CHAPTER 24

The Coral Realm

THE NEXT DAY I woke up with my head unusually clear. Much to my

surprise, I was in my stateroom. No doubt my companions had been put

back in their cabin without noticing it any more than I had. Like me,

they would have no idea what took place during the night, and to

unravel this mystery I could count only on some future happenstance.

I then considered leaving my stateroom. Was I free or still a

prisoner? Perfectly free. I opened my door, headed down the gangways,

and climbed the central companionway. Hatches that had been closed the

day before were now open. I arrived on the platform.

Ned Land and Conseil were there waiting for me. I questioned

them. They knew nothing. Lost in a heavy sleep of which they had no

memory, they were quite startled to be back in their cabin.

As for the Nautilus, it seemed as tranquil and mysterious as ever. It

was cruising on the surface of the waves at a moderate speed. Nothing

seemed to have changed on board.

Ned Land observed the sea with his penetrating eyes. It was

deserted. The Canadian sighted nothing new on the horizon, neither

sail nor shore. A breeze was blowing noisily from the west, and

disheveled by the wind, long billows made the submersible roll very

noticeably.

After renewing its air, the Nautilus stayed at an average depth of

fifteen meters, enabling it to return quickly to the surface of the

waves. And, contrary to custom, it executed such a maneuver several

times during that day of January 19. The chief officer would then

climb onto the platform, and his usual phrase would ring through the

ship’s interior.

As for Captain Nemo, he didn’t appear. Of the other men on board, I

saw only my emotionless steward, who served me with his usual mute

efficiency.

Near two o’clock I was busy organizing my notes in the lounge, when

the captain opened the door and appeared. I bowed to him. He gave me

an almost imperceptible bow in return, without saying a word to me. I

resumed my work, hoping he might give me some explanation of the

previous afternoon’s events. He did nothing of the sort. I stared at

him. His face looked exhausted; his reddened eyes hadn’t been

refreshed by sleep; his facial features expressed profound sadness,

real chagrin. He walked up and down, sat and stood, picked up a book

at random, discarded it immediately, consulted his instruments without

taking his customary notes, and seemed unable to rest easy for an

instant.

Finally he came over to me and said:

“Are you a physician, Professor Aronnax?”

This inquiry was so unexpected that I stared at him a good while

without replying.

“Are you a physician?” he repeated. “Several of your scientific

colleagues took their degrees in medicine, such as Gratiolet,

Moquin-Tandon, and others.”

“That’s right,” I said, “I am a doctor, I used to be on call at the

hospitals. I was in practice for several years before joining the

museum.”

“Excellent, sir.”

My reply obviously pleased Captain Nemo. But not knowing what he was

driving at, I waited for further questions, ready to reply as

circumstances dictated.

“Professor Aronnax,” the captain said to me, “would you consent to

give your medical attentions to one of my men?”

“Someone is sick?”

“Yes.”

“I’m ready to go with you.”

“Come.”

I admit that my heart was pounding. Lord knows why, but I saw a

definite connection between this sick crewman and yesterday’s

happenings, and the mystery of those events concerned me at least as

much as the man’s sickness.

Captain Nemo led me to the Nautilus’s stern and invited me into a

cabin located next to the sailors’ quarters.

On a bed there lay a man some forty years old, with strongly molded

features, the very image of an Anglo-Saxon.

I bent over him. Not only was he sick, he was wounded. Swathed in

blood-soaked linen, his head was resting on a folded pillow. I undid

the linen bandages, while the wounded man gazed with great staring

eyes and let me proceed without making a single complaint.

It was a horrible wound. The cranium had been smashed open by some

blunt instrument, leaving the naked brains exposed, and the cerebral

matter had suffered deep abrasions. Blood clots had formed in this

dissolving mass, taking on the color of wine dregs. Both contusion and

concussion of the brain had occurred. The sick man’s breathing was

labored, and muscle spasms quivered in his face. Cerebral inflammation

was complete and had brought on a paralysis of movement and sensation.

I took the wounded man’s pulse. It was intermittent. The body’s

extremities were already growing cold, and I saw that death was

approaching without any possibility of my holding it in check. After

dressing the poor man’s wound, I redid the linen bandages around his

head, and I turned to Captain Nemo.

“How did he get this wound?” I asked him.

“That’s not important,” the captain replied evasively. “The Nautilus

suffered a collision that cracked one of the engine levers, and it

struck this man. My chief officer was standing beside him. This man

leaped forward to intercept the blow. A brother lays down his life for

his brother, a friend for his friend, what could be simpler? That’s

the law for everyone on board the Nautilus. But what’s your diagnosis

of his condition?”

I hesitated to speak my mind.

“You may talk freely,” the captain told me. “This man doesn’t

understand French.”

I took a last look at the wounded man, then I replied:

“This man will be dead in two hours.”

“Nothing can save him?”

“Nothing.”

Captain Nemo clenched his fists, and tears slid from his eyes, which I

had thought incapable of weeping.

For a few moments more I observed the dying man, whose life was ebbing

little by little. He grew still more pale under the electric light

that bathed his deathbed. I looked at his intelligent head, furrowed

with premature wrinkles that misfortune, perhaps misery, had etched

long before. I was hoping to detect the secret of his life in the last

words that might escape from his lips!

“You may go, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo told me.

I left the captain in the dying man’s cabin and I repaired to my

stateroom, very moved by this scene. All day long I was aquiver with

gruesome forebodings. That night I slept poorly, and between my fitful

dreams, I thought I heard a distant moaning, like a funeral dirge. Was

it a prayer for the dead, murmured in that language I couldn’t

understand?

The next morning I climbed on deck. Captain Nemo was already there. As

soon as he saw me, he came over.

“Professor,” he said to me, “would it be convenient for you to make an

underwater excursion today?”

“With my companions?” I asked.

“If they’re agreeable.”

“We’re yours to command, captain.”

“Then kindly put on your diving suits.”

As for the dead or dying man, he hadn’t come into the picture. I

rejoined Ned Land and Conseil. I informed them of Captain Nemo’s

proposition. Conseil was eager to accept, and this time the Canadian

proved perfectly amenable to going with us.

It was eight o’clock in the morning. By 8:30 we were suited up for

this new stroll and equipped with our two devices for lighting and

breathing. The double door opened, and accompanied by Captain Nemo

with a dozen crewmen following, we set foot on the firm seafloor where

the Nautilus was resting, ten meters down.

A gentle slope gravitated to an uneven bottom whose depth was about

fifteen fathoms. This bottom was completely different from the one I

had visited during my first excursion under the waters of the Pacific

Ocean. Here I saw no fine-grained sand, no underwater prairies, not

one open-sea forest. I immediately recognized the wondrous region in

which Captain Nemo did the honors that day. It was the coral realm.

In the zoophyte branch, class Alcyonaria, one finds the order

Gorgonaria, which contains three groups: sea fans, isidian polyps, and

coral polyps. It’s in this last that precious coral belongs, an

unusual substance that, at different times, has been classified in the

mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Medicine to the ancients,

jewelry to the moderns, it wasn’t decisively placed in the animal

kingdom until 1694, by Peysonnel of Marseilles.

A coral is a unit of tiny animals assembled over a polypary that’s

brittle and stony in nature. These polyps have a unique generating

mechanism that reproduces them via the budding process, and they have

an individual existence while also participating in a communal

life. Hence they embody a sort of natural socialism. I was familiar

with the latest research on this bizarre zoophyte—which turns to stone

while taking on a tree form, as some naturalists have very aptly

observed—and nothing could have been more fascinating to me than to

visit one of these petrified forests that nature has planted on the

bottom of the sea.

We turned on our Ruhmkorff devices and went along a coral shoal in the

process of forming, which, given time, will someday close off this

whole part of the Indian Ocean. Our path was bordered by hopelessly

tangled bushes, formed from snarls of shrubs all covered with little

star-shaped, white-streaked flowers. Only, contrary to plants on

shore, these tree forms become attached to rocks on the seafloor by

heading from top to bottom.

Our lights produced a thousand delightful effects while playing over

these brightly colored boughs. I fancied I saw these cylindrical,

membrane-filled tubes trembling beneath the water’s undulations. I was

tempted to gather their fresh petals, which were adorned with delicate

tentacles, some newly in bloom, others barely opened, while nimble

fish with fluttering fins brushed past them like flocks of birds. But

if my hands came near the moving flowers of these sensitive, lively

creatures, an alarm would instantly sound throughout the colony. The

white petals retracted into their red sheaths, the flowers vanished

before my eyes, and the bush changed into a chunk of stony nipples.

Sheer chance had placed me in the presence of the most valuable

specimens of this zoophyte. This coral was the equal of those fished

up from the Mediterranean off the Barbary Coast or the shores of

France and Italy. With its bright colors, it lived up to those poetic

names of blood flower and blood foam that the industry confers on its

finest exhibits. Coral sells for as much as 500 francs per kilogram,

and in this locality the liquid strata hid enough to make the fortunes

of a whole host of coral fishermen. This valuable substance often

merges with other polyparies, forming compact, hopelessly tangled

units known as “macciota,” and I noted some wonderful pink samples of

this coral.

But as the bushes shrank, the tree forms magnified. Actual petrified

thickets and long alcoves from some fantastic school of architecture

kept opening up before our steps. Captain Nemo entered beneath a dark

gallery whose gentle slope took us to a depth of 100 meters. The light

from our glass coils produced magical effects at times, lingering on

the wrinkled roughness of some natural arch, or some overhang

suspended like a chandelier, which our lamps flecked with fiery

sparks. Amid these shrubs of precious coral, I observed other polyps

no less unusual: melita coral, rainbow coral with jointed outgrowths,

then a few tufts of genus Corallina, some green and others red,

actually a type of seaweed encrusted with limestone salts, which,

after long disputes, naturalists have finally placed in the vegetable

kingdom. But as one intellectual has remarked, “Here, perhaps, is the

actual point where life rises humbly out of slumbering stone, but

without breaking away from its crude starting point.”

Finally, after two hours of walking, we reached a depth of about 300

meters, in other words, the lowermost limit at which coral can begin

to form. But here it was no longer some isolated bush or a modest

grove of low timber. It was an immense forest, huge mineral

vegetation, enormous petrified trees linked by garlands of elegant

hydras from the genus Plumularia, those tropical creepers of the sea,

all decked out in shades and gleams. We passed freely under their

lofty boughs, lost up in the shadows of the waves, while at our feet

organ-pipe coral, stony coral, star coral, fungus coral, and sea

anemone from the genus Caryophylia formed a carpet of flowers all

strewn with dazzling gems.

What an indescribable sight! Oh, if only we could share our feelings!

Why were we imprisoned behind these masks of metal and glass! Why were

we forbidden to talk with each other! At least let us lead the lives

of the fish that populate this liquid element, or better yet, the

lives of amphibians, which can spend long hours either at sea or on

shore, traveling through their double domain as their whims dictate!

Meanwhile Captain Nemo had called a halt. My companions and I stopped

walking, and turning around, I saw the crewmen form a semicircle

around their leader. Looking with greater care, I observed that four

of them were carrying on their shoulders an object that was oblong in

shape.

At this locality we stood in the center of a huge clearing surrounded

by the tall tree forms of this underwater forest. Our lamps cast a

sort of brilliant twilight over the area, making inordinately long

shadows on the seafloor. Past the boundaries of the clearing, the

darkness deepened again, relieved only by little sparkles given off by

the sharp crests of coral.

Ned Land and Conseil stood next to me. We stared, and it dawned on me

that I was about to witness a strange scene. Observing the seafloor, I

saw that it swelled at certain points from low bulges that were

encrusted with limestone deposits and arranged with a symmetry that

betrayed the hand of man.

In the middle of the clearing, on a pedestal of roughly piled rocks,

there stood a cross of coral, extending long arms you would have

thought were made of petrified blood.

At a signal from Captain Nemo, one of his men stepped forward and, a

few feet from this cross, detached a mattock from his belt and began

to dig a hole.

I finally understood! This clearing was a cemetery, this hole a grave,

that oblong object the body of the man who must have died during the

night! Captain Nemo and his men had come to bury their companion in

this communal resting place on the inaccessible ocean floor!

No! My mind was reeling as never before! Never had ideas of such

impact raced through my brain! I didn’t want to see what my eyes saw!

Meanwhile the grave digging went slowly. Fish fled here and there as

their retreat was disturbed. I heard the pick ringing on the limestone

soil, its iron tip sometimes giving off sparks when it hit a stray

piece of flint on the sea bottom. The hole grew longer, wider, and

soon was deep enough to receive the body.

