautiful phyctallines, belonging to the actinidian family, and among other species the phyctalis protexta, peculiar to that part of the ocean, with a little cylindrical trunk, ornamented with vertical lines, speckled with red dots, crowning a marvelous blossoming of tentacles. As to the mollusks, they consisted of some I had already observed—turritellas, olive porphyras, with regular lines intercrossed, with red spots standing out plainly against the flesh; odd peteroceras, like petrified scorpions; translucid hyaleas, argonauts, cuttle-fish (excellent eating), and certain species of calmars that naturalists of antiquity have classed among the flying-fish, and that serve principally for bait for cod fishing. I had not an opportunity of studying several species of fish on these shores. Among the cartilaginous ones, petromyzons-pricka, a sort of eel, fifteen inches long, with a greenish head, violet fins, gray-blue back, brown belly, silvered and sown with bright spots, the pupil of the eye encircled with gold—a curious animal that the current of the Amazon had drawn to the sea, for they inhabit fresh waters—tuberculated streaks, with pointed snouts, and a long loose tail, armed with a long jagged sting; little sharks, a yard long, gray and whitish skin, and several rows of teeth, bent back, that are generally known by the name of pantouffles; vespertilios, a kind of red isosceles triangle, half a yard long, to which pectorals are attached by fleshy prolongations that make them look like bats, but that their horny appendage, situated near the nostrils, has given them the name of sea-unicorns; lastly, some species of balistæ, the curassavian, whose spots were of a brilliant gold color, and the capriscus of clear violet, and with varying shades like a pigeon’s throat.
I end here this catalogue, which is somewhat dry, perhaps, but very exact, with a series of bony fish that I observed in passing, belonging to the apteronotes, and whose snout is white as snow, the body of a beautiful black, marked with a very long loose fleshy strip; odontognathes, armed with spikes; sardines, nine inches long, glittering with a bright silver light; a species of mackerel provided with two anal fins; centronotes of a blackish tint, that are fished for with torches, long fish, two yards in length, with fat flesh, white and firm, which, when they are fresh, taste like eel, and when dry, like smoked salmon; labres, half red, covered with scales only at the bottom of the dorsal and anal fins; chrysoptera, on which gold and silver blend their brightness with that of the ruby and topaz; golden-tailed spares, the flesh of which is extremely delicate, and whose phosphorescent properties betray them in the midst of the waters; orange-colored spares with a long tongue; maigres, with gold caudal fins, dark thorn-tails, anableps of Surinam, etc.
Notwithstanding this “et cetera,” I must not omit to mention fish that Conseil will long remember, and with good reason. One of our nets had hauled up a sort of very flat ray-fish, which, with the tail cut off, formed a perfect disk, and weighed twenty ounces. It was white underneath, red above, with large round spots of dark blue encircled with black, very glossy skin, terminating in a bilobed fin. Laid out on the platform, it struggled, tried to turn itself by convulsive movements, and made so many efforts that one last turn had nearly sent it into the sea. But Conseil, not wishing to let the fish go, rushed to it, and, before I could prevent him, had seized it with both hands. In a moment he was overthrown, his legs in the air, and half his body paralyzed, crying:
“Oh, master, master! Come to me!”
It was the first time the poor boy had not spoken to me in the third person. The Canadian and I took him up, and rubbed his contracted arms till he became sensible. The unfortunate Conseil had attacked a crampfish of the most dangerous kind, the cumana. This odd animal, in a medium conductor like water, strikes fish at several yards’ distance, so great is the power of its electric organ, the two principal surfaces of which do not measure less than twenty-seven square feet. The next day, April 12, the Nautilus approached the Dutch coast, near the mouth of the Maroni. There several groups of sea-cows herded together; they were manatees, that, like the dugong and the stellera, belong to the sirenian order. These beautiful animals, peaceable and inoffensive, from eighteen to twenty-one feet in length, weigh at least sixteen hundredweight. I told Ned Land and Conseil that provident nature had assigned an important rôle to these mammalia. Indeed, they, like the seals, are designed to graze on the submarine prairies, and thus destroy the accumulation of weed that obstructs the tropical rivers.
“And do you know,” I added, “what has been the result since men have almost entirely annihilated this useful race? That the putrified weeds have poisoned the air, and the poisoned air causes the yellow fever,cb that desolates these beautiful countries. Enormous vegetations are multiplied under the torrid seas, and the evil is irresistibly developed from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Florida. If we are to believe Toussenel, this plague is nothing to what it would be if the seas were cleared of whales and seals. Then, infested with poulps, medusæ, and cuttle-fish, they would become immense centers of infection, since their waves would not possess ‘these vast stomachs that God had charged to infest the surface of the seas.’ ”
However, without disputing these theories, the crew of the Nautilus took possession of half a dozen manatees. They provisioned the larders with excellent flesh, superior to beef and veal. This sport was not interesting. The manatees allowed themselves to be hit without defending themselves. Several thousand pounds of meat were stored up on board to be dried, On this day, a successful haul of fish increased the stores of the Nautilus, so full of game were these seas. They were echeneides belonging to the third family of the malacopterygiens ; their flattened disks were composed of transverse movable cartilaginous plates, by which the animal was enabled to create a vacuum, and so to adhere to any object like a cupping-glass. The remora that I had observed in the Mediterranean belongs to this species. But the one of which we are speaking was the echeneis osteochera, peculiar to this sea.
The fishing over, the Nautilus neared the coast. About here a number of sea-turtles were sleeping on the surface of the water. It would have been difficult to capture these precious reptiles, for the least noise awakens them, and their solid skull is proof against the harpoon. But the echeneis effects their capture with extraordinary precision and certainty. This animal is, indeed, a living fishhook, which would make the fortune of an inexperienced fisherman. The crew of the Nautilus tied a ring to the tail of these fish, so large as not to encumber their movements, and to this ring a long cord, lashed to the ship’s side by the other end. The echeneids, thrown into the sea, directly began their game, and fixed themselves to the breastplate of the turtles. Their tenacity was such that they were torn rather than let go their hold. The men hauled them on board, and with them the turtles to which they adhered. They took also several cacouannes a yard long, which weighed 400 lbs. Their carapace covered with large horny plates, thin, transparent, brown, with white and yellow spots, fetch a good price in the market. Besides, they were excellent in an edible point of view, as well as the fresh turtles, which have an exquisite flavor. This day’s fishing brought to a close our stay on the shores of the Amazon, and by nightfall the Nautilus had regained the high seas.
Chapter XVIII
The Poulpscc
FOR SEVERAL DAYS THE Nautilus kept off from the American coast. Evidently it did not wish to risk the tides of the Gulf of Mexico, or of the sea of the Antilles. April 16th, we sighted Martinique and Guadaloupe from a distance of about thirty miles. I saw their tall peaks for an instant. The Canadian, who counted on carrying out his projects in the Gulf, by either landing, or hailing one of the numerous boats that coast from one island to another, was quite disheartened. Flight would have been quite practicable, if Ned Land had been able to take possession of the boat without the captain’s knowledge. But in the open sea it could not be thought of. The Canadian, Conseil, and I had a long conversation on this subject. For six months we had been prisoners on board the Nautilus. We had traveled 17,000 leagues; and, as Ned Land said, there was no reason why it should not come to an end. We could hope nothing from the captain of the Nautilus, but only from ourselves. Besides, for some time past he had become graver, more retired, less sociable. He seemed to shun me. I met him rarely. Formerly, he was pleased to explain the submarine marvels to me; now, he left me to my studies, and came no more to the saloon. What change had come over him? For what cause? For my part, I did not wish to bury with me my curious and novel studies. I had now the power to write the true book of the sea; and this book, sooner or later, I wished to see daylight. Then again, in the water by the Antilles, ten yards below the surface of the waters, by the open panels, what interesting products I had to enter on my daily notes! There were, among other zoöphytes, those known under the name of physalis pelagica, a sort of large oblong bladder with mother-of-pearl rays, holding out their membranes to the wind, and letting their blue tentacles float like threads of silk; charming medusæ to the eye, real nettles to the touch, that distill a corrosive fluid. There were also annelides, a yard and a half long, furnished with a pink horn, and with 1,700 locomotive organs that wind through the waters, and throw out in passing all the light of the solar spectrum. There were, in the fish category, some Malabar rays, enormous gristly things, ten feet long, weighing 600 pounds, the pectoral fin triangular in the midst of a slightly humped back, the eyes fixed in the extremities of the face, beyond the head, and which floated like weft, and looked sometimes like an opaque shutter on our glass window. There were American balistæ, which nature has only dressed in black and white; gobies, with yellow fins and prominent jaw; mackerel sixteen feet long, with short pointed teeth, covered with small scales, belonging to the albicore species. Then, in swarms, appeared gray mullet, covered with stripes of gold from the head to the tail, beating their resplendent fins, like masterpieces of jewelry, consecrated formerly to Diana, particularly sought after by rich Romans, and of which the proverb says, “Whoever takes them does not eat them.” Lastly, pomacanthe dorees, ornamented with emerald bands, dressed in velvet and silk, passed before our eyes like Veronese lords; spurred spari passed with their pectoral fins; clupanodons, fifteen inches long, enveloped in their phosphorescent light; mullet beat the sea with their large jagged tails; red vendaces seemed to mow the waves with their showy pectoral fins; and silvery selenes, worthy of their name, rose on the horizon of the waters like so many moons with whitish rays. April 20th, we had risen to a mean height of 1,500 yards. The land nearest us then was the archipelago of the Bahamas. There rose high submarine cliffs covered with large weeds, giant laminariæ and fuci, a perfect espalier of hydrophytes worthy of a Titan world. It was about eleven o’clock when Ned Land drew my attention to a formidable pricking, like the sting of an ant, which was produced by means of large seaweeds.
“Well,” I said, “these are proper caverns for poulps, and I should not be astonished to see some of these monsters.”
“What!” said Conseil. “Cuttle-fish, real cuttle-fish, of the cephalopod class?”
“No,” I said; “poulps of huge dimensions.”
“I will never believe that such animals exist,” said Ned.
“Well,” said Conseil, with the most serious air in the world, “I remember perfectly to have seen a large vessel drawn under the waves by a cephalopod’s arm.”
“You saw that?” said the Canadian.
“Yes, Ned.”
“With your own eyes?”
“With my own eyes.”
“Where, pray, might that be?”
“At St. Malo,” answered Conseil.
“In the port?” said Ned ironically.
“No; in a church,” replied Conseil.
“In a church!” cried the Canadian.
“Yes; friend Ned. In a picture representing the poulp in question.”
“Good!” said Ned Land, bursting out laughing.
“He is quite right,” I said. “I have heard of this picture; but the subject represented is taken from a legend, and you know what to think of legends in the matter of natural history. Besides, when it is a question of monsters, the imagination is apt to run wild. Not only is it supposed that these poulps can draw down vessels, but a certain Olaüs Magnus speaks of a cephalopod a mile long, that is more like an island than an animal. It is also said that the Bishop of Nidros was building an altar on an immense rock. Mass finished, the rock began to walk, and returned to the sea. The rock was a poulp. Another bishop, Pontoppidan, speaks also of a poulp on which a regiment of cavalry could maneuver. Lastly, the ancient naturalists speak of monsters whose mouths were like gulfs, and which were too large to pass through the Straits of Gibraltar.”
“But how much is true of these stories?” asked Conseil.
“Nothing, my friends; at least of that which passes the limit of truth to get to fable or legend. Nevertheless, there must be some ground for the imagination of the story-tellers. One cannot deny that poulps and cuttle-fish exist of a large species, inferior, however, to the cetaceans. Aristotle has stated the dimensions of a cuttle-fish as five cubits, or nine feet two inches. Our fishermen frequently see some that are more than four feet long. Some skeletons of poulps are preserved in the museums of Trieste and Montpellier, that measure two yards in length. Besides, according to the calculations of some naturalists, one of these animals, only six feet long, would have tentacles twenty-seven feet long. That would suffice to make a formidable monster.”
“Do they fish for them in these days?” asked Ned.
“If they do not fish for them, sailors see them at least. One of my friends, Captain Paul Bos of Havre, has often affirmed that he met one of these monsters, of colossal dimensions, in the Indian seas. But the most astonishing fact, and which does not permit of the denial of the existence of these gigantic animals, happened some years ago, in 1861.”
“What is the fact?” asked Ned Land.
“This is it. In 1861, to the northeast of Teneriffe, very nearly in the same latitude we are in now, the crew of the dispatch-boat Alector perceived a monstrous cuttle-fish swimming in the waters. Captain Bouguer went near to the animal, and attacked it with harpoons and guns, without much success, for balls and harpoons glided over the soft flesh. After several fruitless attempts, the crew tried to pass a slip-knot round the body of the mollusk. The noose slipped as far as the caudal fins, and there stopped. They tried then to haul it on board, but its weight was so considerable that the tightness of the cord separated the tail from the body, and, deprived of this ornament, he disappeared under the water.”