Then the pallbearers approached. Wrapped in white fabric made from

filaments of the fan mussel, the body was lowered into its watery

grave. Captain Nemo, arms crossed over his chest, knelt in a posture

of prayer, as did all the friends of him who had loved them. . . . My

two companions and I bowed reverently.

The grave was then covered over with the rubble dug from the seafloor,

and it formed a low mound.

When this was done, Captain Nemo and his men stood up; then they all

approached the grave, sank again on bended knee, and extended their

hands in a sign of final farewell. . . .

Then the funeral party went back up the path to the Nautilus,

returning beneath the arches of the forest, through the thickets,

along the coral bushes, going steadily higher.

Finally the ship’s rays appeared. Their luminous trail guided us to

the Nautilus. By one o’clock we had returned.

After changing clothes, I climbed onto the platform, and in the grip

of dreadfully obsessive thoughts, I sat next to the beacon.

Captain Nemo rejoined me. I stood up and said to him:

“So, as I predicted, that man died during the night?”

“Yes, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied.

“And now he rests beside his companions in that coral cemetery?”

“Yes, forgotten by the world but not by us! We dig the graves, then

entrust the polyps with sealing away our dead for eternity!”

And with a sudden gesture, the captain hid his face in his clenched

fists, vainly trying to hold back a sob. Then he added:

“There lies our peaceful cemetery, hundreds of feet beneath the

surface of the waves!”

“At least, captain, your dead can sleep serenely there, out of the

reach of sharks!”

“Yes, sir,” Captain Nemo replied solemnly, “of sharks and men!”

END OF THE FIRST PART

SECOND PART

CHAPTER 1

The Indian Ocean

NOW WE BEGIN the second part of this voyage under the seas. The first

ended in that moving scene at the coral cemetery, which left a

profound impression on my mind. And so Captain Nemo would live out his

life entirely in the heart of this immense sea, and even his grave lay

ready in its impenetrable depths. There the last sleep of the

Nautilus’s occupants, friends bound together in death as in life,

would be disturbed by no monster of the deep! “No man either!” the

captain had added.

Always that same fierce, implacable defiance of human society!

As for me, I was no longer content with the hypotheses that satisfied

Conseil. That fine lad persisted in seeing the Nautilus’s commander as

merely one of those unappreciated scientists who repay humanity’s

indifference with contempt. For Conseil, the captain was still a

misunderstood genius who, tired of the world’s deceptions, had been

driven to take refuge in this inaccessible environment where he was

free to follow his instincts. But to my mind, this hypothesis

explained only one side of Captain Nemo.

In fact, the mystery of that last afternoon when we were locked in

prison and put to sleep, the captain’s violent precaution of snatching

from my grasp a spyglass poised to scour the horizon, and the fatal

wound given that man during some unexplained collision suffered by the

Nautilus, all led me down a plain trail. No! Captain Nemo wasn’t

content simply to avoid humanity! His fearsome submersible served not

only his quest for freedom, but also, perhaps, it was used in

lord-knows-what schemes of dreadful revenge.

Right now, nothing is clear to me, I still glimpse only glimmers in

the dark, and I must limit my pen, as it were, to taking dictation

from events.

But nothing binds us to Captain Nemo. He believes that escaping from

the Nautilus is impossible. We are not even constrained by our word of

honor. No promises fetter us. We’re simply captives, prisoners

masquerading under the name “guests” for the sake of everyday

courtesy. Even so, Ned Land hasn’t given up all hope of recovering his

freedom. He’s sure to take advantage of the first chance that comes

his way. No doubt I will do likewise. And yet I will feel some regret

at making off with the Nautilus’s secrets, so generously unveiled for

us by Captain Nemo! Because, ultimately, should we detest or admire

this man? Is he the persecutor or the persecuted? And in all honesty,

before I leave him forever, I want to finish this underwater tour of

the world, whose first stages have been so magnificent. I want to

observe the full series of these wonders gathered under the seas of

our globe. I want to see what no man has seen yet, even if I must pay

for this insatiable curiosity with my life! What are my discoveries to

date? Nothing, relatively speaking—since so far we’ve covered only

6,000 leagues across the Pacific!

Nevertheless, I’m well aware that the Nautilus is drawing near to

populated shores, and if some chance for salvation becomes available

to us, it would be sheer cruelty to sacrifice my companions to my

passion for the unknown. I must go with them, perhaps even guide

them. But will this opportunity ever arise? The human being, robbed of

his free will, craves such an opportunity; but the scientist, forever

inquisitive, dreads it.

That day, January 21, 1868, the chief officer went at noon to take the

sun’s altitude. I climbed onto the platform, lit a cigar, and watched

him at work. It seemed obvious to me that this man didn’t understand

French, because I made several remarks in a loud voice that were bound

to provoke him to some involuntary show of interest had he understood

them; but he remained mute and emotionless.

While he took his sights with his sextant, one of the Nautilus’s

sailors—that muscular man who had gone with us to Crespo Island during

our first underwater excursion—came up to clean the glass panes of the

beacon. I then examined the fittings of this mechanism, whose power

was increased a hundredfold by biconvex lenses that were designed like

those in a lighthouse and kept its rays productively focused. This

electric lamp was so constructed as to yield its maximum illuminating

power. In essence, its light was generated in a vacuum, insuring both

its steadiness and intensity. Such a vacuum also reduced wear on the

graphite points between which the luminous arc expanded. This was an

important savings for Captain Nemo, who couldn’t easily renew

them. But under these conditions, wear and tear were almost

nonexistent.

When the Nautilus was ready to resume its underwater travels, I went

below again to the lounge. The hatches closed once more, and our

course was set due west.

We then plowed the waves of the Indian Ocean, vast liquid plains with

an area of 550,000,000 hectares, whose waters are so transparent it

makes you dizzy to lean over their surface. There the Nautilus

generally drifted at a depth between 100 and 200 meters. It behaved in

this way for some days. To anyone without my grand passion for the

sea, these hours would surely have seemed long and monotonous; but my

daily strolls on the platform where I was revived by the life-giving

ocean air, the sights in the rich waters beyond the lounge windows,

the books to be read in the library, and the composition of my

memoirs, took up all my time and left me without a moment of weariness

or boredom.

All in all, we enjoyed a highly satisfactory state of health. The diet

on board agreed with us perfectly, and for my part, I could easily

have gone without those changes of pace that Ned Land, in a spirit of

protest, kept taxing his ingenuity to supply us. What’s more, in this

constant temperature we didn’t even have to worry about catching

colds. Besides, the ship had a good stock of the madrepore

Dendrophylia, known in Provence by the name sea fennel, and a poultice

made from the dissolved flesh of its polyps will furnish an excellent

cough medicine.

For some days we saw a large number of aquatic birds with webbed feet,

known as gulls or sea mews. Some were skillfully slain, and when

cooked in a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of

water game. Among the great wind riders—carried over long distances

from every shore and resting on the waves from their exhausting

flights—I spotted some magnificent albatross, birds belonging to the

Longipennes (long-winged) family, whose discordant calls sound like

the braying of an ass. The Totipalmes (fully webbed) family was

represented by swift frigate birds, nimbly catching fish at the

surface, and by numerous tropic birds of the genus Phaeton, among

others the red-tailed tropic bird, the size of a pigeon, its white

plumage shaded with pink tints that contrasted with its dark-hued

wings.

The Nautilus’s nets hauled up several types of sea turtle from the

hawksbill genus with arching backs whose scales are highly

prized. Diving easily, these reptiles can remain a good while

underwater by closing the fleshy valves located at the external

openings of their nasal passages. When they were captured, some

hawksbills were still asleep inside their carapaces, a refuge from

other marine animals. The flesh of these turtles was nothing

memorable, but their eggs made an excellent feast.

As for fish, they always filled us with wonderment when, staring

through the open panels, we could unveil the secrets of their aquatic

lives. I noted several species I hadn’t previously been able to

observe.

I’ll mention chiefly some trunkfish unique to the Red Sea, the sea of

the East Indies, and that part of the ocean washing the coasts of

equinoctial America. Like turtles, armadillos, sea urchins, and

crustaceans, these fish are protected by armor plate that’s neither

chalky nor stony but actual bone. Sometimes this armor takes the shape

of a solid triangle, sometimes that of a solid quadrangle. Among the

triangular type, I noticed some half a decimeter long, with brown

tails, yellow fins, and wholesome, exquisitely tasty flesh; I even

recommend that they be acclimatized to fresh water, a change,

incidentally, that a number of saltwater fish can make with ease. I’ll

also mention some quadrangular trunkfish topped by four large

protuberances along the back; trunkfish sprinkled with white spots on

the underside of the body, which make good house pets like certain

birds; boxfish armed with stings formed by extensions of their bony

crusts, and whose odd grunting has earned them the nickname “sea

pigs”; then some trunkfish known as dromedaries, with tough, leathery

flesh and big conical humps.

From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrieve certain fish

from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas: southern puffers with

red backs and white chests distinguished by three lengthwise rows of

filaments, and jugfish, seven inches long, decked out in the brightest

colors. Then, as specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark

brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish,

genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate

themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles;

seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts

and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable

them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped

paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish

with long jaws, excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and

gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with

wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and

long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with

prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a

favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on

which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow

mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered

with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers

are thought to be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids;

finally, archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing

flycatchers, armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or

Chassepot: it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of

water.

From the eighty-ninth fish genus in Lacépède’s system of

classification, belonging to his second subclass of bony fish

(characterized by gill covers and a bronchial membrane), I noted some

scorpionfish whose heads are adorned with stings and which have only

one dorsal fin; these animals are covered with small scales, or have

none at all, depending on the subgenus to which they belong. The

second subgenus gave us some Didactylus specimens three to four

decimeters long, streaked with yellow, their heads having a

phantasmagoric appearance. As for the first subgenus, it furnished

several specimens of that bizarre fish aptly nicknamed “toadfish,”

whose big head is sometimes gouged with deep cavities, sometimes

swollen with protuberances; bristling with stings and strewn with

nodules, it sports hideously irregular horns; its body and tail are

adorned with callosities; its stings can inflict dangerous injuries;

it’s repulsive and horrible.

From January 21 to the 23rd, the Nautilus traveled at the rate of 250

leagues in twenty-four hours, hence 540 miles at twenty-two miles per

hour. If, during our trip, we were able to identify these different

varieties of fish, it’s because they were attracted by our electric

light and tried to follow alongside; but most of them were

outdistanced by our speed and soon fell behind; temporarily, however,

a few managed to keep pace in the Nautilus’s waters.

On the morning of the 24th, in latitude 12 degrees 5′ south and

longitude 94 degrees 33′, we raised Keeling Island, a madreporic

upheaving planted with magnificent coconut trees, which had been

visited by Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus cruised along

a short distance off the shore of this desert island. Our dragnets

brought up many specimens of polyps and echinoderms plus some unusual

shells from the branch Mollusca. Captain Nemo’s treasures were

enhanced by some valuable exhibits from the delphinula snail species,

to which I joined some pointed star coral, a sort of parasitic

polypary that often attaches itself to seashells.

Soon Keeling Island disappeared below the horizon, and our course was

set to the northwest, toward the tip of the Indian peninsula.

“Civilization!” Ned Land told me that day. “Much better than those

Papuan Islands where we ran into more savages than venison! On this

Indian shore, professor, there are roads and railways, English,

French, and Hindu villages. We wouldn’t go five miles without bumping

into a fellow countryman. Come on now, isn’t it time for our sudden

departure from Captain Nemo?”

“No, no, Ned,” I replied in a very firm tone. “Let’s ride it out, as

you seafaring fellows say. The Nautilus is approaching populated

areas. It’s going back toward Europe, let it take us there. After we

arrive in home waters, we can do as we see fit. Besides, I don’t

imagine Captain Nemo will let us go hunting on the coasts of Malabar

or Coromandel as he did in the forests of New Guinea.”

“Well, sir, can’t we manage without his permission?”

I didn’t answer the Canadian. I wanted no arguments. Deep down, I was

determined to fully exploit the good fortune that had put me on board

the Nautilus.

After leaving Keeling Island, our pace got generally slower. It also

got more unpredictable, often taking us to great depths. Several times

we used our slanting fins, which internal levers could set at an

oblique angle to our waterline. Thus we went as deep as two or three

kilometers down but without ever verifying the lowest depths of this

sea near India, which soundings of 13,000 meters have been unable to

reach. As for the temperature in these lower strata, the thermometer

always and invariably indicated 4 degrees centigrade. I merely

observed that in the upper layers, the water was always colder over

shallows than in the open sea.