“Indeed! Is that a fact?”
“An indisputable fact, my good Ned. They proposed to name this poulp ‘Bouguer’s cuttle-fish.”’
“What length was it?” asked the Canadian.
“Did it not measure about six yards?” said Conseil, who, posted at the window, was examining again the irregular windings of the cliff.
“Precisely,” I replied.
“Its head,” rejoined Conseil, “was it not crowned with eight tentacles, that beat the water like a nest of serpents?”
“Precisely.”
“Had not its eyes, placed at the back of its head, considerable development?”
“Yes, Conseil.”
“And was not its mouth like a parrot’s beak?”
“Exactly, Conseil.”
“Very well! No offense to master,” he replied quietly; “if this is not Bouguer’s cuttle-fish, it is, at least, one of its brothers.”
I looked at Conseil. Ned Land hurried to the window.
“What a horrible beast!” he cried.
I looked in my turn, and could not repress a gesture of disgust. Before my eyes was a horrible monster, worthy to figure in the legends of the marvelous. It was an immense cuttle-fish, being eight yards long. It swam crossways in the direction of the Nautilus with great speed, watching us with its enormous staring green eyes. Its eight arms, or rather feet, fixed to its head, that have given the name of cephalopod to these animals, were twice as long as its body, and were twisted like the Furies’ hair. One could see the 250 air-holes on the inner side of the tentacles. The monster’s mouth, a horned beak like a parrot’s, opened and shut vertically. Its tongue, a horned substance, furnished with several rows of pointed teeth, came out quivering from this veritable pair of shears. What a freak of nature—a bird’s beak on a mollusk! Its spindle-like body formed a fleshy mass that might weigh 4,000 to 5,000 lbs.; the varying color changing with great rapidity, according to the irritation of the animal, passed successively from livid gray to reddish-brown. What irritated this mollusk? No doubt the presence of the Nautilus, more formidable than itself, and on which its suckers or its jaws had no hold. Yet, what monsters these poulps are! What vitality the Creator has given them! What vigor in their movements! And they possess three hearts! Chance had brought us in presence of this cuttle-fish, and I did not wish to lose the opportunity of carefully studying this specimen of cephalopods. I overcame the horror that inspired me; and, taking a pencil, began to draw it.
“Perhaps this is the same which the Alector saw,” said Conseil.
“No,” replied the Canadian; “for this is whole, and the other had lost its tail.”
“That is no reason,” I replied. “The arms and tails of these animals are reformed by redintegration; and, in seven years, the tail of Bouguer’s cuttle-fish has no doubt had time to grow.”
By this time other poulps appeared at the port light. I counted seven. They formed a procession after the Nautilus, and I heard their beaks gnashing against the iron hull. I continued my work. These monsters kept in the water with such precision that they seemed immovable. Suddenly the Nautilus stopped. A shock made it tremble in every plate.
“Have we struck anything?” I asked.
“In any case,” replied the Canadian, “we shall be free, for we are floating.”
The Nautilus was floating, no doubt, but it did not move. A minute passed. Captain Nemo, followed by his lieutenant, entered the drawing-room. I had not seen him for some time. He seemed dull. Without noticing or speaking to us, he went to the panel, looked at the poulps, and said something to his lieutenant. The latter went out. Soon the panels were shut. The ceiling was lighted. I went toward the captain.
“A curious collection of poulps?” I said.
“Yes, indeed, Mr. Naturalist,” he replied; “and we are going to fight them, man to beast.”
I looked at him. I thought I had not heard aright.
“Man to beast?” I repeated.
“Yes, sir. The screw is stopped. I think that the horny jaw of one of the cuttle-fish is entangled in the blades. That is what prevents our moving.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Rise to the surface, and slaughter this vermin.”
“A difficult enterprise.”
“Yes, indeed. The electric bullets are powerless against the soft flesh, where they do not find resistance enough to go off. But we shall attack them with the hatchet.”
“And the harpoon, sir,” said the Canadian, “if you do not refuse my help.”
“I will accept it, Master Land.”
“We will follow you,” I said; and following Captain Nemo, we went toward the central staircase.
There, about ten men with boarding hatchets were ready for the attack. Conseil and I took two hatchets; Ned Land seized a harpoon. The Nautilus had then risen to the surface. One of the sailors, posted on the top ladderstep, unscrewed the bolts of the panels. But hardly were the screws loosed, when the panel rose with great violence, evidently drawn by the suckers of a poulp’s arm. Immediately one of these arms slid like a serpent down the opening, and twenty others were above. With one blow of the axe, Captain Nemo cut this formidable tentacle, that slid wriggling down the ladder. Just as were pressing one on the other to reach the platform, two other arms, lashing the air, came down on the seaman placed before Captain Nemo and lifted him up with irresistible power. Captain Nemo uttered a cry, and rushed out. We hurried after him.
What a scene! The unhappy man, seized by the tentacle, and fixed to the suckers, was balanced in the air at the caprice of this enormous trunk. He rattled in his throat, he was stifled, he cried, “Help! Help!” These words, spoken in French, startled me! I had a fellow-countryman on board, perhaps several! That heartrending cry! I shall hear it all my life. The unfortunate man was lost. Who could rescue him from that powerful pressure? However, Captain Nemo had rushed to the poulp, and with one blow of the axe had cut through one arm. His lieutenant struggled furiously against other monsters that crept on the flanks of the Nautilus. The crew fought with their axes. The Canadian, Conseil, and I buried our weapons in the fleshy masses; a strong smell of musk penetrated the atmosphere. It was horrible!
For one instant, I thought the unhappy man entangled with the poulp would be torn from its powerful suction. Seven of the eight arms had been cut off. One only wriggled in the air, brandishing the victim like a feather. But just as Captain Nemo and his lieutenant threw themselves on it, the animal ejected a stream of black liquid. We were blinded with it. When the cloud dispersed, the cuttle-fish had disappeared, and my unfortunate countryman with it. Ten or twelve poulps now invaded the platform and sides of the Nautilus. We rolled pell-mell into the midst of this nest of serpents, that wriggled on the platform in the waves of blood and ink. It seemed as though these slimy tentacles sprang up like the hydra’s heads. Ned Land’s harpoon, at each stroke, was plunged into the staring eyes of the cuttle-fish. But my bold companion was suddenly overturned by the tentacles of a monster he had not been able to avoid.
Ah! how my heart beat with emotion and horror! The formidable beak of a cuttle-fish was open over Ned Land. The unhappy man would be cut in two. I rushed to his succor. But Captain Nemo was before me; his axe disappeared between the two enormous jaws, and, miraculously saved, the Canadian, rising, plunged his harpoon deep into the triple heart of the poulp.
“I owed myself this revenge!” said the captain to the Canadian.
Ned bowed without replying. The combat had lasted a quarter of an hour. The monsters, vanquished and mutilated, left us at last, and disappeared under the waves. Captain Nemo, covered with blood, nearly exhausted, gazed upon the sea that had swallowed up one of his companions, and great tears gathered in his eyes.
Chapter XIX
The Gulf Stream
THIS TERRIBLE SCENE OF the 20th of April none of us can ever forget. I have written it under the influence of violent emotion. Since then I have revised the recital; I have read it to Conseil and to the Canadian. They found it exact as to facts, but insufficient as to effect. To paint such pictures, one must have the pen of the most illustrious of our poets, the author of “The Toilers of the Deep.”39
I have said that Captain Nemo wept while watching the waves; his grief was great. It was the second companion he had lost since our arrival on board, and what a death! That friend, crushed, stifled, bruised by the dreadful arms of a poulp, pounded by his iron jaws, would not rest with his comrades in the peaceful coral cemetery! In the midst of the struggle, it was the despairing cry uttered by the unfortunate man that had torn my heart. The poor Frenchman, forgetting his conventional language, had taken to his own mother tongue, to utter a last appeal! Among the crew of the Nautilus, associated with the body and soul of the captain, recoiling like him from all contact with men, I had a fellow-countryman. Did he alone represent France in this mysterious association, evidently composed of individuals of divers nationalities? It was one of these insoluble problems that rose up unceasingly before my mind!
Captain Nemo entered his room, and I saw him no more for some time. But that he was sad and irresolute I could see by the vessel, of which he was the soul, and which received all his impressions. The Nautilus did not keep on in its settled course; it floated about like a corpse at the will of the waves. It went at random. He could not tear himself away from the scene of the last struggle, from this sea that had devoured one of his men. Ten days passed thus. It was not till the 1 st of May that the Nautilus resumed its northerly course, after having sighted the Bahamas at the mouth of the Bahama Canal. We were then following the current from the largest river to the sea, that has its banks, its fish, and its proper temperatures. I mean the Gulf Stream. It is really a river, that flows freely to the middle of the Atlantic, and whose waters do not mix with the ocean waters. It is a salt river, saltier than the surrounding sea. Its mean depth is 1,500 fathoms, its mean breadth ten miles. In certain places the current flows with the speed of two miles and a half an hour. The body of its waters is more considerable than that of all the rivers on the globe. It was on this ocean river that the Nautilus then sailed.
This current carried with it all kinds of living things. Argonauts, so common in the Mediterranean, were there in quantities. Of the gristly sort, the most remarkable were the turbot, whose slender tails form nearly the third part of the body, and that looked like large lozenges twenty-five feet long; also, small sharks a yard long, with large heads, short rounded muzzles, pointed teeth in several rows, and whose bodies seemed covered with scales. Among the bony fish I noticed some gray gobies, peculiar to these waters; black giltheads, whose iris shone like fire; sirenes a yard long, with large snouts thickly set with little teeth, that uttered little cries; blue coryphænes, in gold and silver; parrots, like the rainbows of the ocean, that could rival in color the most beautiful tropical birds; blennies with triangular heads; bluish rhombs destitute of scales; batrachoides covered with yellow transversal bands like a Greek τ; heaps of little gobies spotted with yellow; dipterodons with silvery heads and yellow tails; several specimens of salmon, mugilomores slender in shape, shining with a soft light that Lacépède consecrated to the service of his wife; and lastly, a beautiful fish, the American-knight, that, decorated with all the orders and ribbons, frequents the shores of this great nation, that esteems orders and ribbons so little.
I must add that, during the night, the phosphorescent waters of the Gulf Stream rivaled the electric power of our watch-light, especially in the stormy weather that threatened us so frequently. May 8th, we were still crossing Cape Hatteras, at the height of North Carolina. The width of the Gulf Stream there is seventy-five miles, and its depth 210 yards. The Nautilus still went at random; all supervision seemed abandoned. I thought that, under these circumstances, escape would be possible. Indeed, the inhabited shores offered anywhere an easy refuge. The sea was incessantly plowed by the steamers that ply between New York or Boston and the Gulf of Mexico, and overrun day and night by the little schooners coasting about the several parts of the American coast. We could hope to be picked up. It was a favorable opportunity, notwithstanding the thirty miles that separated the Nautilus from the coasts of the Union. One unfortunate circumstance thwarted the Canadian’s plans. The weather was very bad. We were nearing those shores where tempests are so frequent, that country of waterspouts and cyclones actually engendered by the current of the Gulf Stream. To tempt the sea in a frail boat was certain destruction! Ned Land owned this himself. He fretted, seized with nostalgia that flight only could cure.
“Master,” he said that day to me, “this must come to an end. I must make a clean breast of it. This Nemo is leaving land and going up to the north. But I declare to you, I have had enough of the South Pole, and I will not follow him to the north.”
“What is to be done, Ned, since flight is impracticable just now?”
“We must speak to the captain,” said he; “you said nothing when we were in your native seas. I will speak, now we are in mine. When I think that before long the Nautilus will be by Nova Scotia, and that there near Newfoundland is a large bay, and into that bay the St. Lawrence empties itself, and that the St. Lawrence is my river, the river by Quebec, my native town—when I think of this I feel furious, it makes my hair stand on end. Sir, I would rather throw myself into the sea! I will not stay here! I am stifled!”
The Canadian was evidently losing all patience. His vigorous nature could not stand this prolonged imprisonment. His face altered daily; his temper became more surly. I knew what he must suffer, for I was seized with nostalgia myself. Nearly seven months had passed without our having had any news from land; Captain Nemo’s isolation, his altered spirits, especially since the fight with the poulps, his taciturnity, all made me view things in a different light.
“Well, sir?” said Ned, seeing I did not reply.
“Well, Ned! Do you wish me to ask Captain Nemo his intentions concerning us?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Although he has already made them known?”
“Yes; I wish it settled finally. Speak for me, in my name only, if you like.”
“But I so seldom meet him. He avoids me.”
“That is all the more reason for you to go to see him.”
I went to my room. From thence I meant to go to Captain Nemo’s. It would not do to let this opportunity of meeting him slip. I knocked at the door. No answer. I knocked again, then turned the handle. The door opened, I went in. The captain was there. Bending over his work-table, he had not heard me. Resolved not to go without having spoken, I approached him. He raised his head quickly, frowned, and said roughly, “You here! What do you want?”