On January 25, the ocean being completely deserted, the Nautilus spent

the day on the surface, churning the waves with its powerful propeller

and making them spurt to great heights. Under these conditions, who

wouldn’t have mistaken it for a gigantic cetacean? I spent

three-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the

sea. Nothing on the horizon, except near four o’clock in the afternoon

a long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack. Its masting

was visible for an instant, but it couldn’t have seen the Nautilus

because we were lying too low in the water. I imagine that steamboat

belonged to the Peninsular & Oriental line, which provides service

from the island of Ceylon to Sydney, also calling at King George Sound

and Melbourne.

At five o’clock in the afternoon, just before that brief twilight that

links day with night in tropical zones, Conseil and I marveled at an

unusual sight.

It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients,

is a sign of good luck. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppian

studied its habits and lavished on its behalf all the scientific

poetry of Greece and Italy. They called it “nautilus” and “pompilius.”

But modern science has not endorsed these designations, and this

mollusk is now known by the name argonaut.

Anyone consulting Conseil would soon learn from the gallant lad that

the branch Mollusca is divided into five classes; that the first class

features the Cephalopoda (whose members are sometimes naked, sometimes

covered with a shell), which consists of two families, the

Dibranchiata and the Tetrabranchiata, which are distinguished by their

number of gills; that the family Dibranchiata includes three genera,

the argonaut, the squid, and the cuttlefish, and that the family

Tetrabranchiata contains only one genus, the nautilus. After this

catalog, if some recalcitrant listener confuses the argonaut, which is

acetabuliferous (in other words, a bearer of suction tubes), with the

nautilus, which is tentaculiferous (a bearer of tentacles), it will be

simply unforgivable.

Now, it was a school of argonauts then voyaging on the surface of the

ocean. We could count several hundred of them. They belonged to that

species of argonaut covered with protuberances and exclusive to the

seas near India.

These graceful mollusks were swimming backward by means of their

locomotive tubes, sucking water into these tubes and then expelling

it. Six of their eight tentacles were long, thin, and floated on the

water, while the other two were rounded into palms and spread to the

wind like light sails. I could see perfectly their undulating,

spiral-shaped shells, which Cuvier aptly compared to an elegant

cockleboat. It’s an actual boat indeed. It transports the animal that

secretes it without the animal sticking to it.

“The argonaut is free to leave its shell,” I told Conseil, “but it

never does.”

“Not unlike Captain Nemo,” Conseil replied sagely. “Which is why he

should have christened his ship the Argonaut.”

For about an hour the Nautilus cruised in the midst of this school of

mollusks. Then, lord knows why, they were gripped with a sudden

fear. As if at a signal, every sail was abruptly lowered; arms folded,

bodies contracted, shells turned over by changing their center of

gravity, and the whole flotilla disappeared under the waves. It was

instantaneous, and no squadron of ships ever maneuvered with greater

togetherness.

Just then night fell suddenly, and the waves barely surged in the

breeze, spreading placidly around the Nautilus’s side plates.

The next day, January 26, we cut the equator on the 82nd meridian and

we reentered the northern hemisphere.

During that day a fearsome school of sharks provided us with an

escort. Dreadful animals that teem in these seas and make them

extremely dangerous. There were Port Jackson sharks with a brown back,

a whitish belly, and eleven rows of teeth, bigeye sharks with necks

marked by a large black spot encircled in white and resembling an eye,

and Isabella sharks whose rounded snouts were strewn with dark

speckles. Often these powerful animals rushed at the lounge window

with a violence less than comforting. By this point Ned Land had lost

all self-control. He wanted to rise to the surface of the waves and

harpoon the monsters, especially certain smooth-hound sharks whose

mouths were paved with teeth arranged like a mosaic, and some big

five-meter tiger sharks that insisted on personally provoking him. But

the Nautilus soon picked up speed and easily left astern the fastest

of these man-eaters.

On January 27, at the entrance to the huge Bay of Bengal, we

repeatedly encountered a gruesome sight: human corpses floating on the

surface of the waves! Carried by the Ganges to the high seas, these

were deceased Indian villagers who hadn’t been fully devoured by

vultures, the only morticians in these parts. But there was no

shortage of sharks to assist them with their undertaking chores.

Near seven o’clock in the evening, the Nautilus lay half submerged,

navigating in the midst of milky white waves. As far as the eye could

see, the ocean seemed lactified. Was it an effect of the moon’s rays?

No, because the new moon was barely two days old and was still lost

below the horizon in the sun’s rays. The entire sky, although lit up

by stellar radiation, seemed pitch-black in comparison with the

whiteness of these waters.

Conseil couldn’t believe his eyes, and he questioned me about the

causes of this odd phenomenon. Luckily I was in a position to answer

him.

“That’s called a milk sea,” I told him, “a vast expanse of white waves

often seen along the coasts of Amboina and in these waterways.”

“But,” Conseil asked, “could master tell me the cause of this effect,

because I presume this water hasn’t really changed into milk!”

“No, my boy, and this whiteness that amazes you is merely due to the

presence of myriads of tiny creatures called infusoria, a sort of

diminutive glowworm that’s colorless and gelatinous in appearance, as

thick as a strand of hair, and no longer than one-fifth of a

millimeter. Some of these tiny creatures stick together over an area

of several leagues.”

“Several leagues!” Conseil exclaimed.

“Yes, my boy, and don’t even try to compute the number of these

infusoria. You won’t pull it off, because if I’m not mistaken, certain

navigators have cruised through milk seas for more than forty miles.”

I’m not sure that Conseil heeded my recommendation, because he seemed

to be deep in thought, no doubt trying to calculate how many

one-fifths of a millimeter are found in forty square miles. As for me,

I continued to observe this phenomenon. For several hours the

Nautilus’s spur sliced through these whitish waves, and I watched it

glide noiselessly over this soapy water, as if it were cruising

through those foaming eddies that a bay’s currents and countercurrents

sometimes leave between each other.

Near midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual hue, but behind us

all the way to the horizon, the skies kept mirroring the whiteness of

those waves and for a good while seemed imbued with the hazy glow of

an aurora borealis.

CHAPTER 2

A New Proposition from Captain Nemo

ON JANUARY 28, in latitude 9 degrees 4′ north, when the Nautilus

returned at noon to the surface of the sea, it lay in sight of land

some eight miles to the west. Right off, I observed a cluster of

mountains about 2,000 feet high, whose shapes were very whimsically

sculpted. After our position fix, I reentered the lounge, and when our

bearings were reported on the chart, I saw that we were off the island

of Ceylon, that pearl dangling from the lower lobe of the Indian

peninsula.

I went looking in the library for a book about this island, one of the

most fertile in the world. Sure enough, I found a volume entitled

Ceylon and the Singhalese by H. C. Sirr, Esq. Reentering the lounge, I

first noted the bearings of Ceylon, on which antiquity lavished so

many different names. It was located between latitude 5 degrees 55′

and 9 degrees 49′ north, and between longitude 79 degrees 42′ and 82

degrees 4′ east of the meridian of Greenwich; its length is 275 miles;

its maximum width, 150 miles; its circumference, 900 miles; its

surface area, 24,448 square miles, in other words, a little smaller

than that of Ireland.

Just then Captain Nemo and his chief officer appeared.

The captain glanced at the chart. Then, turning to me:

“The island of Ceylon,” he said, “is famous for its pearl

fisheries. Would you be interested, Professor Aronnax, in visiting one

of those fisheries?”

“Certainly, captain.”

“Fine. It’s easily done. Only, when we see the fisheries, we’ll see no

fishermen. The annual harvest hasn’t yet begun. No matter. I’ll give

orders to make for the Gulf of Mannar, and we’ll arrive there late

tonight.”

The captain said a few words to his chief officer who went out

immediately. Soon the Nautilus reentered its liquid element, and the

pressure gauge indicated that it was staying at a depth of thirty

feet.

With the chart under my eyes, I looked for the Gulf of Mannar. I found

it by the 9th parallel off the northwestern shores of Ceylon. It was

formed by the long curve of little Mannar Island. To reach it we had

to go all the way up Ceylon’s west coast.

“Professor,” Captain Nemo then told me, “there are pearl fisheries in

the Bay of Bengal, the seas of the East Indies, the seas of China and

Japan, plus those seas south of the United States, the Gulf of Panama

and the Gulf of California; but it’s off Ceylon that such fishing

reaps its richest rewards. No doubt we’ll be arriving a little

early. Fishermen gather in the Gulf of Mannar only during the month of

March, and for thirty days some 300 boats concentrate on the lucrative

harvest of these treasures from the sea. Each boat is manned by ten

oarsmen and ten fishermen. The latter divide into two groups, dive in

rotation, and descend to a depth of twelve meters with the help of a

heavy stone clutched between their feet and attached by a rope to

their boat.”

“You mean,” I said, “that such primitive methods are still all that

they use?”

“All,” Captain Nemo answered me, “although these fisheries belong to

the most industrialized people in the world, the English, to whom the

Treaty of Amiens granted them in 1802.”

“Yet it strikes me that diving suits like yours could perform yeoman

service in such work.”

“Yes, since those poor fishermen can’t stay long underwater. On his

voyage to Ceylon, the Englishman Percival made much of a Kaffir who

stayed under five minutes without coming up to the surface, but I find

that hard to believe. I know that some divers can last up to

fifty-seven seconds, and highly skillful ones to eighty-seven; but

such men are rare, and when the poor fellows climb back on board, the

water coming out of their noses and ears is tinted with blood. I

believe the average time underwater that these fishermen can tolerate

is thirty seconds, during which they hastily stuff their little nets

with all the pearl oysters they can tear loose. But these fishermen

generally don’t live to advanced age: their vision weakens, ulcers

break out on their eyes, sores form on their bodies, and some are even

stricken with apoplexy on the ocean floor.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s a sad occupation, and one that exists only to

gratify the whims of fashion. But tell me, captain, how many oysters

can a boat fish up in a workday?”

“About 40,000 to 50,000. It’s even said that in 1814, when the English

government went fishing on its own behalf, its divers worked just

twenty days and brought up 76,000,000 oysters.”

“At least,” I asked, “the fishermen are well paid, aren’t they?”

“Hardly, professor. In Panama they make just $1.00 per week. In most

places they earn only a penny for each oyster that has a pearl, and

they bring up so many that have none!”

“Only one penny to those poor people who make their employers rich!

That’s atrocious!”

“On that note, professor,” Captain Nemo told me, “you and your

companions will visit the Mannar oysterbank, and if by chance some

eager fisherman arrives early, well, we can watch him at work.”

“That suits me, captain.”

“By the way, Professor Aronnax, you aren’t afraid of sharks, are you?”

“Sharks?” I exclaimed.

This struck me as a pretty needless question, to say the least.

“Well?” Captain Nemo went on.

“I admit, captain, I’m not yet on very familiar terms with that genus

of fish.”

“We’re used to them, the rest of us,” Captain Nemo answered. “And in

time you will be too. Anyhow, we’ll be armed, and on our way we might

hunt a man-eater or two. It’s a fascinating sport. So, professor, I’ll

see you tomorrow, bright and early.”

This said in a carefree tone, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

If you’re invited to hunt bears in the Swiss mountains, you might say:

“Oh good, I get to go bear hunting tomorrow!” If you’re invited to

hunt lions on the Atlas plains or tigers in the jungles of India, you

might say: “Ha! Now’s my chance to hunt lions and tigers!” But if

you’re invited to hunt sharks in their native element, you might want

to think it over before accepting.

As for me, I passed a hand over my brow, where beads of cold sweat

were busy forming.

“Let’s think this over,” I said to myself, “and let’s take our

time. Hunting otters in underwater forests, as we did in the forests

of Crespo Island, is an acceptable activity. But to roam the bottom of

the sea when you’re almost certain to meet man-eaters in the

neighborhood, that’s another story! I know that in certain countries,

particularly the Andaman Islands, Negroes don’t hesitate to attack

sharks, dagger in one hand and noose in the other; but I also know

that many who face those fearsome animals don’t come back

alive. Besides, I’m not a Negro, and even if I were a Negro, in this

instance I don’t think a little hesitation on my part would be out of

place.”

And there I was, fantasizing about sharks, envisioning huge jaws armed

with multiple rows of teeth and capable of cutting a man in half. I

could already feel a definite pain around my pelvic girdle. And how I

resented the offhand manner in which the captain had extended his

deplorable invitation! You would have thought it was an issue of going

into the woods on some harmless fox hunt!

“Thank heavens!” I said to myself. “Conseil will never want to come

along, and that’ll be my excuse for not going with the captain.”

As for Ned Land, I admit I felt less confident of his wisdom. Danger,

however great, held a perennial attraction for his aggressive nature.

I went back to reading Sirr’s book, but I leafed through it

mechanically. Between the lines I kept seeing fearsome, wide-open

jaws.

Just then Conseil and the Canadian entered with a calm, even gleeful

air. Little did they know what was waiting for them.

“Ye gods, sir!” Ned Land told me. “Your Captain Nemo—the devil take

him—has just made us a very pleasant proposition!”

“Oh!” I said. “You know about—”

“With all due respect to master,” Conseil replied, “the Nautilus’s

commander has invited us, together with master, for a visit tomorrow

to Ceylon’s magnificent pearl fisheries. He did so in the most cordial

terms and conducted himself like a true gentleman.”

“He didn’t tell you anything else?”

“Nothing, sir,” the Canadian replied. “He said you’d already discussed

this little stroll.”

“Indeed,” I said. “But didn’t he give you any details on—”

“Not a one, Mr. Naturalist. You will be going with us, right?”

“Me? Why yes, certainly, of course! I can see that you like the idea,

Mr. Land.”

“Yes! It will be a really unusual experience!”

“And possibly dangerous!” I added in an insinuating tone.

“Dangerous?” Ned Land replied. “A simple trip to an oysterbank?”

Assuredly, Captain Nemo hadn’t seen fit to plant the idea of sharks in

the minds of my companions. For my part, I stared at them with anxious

eyes, as if they were already missing a limb or two. Should I alert

them? Yes, surely, but I hardly knew how to go about it.

“Would master,” Conseil said to me, “give us some background on pearl

fishing?”

“On the fishing itself?” I asked. “Or on the occupational hazards

that—”

“On the fishing,” the Canadian replied. “Before we tackle the terrain,

it helps to be familiar with it.”

“All right, sit down, my friends, and I’ll teach you everything I

myself have just been taught by the Englishman H. C. Sirr!”

Ned and Conseil took seats on a couch, and right off the Canadian said

to me:

“Sir, just what is a pearl exactly?”

“My gallant Ned,” I replied, “for poets a pearl is a tear from the

sea; for Orientals it’s a drop of solidified dew; for the ladies it’s

a jewel they can wear on their fingers, necks, and ears that’s oblong

in shape, glassy in luster, and formed from mother-of-pearl; for

chemists it’s a mixture of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate

with a little gelatin protein; and finally, for naturalists it’s a

simple festering secretion from the organ that produces

mother-of-pearl in certain bivalves.”

“Branch Mollusca,” Conseil said, “class Acephala, order Testacea.”

“Correct, my scholarly Conseil. Now then, those Testacea capable of

producing pearls include rainbow abalone, turbo snails, giant clams,

and saltwater scallops—briefly, all those that secrete

mother-of-pearl, in other words, that blue, azure, violet, or white

substance lining the insides of their valves.”

“Are mussels included too?” the Canadian asked.

“Yes! The mussels of certain streams in Scotland, Wales, Ireland,

Saxony, Bohemia, and France.”

“Good!” the Canadian replied. “From now on we’ll pay closer attention

to ’em.”

“But,” I went on, “for secreting pearls, the ideal mollusk is the

pearl oyster Meleagrina margaritifera, that valuable shellfish. Pearls

result simply from mother-of-pearl solidifying into a globular

shape. Either they stick to the oyster’s shell, or they become

embedded in the creature’s folds. On the valves a pearl sticks fast;

on the flesh it lies loose. But its nucleus is always some small, hard

object, say a sterile egg or a grain of sand, around which the

mother-of-pearl is deposited in thin, concentric layers over several

years in succession.”

“Can one find several pearls in the same oyster?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, my boy. There are some shellfish that turn into real jewel

coffers. They even mention one oyster, about which I remain dubious,

that supposedly contained at least 150 sharks.”

“150 sharks!” Ned Land yelped.

“Did I say sharks?” I exclaimed hastily. “I meant 150 pearls. Sharks

wouldn’t make sense.”

“Indeed,” Conseil said. “But will master now tell us how one goes

about extracting these pearls?”

“One proceeds in several ways, and often when pearls stick to the

valves, fishermen even pull them loose with pliers. But usually the

shellfish are spread out on mats made from the esparto grass that

covers the beaches. Thus they die in the open air, and by the end of

ten days they’ve rotted sufficiently. Next they’re immersed in huge

tanks of salt water, then they’re opened up and washed. At this point

the sorters begin their twofold task. First they remove the layers of

mother-of-pearl, which are known in the industry by the names

legitimate silver, bastard white, or bastard black, and these are

shipped out in cases weighing 125 to 150 kilograms. Then they remove

the oyster’s meaty tissue, boil it, and finally strain it, in order to

extract even the smallest pearls.”

“Do the prices of these pearls differ depending on their size?”

Conseil asked.

“Not only on their size,” I replied, “but also according to their

shape, their water—in other words, their color—and their orient—in

other words, that dappled, shimmering glow that makes them so

delightful to the eye. The finest pearls are called virgin pearls, or

paragons; they form in isolation within the mollusk’s tissue. They’re

white, often opaque but sometimes of opalescent transparency, and

usually spherical or pear-shaped. The spherical ones are made into

bracelets; the pear-shaped ones into earrings, and since they’re the

most valuable, they’re priced individually. The other pearls that

stick to the oyster’s shell are more erratically shaped and are priced

by weight. Finally, classed in the lowest order, the smallest pearls

are known by the name seed pearls; they’re priced by the measuring cup

and are used mainly in the creation of embroidery for church

vestments.”

“But it must be a long, hard job, sorting out these pearls by size,”

the Canadian said.

“No, my friend. That task is performed with eleven strainers, or

sieves, that are pierced with different numbers of holes. Those pearls

staying in the strainers with twenty to eighty holes are in the first

order. Those not slipping through the sieves pierced with 100 to 800

holes are in the second order. Finally, those pearls for which one

uses strainers pierced with 900 to 1,000 holes make up the seed

pearls.”

“How ingenious,” Conseil said, “to reduce dividing and classifying

pearls to a mechanical operation. And could master tell us the profits

brought in by harvesting these banks of pearl oysters?”

“According to Sirr’s book,” I replied, “these Ceylon fisheries are

farmed annually for a total profit of 3,000,000 man-eaters.”

“Francs!” Conseil rebuked.

“Yes, francs! 3,000,000 francs!” I went on. “But I don’t think these

fisheries bring in the returns they once did. Similarly, the Central

American fisheries used to make an annual profit of 4,000,000 francs

during the reign of King Charles V, but now they bring in only

two-thirds of that amount. All in all, it’s estimated that 9,000,000

francs is the current yearly return for the whole pearl-harvesting

industry.”

“But,” Conseil asked, “haven’t certain famous pearls been quoted at

extremely high prices?”

“Yes, my boy. They say Julius Caesar gave Servilia a pearl worth

120,000 francs in our currency.”

“I’ve even heard stories,” the Canadian said, “about some lady in

ancient times who drank pearls in vinegar.”

“Cleopatra,” Conseil shot back.

“It must have tasted pretty bad,” Ned Land added.

“Abominable, Ned my friend,” Conseil replied. “But when a little glass

of vinegar is worth 1,500,000 francs, its taste is a small price to

pay.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t marry the gal,” the Canadian said, throwing up his

hands with an air of discouragement.

“Ned Land married to Cleopatra?” Conseil exclaimed.

“But I was all set to tie the knot, Conseil,” the Canadian replied in

all seriousness, “and it wasn’t my fault the whole business fell

through. I even bought a pearl necklace for my fiancée, Kate Tender,

but she married somebody else instead. Well, that necklace cost me

only $1.50, but you can absolutely trust me on this, professor, its

pearls were so big, they wouldn’t have gone through that strainer with

twenty holes.”

“My gallant Ned,” I replied, laughing, “those were artificial pearls,

ordinary glass beads whose insides were coated with Essence of

Orient.”

“Wow!” the Canadian replied. “That Essence of Orient must sell for

quite a large sum.”

“As little as zero! It comes from the scales of a European carp, it’s

nothing more than a silver substance that collects in the water and is

preserved in ammonia. It’s worthless.”

“Maybe that’s why Kate Tender married somebody else,” replied Mr. Land

philosophically.

“But,” I said, “getting back to pearls of great value, I don’t think

any sovereign ever possessed one superior to the pearl owned by

Captain Nemo.”

“This one?” Conseil said, pointing to a magnificent jewel in its glass

case.

“Exactly. And I’m certainly not far off when I estimate its value at

2,000,000 . . . uh . . .”

“Francs!” Conseil said quickly.

“Yes,” I said, “2,000,000 francs, and no doubt all it cost our captain

was the effort to pick it up.”

“Ha!” Ned Land exclaimed. “During our stroll tomorrow, who says we

won’t run into one just like it?”

“Bah!” Conseil put in.

“And why not?”

“What good would a pearl worth millions do us here on the Nautilus?”

“Here, no,” Ned Land said. “But elsewhere. . . .”

“Oh! Elsewhere!” Conseil put in, shaking his head.

“In fact,” I said, “Mr. Land is right. And if we ever brought back to

Europe or America a pearl worth millions, it would make the story of

our adventures more authentic—and much more rewarding.”

“That’s how I see it,” the Canadian said.

“But,” said Conseil, who perpetually returned to the didactic side of

things, “is this pearl fishing ever dangerous?”

“No,” I replied quickly, “especially if one takes certain

precautions.”

“What risks would you run in a job like that?” Ned Land

said. “Swallowing a few gulps of salt water?”

“Whatever you say, Ned.” Then, trying to imitate Captain Nemo’s

carefree tone, I asked, “By the way, gallant Ned, are you afraid of

sharks?”

“Me?” the Canadian replied. “I’m a professional harpooner! It’s my job

to make a mockery of them!”

“It isn’t an issue,” I said, “of fishing for them with a swivel hook,

hoisting them onto the deck of a ship, chopping off the tail with a

sweep of the ax, opening the belly, ripping out the heart, and tossing

it into the sea.”

“So it’s an issue of . . . ?”

“Yes, precisely.”

“In the water?”

“In the water.”

“Ye gods, just give me a good harpoon! You see, sir, these sharks are

badly designed. They have to roll their bellies over to snap you up,

and in the meantime . . .”

Ned Land had a way of pronouncing the word “snap” that sent chills

down the spine.

“Well, how about you, Conseil? What are your feelings about these

man-eaters?”

“Me?” Conseil said. “I’m afraid I must be frank with master.”

Good for you, I thought.

“If master faces these sharks,” Conseil said, “I think his loyal

manservant should face them with him!”

CHAPTER 3

A Pearl Worth Ten Million

NIGHT FELL. I went to bed. I slept pretty poorly. Man-eaters played a

major role in my dreams. And I found it more or less appropriate that

the French word for shark, requin, has its linguistic roots in the

word requiem.

The next day at four o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the

steward whom Captain Nemo had placed expressly at my service. I got up

quickly, dressed, and went into the lounge.

Captain Nemo was waiting for me.

“Professor Aronnax,” he said to me, “are you ready to start?”

“I’m ready.”

“Kindly follow me.”

“What about my companions, captain?”

“They’ve been alerted and are waiting for us.”

“Aren’t we going to put on our diving suits?” I asked.

“Not yet. I haven’t let the Nautilus pull too near the coast, and

we’re fairly well out from the Mannar oysterbank. But I have the skiff

ready, and it will take us to the exact spot where we’ll disembark,

which will save us a pretty long trek. It’s carrying our diving

equipment, and we’ll suit up just before we begin our underwater

exploring.”

Captain Nemo took me to the central companionway whose steps led to

the platform. Ned and Conseil were there, enraptured with the

“pleasure trip” getting under way. Oars in position, five of the

Nautilus’s sailors were waiting for us aboard the skiff, which was

moored alongside. The night was still dark. Layers of clouds cloaked

the sky and left only a few stars in view. My eyes flew to the side

where land lay, but I saw only a blurred line covering three-quarters

of the horizon from southwest to northwest. Going up Ceylon’s west

coast during the night, the Nautilus lay west of the bay, or rather

that gulf formed by the mainland and Mannar Island. Under these dark

waters there stretched the bank of shellfish, an inexhaustible field

of pearls more than twenty miles long.