“To speak to you, captain.”
“But I am busy, sir; I am working. I leave you at liberty to shut yourself up; can not I be allowed the same?”
This reception was not encouraging; but I was determined to hear and answer everything.
“Sir,” I said coldly, “I have to speak to you on a matter that admits of no delay.”
“What is that, sir?” he replied ironically. “Have you discovered something that has escaped me, or has the sea delivered up any new secrets?”
We were at cross-purposes. But before I could reply, he showed me an open manuscript on his table, and said, in a more serious tone, “Here, M. Aronnax, is a manuscript written in several languages. It contains the sum of my studies of the sea; and, if it please God, it shall not perish with me. This manuscript, signed with my name, completed with the history of my life, will be shut up in a little insubmersible case. The last survivor of all of us on board the Nautilus will throw this case into the sea, and it will go whither it is borne by the waves.”
This man’s name! his history written by himself! His mystery would then be revealed some day.
“Captain,” I said, “I can but approve of the idea that makes you act thus. The result of your studies must not be lost. But the means you employ seem to me to be primitive. Who knows where the winds will carry this case, and in whose hands it will fall? Could you not use some other means? Could not you, or one of yours—”
“Never, sir!” he said, hastily interrupting me.
“But I and my companions are ready to keep this manuscript in store; and, if you will put us at liberty—”
“At liberty?” said the captain, rising.
“Yes, sir; that is the subject on which I wish to question you. For seven months we have been here on board, and I ask you to-day, in the name of my companions, and in my own, if your intention is to keep us here always?”
“M. Aronnax, I will answer you to-day as I did seven months ago; whoever enters the Nautilus must never quit it.”
“You impose actual slavery on us!”
“Give it what name you please.”
“But everywhere the slave has the right to regain his liberty.”
“Who denies you this right? Have I ever tried to chain you with an oath?”
He looked at me with his arms crossed.
“Sir,” I said, “to return a second time to this subject will be neither to your nor to my taste; but as we have entered upon it, let us go through with it. I repeat, it is not only myself whom it concerns. Study is to me a relief, a diversion, a passion that could make me forget everything. Like you, I am willing to live obscure in the frail hope of bequeathing one day, to future time, the result of my labors. But it is otherwise with Ned Land. Every man, worthy of the name, deserves some consideration. Have you thought that love of liberty, hatred of slavery, can give rise to schemes of revenge in a nature like the Canadian’s; that he could think, attempt, and try—”
I was silenced; Captain Nemo rose.
“Whatever Ned Land thinks of, attempts, or tries, what does it matter to me? I did not seek him! It is not for my pleasure that I keep him on board! As for you, M. Aronnax, you are one of those who can understand everything, even silence. I have nothing more to say to you. Let this first time you have come to treat of this subject be the last; for a second time I will not listen to you.”
I retired. Our situation was critical. I related my conversation to my two companions.
“We know now,” said Ned, “that we can expect nothing from this man. The Nautilus is nearing Long Island. We will escape, whatever the weather may be.”
But the sky became more and more threatening. Symptoms of a hurricane became manifest. The atmosphere was becoming white and misty. On the horizon fine streaks of cirrhous clouds were succeeded by masses of cumuli. Other low clouds passed swiftly by. The swollen sea rose in huge billows. The birds disappeared, with the exception of the petrels, those friends of the storm. The barometer fell sensibly, and indicated an extreme tension of the vapors. The mixture of the storm-glass was decomposed under the influence of the electricity that pervaded the atmosphere. The tempest burst on the 18th of May, just as the Nautilus was floating off Long Island, some miles from the port of New York. I can describe this strife of the elements! For, instead of fleeing to the depths of the sea, Captain Nemo, by an unaccountable caprice, would brave it at the surface. The wind blew from the southwest at first. Captain Nemo, during the squalls, had taken his place on the platform. He had made himself fast, to prevent being washed overboard by the monstrous waves. I had hoisted myself up, and made myself fast also, dividing my admiration between the tempest and this extraordinary man who was coping with it. The raging sea was swept by huge cloud-drifts, which were actually saturated with the waves. The Nautilus, sometimes lying on its side, sometimes standing up like a mast, rolled and pitched terribly. About five o‘clock a torrent of rain fell, that lulled neither sea nor wind. The hurricane blew nearly forty leagues an hour. It is under these conditions that it overturns houses, breaks iron gates, displaces twenty-four-pounders. However, the Nautilus, in the midst of the tempest, confirmed the words of a clever engineer: “There is no well-constructed hull that cannot defy the sea.” This was not a resisting rock; it was a steel spindle, obedient and movable, without rigging or masts, that braved its fury with impunity. However, I watched these raging waves attentively. They measured fifteen feet in height, and 150 to 175 yards long, and their speed of propagation was thirty feet per second. Their bulk and power increased with the depth of the water. Such waves as these at the Hebrides have displaced a mass weighing 8,400 lbs. They are they which, in the tempest of December 23, 1864, after destroying the town of Yeddo, in Japan, broke the same day on the shores of America. cd The intensity of the tempest increased with the night. The barometer, as in 1860 at Reunion during a cyclone, fell seven-tenths at the close of day. I saw a large vessel pass the horizon struggling painfully. She was trying to lie to under half steam, to keep up above the waves. It was probably one of the steamers of the line from New York to Liverpool or Havre. It soon disappeared in the gloom. At ten o’clock in the evening the sky was on fire. The atmosphere was streaked with vivid lightning. I could not bear the brightness of it; while the captain, looking at it, seemed to envy the spirit of the tempest. A terrible noise filled the air, a complex noise, made up of the howls of the crushed waves, the roaring of the wind, and the claps of thunder. The wind veered suddenly to all points of the horizon; and the cyclone, rising in the east, returned after passing by the north, west, and south, in the inverse course pursued by the circular storms of the southern hemisphere. Ah, that Gulf Stream! It deserves its name of the King of Tempests. It is that which causes those formidable cyclones, by the difference of temperature between its air and its currents. A shower of fire had succeeded the rain. The drops of water were changed to sharp spikes. One would have thought that Captain Nemo was courting a death worthy of himself, a death by lightning. As the Nautilus, pitching dreadfully, raised its steel spur in the air, it seemed to act as a conductor, and I saw long sparks burst from it. Crushed and without strength, I crawled to the panel, opened it, and descended to the saloon. The storm was then at its height. It was impossible to stand upright in the interior of the Nautilus. Captain Nemo came down about twelve. I heard the reservoirs filling by degrees, and the Nautilus sank slowly beneath the waves. Through the open windows in the saloon I saw large fish, terrified, passing like phantoms in the water. Some were struck before my eyes. The Nautilus was still descending. I thought that at about eight fathoms deep we should find a calm. But no! The upper beds were too violently agitated for that. We had to seek repose at more than twenty-five fathoms in the bowels of the deep. But there, what quiet, what silence, what peace! Who could have told that such a hurricane had been let loose on the surface of that ocean?
Chapter XX
From Latitude 47° 24’ to Longitude 17° 28’
IN CONSEQUENCE OF THE storm, we had been thrown eastward once more. All hope of escape on the shores of New York or St. Lawrence had faded away; and poor Ned, in despair, had isolated himself like Captain Nemo. Conseil and I, however, never left each other. I said that the Nautilus had gone aside to the east. I should have said (to be more exact) the northeast. For some days it wandered, first on the surface and then beneath it, amid those fogs so dreaded by sailors. What accidents are due to these thick fogs! What shocks upon these reefs when the wind drowns the breaking of the waves! What collisions between vessels, in spite of their warning lights, whistles, and alarm-bells! And the bottoms of these seas look like a field of battle, where still lie all the conquered of the ocean; some old and already incrusted, others fresh and reflecting from their iron bands and copper plates the brilliancy of our lantern.
On the 15th of May we were at the extreme south of the Bank of Newfoundland. This bank consists of alluvia, or large heaps of organic matter, brought either from the equator by the Gulf Stream, or from the North Pole by the counter-current of cold water which skirts the American coast. There also are heaped up those erratic blocks which are carried along by the broken ice; and close by, a vast charnel-house of mollusks or zoöphytes, which perish here by millions. The depth of the sea is not great at Newfoundland—not more than some hundreds of fathoms; but toward the south is a depression of 1,500 fathoms. There the Gulf Stream widens. It loses some of its speed and some of its temperature, but it becomes a sea.
It was on the 17th of May, about 500 miles from Heart’s Content, at a depth of more than 1,400 fathoms, that I saw the electric cable lying on the bottom. Conseil, to whom I had not mentioned it, thought at first that it was a gigantic sea-serpent. But I undeceived the worthy fellow, and by way of consolation related several particulars in the laying of this cable. The first one was laid in the years 1857 and 1858; but after transmitting about 400 telegrams, would not act any longer. In 1863, the engineers constructed another one, measuring 2,000 miles in length, and weighing 4,500 tons, which was embarked on the Great Eastern.40 This attempt also failed.
On the 25th of May, the Nautilus, being at a depth of more than 1,918 fathoms, was on the precise spot where the rupture occurred which ruined the enterprise. It was within 638 miles of the coast of Ireland; and at half-past two in the afternoon they discovered that communication with Europe had ceased. The electricians on board resolved to cut the cable before fishing it up, and at eleven o’clock at night they had recovered the damaged part. They made another point and spliced it, and it was once more submerged. But some days after it broke again, and in the depths of the ocean could not be recaptured. The Americans, however, were not discouraged. Cyrus Field, the bold promoter of the enterprise, as he had sunk all his own fortune, set a new subscription on foot, which was at once answered, and another cable was constructed on better principles. The bundles of conducting wires were each enveloped in gutta-percha, and protected by a wadding of hemp, contained in a metallic covering. The Great Eastern sailed on the 13th of July, 1866. The operation worked well. But one incident occurred. Several times in unrolling the cable they observed that nails had been recently forced into it, evidently with the motive of destroying it. Captain Anderson, the officers and engineers, consulted together, and had it posted up that if the offender was surprised on board, he would be thrown without further trial into the sea. From that time the criminal attempt was never repeated.
On the 23d of July the Great Eastern was not more than 500 miles from Newfoundland, when they telegraphed from Ireland news of the armistice concluded between Prussia and Austria after Sadowa. On the 27th, in the midst of heavy fogs, they reached the port of Heart’s Content. The enterprise was successfully terminated; and for its first dispatch young America addressed old Europe in these words of wisdom so rarely understood: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.”
I did not expect to find the electric cable in its primitive state, such as it was on leaving the manufactory. The long serpent, covered with the remains of shells, bristling with foraminiferæ, was incrusted with a strong coating which served as a protection against all boring mollusks. It lay quietly sheltered from the motions of the sea, and under a favorable pressure for the transmission of the electric spark which passes from Europe to America in 0.32 of a second. Doubtless this cable will last for a great length of time, for they find that the gutta-percha covering is improved by the sea-water. Besides, on this level, so well chosen, the cable is never so deeply submerged as to cause it to break. The Nautilus followed it to the lowest depth, which was more than 2,212 fathoms, and there it lay without any anchorage and then we reached the spot where the accident had taken place in 1863. The bottom of the ocean then formed a valley about 100 miles broad, in which Mont Blanc might have been placed without its summit appearing above the waves. This valley is closed at the east by a perpendicular wall more than 2,000 yards high. We arrived there on the 28th of May, and the Nautilus was then not more than 120 miles from Ireland.
Was Captain Nemo going to land on the British Isles? No. To my great surprise he made for the south, once more coming back toward European seas. In rounding the Emerald Isle, for one instant I caught sight of Cape Clear, and the light which guides the thousands of vessels leaving Glasgow or Liverpool. An important question then arose in my mind. Did the Nautilus dare entangle itself in the Mauch?ce Ned Land, who had reappeared since we had been nearing land, did not cease to question me. How could I answer? Captain Nemo remained invisible. After having shown the Canadian a glimpse of American shores, was he going to show me the coast of France?
But the Nautilus was still going southward. On the 30th of May, it passed in sight of Land’s End, between the extreme point of England and the Scilly Isles, which were left to starboard. If he wished to enter the Mauch he must go straight to the east. He did not do so.
During the whole of the 31st of May, the Nautilus described a series of circles on the water, which greatly interested me. It seemed to be seeking a spot it had some trouble in finding. At noon, Captain Nemo himself came to work the ship’s log. He spoke no word to me, but seemed gloomier than ever. What could sadden him thus? Was it his proximity to European shores? Had he some recollections of his abandoned country? If not, what did he feel? Remorse or regret? For a long while this thought haunted my mind, and I had a kind of presentiment that before long chance would betray the captain’s secrets.
The next day, the 1st of June, the Nautilus continued the same process. It was evidently seeking some particular spot in the ocean. Captain Nemo took the sun’s altitude as he had done the day before. The sea was beautiful, the sky clear. About eight miles to the east, a large steamvessel could be discerned on the horizon. No flag fluttered from its mast, and I could not discover its nationality. Some minutes before the sun passed the meridian, Captain Nemo took his sextant, and watched with great attention. The perfect rest of the water greatly helped the operation. The Nautilus was motionless; it neither rolled nor pitched.
I was on the platform when the altitude was taken, and the captain pronounced these words—“It is here.”
He turned and went below. Had he seen the vessel which was changing its course and seemed to be nearing us? I could not tell. I returned to the saloon. The panels closed, I heard the hissing of the water in the reservoirs. The Nautilus began to sink, following a vertical line, for its screw communicated no motion to it. Some minutes later it stopped at a depth of more than 420 fathoms, resting on the ground. The luminous ceiling was darkened, then the panels were opened, and through the glass I saw the sea brilliantly illuminated by the rays of our lantern for at least half a mile round us.
I looked to the port side, and saw nothing but an immensity of quiet waters. But to starboard, on the bottom appeared a large protuberance, which at once attracted my attention. One would have thought it a ruin buried under a coating of white shells, much resembling a covering of snow. Upon examining the mass attentively, I could recognize the ever-thickening form of a vessel bare of its masts, which must have sunk. It certainly belonged to past times. This wreck, to be thus incrusted with the lime of the water, must already be able to count many years passed at the bottom of the ocean.
What was this vessel? Why did the Nautilus visit its tomb? Could it have been aught but a shipwreck which had drawn it under the water? I knew not what to think, when near me in a slow voice I heard Captain Nemo say:
“At one time this ship was called the Marseillais. It carried seventy-four guns, and was launched in 1762. In 1778, the 13th of August, commanded by La Poype-Vertrieux, it fought boldly against the Preston. In 1779, on the 4th of July, it was at the taking of Grenada, with the squadron of Admiral Estaing. In 1781, on the 5th of September, it took part in the battle of Comte de Grasse, in Chesapeake Bay. In 1794, the French Republic changed its name. On the 16th of April, in the same year, it joined the squadron of Villaret Joyeuse, at Brest, being intrusted with the escort of a cargo of corn coming from America, under the command of Admiral Van Stabel. On the 11th and 12th Prairal of the second year,41 this squadron fell in with an English vessel. Sir, to-day is the 13th Prairal, the 1st of June, 1868. It is now seventy-four years ago, day for day, on this very spot, in latitude 47° 24’, longitude 17° 28’, that this vessel, after fighting heroically, losing its three masts, with the water in its hold, and the third of its crew disabled, preferred sinking with its 356 sailors to surrendering; and nailing its colors to the poop, disappeared under the waves to the cry of ‘Long live the Republic!’ ”
“The Avenger!”cf I exclaimed.
“Yes, sir, the Avenger! A good name!” muttered Captain Nemo, crossing his arms.
Chapter XXI
A Hecatombcg
THE WAY OF DESCRIBING this unlooked-for scene, the history of the patriot ship, told at first so coldly, and the emotion with which this strange man pronounced the last words, the name of the Avenger, the significance of which could not escape me, all impressed itself deeply on my mind. My eyes did not leave the captain, who, with his hand stretched out to sea, was watching with a glowing eye the glorious wreck. Perhaps I was never to know who he was, from whence he came, or where he was going to, but I saw the man move, and apart from the savant. It was no common misanthropy which had shut Captain Nemo and his companions within the Nautilus, but a hatred, either monstrous or sublime, which time could never weaken. Did this hatred still seek for vengeance? The future would soon teach me that. But the Nautilus was rising slowly to the surface of the sea, and the form of the Avenger disappeared by degrees from my sight. Soon a slight rolling told me that we were in the open air. At that moment a dull boom was heard. I looked at the captain. He did not move.
“Captain!” said I.
He did not answer. I left him and mounted the platform. Conseil and the Canadian were already there.
“Where did that sound come from?” I asked.
“It was a gunshot,” replied Ned Land.
I looked in the direction of the vessel I had already seen. It was nearing the Nautilus, and we could see that it was putting on steam. It was within six miles of us.
“What is that ship, Ned?”
“By its rigging, and the height of its lower masts,” said the Canadian, “I bet she is a ship of war. May it reach us; and, if necessary, sink this cursed Nautilus.”
“Friend Ned,” replied Conseil, “what harm can it do to the Nautilus? Can it attack it beneath the waves? Can it cannonade us at the bottom of the sea?”
“Tell me, Ned,” said I, “can you recognize what country she belongs to?”
The Canadian knitted his eyebrows, dropped his eyelids, and screwed up the corners of his eyes, and for a few moments fixed a piercing look upon the vessel.
“No, sir,” he replied; “I cannot tell what nation she belongs to, for she shows no colors. But I can declare she is a man-of-war, for a long pennant flutters from her mainmast.”
For a quarter of an hour we watched the ship which was steaming toward us. I could not, however, believe that she could see the Nautilus from that distance, and still less that she could know what this submarine engine was. Soon the Canadian informed me that she was a large armored two-decker ram. A thick black smoke was pouring from her two funnels. Her closely furled sails were stopped to her yards. She hoisted no flag at her mizzen-peak. The distance prevented us from distinguishing the colors of her pennant, which floated like a thin ribbon. She advanced rapidly. If Captain Nemo allowed her to approach, there was a chance of salvation for us.
“Sir,” said Ned Land, “if that vessel passes within a mile of us, I shall throw myself into the sea, and I should advise you to do the same.”
I did not reply to the Canadian’s suggestion, but continued watching the ship. Whether English, French, American, or Russian, she would be sure to take us in if we could only reach her. Presently a white smoke burst from the forepart of the vessel; some seconds after the water, agitated by the fall of a heavy body, splashed the stern of the Nautilus, and shortly afterward a loud explosion struck my ear.
“What! They are firing at us!” I exclaimed.
“So please you, sir,” said Ned, “they have recognized the unicorn,ch and they are firing at us.”
“But,” I exclaimed, “surely they can see that there are men in the case?”
“It is, perhaps, because of that,” replied Ned Land, looking at me.
A whole flood of light burst upon my mind. Doubtless they knew now how to believe the stories of the pretended monster. No doubt, on board the Abraham Lincoln, when the Canadian struck it with the harpoon, Commander Farragut had recognized in the supposed narwhal a submarine vessel, more dangerous than a supernatural cetacean. Yes, it must have been so; and on every sea they were now seeking this engine of destruction. Terrible indeed if, as we supposed, Captain Nemo employed the Nautilus in works of vengeance! On the night when we were imprisoned in that cell, in the midst of the Indian Ocean, had he not attacked some vessel? The man buried in the coral cemetery, had he not been a victim to the shock caused by the Nautilus? Yes, I repeat it, it must be so. One part of the mysterious existence of Captain Nemo had been unveiled; and, if his identity had not been recognized, at least, the nations united against him were no longer hunting a chimerical creature, but a man who had vowed a deadly hatred against them. All the formidable past rose before me. Instead of meeting friends on board the approaching ship, we could only expect pitiless enemies. But the shot rattled about us. Some of them struck the sea and ricochetted, losing themselves in the distance. But none touched the Nautilus. The vessel was not more than three miles from us. In spite of the serious cannonade, Captain Nemo did not appear on the platform; but, if one of the conical projectiles had struck the shell of the Nautilus, it would have been fatal. The Canadian then said, “Sir, we must do all we can to get out of this dilemma. Let us signal them. They will then, perhaps, understand that we are honest folks.”
Ned Land took his handkerchief to wave in the air; but he had scarcely displayed it, when he was struck down by an iron hand, and fell, in spite of his great strength, upon the deck.
“Fool!” exclaimed the captain. “Do you wish to be pierced by the spur of the Nautilus before it is hurled at this vessel?”
Captain Nemo was terrible to hear; he was still more terrible to see. His face was deadly pale, with a spasm at his heart. For an instant it must have ceased to beat. His pupils were fearfully contracted. He did not speak, he roared, as, with his body thrown forward, he wrung the Canadian’s shoulders. Then, leaving him, and turning to the ship of war, whose shot was still raining around him, he exclaimed, with a powerful voice, “Ah, ship of an accursed nation, you know who I am! I do not want your colors to know you by. Look and I will show you mine!”
And on the forepart of the platform Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag, similar to the one he had placed at the South Pole. At that moment a shot struck the shell of the Nautilus obliquely, without piercing it; and, rebounding near the captain, was lost in the sea. He shrugged his shoulders; and addressing me, said shortly, “Go down, you and your companions, go down!”
“Sir,” I exclaimed, “are you going to attack this vessel?”
“Sir, I am going to sink it.”
“You will not do that?”
“I shall do it,” he replied coldly. “And I advise you not to judge me, sir. Fate has shown you what you ought not to have seen. The attack has begun; go down.”
“What is this vessel?”
“You do not know? Very well! So much the better! Its nationality to you, at least, will be a secret. Go down!”
We could but obey. About fifteen of the sailors surrounded the captain, looking with implacable hatred at the vessel nearing them. One could feel that the same desire of vengeance animated every soul. I went down at the moment another projectile struck the Nautilus, and I heard the captain exclaim:
“Strike, mad vessel! Shower your useless shot! And then, you will not escape the spur of the Nautilus. But it is not here that you shall perish! I would not have your ruins mingle with those of the Avenger!”
I reached my room. The captain and his second had remained on the platform. The screw was set in motion, and the Nautilus, moving with speed, was soon beyond the reach of the ship’s guns. But the pursuit continued, and Captain Nemo contented himself with keeping his distance.
About four in the afternoon, being no longer able to contain my impatience, I went to the central staircase. The panel was open, and I ventured on to the platform. The captain was still walking up and down with an agitated step. He was looking at the ship, which was five or six miles to leeward.
He was going round it like a wild beast, and drawing it eastward, he allowed them to pursue. But he did not attack. Perhaps he still hesitated? I wished to mediate once more. But I had scarcely spoken, when Captain Nemo imposed silence, saying:
“I am the law, and I am the judge! I am the oppressed, and there is the oppressor! Through him I have lost all that I loved, cherished, and venerated—country, wife, children, father, and mother. I saw all perish! All that I hate is there! Say no more!”
I cast a last look at the man-of-war, which was putting on steam, and rejoined Ned and Conseil.
“We will fly!” I exclaimed.
“Good!” said Ned. “What is this vessel?”
“I do not know; but whatever it is, it will be sunk before night. In any case, it is better to perish with it, than be made accomplices in a retaliation, the justice of which we cannot judge.”
“That is my opinion too,” said Ned Land coolly. “Let us wait for night.”
Night arrived. Deep silence reigned on board. The compass showed that the Nautilus had not altered its course. It was on the surface, rolling slightly. My companions and I resolved to fly when the vessel should be near enough either to hear us or to see us; for the moon, which would be full in two or three days, shone brightly. Once on board the ship, if we could not prevent the blow which threatened it, we could, at least we would, do all that circumstances would allow. Several times I thought the Nautilus was preparing for attack; but Captain Nemo contented himself with allowing his adversary to approach, and then fled once more before it.
Part of the night passed without any incident. We watched the opportunity for action. We spoke little, for we were too much moved. Ned Land would have thrown himself into the sea, but I forced him to wait. According to my idea, the Nautilus would attack the ship at her water-line, and then it would not only be possible, but easy to fly.
At three in the morning, full of uneasiness, I mounted the platform. Captain Nemo had not left it. He was standing at the forepart near his flag, which a slight breeze displayed above his head. He did not take his eyes from the vessel. The intensity of his look seemed to attract, and fascinate, and draw it onward more surely than if he had been towing it. The moon was then passing the meridian. Jupiter was rising in the east. Amid this peaceful scene of nature, sky and ocean rivaled each other in tranquillity, the sea offering to the orbs of night the finest mirror they could ever have in which to reflect their image. As I thought of the deep calm of these elements, compared with all those passions brooding imperceptibly within the Nautilus, I shuddered.
The vessel was within two miles of us. It was ever nearing that phosphorescent light which showed the presence of the Nautilus. I could see its green and red lights, and its white lantern hanging from the large mizzenmast. An indistinct vibration quivered through its rigging, showing that the furnaces were heated to the uttermost. Sheaves of sparks and red ashes flew from the funnels, shining in the atmosphere like stars.
I remained thus until six in the morning, without Captain Nemo noticing me. The ship stood about a mile and a half from us, and with the first dawn of day the firing began afresh. The moment could not be far off when, the Nautilus attacking its adversary, my companions and myself should forever leave this man. I was preparing to go down to remind them when the second mounted the platform, accompanied by several sailors. Captain Nemo either did not or would not see them. Some steps were taken which might be called the signal for action. They were very simple. The iron balustrade around the platform was lowered, and the lantern and pilot cages were pushed within the shell until they were flush with the deck. The long surface of the steel cigar no longer offered a single point to check its maneuvers. I returned to the saloon. The Nautilus still floated; some streaks of light were filtering through the liquid beds. With the undulations of the waves the windows were brightened by the red streaks of the rising sun, and this dreadful day of the 2d of June had dawned.