Captain Nemo, Conseil, Ned Land, and I found seats in the stern of the

skiff. The longboat’s coxswain took the tiller; his four companions

leaned into their oars; the moorings were cast off and we pulled

clear.

The skiff headed southward. The oarsmen took their time. I watched

their strokes vigorously catch the water, and they always waited ten

seconds before rowing again, following the practice used in most

navies. While the longboat coasted, drops of liquid flicked from the

oars and hit the dark troughs of the waves, pitter-pattering like

splashes of molten lead. Coming from well out, a mild swell made the

skiff roll gently, and a few cresting billows lapped at its bow.

We were silent. What was Captain Nemo thinking? Perhaps that this

approaching shore was too close for comfort, contrary to the

Canadian’s views in which it still seemed too far away. As for

Conseil, he had come along out of simple curiosity.

Near 5:30 the first glimmers of light on the horizon defined the upper

lines of the coast with greater distinctness. Fairly flat to the east,

it swelled a little toward the south. Five miles still separated it

from us, and its beach merged with the misty waters. Between us and

the shore, the sea was deserted. Not a boat, not a diver. Profound

solitude reigned over this gathering place of pearl fishermen. As

Captain Nemo had commented, we were arriving in these waterways a

month too soon.

At six o’clock the day broke suddenly, with that speed unique to

tropical regions, which experience no real dawn or dusk. The sun’s

rays pierced the cloud curtain gathered on the easterly horizon, and

the radiant orb rose swiftly.

I could clearly see the shore, which featured a few sparse trees here

and there.

The skiff advanced toward Mannar Island, which curved to the

south. Captain Nemo stood up from his thwart and studied the sea.

At his signal the anchor was lowered, but its chain barely ran because

the bottom lay no more than a meter down, and this locality was one of

the shallowest spots near the bank of shellfish. Instantly the skiff

wheeled around under the ebb tide’s outbound thrust.

“Here we are, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo then said. “You observe

this confined bay? A month from now in this very place, the numerous

fishing boats of the harvesters will gather, and these are the waters

their divers will ransack so daringly. This bay is felicitously laid

out for their type of fishing. It’s sheltered from the strongest

winds, and the sea is never very turbulent here, highly favorable

conditions for diving work. Now let’s put on our underwater suits, and

we’ll begin our stroll.”

I didn’t reply, and while staring at these suspicious waves, I began

to put on my heavy aquatic clothes, helped by the longboat’s

sailors. Captain Nemo and my two companions suited up as well. None of

the Nautilus’s men were to go with us on this new excursion.

Soon we were imprisoned up to the neck in india-rubber clothing, and

straps fastened the air devices onto our backs. As for the Ruhmkorff

device, it didn’t seem to be in the picture. Before inserting my head

into its copper capsule, I commented on this to the captain.

“Our lighting equipment would be useless to us,” the captain answered

me. “We won’t be going very deep, and the sun’s rays will be

sufficient to light our way. Besides, it’s unwise to carry electric

lanterns under these waves. Their brightness might unexpectedly

attract certain dangerous occupants of these waterways.”

As Captain Nemo pronounced these words, I turned to Conseil and Ned

Land. But my two friends had already encased their craniums in their

metal headgear, and they could neither hear nor reply.

I had one question left to address to Captain Nemo.

“What about our weapons?” I asked him. “Our rifles?”

“Rifles! What for? Don’t your mountaineers attack bears dagger in

hand? And isn’t steel surer than lead? Here’s a sturdy blade. Slip it

under your belt and let’s be off.”

I stared at my companions. They were armed in the same fashion, and

Ned Land was also brandishing an enormous harpoon he had stowed in the

skiff before leaving the Nautilus.

Then, following the captain’s example, I let myself be crowned with my

heavy copper sphere, and our air tanks immediately went into action.

An instant later, the longboat’s sailors helped us overboard one after

the other, and we set foot on level sand in a meter and a half of

water. Captain Nemo gave us a hand signal. We followed him down a

gentle slope and disappeared under the waves.

There the obsessive fears in my brain left me. I became surprisingly

calm again. The ease with which I could move increased my confidence,

and the many strange sights captivated my imagination.

The sun was already sending sufficient light under these waves. The

tiniest objects remained visible. After ten minutes of walking, we

were in five meters of water, and the terrain had become almost flat.

Like a covey of snipe over a marsh, there rose underfoot schools of

unusual fish from the genus Monopterus, whose members have no fin but

their tail. I recognized the Javanese eel, a genuine eight-decimeter

serpent with a bluish gray belly, which, without the gold lines over

its flanks, could easily be confused with the conger eel. From the

butterfish genus, whose oval bodies are very flat, I observed several

adorned in brilliant colors and sporting a dorsal fin like a sickle,

edible fish that, when dried and marinated, make an excellent dish

known by the name “karawade”; then some sea poachers, fish belonging

to the genus Aspidophoroides, whose bodies are covered with scaly

armor divided into eight lengthwise sections.

Meanwhile, as the sun got progressively higher, it lit up the watery

mass more and more. The seafloor changed little by little. Its

fine-grained sand was followed by a genuine causeway of smooth crags

covered by a carpet of mollusks and zoophytes. Among other specimens

in these two branches, I noted some windowpane oysters with thin

valves of unequal size, a type of ostracod unique to the Red Sea and

the Indian Ocean, then orange-hued lucina with circular shells,

awl-shaped auger shells, some of those Persian murex snails that

supply the Nautilus with such wonderful dye, spiky periwinkles fifteen

centimeters long that rose under the waves like hands ready to grab

you, turban snails with shells made of horn and bristling all over

with spines, lamp shells, edible duck clams that feed the Hindu

marketplace, subtly luminous jellyfish of the species Pelagia

panopyra, and finally some wonderful Oculina flabelliforma,

magnificent sea fans that fashion one of the most luxuriant tree forms

in this ocean.

In the midst of this moving vegetation, under arbors of water plants,

there raced legions of clumsy articulates, in particular some fanged

frog crabs whose carapaces form a slightly rounded triangle, robber

crabs exclusive to these waterways, and horrible parthenope crabs

whose appearance was repulsive to the eye. One animal no less hideous,

which I encountered several times, was the enormous crab that

Mr. Darwin observed, to which nature has given the instinct and

requisite strength to eat coconuts; it scrambles up trees on the beach

and sends the coconuts tumbling; they fracture in their fall and are

opened by its powerful pincers. Here, under these clear waves, this

crab raced around with matchless agility, while green turtles from the

species frequenting the Malabar coast moved sluggishly among the

crumbling rocks.

Near seven o’clock we finally surveyed the bank of shellfish, where

pearl oysters reproduce by the millions. These valuable mollusks stick

to rocks, where they’re strongly attached by a mass of brown filaments

that forbids their moving about. In this respect oysters are inferior

even to mussels, to whom nature has not denied all talent for

locomotion.

The shellfish Meleagrina, that womb for pearls whose valves are nearly

equal in size, has the shape of a round shell with thick walls and a

very rough exterior. Some of these shells were furrowed with flaky,

greenish bands that radiated down from the top. These were the young

oysters. The others had rugged black surfaces, measured up to fifteen

centimeters in width, and were ten or more years old.

Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw

that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature’s creative

powers are greater than man’s destructive instincts. True to those

instincts, Ned Land greedily stuffed the finest of these mollusks into

a net he carried at his side.

But we couldn’t stop. We had to follow the captain, who headed down

trails seemingly known only to himself. The seafloor rose noticeably,

and when I lifted my arms, sometimes they would pass above the surface

of the sea. Then the level of the oysterbank would lower

unpredictably. Often we went around tall, pointed rocks rising like

pyramids. In their dark crevices huge crustaceans, aiming their long

legs like heavy artillery, watched us with unblinking eyes, while

underfoot there crept millipedes, bloodworms, aricia worms, and

annelid worms, whose antennas and tubular tentacles were incredibly

long.

Just then a huge cave opened up in our path, hollowed from a

picturesque pile of rocks whose smooth heights were completely hung

with underwater flora. At first this cave looked pitch-black to

me. Inside, the sun’s rays seemed to diminish by degrees. Their hazy

transparency was nothing more than drowned light.

Captain Nemo went in. We followed him. My eyes soon grew accustomed to

this comparative gloom. I distinguished the unpredictably contoured

springings of a vault, supported by natural pillars firmly based on a

granite foundation, like the weighty columns of Tuscan

architecture. Why had our incomprehensible guide taken us into the

depths of this underwater crypt? I would soon find out.

After going down a fairly steep slope, our feet trod the floor of a

sort of circular pit. There Captain Nemo stopped, and his hand

indicated an object that I hadn’t yet noticed.

It was an oyster of extraordinary dimensions, a titanic giant clam, a

holy-water font that could have held a whole lake, a basin more than

two meters wide, hence even bigger than the one adorning the

Nautilus’s lounge.

I approached this phenomenal mollusk. Its mass of filaments attached

it to a table of granite, and there it grew by itself in the midst of

the cave’s calm waters. I estimated the weight of this giant clam at

300 kilograms. Hence such an oyster held fifteen kilos of meat, and

you’d need the stomach of King Gargantua to eat a couple dozen.

Captain Nemo was obviously familiar with this bivalve’s

existence. This wasn’t the first time he’d paid it a visit, and I

thought his sole reason for leading us to this locality was to show us

a natural curiosity. I was mistaken. Captain Nemo had an explicit

personal interest in checking on the current condition of this giant

clam.

The mollusk’s two valves were partly open. The captain approached and

stuck his dagger vertically between the shells to discourage any ideas

about closing; then with his hands he raised the fringed,

membrane-filled tunic that made up the animal’s mantle.

There, between its leaflike folds, I saw a loose pearl as big as a

coconut. Its globular shape, perfect clarity, and wonderful orient

made it a jewel of incalculable value. Carried away by curiosity, I

stretched out my hand to take it, weigh it, fondle it! But the captain

stopped me, signaled no, removed his dagger in one swift motion, and

let the two valves snap shut.

I then understood Captain Nemo’s intent. By leaving the pearl buried

beneath the giant clam’s mantle, he allowed it to grow

imperceptibly. With each passing year the mollusk’s secretions added

new concentric layers. The captain alone was familiar with the cave

where this wonderful fruit of nature was “ripening”; he alone reared

it, so to speak, in order to transfer it one day to his dearly beloved

museum. Perhaps, following the examples of oyster farmers in China and

India, he had even predetermined the creation of this pearl by

sticking under the mollusk’s folds some piece of glass or metal that

was gradually covered with mother-of-pearl. In any case, comparing

this pearl to others I already knew about, and to those shimmering in

the captain’s collection, I estimated that it was worth at least

10,000,000 francs. It was a superb natural curiosity rather than a

luxurious piece of jewelry, because I don’t know of any female ear

that could handle it.

Our visit to this opulent giant clam came to an end. Captain Nemo left

the cave, and we climbed back up the bank of shellfish in the midst of

these clear waters not yet disturbed by divers at work.

We walked by ourselves, genuine loiterers stopping or straying as our

fancies dictated. For my part, I was no longer worried about those

dangers my imagination had so ridiculously exaggerated. The shallows

drew noticeably closer to the surface of the sea, and soon, walking in

only a meter of water, my head passed well above the level of the

ocean. Conseil rejoined me, and gluing his huge copper capsule to

mine, his eyes gave me a friendly greeting. But this lofty plateau

measured only a few fathoms, and soon we reentered Our Element. I

think I’ve now earned the right to dub it that.

Ten minutes later, Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. I thought he’d

called a halt so that we could turn and start back. No. With a gesture

he ordered us to crouch beside him at the foot of a wide crevice. His

hand motioned toward a spot within the liquid mass, and I looked

carefully.

Five meters away a shadow appeared and dropped to the seafloor. The

alarming idea of sharks crossed my mind. But I was mistaken, and once

again we didn’t have to deal with monsters of the deep.

It was a man, a living man, a black Indian fisherman, a poor devil who

no doubt had come to gather what he could before harvest time. I saw

the bottom of his dinghy, moored a few feet above his head. He would

dive and go back up in quick succession. A stone cut in the shape of a

sugar loaf, which he gripped between his feet while a rope connected

it to his boat, served to lower him more quickly to the ocean

floor. This was the extent of his equipment. Arriving on the seafloor

at a depth of about five meters, he fell to his knees and stuffed his

sack with shellfish gathered at random. Then he went back up, emptied

his sack, pulled up his stone, and started all over again, the whole

process lasting only thirty seconds.

This diver didn’t see us. A shadow cast by our crag hid us from his

view. And besides, how could this poor Indian ever have guessed that

human beings, creatures like himself, were near him under the waters,

eavesdropping on his movements, not missing a single detail of his

fishing!