At five o’clock, the log showed that the speed of the Nautilus was slackening, and I knew that it was allowing them to draw nearer. Besides, the reports were heard more distinctly, and the projectiles, laboring through the ambient water, were extinguished with a strange hissing noise.
“My friends,” said I, “the moment is come. One grasp of the hand, and may God protect us!”
Ned Land was resolute, Conseil calm, myself so nervous that I knew not how to contain myself. We all passed into the library; but the moment I pushed the door opening on the central staircase, I heard the upper panel close sharply. The Canadian rushed on to the stairs, but I stopped him. A well-known hissing noise told me that the water was running into the reservoirs, and in a few minutes the Nautilus was some yards beneath the surface of the waves. I understood the maneuver. It was too late to act. The Nautilus did not wish to strike at the impenetrable cuirass, but below the water-line, where the metallic covering no longer protected it.
We were again imprisoned, unwilling witnesses of the dreadful drama that was preparing. We had scarcely time to reflect; taking refuge in my room, we looked at each other without speaking. A deep stupor had taken hold of my mind; thought seemed to stand still. I was in that painful state of expectation preceding a dreadful report. I waited, I listened; every sense was merged in that of hearing! The speed of the Nautilus was accelerated. It was preparing to rush. The whole ship trembled. Suddenly I screamed. I felt the shock, but comparatively light. I felt the penetrating power of the steel spur. I heard rattlings and scrapings. But the Nautilus, carried along by its propelling power, passed through the mass of the vessel, like a needle through sail-cloth!
I could stand it no longer. Mad, out of my mind, I rushed from my room into the saloon. Captain Nemo was there, mute, gloomy, implacable; he was looking through the port panel. A large mass cast a shadow on the water; and that it might lose nothing of her agony, the Nautilus was going down into the abyss with her. Ten yards from me I saw the open shell through which the water was rushing with the noise of thunder, then the double line of guns and the netting. The bridge was covered with black agitated shadows.
The water was rising. The poor creatures were crowding the ratlings, clinging to the masts, struggling underwater. It was a human ant-heap overtaken by the sea. Paralyzed, stiffened with anguish, my hair standing on end, with eyes wide open, panting, without breath and without voice, I too was watching! An irresistible attraction glued me to the glass! Suddenly an explosion took place. The compressed air blew up her decks, as if the magazines had caught fire. Then the unfortunate vessel sank more rapidly. Her topmast, laden with victims, now appeared; then her spars, bending under the weight of men; and last of all, the top of her mainmast. Then the dark mass disappeared, and with it the dead crew, drawn down by the strong eddy.
I turned to Captain Nemo. That terrible avenger, a perfect archangel of hatred, was still looking. When all was over, he turned to his room, opened the door, and entered. I followed him with my eyes. On the end wall beneath his heroes, I saw the portrait of a woman still young, and two little children. Captain Nemo looked at them for some moments, stretched his arms toward them, and kneeling down burst into deep sobs.
Chapter XXII
The Last Words of Captain Nemo
THE PANELS HAD CLOSED on this dreadful vision, but light had not returned to the saloon: all was silence and darkness within the Nautilus. At wonderful speed, a hundred feet beneath the water, it was leaving this desolate spot. Whither was it going? To the north or south? Where was the man flying to after such dreadful retaliation? I had returned to my room, where Ned and Conseil had remained silent enough. I felt an insurmountable horror for Captain Nemo. Whatever he had suffered at the hands of these men, he had no right to punish thus. He had made me, if not an accomplice, at least a witness of his vengeance. At eleven the electric light reappeared. I passed into the saloon. It was deserted. I consulted the different instruments. The Nautilus was flying northward at the rate of twenty-five miles an hour, now on the surface, and now thirty feet below it. On taking the bearings by the chart, I saw that we were passing the mouth of the Manche, and that our course was hurrying us toward the northern seas at a frightful speed. That night we had crossed two hundred leagues of the Atlantic. The shadows fell, and the sea was covered with darkness until the rising of the moon. I went to my room, but could not sleep. I was troubled with a dreadful nightmare. The horrible scene of destruction was continually before my eyes. From that day, who could tell into what part of the North Atlantic basin the Nautilus would take us? Still with unaccountable speed, still in the midst of these northern fogs, would it touch at Spitzbergen, or on the shores of Nova Zembla? Should we explore those unknown seas, the White Sea, the Sea of Kara, the Gulf of Obi, the Archipelago of Liarrov, and the unknown coast of Asia? I could not say. I could no longer judge of the time that was passing. The clocks had been stopped on board. It seemed, as in polar countries, that night and day no longer followed their regular course. I felt myself being drawn into that strange region where the foundered imagination of Edgar Poe roamed at will. Like the fabulous Gordon Pym, at every moment I expected to see “that veiled human figure, of larger proportions than those of any inhabitant of the earth, thrown across the cataract which defends the approach to the pole.”42 I estimated (though perhaps I may be mistaken)—I estimated this adventurous course of the Nautilus to have lasted fifteen or twenty days. And I know not how much longer it might have lasted, had it not been for the catastrophe which ended this voyage. Of Captain Nemo I saw nothing whatever now, nor of his second. Not a man of the crew was visible for an instant. The Nautilus was almost incessantly underwater. When we came to the surface to renew the air, the panels opened and shut mechanically. There were no more marks on the planisphere. I knew not where we were. And the Canadian, too, his strength and patience at an end, appeared no more. Conseil could not draw a word from him, and fearing that, in a dreadful fit of madness, he might kill himself, watched him with constant devotion. One morning (what date it was I could not say), I had fallen into a heavy sleep toward the early hours, a sleep both painful and unhealthy, when I suddenly awoke. Ned Land was leaning over me, saying in a low voice, “We are going to fly.”
I sat up.
“When shall we go?” I asked.
“To-night. All inspection on board the Nautilus seems to have ceased. All appear to be stupefied. You will be ready, sir?”
“Yes; where are we?”
“In sight of land. I took the reckoning this morning in the fog—twenty miles to the east.”
“What country is it?”
“I do not know, but whatever it is we will take refuge there.”
“Yes, Ned, yes. We will fly to-night, even if the sea should swallow us up.”
“The sea is bad, the wind violent, but twenty miles in that light boat of the Nautilus does not frighten me. Unknown to the crew I have been able to procure food and some bottles of water.”
“I will follow you.”
“But,” continued the Canadian, “if I am surprised I will defend myself; I will force them to kill me.”
“We will die together, friend Ned.”
I had made up my mind to all. The Canadian left me. I reached the platform, on which I could with difficulty support myself against the shock of the waves. The sky was threatening, but as land was in those thick brown shadows we must fly. I returned to the saloon, fearing and yet hoping to see Captain Nemo, wishing and yet not wishing to see him. What could I have said to him? Could I hide the involuntary horror with which he inspired me? No. It was better that I should not meet him face to face; better to forget him. And yet—How long seemed that day, the last that I should pass in the Nautilus. I remained alone. Ned Land and Conseil avoided speaking, for fear of betraying themselves. At six I dined, but I was not hungry; I forced myself to eat in spite of my disgust, that I might not weaken myself. At half-past six Ned Land came to my room saying, “We shall not see each other again before our departure. At ten the moon will not be risen. We will profit by the darkness. Come to the boat; Conseil and I will wait for you.”
The Canadian went out without giving me time to answer. Wishing to verify the course of the Nautilus, I went to the saloon. We were running N.N.E. at frightful speed and more than fifty yards deep. I cast a last look on these wonders of nature, on the riches of art heaped up in this museum, upon the unrivaled collection destined to perish at the bottom of the sea with him who had formed it. I wished to fix an indelible impression of it in my mind. I remained an hour thus, bathed in the light of that luminous ceiling, and passing in review those treasures shining under their glasses. Then I returned to my room.
I dressed myself in strong sea clothing. I collected my notes, placing them carefully about me. My heart beat loudly. I could not check its pulsations. Certainly my trouble and agitation would have betrayed me to Captain Nemo’s eyes. What was he doing at this moment? I listened at the door of his room. I heard steps. Captain Nemo was there. He had not gone to rest. At every moment I expected to see him appear and ask me why I wished to fly. I was constantly on the alert. My imagination magnified everything. The impression became at last so poignant that I asked myself if it would not be better to go to the captain’s room, see him face to face, and brave him with look and gesture.
It was the inspiration of a madman; fortunately I resisted the desire, and stretched myself on my bed to quiet my bodily agitation. My nerves were somewhat calmer, but in my excited brain I saw over again all my existence on board the Nautilus; every incident, either happy or unfortunate, which had happened since my disappearance from the Abraham Lincoln—the submarine hunt, the Torres Straits, the savages of Papua, the running ashore, the coral cemetery, the passage of Suez, the island of Santorin, the Cretan diver, Vigo Bay, Atlantis, the iceberg, the South Pole, the imprisonment in the ice, the fight among the poulps, the storm in the Gulf Stream, the Avenger, and the horrible scene of the vessel sunk with all her crew. All these events passed before my eyes like scenes in a drama. Then Captain Nemo seemed to grow enormously, his features to assume superhuman proportions. He was no longer my equal, but a man of the waters, the genie of the sea.
It was then half-past nine. I held my head between my hands to keep it from bursting. I closed my eyes, I would not think any longer. There was another half-hour to wait, another half-hour of a nightmare, which might drive me mad.
At that moment I heard the distant strains of the organ, a sad harmony to an undefinable chant, the wail of a soul longing to break these earthly bonds. I listened with every sense, scarcely breathing; plunged, like Captain Nemo, in that musical ecstasy, which was drawing him in spirit to the end of life.
Then a sudden thought terrified me. Captain Nemo had left his room. He was in the saloon, which I must cross to fly. There I should meet him for the last time. He would see me, perhaps speak to me. A gesture of his might destroy me, a single word chain me on board.
But ten was about to strike. The moment had come for me to leave my room and join my companions.
I must not hesitate, even if Captain Nemo himself should rise before me. I opened my door carefully; and even then, as it turned on its hinges, it seemed to me to make a dreadful noise. Perhaps it only existed in my own imagination.
I crept along the dark stairs of the Nautilus, stopping at each step to check the beating of my heart. I reached the door of the saloon, and opened it gently. It was plunged in profound darkness. The strains of the organ sounded faintly. Captain Nemo was there. He did not see me. In the full light I do not think he would have noticed me, so entirely was he absorbed in the ecstasy.
I crept along the carpet, avoiding the slightest sound which might betray my presence. I was at least five minutes reaching the door, at the opposite side, opening into the library.
I was going to open it, when a sigh from Captain Nemo nailed me to the spot. I knew that he was rising. I could even see him, for the light from the library came through to the saloon. He came toward me silently, with his arms crossed, gliding like a specter rather than walking. His breast was swelling with sobs; and I heard him murmur these words (the last which ever struck my ear):
“Almighty God! Enough! Enough!”
Was it a confession of remorse which thus escaped from this man’s conscience?
In desperation I rushed through the library, mounted the central staircase, and following the upper flight reached the boat. I crept through the opening, which had already admitted my two companions.
“Let us go! Let us go!” I exclaimed.
“Directly!” replied the Canadian.
The orifice in the plates of the Nautilus was first closed, and fastened down by means of a false key, with which Ned Land had provided himself; the opening in the boat was also closed. The Canadian began to loosen the bolts which still held us to the submarine boat.
Suddenly a noise within was heard. Voices were answering each other loudly. What was the matter? Had they discovered our flight? I felt Ned Land slipping a dagger into my hand.
“Yes,” I murmured, “we know how to die!”
The Canadian had stopped in his work. But one word many times repeated, a dreadful word, revealed the cause of the agitation spreading on board the Nautilus. It was not we the crew were looking after!
“The Maëlstrom! The Maëlstrom!” I exclaimed.
The Maëlstrom! Could a more dreadful word in a more dreadful situation have sounded in our ears! We were then upon the dangerous coast of Norway. Was the Nautilus being drawn into this gulf at the moment our boat was going to leave its sides? We knew that at the tide the pent-up waters between the islands of Ferroe and Lofoten rush with irresistible violence, forming a whirlpool from which no vessel ever escapes. From every point of the horizon enormous waves were meeting, forming a gulf justly called the “Navel of the Ocean,” whose power of attraction extends to a distance of twelve miles. There, not only vessels, but whales, are sacrificed, as well as white bears from the northern regions.
It is thither that the Nautilus, voluntarily or involuntarily, had been run by the captain.
It was describing a spiral, the circumference of which was lessening by degrees, and the boat, which was still fastened to its side, was carried along with giddy speed. I felt that sickly giddiness which arises from long-continued whirling round.
We were in dread. Our horror was at its height, circulation had stopped, all nervous influence was annihilated, and we were covered with cold sweat, like a sweat of agony! And what noise around our frail bark! What roarings repeated by the echo miles away! What an uproar was that of the waters broken on the sharp rocks at the bottom, where the hardest bodies are crushed, and trees worn away, “with all the fur rubbed off,” according to the Norwegian phrase!
What a situation to be in! We rocked frightfully. The Nautilus defended itself like a human being. Its steel muscles cracked. Sometimes it seemed to stand upright, and we with it!
“We must hold on,” said Ned, “and look after the bolts. We may still be saved if we stick to the Nautilus——”
He had not finished the words when we heard a crashing noise, the bolts gave way, and the boat, torn from its groove, was hurled like a stone from a sling into the midst of the whirlpool.
My head struck on a piece of iron, and with the violent shock I lost all consciousness.
Chapter XXIII
Conclusion
THUS ENDS THE VOYAGE under the seas. What passed during that night—how the boat escaped from the eddies of the Maelstrom, how Ned Land, Conseil, and myself ever came out of the gulf—I cannot tell. But when I returned to consciousness, I was lying in a fisherman’s hut, on the Lofoten Isles. My two companions, safe and sound, were near me holding my hands. We embraced each other heartily.
At that moment we could not think of returning to France. The means of communication between the north of Norway and the south are rare, and I am therefore obliged to wait for the steamboat running monthly from Cape North.
And among the worthy people who have so kindly received us I revise my record of these adventures once more. Not a fact has been omitted, not a detail exaggerated. It is a faithful narrative of this incredible expedition in an element inaccessible to man, but to which Progress will one day open a road.
Shall I be believed? I do not know. And it matters little, after all. What I now affirm is, that I have a right to speak of these seas, under which, in less than ten months, I have crossed 20,000 leagues in that submarine tour of the world which has revealed so many wonders.
But what has become of the Nautilus? Did it resist the pressure of the Maelstrom? Does Captain Nemo still live?ci And does he still follow under the ocean those frightful retaliations? Or did he stop after that last hecatomb?
Will the waves one day carry to him this manuscript containing the history of his life? Shall I ever know the name of this man? Will the missing vessel tell us by its nationality that of Captain Nemo?
I hope so. And I also hope that his powerful vessel has conquered the sea at its most terrible gulf, and that the Nautilus has survived where so many other vessels have been lost! If it be so, if Captain Nero still inhabits the ocean, his adopted country, may hatred be appeased in that savage heart! May the contemplation of so many wonders extinguish forever the spirit of vengeance! May the judge disappear, and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea! If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime. Have I not understood it myself? Have I not lived ten months of this unnatural life? And to the question asked by Ecclesiastescj 3,000 years ago, “That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?” two men alone of all now living have the right to give an answer:CAPTAIN NEMO AND MYSELF.
Endnotes
1 (p. 5) “an enormous thing,” ... infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale: Verne did not fabricate this idea. Sea monsters large enough to be mistaken for an island had been reported as early as the mid-eighteenth century. In A Natural History of Norway (1752), Danish theologian Erik Pontoppidan claimed the existence of an animal as large as a floating island with tentacles strong enough to pull a ship to the bottom of the sea; he called the kraken “the largest and most surprising of all the animal creation.” These rumors were made credible by such discoveries as the washed-up corpse of a giant squid with 60-foot tentacles, found in the South Pacific in 1887 (Grann, “A Reporter at Large: The Squid Hunter”; see “For Further Reading”).
2 (p. 6) a distance of more than seven hundred nautical leagues: In nineteenth-century France, a league equaled about 2.16 miles, so 700 nautical leagues would have been 1,512 miles, and 20,000 leagues would have equaled 43,200 miles. Today the league has been standardized to equal 3 nautical miles.
3 . (p. 7) the white whale, the terrible “Moby Dick”: The “title character” of American writer Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick is a huge, ferocious white whale that is pursued by Ahab, the obsessed captain of the Pequod.
4 . (p. 7) Aristotle and Pliny ... who admitted the existence of these monsters: In History of Animals, Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), known for his writings on logic and natural science, mentions the existence of huge sea serpents that pull oxen from the shore and devour them. Roman naturalist and scholar Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) wrote in Historia naturalis (book 9) about a 700-pound sea monster with arms 30 feet long that haunted the coast of Spain.
5 . (p. 8) Linnæus: Swedish naturalist and botanist Carolus Linnaeus (also known as Carl von Linné, 1707-1778) established the binomial system of scientific classification, in which species of plants and animals are identified by a two-part Latin name that includes their genus and their species.
6 . (p. 8) Hippolytus: In Greek mythology, Hippolytus, son of the Greek king Theseus, rejects the advances of Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love. Seeking revenge, Aphrodite causes Hippolytus’ stepmother to fall in love with him, which leads Theseus to banish and curse him. As Hippolytus leaves the kingdom, his chariot is attacked by a sea monster, and his frightened horses drag him to his death.
7 . (p. 9) the Scotia, of the Cunard Company’s line: In 1863 the steamship Scotia set the record for the fastest journey between New York and Liverpool, England, when it made the trip in less than nine days. The Scotia was owned by Sir Samuel Cunard (1788-1865), British founder of the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, known as the Cunard Line. Cunard was one of the first to use steam to power a fleet of ships.
8 (p. 14) Commander Farragut: Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870) was a hero of the American Civil War who defeated the Confederates at New Orleans.
9 . (p. 15) I no more thought of pursuing the unicorn than of attempting the passage of the North Sea: In 1867 European traders and navigators were seeking to navigate the dangerous Northwest Passage, a northern passage to India that would have considerably shortened the trading route between the two continents. Many renowned naval explorers died in the attempt. The Northwest Passage was first successfully navigated by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1906, just months after Verne’s death.
10 (p. 19) hoisting the American colors ... whose thirty-nine stars: In 1867 there were thirty-seven, not thirty-nine, stars on the American flag. New stars were added when new states joined the confederation of states collectively known as the United States of America.
11 (p. 20) The frigate might have been called the Argus, for a hundred reasons: The reference is to Argus, a creature in Greek mythology with 100 eyes; since he closed only a few of his eyes at a time while he slept, the goddess Hera used him as a watchman over Ios, the lover of her husband, Zeus. When Argus was killed, Hera placed his eyes in the tail of the peacock, her favorite bird.
12 (p. 21) that old language of Rabelais, which is still in use in some Canadian provinces: The Canadian-French dialect preserved an older syntax and vocabulary than the mainland French Aronnax would have spoken. François Rabelais (c.1490-1553) is known for his satirical novels, including Pantagruel and Gargantua.
13 (p. 34) We heaved the log, and calculated that the Abraham Lincoln was going at the rate of 18½ miles an hour: The “log” was a piece of wood weighted with lead and attached to a ship by a line tied with knots at regular intervals. Seamen tossed the log from the ship and measured the speed at which the ship moved away from the log by counting the number of knots played out every 28 seconds. This method of measuring speed gave rise to the term “knot” (meaning 1 nautical mile per hour) in nautical terminology.
14 . (p. 36) I am a good swimmer (though without pretending to rival Byron or Edgar Poe, who were masters of the art): In 1810 English Romantic poet George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), known as Lord Byron, swam the Hellespont, or Dardanelles, the strait between Turkey and Europe. American gothic and mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was a strong influence on Verne, although he was not reported to be a great swimmer.
15 . (p. 45) They evidently understood neither the language of Arago nor of Faraday: That is, the strangers don’t understand either French or English. François Arago (1786-1853) was a French physicist and astronomer who demonstrated the wave nature of light; Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was an English chemist and physicist who discovered electromagnetic induction.
16 6. (p. 53) I regarded him with fear mingled with interest, as, doubtless, Œdipus regarded the Sphinx: In Greek mythology, the Sphinx, a horrible monster with the body of a winged lion and the head of a woman, waylaid and devoured travelers who couldn’t answer her riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? Oedipus, son of King Laius of Thebes, answered correctly that a human crawls on hands and knees as a child, walks erect as a man, and uses a cane in old age, thereby causing the Sphinx to kill herself. A version of this story is given by Greek tragic playwright Sophocles (c.496-406 B.C.) in Oedipus Rex.
17 (p. 55) Nautilus: Captain Nemo’s ship is named after a species of shellfish found in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans that regulates its buoyancy with gas and liquid exchanges through tubes in its shell wall, enabling it to move up and down in the water column; and also after the Nautilus, the first submarine to be successfully operated (1801), invented by American engineer Robert Fulton. The first nuclear submarine, the USS Nautilus, was commissioned by the U.S. Navy during World War II; it was the first submarine to cross under the ice of the North Pole.
18 . (p. 56) “My flocks, like those of Neptune’s old shepherds”: In Roman mythology, Neptune (called Poseidon by the Greeks) ruled over the sea. His servant Proteus shepherded flocks of seals and dolphins.
19 . (p. 60) “These musicians ... are the contemporaries of Orpheus”: The most accomplished musician of Greek mythology, Orpheus had the power to calm both gods and men with his music, and even to move inanimate objects. When his wife, Eurydice, died, he played his lyre to convince Pluto, ruler of the underworld, to release her.
20 (p. 64) “There is a powerful agent, ... the soul of my mechanical apparatus. This agent is electricity”: First introduced to the public at the World’s Fair held in Paris in 1867, electricity was not available for domestic use until well into the 1880s. Verne was fascinated by the power of electricity; however, he did not thoroughly understand it, and much of his writing on the subject is conjecture. In fact, if a submarine like the Nautilus were to be powered by batteries, the batteries would have to be bigger than the ship itself.
21 . (p.67) “I use Bunsen’s contrivances, not Ruhmkorff‘s”: Heinrich Daniel Ruhmkorff (1803-1877) was a famed German mechanic who invented the Ruhmkorff coil, an induction coil (for producing high voltage from a low-voltage source) that could produce very large electrical sparks. German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (1811-1899) invented the Bunsen cell (a device that delivers an electric current), which was more powerful than other cells. Verne is implying that Nemo has discovered a new, more powerful cell or coil.
22 . (p. 68) “steel plates, whose density is from .07 to .08 that of water”: The standard English translation of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, used for this edition, misprints many of Verne’s original—and correct—figures, as it does here. Steel has a density of 7.8, not .07 or .08, that of water. If the figures here were correct, steel would be light enough to float. (A steel ship floats because its overall density is less than that of water.)
23 . (p. 76) Ned named the fish, and Conseil classed them: At this point Verne’s original French text includes a long passage in which Conseil lectures Ned on the scientific classifications of fish. Ned responds that fish are classified into two categories: fish that can be eaten and fish that can’t! The exchange establishes important character traits of both Conseil and Ned—the one scientific and intellectual, the other practical and hedonistic.
24 . (p. 82) “the Rouquayrol apparatus, invented by two of your own country-men”: Frenchmen Benoit Rouquayrol, a mining engineer, and Auguste Denayrouse, a naval officer, developed the first modern diving cylinder, patented in 1865 as an “Aerophore.” It allowed a diver to breathe compressed air equal to the water pressure of his depth, thus making it possible to descend much deeper than before. The aerophore is the forerunner of modern scuba equipment.
25 . (p. 96) “the learned Maury”: American naval officer and oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury (1806-1873) wrote what has been called the first textbook of modern oceanography, The Physical Geography of the Sea. Verne often returns to Maury as a source.
26 6. (p. 97) the Sandwich Islands, where Cook died, February 14, 1779: Both Nemo and Aronnax speak highly of English navigator and explorer Captain James Cook (1728-1779), who completed the first major scientific survey of the South Pacific Ocean. Cook was killed by natives of Hawaii (formerly called the Sandwich Islands) as he returned from his third expedition.
27 (p. 98) if one can believe Athenæus, a Greek doctor, who lived before Galen: Greek physician Athenaeus of Attaleia (first century A.D.) founded a school of medicine based in Stoic thought. Galen (A.D. 129-c.199) was also a Greek physician.
28 8. (p. 98) D‘Orbigny: French naturalist Alcide Dessalines d’Orbigny (1802-1857) founded the science of stratigraphical paleontology, the study of fossils as they appear in the geographical strata.
29 . (p. 100) we sighted the Pomotou Islands, the old “dangerous group” of Bougainville: Count Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729-1811), a French navigator, wrote Description d‘un voyage autour du monde (Description of a Voyage Around the World), an account of his journey to Polynesia. He nicknamed the archipelago of Polynesia, which includes the Pomotou Islands, the “dangerous group,” partly because of the behavior of the island’s native inhabitants.
30 . (p. 101 ) Such is, at least, Darwin’s theory, who thus explains the formation of the atolls: Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was an English naturalist whose most famous work, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), proposed the theory of natural selection and evolution. Darwin also wrote Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, referred to here. An atoll is a circular coral reef.
31 . (p. 102) “vanikoro.” ... It was the name of the islands on which La Perouse had been lost!: French navigator Jean-François de Galaup (1741-c.1788), known as La Pérouse, disappeared during an expedition to find the Northwest Passage. His disappearance was one of the great, unsolved mysteries of Verne’s day. It is thought he was murdered by natives of the Santa Cruz Islands, part of the Solomon Islands group in the western Pacific Ocean, which includes the island of Vanikoro, or Vanikolo.