So he went up and down several times. He gathered only about ten

shellfish per dive, because he had to tear them from the banks where

each clung with its tough mass of filaments. And how many of these

oysters for which he risked his life would have no pearl in them!

I observed him with great care. His movements were systematically

executed, and for half an hour no danger seemed to threaten him. So I

had gotten used to the sight of this fascinating fishing when all at

once, just as the Indian was kneeling on the seafloor, I saw him make

a frightened gesture, stand, and gather himself to spring back to the

surface of the waves.

I understood his fear. A gigantic shadow appeared above the poor

diver. It was a shark of huge size, moving in diagonally, eyes ablaze,

jaws wide open!

I was speechless with horror, unable to make a single movement.

With one vigorous stroke of its fins, the voracious animal shot toward

the Indian, who jumped aside and avoided the shark’s bite but not the

thrashing of its tail, because that tail struck him across the chest

and stretched him out on the seafloor.

This scene lasted barely a few seconds. The shark returned, rolled

over on its back, and was getting ready to cut the Indian in half,

when Captain Nemo, who was stationed beside me, suddenly stood

up. Then he strode right toward the monster, dagger in hand, ready to

fight it at close quarters.

Just as it was about to snap up the poor fisherman, the man-eater saw

its new adversary, repositioned itself on its belly, and headed

swiftly toward him.

I can see Captain Nemo’s bearing to this day. Bracing himself, he

waited for the fearsome man-eater with wonderful composure, and when

the latter rushed at him, the captain leaped aside with prodigious

quickness, avoided a collision, and sank his dagger into its

belly. But that wasn’t the end of the story. A dreadful battle was

joined.

The shark bellowed, so to speak. Blood was pouring into the waves from

its wounds. The sea was dyed red, and through this opaque liquid I

could see nothing else.

Nothing else until the moment when, through a rift in the clouds, I

saw the daring captain clinging to one of the animal’s fins, fighting

the monster at close quarters, belaboring his enemy’s belly with stabs

of the dagger yet unable to deliver the deciding thrust, in other

words, a direct hit to the heart. In its struggles the man-eater

churned the watery mass so furiously, its eddies threatened to knock

me over.

I wanted to run to the captain’s rescue. But I was transfixed with

horror, unable to move.

I stared, wild-eyed. I saw the fight enter a new phase. The captain

fell to the seafloor, toppled by the enormous mass weighing him

down. Then the shark’s jaws opened astoundingly wide, like a pair of

industrial shears, and that would have been the finish of Captain Nemo

had not Ned Land, quick as thought, rushed forward with his harpoon

and driven its dreadful point into the shark’s underside.

The waves were saturated with masses of blood. The waters shook with

the movements of the man-eater, which thrashed about with

indescribable fury. Ned Land hadn’t missed his target. This was the

monster’s death rattle. Pierced to the heart, it was struggling with

dreadful spasms whose aftershocks knocked Conseil off his feet.

Meanwhile Ned Land pulled the captain clear. Uninjured, the latter

stood up, went right to the Indian, quickly cut the rope binding the

man to his stone, took the fellow in his arms, and with a vigorous

kick of the heel, rose to the surface of the sea.

The three of us followed him, and a few moments later, miraculously

safe, we reached the fisherman’s longboat.

Captain Nemo’s first concern was to revive this unfortunate man. I

wasn’t sure he would succeed. I hoped so, since the poor devil hadn’t

been under very long. But that stroke from the shark’s tail could have

been his deathblow.

Fortunately, after vigorous massaging by Conseil and the captain, I

saw the nearly drowned man regain consciousness little by little. He

opened his eyes. How startled he must have felt, how frightened even,

at seeing four huge, copper craniums leaning over him!

And above all, what must he have thought when Captain Nemo pulled a

bag of pearls from a pocket in his diving suit and placed it in the

fisherman’s hands? This magnificent benefaction from the Man of the

Waters to the poor Indian from Ceylon was accepted by the latter with

trembling hands. His bewildered eyes indicated that he didn’t know to

what superhuman creatures he owed both his life and his fortune.

At the captain’s signal we returned to the bank of shellfish, and

retracing our steps, we walked for half an hour until we encountered

the anchor connecting the seafloor with the Nautilus’s skiff.

Back on board, the sailors helped divest us of our heavy copper

carapaces.

Captain Nemo’s first words were spoken to the Canadian.

“Thank you, Mr. Land,” he told him.

“Tit for tat, captain,” Ned Land replied. “I owed it to you.”

The ghost of a smile glided across the captain’s lips, and that was

all.

“To the Nautilus,” he said.

The longboat flew over the waves. A few minutes later we encountered

the shark’s corpse again, floating.

From the black markings on the tips of its fins, I recognized the

dreadful Squalus melanopterus from the seas of the East Indies, a

variety in the species of sharks proper. It was more than twenty-five

feet long; its enormous mouth occupied a third of its body. It was an

adult, as could be seen from the six rows of teeth forming an

isosceles triangle in its upper jaw.

Conseil looked at it with purely scientific fascination, and I’m sure

he placed it, not without good reason, in the class of cartilaginous

fish, order Chondropterygia with fixed gills, family Selacia, genus

Squalus.

While I was contemplating this inert mass, suddenly a dozen of these

voracious melanoptera appeared around our longboat; but, paying no

attention to us, they pounced on the corpse and quarreled over every

scrap of it.

By 8:30 we were back on board the Nautilus.

There I fell to thinking about the incidents that marked our excursion

over the Mannar oysterbank. Two impressions inevitably stood out. One

concerned Captain Nemo’s matchless bravery, the other his devotion to

a human being, a representative of that race from which he had fled

beneath the seas. In spite of everything, this strange man hadn’t yet

succeeded in completely stifling his heart.

When I shared these impressions with him, he answered me in a tone

touched with emotion:

“That Indian, professor, lives in the land of the oppressed, and I am

to this day, and will be until my last breath, a native of that same

land!”

CHAPTER 4

The Red Sea

DURING THE DAY of January 29, the island of Ceylon disappeared below

the horizon, and at a speed of twenty miles per hour, the Nautilus

glided into the labyrinthine channels that separate the Maldive and

Laccadive Islands. It likewise hugged Kiltan Island, a shore of

madreporic origin discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1499 and one of

nineteen chief islands in the island group of the Laccadives, located

between latitude 10 degrees and 14 degrees 30′ north, and between

longitude 50 degrees 72′ and 69 degrees east.

By then we had fared 16,220 miles, or 7,500 leagues, from our starting

point in the seas of Japan.

The next day, January 30, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the

ocean, there was no more land in sight. Setting its course to the

north-northwest, the ship headed toward the Gulf of Oman, carved out

between Arabia and the Indian peninsula and providing access to the

Persian Gulf.

This was obviously a blind alley with no possible outlet. So where was

Captain Nemo taking us? I was unable to say. Which didn’t satisfy the

Canadian, who that day asked me where we were going.

“We’re going, Mr. Ned, where the captain’s fancy takes us.”

“His fancy,” the Canadian replied, “won’t take us very far. The

Persian Gulf has no outlet, and if we enter those waters, it won’t be

long before we return in our tracks.”

“All right, we’ll return, Mr. Land, and after the Persian Gulf, if the

Nautilus wants to visit the Red Sea, the Strait of Bab el Mandeb is

still there to let us in!”

“I don’t have to tell you, sir,” Ned Land replied, “that the Red Sea

is just as landlocked as the gulf, since the Isthmus of Suez hasn’t

been cut all the way through yet; and even if it was, a boat as

secretive as ours wouldn’t risk a canal intersected with locks. So the

Red Sea won’t be our way back to Europe either.”

“But I didn’t say we’d return to Europe.”

“What do you figure, then?”

“I figure that after visiting these unusual waterways of Arabia and

Egypt, the Nautilus will go back down to the Indian Ocean, perhaps

through Mozambique Channel, perhaps off the Mascarene Islands, and

then make for the Cape of Good Hope.”

“And once we’re at the Cape of Good Hope?” the Canadian asked with

typical persistence.

“Well then, we’ll enter that Atlantic Ocean with which we aren’t yet

familiar. What’s wrong, Ned my friend? Are you tired of this voyage

under the seas? Are you bored with the constantly changing sight of

these underwater wonders? Speaking for myself, I’ll be extremely

distressed to see the end of a voyage so few men will ever have a

chance to make.”

“But don’t you realize, Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied,

“that soon we’ll have been imprisoned for three whole months aboard

this Nautilus?”

“No, Ned, I didn’t realize it, I don’t want to realize it, and I don’t

keep track of every day and every hour.”

“But when will it be over?”

“In its appointed time. Meanwhile there’s nothing we can do about it,

and our discussions are futile. My gallant Ned, if you come and tell

me, ‘A chance to escape is available to us,’ then I’ll discuss it with

you. But that isn’t the case, and in all honesty, I don’t think

Captain Nemo ever ventures into European seas.”

This short dialogue reveals that in my mania for the Nautilus, I was

turning into the spitting image of its commander.

As for Ned Land, he ended our talk in his best speechifying style:

“That’s all fine and dandy. But in my humble opinion, a life in jail

is a life without joy.”

For four days until February 3, the Nautilus inspected the Gulf of

Oman at various speeds and depths. It seemed to be traveling at

random, as if hesitating over which course to follow, but it never

crossed the Tropic of Cancer.

After leaving this gulf we raised Muscat for an instant, the most

important town in the country of Oman. I marveled at its strange

appearance in the midst of the black rocks surrounding it, against

which the white of its houses and forts stood out sharply. I spotted

the rounded domes of its mosques, the elegant tips of its minarets,

and its fresh, leafy terraces. But it was only a fleeting vision, and

the Nautilus soon sank beneath the dark waves of these waterways.

Then our ship went along at a distance of six miles from the Arabic

coasts of Mahra and Hadhramaut, their undulating lines of mountains

relieved by a few ancient ruins. On February 5 we finally put into the

Gulf of Aden, a genuine funnel stuck into the neck of Bab el Mandeb

and bottling these Indian waters in the Red Sea.

On February 6 the Nautilus cruised in sight of the city of Aden,

perched on a promontory connected to the continent by a narrow

isthmus, a sort of inaccessible Gibraltar whose fortifications the

English rebuilt after capturing it in 1839. I glimpsed the octagonal

minarets of this town, which used to be one of the wealthiest, busiest

commercial centers along this coast, as the Arab historian Idrisi

tells it.

I was convinced that when Captain Nemo reached this point, he would

back out again; but I was mistaken, and much to my surprise, he did

nothing of the sort.

The next day, February 7, we entered the Strait of Bab el Mandeb,

whose name means “Gate of Tears” in the Arabic language. Twenty miles

wide, it’s only fifty-two kilometers long, and with the Nautilus

launched at full speed, clearing it was the work of barely an

hour. But I didn’t see a thing, not even Perim Island where the

British government built fortifications to strengthen Aden’s

position. There were many English and French steamers plowing this

narrow passageway, liners going from Suez to Bombay, Calcutta,

Melbourne, Réunion Island, and Mauritius; far too much traffic for the

Nautilus to make an appearance on the surface. So it wisely stayed in

midwater.

Finally, at noon, we were plowing the waves of the Red Sea.

The Red Sea: that great lake so famous in biblical traditions, seldom

replenished by rains, fed by no important rivers, continually drained

by a high rate of evaporation, its water level dropping a meter and a

half every year! If it were fully landlocked like a lake, this odd

gulf might dry up completely; on this score it’s inferior to its

neighbors, the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea, whose levels lower only

to the point where their evaporation exactly equals the amounts of

water they take to their hearts.

This Red Sea is 2,600 kilometers long with an average width of 240.

In the days of the Ptolemies and the Roman emperors, it was a great

commercial artery for the world, and when its isthmus has been cut

through, it will completely regain that bygone importance that the Suez

railways have already brought back in part.

I would not even attempt to understand the whim that induced Captain

Nemo to take us into this gulf. But I wholeheartedly approved of the

Nautilus’s entering it. It adopted a medium pace, sometimes staying on

the surface, sometimes diving to avoid some ship, and so I could

observe both the inside and topside of this highly unusual sea.

On February 8, as early as the first hours of daylight, Mocha appeared

before us: a town now in ruins, whose walls would collapse at the mere

sound of a cannon, and which shelters a few leafy date trees here and

there. This once-important city used to contain six public

marketplaces plus twenty-six mosques, and its walls, protected by

fourteen forts, fashioned a three-kilometer girdle around it.