32 . (p.169) “after the construction of the Suez Canal”: Construction of the Suez Canal, a ship canal through the Isthmus of Suez that connects the Red and Mediterranean Seas, was begun in 1859. The canal opened in 1869, the year before this novel was published.
33 . (p. 182) battle of Actium: Roman general Octavian defeated Marc Antony and Cleopatra at the naval battle of Actium (31 B.C) to become the first Roman emperor. In one of history’s strangest and most important battles, Cleopatra’s fleet of sixty ships mysteriously turned tail and fled and Antony followed her, deserting his men.
34 (p. 187) Michelet: French historian Jules Michelet (1798-1874) wrote La Mer (The Sea), a romantic history of the ocean reputed to be a source of many of Verne’s episodes and images. Michelet lost his position as professor of history at the Collège de France when he refused to swear allegiance to Louis-Napoleon (later Emperor Napoléon III).
35 . (p. 195) Still the same monk-like severity of aspect: At this point in the narrative, the translator of this edition leaves out two important paragraphs describing portraits hanging in Nemo’s room. The portraits, planted by Verne as a clue to Nemo’s character, include: Thaddeus Kosciusko (1746-1817), a Polish general and patriot who fought for Polish independence from Russia and Prussia; Markos Botsaris (c.1788-1823), a Greek patriot and a prominent figure in the Greek War of Independence from the Turks; Daniel O’Connell (1775-1847), an Irish nationalist leader known as the Liberator, who fought for Catholic Emancipation; George Washington (1732-1799), the American general who commanded the Continental armies during the Revolutionary War and the first president of the United States; Daniele Manin (1804-1857), an Italian patriot who fought against Austrian control; and Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), president of the United States during the American Civil War. Also displayed in Nemo’s room is an etching of American abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) hanging on the gallows, whom Verne called a martyr to the emancipation of the black race. Given the fact that Verne and his editor cut the explanation of Nemo’s motivations from the original manuscript (see the Introduction, pp. xxiv-xxv), this collection of portraits is a crucial key to understanding the captain’s character.
36 . (p. 206) ATLANTIS: A legendary civilization of mystery and fascination in Western culture, Atlantis may have been destroyed by flood or earthquake in ancient times. Scientists and archaeologists have been searching for Atlantis for hundreds of years. Verne goes on to list a few of the writers, historians, and philosophers who have described Atlantis, from Origen (c. A.D. 200), an early Greek Christian and defender of the Church, to the more modern Georges-Louis Leclerc Buffon (1707-1788), a renowned French naturalist and author of the 44-volume Histoire Naturelle (Natural History).
37 . (p. 228) which altered the whole landscape like a diorama: Invented in the 1820s by French artists J. M. Daguerre and Charles-Marie Bouton, a diorama is a painting seen from a distance through a large opening that utilizes staggered canvases, transparent cloth, and a changing play of light to produce a three-dimensional scenic optical illusion.
38 8. (p. 235) Doubtless the Canadian did not wish to admit the presence of the South Pole: On the date of publication of this book, neither of the poles had been discovered. American explorer Robert Peary was the first to reach the North Pole in 1909; Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole two years later.
39 (P. 270) To paint such pictures, one must have the pen of the most illustrious of our poets, the author of “The Toilers of the Deep”: The best-known passage of French writer Victor Hugo’s 1866 novel (Travailleurs de la mer) is a battle between the hero and a giant octopus that lives in a cave in the English Channel. Verne greatly admired Hugo’s craft and art.
40 (p. 278) at a depth of more than 1,400 fathoms, that I saw the electric cable lying on the bottom.... In 1863, the engineers constructed another one, measuring 2,000 miles in length, and weighing 4,500 tons, which was embarked on the Great Eastern: In 1866 the Great Eastern completed laying the first transatlantic telegraph cable, linking Europe to America; it was the only ship large enough to carry enough cable to span the entire Atlantic. Verne sailed to New York aboard the Great Eastern in 1867, in his one and only trip to North America. He was impressed by the ship, which could carry 4,000 passengers. He used notes compiled on his voyage while writing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as well as his 1871 novel Une ville flottante (A Floating City).
41 (p. 281 ) “On the 11th and 12th Prairal of the second year”: Prairal is the period of time between May 20 and June 18 marked on the French revolutionary calendar. Acting against Catholic tradition, the National Convention adopted a new calendar, in which years were numbered not from the birth of Christ but from the day the French Republic was proclaimed, September 22, 1792. Months were given names that evoked their season. Prairal (prairie is French for “meadow”) was the ninth month of this new calendar, which was abandoned in 1806.
42 . (p. 290) that strange region where the foundered imagination of Edgar Poe roamed at will. Like the fabulous Gordon Pym, ... “that veiled human figure, ... which defends the approach to the pole”: Verne greatly admired American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s style and craft. Many Verne scholars believe Verne got the idea for his first novel Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) from Poe’s 1850 story “The Balloon Hoax.” Poe’s novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) ends with a description similar to the one Verne gives here. Poe’s 1841 short story “A Descent into the Maelstrom” has much in common with the final scene of Verne’s novel.
Inspired by
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Science Fiction
Oscar Wilde is said to have remarked, somewhat cryptically, that H. G. Wells was a “scientific Jules Verne.” It is hard to know who Wilde wished to slight more by his comment, but it has long been evident that Verne and Wells are the two progenitors of modern science fiction. Without these two seminal authors, scientific fiction—a genre that includes works by Kingsley Amis, Isaac Asimov, Anthony Burgess, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, George Orwell, Ray Bradbury, and J. R. R. Tolkien—would not exist as we know it today.
Herbert George Wells supported himself with teaching, textbook writing, and journalism until 1895, when he made his literary debut with the now-classic novel The Time Machine. He followed this before the end of the century with The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds—books that established him as the first original voice since Verne in the genre of scientific fiction. However, while Verne dealt with realistic scientific phenomena—for example, the submarine Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea predates the modern submarine—Wells was interested in, as Jorge Luis Borges put it, “mere possibilities, if not impossible things.” Time travel, interplanetary warfare, invisibility—these are the stuff of Wells’s conceptual fiction.
Wells disliked being compared to his literary ancestor. In a letter to J. L. Garvin, editor of Outlook, Wells refused to attack Verne publicly, though in a letter he openly denied having been influenced by him: “A good deal of injustice has been done the old man [Verne] in comparison with me. I don’t like the idea of muscling into the circle of attention about him with officious comments or opinions eulogy. I’ve let the time when I might have punished him decently go by.” Wells was a prolific and diverse writer, tackling social philosophy and criticism, history, utopian and comic novels, literary parodies, and even feminism; but he is best remembered for his auspicious beginnings as a science fiction writer.
Film
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was adapted into film as early as 1905, with an eighteen-minute silent. A feature-length silent adaptation, directed by Stuart Paton and released in 1916, includes plot elements from Verne’s later novel The Mysterious Island, which delves into Captain Nemo’s past as the Indian Prince Dakkar. Paton’s film features elaborate underwater photography that is impressive for its time.
A wave of Jules Verne film adaptations appeared in the 1950s, including Around the World in 80 Days (1956), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959). Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), directed by Richard Fleischer, showcases many of the day’s biggest stars: Kirk Douglas as Ned Land, James Mason in the role of Captain Nemo, and Paul Lukas as Pierre Aronnax. Despite its camp flavor, this version stands as the definitive adaptation of the novel, the standard to which all others are compared. After more than half a century, the squid attack scene, accomplished solely though the use of puppets, remains intense and compelling. The film won Academy Awards for special effects and art direction. Though key plot elements differ, it remains true to the spirit of the book and faithfully conveys Verne’s ideals of science, brotherhood, and vengeance.
A Hanna-Barbera animated version of the novel appeared in 1973, and two live-action television versions were broadcast in 1997. Rod Hardy’s version runs four hours and stars Michael Caine as Captain Nemo, Patrick Dempsey as Pierre Aronnax, Bryan Brown as Ned Land, and Mia Sara as Nemo’s reclusive daughter Mara. Michael Anderson’s television version, which stars Richard Crenna as Pierre Aronnax, Ben Cross as Captain Nemo, and Paul Gross as Ned Land, adds new elements: Rather than utilizing the traditional male assistant, in this film Professor Aronnax smuggles on board his young daughter disguised as a man. Captain Nemo and the Nautilus enter later, allowing time for the film to develop before the show-stopping seacraft and its captain appear.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Artist and comics author Alan Moore, a fan of nineteenth-century adventure yarns, assembled an all-star cast of Victorian-era protagonists in his two-volume graphic novel The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2000, 2003). Moore teamed Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea hero Captain Nemo with Allan Quatermain from H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines; Hawley Griffin, a.k.a. H. G. Wells’s Invisible Man; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and his alternate persona Mr. Hyde; and Mina Murray (née Harker) from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. (The 2003 film adaptation takes many liberties with the original comic, adding Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer to the cast.) Allan Quatermain leads this motley band of heroes as they try to stop a notorious villain from firebombing London’s East End. Captain Nemo provides the team with his unprecedented mode of transport, the Nautilus, which he pilots through the channels of Venice, among other exotic environs. In the end, the villain turns out to be none other than Professor Moriarty—Sherlock Holmes’s arch nemesis. In the second volume of Moore’s comic book, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars expert John Carter (from John Carter of Mars) helps the band of heroes as the interplanetary conflict of Wells’s The War of the Worlds unfolds.
Comments & Questions
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions that challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and appreciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea through a variety of points of view and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
R. H. SHERARD
“The great regret of my life is that I have never taken any place in French literature.”
As the old man said this his head drooped, and a ring of sadness sounded in the cheerful and hearty voice.
“Je ne compte pas dans la litterature Française,” he repeated. Who was it who spoke thus, with drooping head, and with a ring of sadness in his cheerful voice? Some writer of cheap but popular feuilletons for the halfpenny press, some man of letters who has never made a scruple of stating that he looks upon his pen as a money-getting implement, and who has always preferred to glory and honor a large account at the cash office of the Society of French Men of Letters? No; strange, monstrous, as it will appear, it was none other than Jules Verne. Yes, Jules Verne, the Jules Verne, your Jules Verne and mine, who has delighted us all the world over for so many years, and who will delight the world for generations and generations to come.
It was in the cool withdrawing-room of the Société Industrielle at Amiens that the master said these words, and I shall never forget the tone of sadness in which he said them. It was like the confession of a wasted life, the sigh of an old man over what can never be recalled. It was to me a poignant sorrow to hear him speak thus, and all that I could do was to say, with no unfeigned enthusiasm, that he was to me and millions like me, a great master, the subject of our unqualified admiration and respect, the novelist who delights many of us more than all the novelists that have ever taken pen in hand. But he only shook his gray head and said: “I do not count in French literature.”
—from McClure’s Magazine (January 1894)
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
I can’t help fancying that, once he has got his story fairly planned and put together, Jules Verne careers on the paper with the most flagrant and detestable vivacity. Of human nature it is certain he knows nothing; and it is almost with a sense of relief that one finds, in these sophisticated days a good trotting-horse of an author who whistles by the way and affects to know nothing of the mysteries of the human heart. Once, indeed, he has gone out of his way, and with perfect ill-success: his Captain Nemo, of the undying hatred and the Scotch impromptus, is a memorable warning. But his extraordinary stock-in-trade consists of several somewhat time-worn dolls: scientific people with bald heads, and humorous seamen of indescribable fidelity. His marionettes are all athletic and all virtuous. I do not remember any bad character in his gallery, or one who was not afraid. “If I sought to despair, I could not,” says Professor Aronnax, referring to a very ticklish moment of his life. And his confidence was not misplaced. Jules Verne has the point of honour of a good ship-captain, and holds himself permanently responsible for the lives of all the crew. A few anonymous persons may perish by the way, lest we should think too lightly of the perils; but so soon as a man has been referred to by name, he bears a charmed existence and will turn up at the last page in good health and animal spirits.
—The Academy (June 3, 1876)
CURRENT OPINION
The most widely-known exploitation of the so-called “scientific” imagination is embodied in Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” In our time, when the use of the imagination in science is made so much of by men like Sir Oliver Lodge and J. J. Thomson, it is important to consider every available test of the factor in question. It is often held that the use of the imagination in science is dangerous because of the tendency to “false” ideas. For example, the late Professor Becquerel complained that the “scientific” romances of Jules Verne filled the popular mind with the sheer delusions on the whole subject of applied science. He deemed the Frenchman, in fact, the natural father of pseudo-science, one of the intellectual perils of his age. The subject has been taken up from a severely practical standpoint by that high authority on the submarine, Doctor C. H. Bedell, who has had over twenty years’ experience with this type of vessel. He observes at the outset, in the Journal of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, that as far as the handling of a submarine is concerned, the boats of the present day are as perfect as the Nautilus of Jules Verne’s story. They make his fancy fact.