Then the Nautilus drew near the beaches of Africa, where the sea is

considerably deeper. There, through the open panels and in a midwater

of crystal clarity, our ship enabled us to study wonderful bushes of

shining coral and huge chunks of rock wrapped in splendid green furs

of algae and fucus. What an indescribable sight, and what a variety of

settings and scenery where these reefs and volcanic islands leveled

off by the Libyan coast! But soon the Nautilus hugged the eastern

shore where these tree forms appeared in all their glory. This was off

the coast of Tihama, and there such zoophyte displays not only

flourished below sea level but they also fashioned picturesque

networks that unreeled as high as ten fathoms above it; the latter

were more whimsical but less colorful than the former, which kept

their bloom thanks to the moist vitality of the waters.

How many delightful hours I spent in this way at the lounge window!

How many new specimens of underwater flora and fauna I marveled at

beneath the light of our electric beacon! Mushroom-shaped fungus

coral, some slate-colored sea anemone including the species

Thalassianthus aster among others, organ-pipe coral arranged like

flutes and just begging for a puff from the god Pan, shells unique to

this sea that dwell in madreporic cavities and whose bases are twisted

into squat spirals, and finally a thousand samples of a polypary I

hadn’t observed until then: the common sponge.

First division in the polyp group, the class Spongiaria has been

created by scientists precisely for this unusual exhibit whose

usefulness is beyond dispute. The sponge is definitely not a plant, as

some naturalists still believe, but an animal of the lowest order, a

polypary inferior even to coral. Its animal nature isn’t in doubt, and

we can’t accept even the views of the ancients, who regarded it as

halfway between plant and animal. But I must say that naturalists are

not in agreement on the structural mode of sponges. For some it’s a

polypary, and for others, such as Professor Milne-Edwards, it’s a

single, solitary individual.

The class Spongiaria contains about 300 species that are encountered

in a large number of seas and even in certain streams, where they’ve

been given the name freshwater sponges. But their waters of choice are

the Red Sea and the Mediterranean near the Greek Islands or the coast

of Syria. These waters witness the reproduction and growth of soft,

delicate bath sponges whose prices run as high as 150 francs apiece:

the yellow sponge from Syria, the horn sponge from Barbary, etc. But

since I had no hope of studying these zoophytes in the seaports of the

Levant, from which we were separated by the insuperable Isthmus of

Suez, I had to be content with observing them in the waters of the Red

Sea.

So I called Conseil to my side, while at an average depth of eight to

nine meters, the Nautilus slowly skimmed every beautiful rock on the

easterly coast.

There sponges grew in every shape, globular, stalklike, leaflike,

fingerlike. With reasonable accuracy, they lived up to their nicknames

of basket sponges, chalice sponges, distaff sponges, elkhorn sponges,

lion’s paws, peacock’s tails, and Neptune’s gloves—designations

bestowed on them by fishermen, more poetically inclined than

scientists. A gelatinous, semifluid substance coated the fibrous

tissue of these sponges, and from this tissue there escaped a steady

trickle of water that, after carrying sustenance to each cell, was

being expelled by a contracting movement. This jellylike substance

disappears when the polyp dies, emitting ammonia as it rots. Finally

nothing remains but the fibers, either gelatinous or made of horn,

that constitute your household sponge, which takes on a russet hue and

is used for various tasks depending on its degree of elasticity,

permeability, or resistance to saturation.

These polyparies were sticking to rocks, shells of mollusks, and even

the stalks of water plants. They adorned the smallest crevices, some

sprawling, others standing or hanging like coral outgrowths. I told

Conseil that sponges are fished up in two ways, either by dragnet or

by hand. The latter method calls for the services of a diver, but it’s

preferable because it spares the polypary’s tissue, leaving it with a

much higher market value.

Other zoophytes swarming near the sponges consisted chiefly of a very

elegant species of jellyfish; mollusks were represented by varieties

of squid that, according to Professor Orbigny, are unique to the Red

Sea; and reptiles by virgata turtles belonging to the genus Chelonia,

which furnished our table with a dainty but wholesome dish.

As for fish, they were numerous and often remarkable. Here are the

ones that the Nautilus’s nets most frequently hauled on board: rays,

including spotted rays that were oval in shape and brick red in color,

their bodies strewn with erratic blue speckles and identifiable by

their jagged double stings, silver-backed skates, common stingrays

with stippled tails, butterfly rays that looked like huge two-meter

cloaks flapping at middepth, toothless guitarfish that were a type of

cartilaginous fish closer to the shark, trunkfish known as dromedaries

that were one and a half feet long and had humps ending in

backward-curving stings, serpentine moray eels with silver tails and

bluish backs plus brown pectorals trimmed in gray piping, a species of

butterfish called the fiatola decked out in thin gold stripes and the

three colors of the French flag, Montague blennies four decimeters

long, superb jacks handsomely embellished by seven black crosswise

streaks with blue and yellow fins plus gold and silver scales, snooks,

standard mullet with yellow heads, parrotfish, wrasse, triggerfish,

gobies, etc., plus a thousand other fish common to the oceans we had

already crossed.

On February 9 the Nautilus cruised in the widest part of the Red Sea,

measuring 190 miles straight across from Suakin on the west coast to

Qunfidha on the east coast.

At noon that day after our position fix, Captain Nemo climbed onto the

platform, where I happened to be. I vowed not to let him go below

again without at least sounding him out on his future plans. As soon

as he saw me, he came over, graciously offered me a cigar, and said to

me:

“Well, professor, are you pleased with this Red Sea? Have you seen

enough of its hidden wonders, its fish and zoophytes, its gardens of

sponges and forests of coral? Have you glimpsed the towns built on its

shores?”

“Yes, Captain Nemo,” I replied, “and the Nautilus is wonderfully

suited to this whole survey. Ah, it’s a clever boat!”

“Yes, sir, clever, daring, and invulnerable! It fears neither the Red

Sea’s dreadful storms nor its currents and reefs.”

“Indeed,” I said, “this sea is mentioned as one of the worst, and in

the days of the ancients, if I’m not mistaken, it had an abominable

reputation.”

“Thoroughly abominable, Professor Aronnax. The Greek and Latin

historians can find nothing to say in its favor, and the Greek

geographer Strabo adds that it’s especially rough during the rainy

season and the period of summer prevailing winds. The Arab Idrisi,

referring to it by the name Gulf of Colzoum, relates that ships

perished in large numbers on its sandbanks and that no one risked

navigating it by night. This, he claims, is a sea subject to fearful

hurricanes, strewn with inhospitable islands, and ‘with nothing good

to offer,’ either on its surface or in its depths. As a matter of

fact, the same views can also be found in Arrian, Agatharchides, and

Artemidorus.”

“One can easily see,” I answered, “that those historians didn’t

navigate aboard the Nautilus.”

“Indeed,” the captain replied with a smile, “and in this respect, the

moderns aren’t much farther along than the ancients. It took many

centuries to discover the mechanical power of steam! Who knows whether

we’ll see a second Nautilus within the next 100 years! Progress is

slow, Professor Aronnax.”

“It’s true,” I replied. “Your ship is a century ahead of its time,

perhaps several centuries. It would be most unfortunate if such a

secret were to die with its inventor!”

Captain Nemo did not reply. After some minutes of silence:

“We were discussing,” he said, “the views of ancient historians on the

dangers of navigating this Red Sea?”

“True,” I replied. “But weren’t their fears exaggerated?”

“Yes and no, Professor Aronnax,” answered Captain Nemo, who seemed to

know “his Red Sea” by heart. “To a modern ship, well rigged, solidly

constructed, and in control of its course thanks to obedient steam,

some conditions are no longer hazardous that offered all sorts of

dangers to the vessels of the ancients. Picture those early navigators

venturing forth in sailboats built from planks lashed together with

palm-tree ropes, caulked with powdered resin, and coated with dogfish

grease. They didn’t even have instruments for taking their bearings,

they went by guesswork in the midst of currents they barely

knew. Under such conditions, shipwrecks had to be numerous. But

nowadays steamers providing service between Suez and the South Seas

have nothing to fear from the fury of this gulf, despite the contrary

winds of its monsoons. Their captains and passengers no longer prepare

for departure with sacrifices to placate the gods, and after

returning, they don’t traipse in wreaths and gold ribbons to say

thanks at the local temple.”

“Agreed,” I said. “And steam seems to have killed off all gratitude in

seamen’s hearts. But since you seem to have made a special study of

this sea, captain, can you tell me how it got its name?”

“Many explanations exist on the subject, Professor Aronnax. Would you

like to hear the views of one chronicler in the 14th century?”

“Gladly.”

“This fanciful fellow claims the sea was given its name after the

crossing of the Israelites, when the Pharaoh perished in those waves

that came together again at Moses’ command:

To mark that miraculous sequel, the sea turned a red without equal.

Thus no other course would do but to name it for its hue.”

“An artistic explanation, Captain Nemo,” I replied, “but I’m unable to

rest content with it. So I’ll ask you for your own personal views.”

“Here they come. To my thinking, Professor Aronnax, this ‘Red Sea’

designation must be regarded as a translation of the Hebrew word

‘Edrom,’ and if the ancients gave it that name, it was because of the

unique color of its waters.”

“Until now, however, I’ve seen only clear waves, without any unique

hue.”

“Surely, but as we move ahead to the far end of this gulf, you’ll note

its odd appearance. I recall seeing the bay of El Tur completely red,

like a lake of blood.”

“And you attribute this color to the presence of microscopic algae?”

“Yes. It’s a purplish, mucilaginous substance produced by those tiny

buds known by the name trichodesmia, 40,000 of which are needed to

occupy the space of one square millimeter. Perhaps you’ll encounter

them when we reach El Tur.”

“Hence, Captain Nemo, this isn’t the first time you’ve gone through

the Red Sea aboard the Nautilus?”

“No, sir.”

“Then, since you’ve already mentioned the crossing of the Israelites

and the catastrophe that befell the Egyptians, I would ask if you’ve

ever discovered any traces under the waters of that great historic

event?”

“No, professor, and for an excellent reason.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s because that same locality where Moses crossed with all his

people is now so clogged with sand, camels can barely get their legs

wet. You can understand that my Nautilus wouldn’t have enough water

for itself.”

“And that locality is . . . ?” I asked.

“That locality lies a little above Suez in a sound that used to form a

deep estuary when the Red Sea stretched as far as the Bitter

Lakes. Now, whether or not their crossing was literally miraculous,

the Israelites did cross there in returning to the Promised Land, and

the Pharaoh’s army did perish at precisely that locality. So I think

that excavating those sands would bring to light a great many weapons

and tools of Egyptian origin.”

“Obviously,” I replied. “And for the sake of archaeology, let’s hope

that sooner or later such excavations do take place, once new towns

are settled on the isthmus after the Suez Canal has been cut through—a

canal, by the way, of little use to a ship such as the Nautilus!”

“Surely, but of great use to the world at large,” Captain Nemo

said. “The ancients well understood the usefulness to commerce of

connecting the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, but they never dreamed

of cutting a canal between the two, and instead they picked the Nile

as their link. If we can trust tradition, it was probably Egypt’s King

Sesostris who started digging the canal needed to join the Nile with

the Red Sea. What’s certain is that in 615 B.C. King Necho II was hard

at work on a canal that was fed by Nile water and ran through the

Egyptian plains opposite Arabia. This canal could be traveled in four

days, and it was so wide, two triple-tiered galleys could pass through

it abreast. Its construction was continued by Darius the Great, son of

Hystaspes, and probably completed by King Ptolemy II. Strabo saw it

used for shipping; but the weakness of its slope between its starting

point, near Bubastis, and the Red Sea left it navigable only a few

months out of the year. This canal served commerce until the century

of Rome’s Antonine emperors; it was then abandoned and covered with

sand, subsequently reinstated by Arabia’s Caliph Omar I, and finally

filled in for good in 761 or 762 A.D. by Caliph Al-Mansur, in an

effort to prevent supplies from reaching Mohammed ibn Abdullah, who

had rebelled against him. During his Egyptian campaign, your General

Napoleon Bonaparte discovered traces of this old canal in the Suez

desert, and when the tide caught him by surprise, he wellnigh perished

just a few hours before rejoining his regiment at Hadjaroth, the very

place where Moses had pitched camp 3,300 years before him.”

“Well, captain, what the ancients hesitated to undertake, Mr. de

Lesseps is now finishing up; his joining of these two seas will

shorten the route from Cadiz to the East Indies by 9,000 kilometers,

and he’ll soon change Africa into an immense island.”