We may even, if we so desire, make our boat so that when it is at rest submerged a man with a diving helmet may pass from it into the sea and, entirely disconnected from the submarine or the surface, explore the ocean floor for an hour or more, as Captain Nemo of the Nautilus did. That such construction is not used is due to the fact that there seems to be no material need for such operations. The Nautilus was driven by electricity. We also use electricity when running submerged, but we obtain our electricity from storage batteries, whereas Captain Nemo obtained his from the sea. The great difference between fiction and reality in this case is that the Nautilus was able to go around the world with one supply of energy, while we are obliged to come to the surface after one or two hundred miles for the purpose of recharging our storage batteries....
Viewing the prophetic submarine of Jules Verne as a whole, in the light of practical experience with the reality, it is clear that the author of “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” has vindicated all that is said to-day regarding the use of the imagination in science. The denunciations of Verne by contemporary scientists are seen to have been unwarranted. He did not deal in pseudo-science. He conveyed no false idea. He erred on points of detail in the application of principle. His romance is something more than “mere literature.” It is a substantial value of the poetical in science, a proof of the contention that the imagination of the French is essentially scientific as distinguished from the imagination of the English which is in the main poetical.
Finally, the romance goes far to justify the contention that the imagination is on the whole a more reliable faculty than the intelligence, seeing that when Verne applied his intelligence alone to the solution of a practical problem in his work he went astray but he made no essential error when he depended upon his imaginative faculty.
—February 1918
H. G. WELLS
The interest Verne invoked was a practical one; he wrote and believed and told that this or that thing could be done, which was not at that time done. He helped his reader to imagine it done and to realise what fun, excitement or mischief would ensue. Many of his inventions have ‘come true.’
—from his preface to Seven Famous Novels (1934)
PAUL VALÉRY
What would or could such a maker of imaginary worlds as Jules Verne or H. G. Wells do today? Note that although they invented imaginary worlds, neither of them attempted anything on the intellectual side. For example, they made no effort to imagine the arts of the future. The celebrated Captain Nemo, as everyone knows, plays the organ in his Nautilus at the bottom of the ocean, and what he plays is the music of Bach or Handel. Jules Verne did not foresee our electronic music, nor did he think up new combinations or compositions, nor some yet unknown kind of aesthetics.
—from History and Politics (1962; translated by Denise Folliot and Jackson Mathews)
ROLAND BARTHES
All the ships in Jules Verne are perfect cubby-holes, and the vastness of their circumnavigation further increases the bliss of their closure, the perfection of their inner humanity. The Nautilus, in this regard, is the most desirable of all caves.
—from Mythologies (1972; translated by Annette Lavers)
Questions 1. Does it matter that Jules Verne predicted more or less accurately some discoveries and scientific events? After all, the audience of his own time did not know that his predictions would come true, yet he was immensely popular.2. Commenting about Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Of human nature it is certain he knows nothing.” Is that fair criticism? What’s the evidence either way?3. Just what is the appeal of these scientific romances? Are they fantasies of escape from the quotidian? A de-familiarization of the world that makes it seem fresh? Are they of the same interest to all ages and both sexes?4. Is Captain Nemo intelligible on the basis of the information given about him in the novel? Do we really understand his motivations? As Victoria Blake discusses in her introduction, Verne and his editor removed background information on Nemo from the original manuscript. Would the novel have been better if this material had remained? Or does the mystery of Nemo add to the appeal of the novel?
For Further Reading
Biographies
Allott, Kenneth. Jules Verne. New York: Macmillan, 1941.
Allotte de la Fuÿe, Marguerite. Jules Verne. Translated by Erik de Mauny. London: Staples Press, 1954. Written by Verne’s great-niece, this was the first biography about Verne and the primary source for many early students of the author. The book, though very entertaining, has been proven to be riddled with errors, inconsistencies, and hyperbole that work to uphold Verne’s reputation more than the facts of his life.
Verne, Jean-Jules. Jules Verne. Translated by Roger Greaves. New York: Taplinger, 1976. Written by the author’s grandson.
Scholarship and Criticism
Evans, Arthur B. Jules Verne Rediscovered: Didacticism and the Scientific Novel. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. Heavy on theory and textual deconstruction, this book is a good academic primer on Verne, and worth the read.
Lynch, Lawrence W. Jules Verne. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992. Occupies an intelligent and informed ground between academic investigation and biography.
Martin, Andrew. The Mask of the Prophet: The Extraordinary Fictions of Jules Verne. Oxford: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press, 1990.
For Young Readers
Schoell, William. Remarkable Journeys: The Story of Jules Verne. Greensboro, NC: Morgan Reynolds, 2002.
Teeters, Peggy. Jules Verne: The Man Who Invented Tomorrow. New York: Walker, 1992.
Other Works Used in the Preparation of the Introduction and the Notes
Grann, David. “A Reporter at Large: The Squid Hunter.” New Yorker, May 24, 2004.
Lottman, Herbert R. Jules Verne: An Exploratory Biography. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996.
Verne, Jules. The Complete Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: A New Translation of Jules Verne’s Science Fiction Classic. Introduction, translation, and annotations by Emanuel J. Mickel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
—. Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: The Definitive Unabridged Edition Based on the Original French Texts.
Translated and annotated by Walter James Miller and Frederick
Paul Walter. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993.
a
Marine mammal of the order Cetacea, which includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
b
Scientists who study the natural history of fishes.
c
Chain of islands off the southern tip of Alaska, still prime whale-watching sites.
d
Square-rigged warship.
e
Legendary Scandinavian sea monster.
f
Le Constitutionnel was a nineteenth-century liberal daily French newspaper known for its extreme political views.
g
This well-known London-based insurance company began by offering marine insurance.
h
Rifles used by the French army in the nineteenth century.
i
Ironclad warship; the term is derived from the USS Monitor, a warship in America’s Union navy and one of the first ironclad warships.
j
Printed in quarto pages, in which paper is folded in half and in half again to form four sheets.
k
Weapon consisting of a spear and a battle-ax, used especially in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
l
Extinct prehistoric relatives of, respectively, the warthog, the horse, the deer, and the raccoon.
m
Or babirusa; a large wild swine of Indonesia.
n
Raised deck at the back, or stern, of a ship.
o
Wharf.
p
Or mizzenmast; the mast located behind the mainmast on a ship, usually the third mast.
q
Biblical sea monster (described in the Bible, Job 41:1-34),
r
That is, a crafty sperm whale.
s
Downwind; facing the direction toward which the wind is blowing.
t
In Greek mythology, fire-breathing monsters.
u
Forecastle: forward part of a ship’s upper deck; taffrail: rail surrounding the stern.
v
A fathom, used especially for measuring water depth, is equal to 6 feet.
w
Electric eel.
x
On alert (French).
y
Reference to the biblical story of Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale and thus saved from drowning.
z
Or Scots; people of Scotland.
aa
French scientists Louis-Pierre Gratiolet (1815-1865) and Josef Engel (1816-1874) developed a scientific method for judging character from facial expressions.
ab
Verne was a proponent of Esperanto, a universal language first published in 1887 to help people from different nations communicate.
ac
Mobile within the mobile element (rough Latin).
ad
Potash, or caustic potash, is a potassium compound used in agriculture and industry.
ae
Nemo is a Latin word meaning “no one” or “nobody.”
af
Genus name of the sea cucumber, a worm-like invertebrate.
ag
The translator here omits a long paragraph listing authors and titles meant to establish Nemo’s character as a Renaissance man and to display the scope of Nemo’s reading and interests.
ah
Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689) journeyed six times to the East and published a two-volume work, Les six voyages de J. B. Tavernier (The Six Voyages of J. B. Tavernier).
ai
Long, wispy cirrus clouds, from which sailors predict impending winds.
aj
Fictional island northwest of Hawaii.
ak
Firm ground (Latin).
al
Glass bottles coated with metal foil used to accumulate electricity.
am
Large, web-footed bird; a sailors’ superstition held that killing these birds brought bad luck.
an
Or Cretan; Candia is an ancient name for the Greek island of Crete.
ao
Tiny, usually microscopic animals.
ap
Jean Macé (1815-1894) worked with Verne’s publisher at the Magazine of Education and Recreation, in which 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was first printed.
aq
Celebration (French).
ar
Made by Bazin (French).
as
Strait between New Guinea and Australia.
at
Bitter or troubled dreams (Latin).
au
Sacred river of the Indian subcontinent.
av
Luminous nighttime phenomenon appearing in the upper atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere; also known as “northern light.”
aw
Greek geographer (c.63 B.C.-C.A.D. 23) whose Geographia was the standard source for geographic and ethnographic knowledge in ancient times.
ax
Summer winds that blow over the Mediterranean for about forty days.
ay
Meaning “red.”
az
Marine mammal of the western Pacific and Indian Oceans with a long body tapered at both ends and a fluked tail like whales and dolphins; also called a sea cow for its habit of “grazing” on vegetation on the ocean floor.
ba
Much bigger than a Dugong’s actual length, which averages about 8 feet.
bb
Collective name for the lands of the Pacific Ocean, especially when referring to the central and southern Pacific.
bc
There, in King Neptune’s abyss by Kárpathos, his spokesman is azure-hued Proteus (Latin); from book 4 of Georgica, by Roman poet Virgil (70-19 B.C.). In classical mythology, Neptune is the god of the sea; Proteus is a minor sea god and Neptune’s servant, who can change his form at will. Kárpathos is a Greek island.
bd
Or Pesce, Italian for “fish.”
be
Group of Greek islands in the southern Aegean Sea.
bf
Or Thira, an island in the Cyclades; it was nearly destroyed almost 3,000 years ago by a huge volcanic eruption and today is sometimes associated with the fabled civilization of Atlantis (see endnote 36).
bg
Preeminent; the best of a kind (French).
bh
Roman gods of the sea and the underworld, respectively (known to the Greeks as Poseidon and Hades).
bi
Roman goddess of love and beauty (known to the Greeks as Aphrodite).
bj
Ancient name for the Sea of Marmara in northwestern Turkey, which connects the Black Sea and the Aegean.
bk
Peasant of classical mythology who killed herself after angering Minerva (goddess of wisdom) by besting her in a weaving contest; Minerva took pity on her and transformed her into a spider.
bl
Spanish enclave in northern Morocco, opposite Gibraltar on the Strait of Gibraltar; a barrier here would close off the Mediterranean from the Atlantic.
bm
Contemporary estimates are much higher.
bn
That is, the Cape of Good Hope, off South Africa.
bo
Reference to the ascension of the Duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV (king of France, 1643-1715), to the Spanish throne as Philip V in 1700, which precipitated the War of the Spanish Succession.
bp
An acropolis (Greek for “uppermost city”) is the fortified height of an ancient Greek city; crowning the famed Acropolis of Athens is the Parthenon, a Doric temple dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
bq
Ancient Roman city destroyed when the volcano Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79; it was preserved by a 20-foot blanket of volcanic ash and debris and has been the site of archaeological excavations since 1748.
br
Or Pillars of Hercules; two rock promontories at the eastern end of the Strait of Gibraltar; according to legend, the rocks were placed there by the mythical Greek hero Hercules.
bs
Renowned Greek philosopher (384-322 B.C.)
bt
Clogged with seaweed and kelp, the Sargasso Sea, a large body of relatively still water in the North Atlantic Ocean, was feared by early sailors who thought the seaweed was evidence of a shallow bottom or, more spectacularly, that it would stop their ship dead.
bu
Sperm whales.
bv
Verne means March, which is an autumn month in the Southern Hemisphere.
bw
The blue whale, the largest animal in the world, measures more than 100 feet in length.
bx
White pillar or halo in the sky caused by the reflection of light off icebergs.
by
In 1958 two U.S. nuclear submarines crossed the Northwest Passage (northern sea passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans) by going under the ice. With a nod to Verne’s predictive abilities, one of the submarines was named Nautilus.
bz
Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, Antarctica, is believed to be the only active volcano in the Antarctic; it was discovered by Sir John Ross in 1841.
ca
Conventionalized iris design associated with heraldry; fleur de lis is French for “flower of the lily.”
cb
The disease is actually transmitted by the bite of an infected yellow-fever mosquito.
cc
That is, octopi, or, as Verne probably intended, squids.
cd
1864 is likely a typo. Reference to an earthquake in Japan that caused a wave to hit San Francisco, California, on December 23, 1854.
ce
Or La Manche, French name for the English Channel.
cf
The full name of this French warship was The People’s Avenger; it sank after a fight with the British in 1793.
cg
Ceremonial sacrifice of 100 oxen or cattle, an ancient Greek and Roman ritual meant to appease angry gods.
ch
The narwhale was referred to as ‘the unicorn of the sea’ because of its horn.
ci
For an answer to this question, read Verne’s 1874 novel L‘Île Mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island).
cj
Biblical book that emphasizes the limits of human knowledge.
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