“Yes, Professor Aronnax, and you have every right to be proud of your

fellow countryman. Such a man brings a nation more honor than the

greatest commanders! Like so many others, he began with difficulties

and setbacks, but he triumphed because he has the volunteer

spirit. And it’s sad to think that this deed, which should have been

an international deed, which would have insured that any

administration went down in history, will succeed only through the

efforts of one man. So all hail to Mr. de Lesseps!”

“Yes, all hail to that great French citizen,” I replied, quite

startled by how emphatically Captain Nemo had just spoken.

“Unfortunately,” he went on, “I can’t take you through that Suez

Canal, but the day after tomorrow, you’ll be able to see the long

jetties of Port Said when we’re in the Mediterranean.”

“In the Mediterranean!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, professor. Does that amaze you?”

“What amazes me is thinking we’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, captain, although since I’ve been aboard your vessel, I should

have formed the habit of not being amazed by anything!”

“But what is it that startles you?”

“The thought of how hideously fast the Nautilus will need to go, if

it’s to double the Cape of Good Hope, circle around Africa, and lie in

the open Mediterranean by the day after tomorrow.”

“And who says it will circle Africa, professor? What’s this talk about

doubling the Cape of Good Hope?”

“But unless the Nautilus navigates on dry land and crosses over the

isthmus—”

“Or under it, Professor Aronnax.”

“Under it?”

“Surely,” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “Under that tongue of land,

nature long ago made what man today is making on its surface.”

“What! There’s a passageway?”

“Yes, an underground passageway that I’ve named the Arabian Tunnel. It

starts below Suez and leads to the Bay of Pelusium.”

“But isn’t that isthmus only composed of quicksand?”

“To a certain depth. But at merely fifty meters, one encounters a firm

foundation of rock.”

“And it’s by luck that you discovered this passageway?” I asked, more

and more startled.

“Luck plus logic, professor, and logic even more than luck.”

“Captain, I hear you, but I can’t believe my ears.”

“Oh, sir! The old saying still holds good: Aures habent et non

audient!* Not only does this passageway exist, but I’ve taken

advantage of it on several occasions. Without it, I wouldn’t have

ventured today into such a blind alley as the Red Sea.”

*Latin: “They have ears but hear not.” Ed.

“Is it indiscreet to ask how you discovered this tunnel?”

“Sir,” the captain answered me, “there can be no secrets between men

who will never leave each other.”

I ignored this innuendo and waited for Captain Nemo’s explanation.

“Professor,” he told me, “the simple logic of the naturalist led me to

discover this passageway, and I alone am familiar with it. I’d noted

that in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean there exist a number of

absolutely identical species of fish: eels, butterfish, greenfish,

bass, jewelfish, flying fish. Certain of this fact, I wondered if

there weren’t a connection between the two seas. If there were, its

underground current had to go from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean

simply because of their difference in level. So I caught a large

number of fish in the vicinity of Suez. I slipped copper rings around

their tails and tossed them back into the sea. A few months later off

the coast of Syria, I recaptured a few specimens of my fish, adorned

with their telltale rings. So this proved to me that some connection

existed between the two seas. I searched for it with my Nautilus, I

discovered it, I ventured into it; and soon, professor, you also will

have cleared my Arabic tunnel!”

CHAPTER 5

Arabian Tunnel

THE SAME DAY, I reported to Conseil and Ned Land that part of the

foregoing conversation directly concerning them. When I told them we

would be lying in Mediterranean waters within two days, Conseil

clapped his hands, but the Canadian shrugged his shoulders.

“An underwater tunnel!” he exclaimed. “A connection between two seas!

Who ever heard of such malarkey!”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “had you ever heard of the Nautilus?

No, yet here it is! So don’t shrug your shoulders so blithely, and

don’t discount something with the feeble excuse that you’ve never

heard of it.”

“We’ll soon see!” Ned Land shot back, shaking his head. “After all,

I’d like nothing better than to believe in your captain’s little

passageway, and may Heaven grant it really does take us to the

Mediterranean.”

The same evening, at latitude 21 degrees 30′ north, the Nautilus was

afloat on the surface of the sea and drawing nearer to the Arab

coast. I spotted Jidda, an important financial center for Egypt,

Syria, Turkey, and the East Indies. I could distinguish with

reasonable clarity the overall effect of its buildings, the ships made

fast along its wharves, and those bigger vessels whose draft of water

required them to drop anchor at the port’s offshore mooring. The sun,

fairly low on the horizon, struck full force on the houses in this

town, accenting their whiteness. Outside the city limits, some wood or

reed huts indicated the quarter where the bedouins lived.

Soon Jidda faded into the shadows of evening, and the Nautilus went

back beneath the mildly phosphorescent waters.

The next day, February 10, several ships appeared, running on our

opposite tack. The Nautilus resumed its underwater navigating; but at

the moment of our noon sights, the sea was deserted and the ship rose

again to its waterline.

With Ned and Conseil, I went to sit on the platform. The coast to the

east looked like a slightly blurred mass in a damp fog.

Leaning against the sides of the skiff, we were chatting of one thing

and another, when Ned Land stretched his hand toward a point in the

water, saying to me:

“See anything out there, professor?”

“No, Ned,” I replied, “but you know I don’t have your eyes.”

“Take a good look,” Ned went on. “There, ahead to starboard, almost

level with the beacon! Don’t you see a mass that seems to be moving

around?”

“Right,” I said after observing carefully, “I can make out something

like a long, blackish object on the surface of the water.”

“A second Nautilus?” Conseil said.

“No,” the Canadian replied, “unless I’m badly mistaken, that’s some

marine animal.”

“Are there whales in the Red Sea?” Conseil asked.

“Yes, my boy,” I replied, “they’re sometimes found here.”

“That’s no whale,” continued Ned Land, whose eyes never strayed from

the object they had sighted. “We’re old chums, whales and I, and I

couldn’t mistake their little ways.”

“Let’s wait and see,” Conseil said. “The Nautilus is heading that

direction, and we’ll soon know what we’re in for.”

In fact, that blackish object was soon only a mile away from us. It

looked like a huge reef stranded in midocean. What was it? I still

couldn’t make up my mind.

“Oh, it’s moving off! It’s diving!” Ned Land exclaimed. “Damnation!

What can that animal be? It doesn’t have a forked tail like baleen

whales or sperm whales, and its fins look like sawed-off limbs.”

“But in that case—” I put in.

“Good lord,” the Canadian went on, “it’s rolled over on its back, and

it’s raising its breasts in the air!”

“It’s a siren!” Conseil exclaimed. “With all due respect to master,

it’s an actual mermaid!”

That word “siren” put me back on track, and I realized that the animal

belonged to the order Sirenia: marine creatures that legends have

turned into mermaids, half woman, half fish.

“No,” I told Conseil, “that’s no mermaid, it’s an unusual creature of

which only a few specimens are left in the Red Sea. That’s a dugong.”

“Order Sirenia, group Pisciforma, subclass Monodelphia, class

Mammalia, branch Vertebrata,” Conseil replied.

And when Conseil has spoken, there’s nothing else to be said.

Meanwhile Ned Land kept staring. His eyes were gleaming with desire at

the sight of that animal. His hands were ready to hurl a harpoon. You

would have thought he was waiting for the right moment to jump

overboard and attack the creature in its own element.

“Oh, sir,” he told me in a voice trembling with excitement, “I’ve

never killed anything like that!”

His whole being was concentrated in this last word.

Just then Captain Nemo appeared on the platform. He spotted the

dugong. He understood the Canadian’s frame of mind and addressed him

directly:

“If you held a harpoon, Mr. Land, wouldn’t your hands be itching to

put it to work?”

“Positively, sir.”

“And just for one day, would it displease you to return to your

fisherman’s trade and add this cetacean to the list of those you’ve

already hunted down?”

“It wouldn’t displease me one bit.”

“All right, you can try your luck!”

“Thank you, sir,” Ned Land replied, his eyes ablaze.

“Only,” the captain went on, “I urge you to aim carefully at this

animal, in your own personal interest.”

“Is the dugong dangerous to attack?” I asked, despite the Canadian’s

shrug of the shoulders.

“Yes, sometimes,” the captain replied. “These animals have been known

to turn on their assailants and capsize their longboats. But with

Mr. Land that danger isn’t to be feared. His eye is sharp, his arm is

sure. If I recommend that he aim carefully at this dugong, it’s

because the animal is justly regarded as fine game, and I know

Mr. Land doesn’t despise a choice morsel.”

“Aha!” the Canadian put in. “This beast offers the added luxury of

being good to eat?”

“Yes, Mr. Land. Its flesh is actual red meat, highly prized, and set

aside throughout Malaysia for the tables of aristocrats. Accordingly,

this excellent animal has been hunted so bloodthirstily that, like its

manatee relatives, it has become more and more scarce.”

“In that case, captain,” Conseil said in all seriousness, “on the

offchance that this creature might be the last of its line, wouldn’t

it be advisable to spare its life, in the interests of science?”

“Maybe,” the Canadian answered, “it would be better to hunt it down,

in the interests of mealtime.”

“Then proceed, Mr. Land,” Captain Nemo replied.

Just then, as mute and emotionless as ever, seven crewmen climbed onto

the platform. One carried a harpoon and line similar to those used in

whale fishing. Its deck paneling opened, the skiff was wrenched from

its socket and launched to sea. Six rowers sat on the thwarts, and the

coxswain took the tiller. Ned, Conseil, and I found seats in the

stern.

“Aren’t you coming, captain?” I asked.

“No, sir, but I wish you happy hunting.”

The skiff pulled clear, and carried off by its six oars, it headed

swiftly toward the dugong, which by then was floating two miles from

the Nautilus.

Arriving within a few cable lengths of the cetacean, our longboat

slowed down, and the sculls dipped noiselessly into the tranquil

waters. Harpoon in hand, Ned Land went to take his stand in the

skiff’s bow. Harpoons used for hunting whales are usually attached to

a very long rope that pays out quickly when the wounded animal drags

it with him. But this rope measured no more than about ten fathoms,

and its end had simply been fastened to a small barrel that, while

floating, would indicate the dugong’s movements beneath the waters.

I stood up and could clearly observe the Canadian’s adversary. This

dugong—which also boasts the name halicore—closely resembled a

manatee. Its oblong body ended in a very long caudal fin and its

lateral fins in actual fingers. It differs from the manatee in that

its upper jaw is armed with two long, pointed teeth that form

diverging tusks on either side.

This dugong that Ned Land was preparing to attack was of colossal

dimensions, easily exceeding seven meters in length. It didn’t stir

and seemed to be sleeping on the surface of the waves, a circumstance

that should have made it easier to capture.

The skiff approached cautiously to within three fathoms of the

animal. The oars hung suspended above their rowlocks. I was

crouching. His body leaning slightly back, Ned Land brandished his

harpoon with expert hands.

Suddenly a hissing sound was audible, and the dugong

disappeared. Although the harpoon had been forcefully hurled, it

apparently had hit only water.

“Damnation!” exclaimed the furious Canadian. “I missed it!”

“No,” I said, “the animal’s wounded, there’s its blood; but your

weapon didn’t stick in its body.”

“My harpoon! Get my harpoon!” Ned Land exclaimed.

The sailors went back to their sculling, and the coxswain steered the

longboat toward the floating barrel. We fished up the harpoon, and the

skiff started off in pursuit of the animal.

The latter returned from time to time to breathe at the surface of the

sea. Its wound hadn’t weakened it because it went with tremendous

speed. Driven by energetic arms, the longboat flew on its

trail. Several times we got within a few fathoms of it, and the

Canadian hovered in readiness to strike; but then the dugong would

steal away with a sudden dive, and it proved impossible to overtake

the beast.

I’ll let you assess the degree of anger consuming our impatient Ned

Land. He hurled at the hapless animal the most potent swearwords in

the English language. For my part, I was simply distressed to see this

dugong outwit our every scheme.

We chased it unflaggingly for a full hour, and I’d begun to think it

would prove too difficult to capture, when the animal got the untimely

idea of taking revenge on us, a notion it would soon have cause to

regret. It wheeled on the skiff, to assault us in its turn.

This maneuver did not escape the Canadian.

“Watch out!” he said.

The coxswain pronounced a few words in his bizarre language, and no

doubt he alerted his men to keep on their guard.

Arriving within twenty feet of the skiff, the dugong stopped, sharply

sniffing the air with its huge nostrils, pierced not at the tip of its

muzzle but on its topside. Then it gathered itself and sprang at us.