ever was one. With some justice, fishermen’s yarns aren’t to be
trusted, but here’s what a few of them relate. Inside the corpse of
one of these animals there were found a buffalo head and a whole calf;
in another, two tuna and a sailor in uniform; in yet another, a
soldier with his saber; in another, finally, a horse with its
rider. In candor, none of these sounds like divinely inspired
truth. But the fact remains that not a single dogfish let itself get
caught in the Nautilus’s nets, so I can’t vouch for their voracity.
Schools of elegant, playful dolphin swam alongside for entire
days. They went in groups of five or six, hunting in packs like wolves
over the countryside; moreover, they’re just as voracious as dogfish,
if I can believe a certain Copenhagen professor who says that from one
dolphin’s stomach, he removed thirteen porpoises and fifteen
seals. True, it was a killer whale, belonging to the biggest known
species, whose length sometimes exceeds twenty-four feet. The family
Delphinia numbers ten genera, and the dolphins I saw were akin to the
genus Delphinorhynchus, remarkable for an extremely narrow muzzle four
times as long as the cranium. Measuring three meters, their bodies
were black on top, underneath a pinkish white strewn with small, very
scattered spots.
From these seas I’ll also mention some unusual specimens of croakers,
fish from the order Acanthopterygia, family Scienidea. Some
authors—more artistic than scientific—claim that these fish are
melodious singers, that their voices in unison put on concerts
unmatched by human choristers. I don’t say nay, but to my regret these
croakers didn’t serenade us as we passed.
Finally, to conclude, Conseil classified a large number of flying
fish. Nothing could have made a more unusual sight than the marvelous
timing with which dolphins hunt these fish. Whatever the range of its
flight, however evasive its trajectory (even up and over the
Nautilus), the hapless flying fish always found a dolphin to welcome
it with open mouth. These were either flying gurnards or kitelike sea
robins, whose lips glowed in the dark, at night scrawling fiery
streaks in the air before plunging into the murky waters like so many
shooting stars.
Our navigating continued under these conditions until March 13. That
day the Nautilus was put to work in some depth-sounding experiments
that fascinated me deeply.
By then we had fared nearly 13,000 leagues from our starting point in
the Pacific high seas. Our position fix placed us in latitude 45
degrees 37′ south and longitude 37 degrees 53′ west. These were the
same waterways where Captain Denham, aboard the Herald, payed out
14,000 meters of sounding line without finding bottom. It was here too
that Lieutenant Parker, aboard the American frigate Congress, was
unable to reach the underwater soil at 15,149 meters.
Captain Nemo decided to take his Nautilus down to the lowest depths in
order to double-check these different soundings. I got ready to record
the results of this experiment. The panels in the lounge opened, and
maneuvers began for reaching those strata so prodigiously far removed.
It was apparently considered out of the question to dive by filling
the ballast tanks. Perhaps they wouldn’t sufficiently increase the
Nautilus’s specific gravity. Moreover, in order to come back up, it
would be necessary to expel the excess water, and our pumps might not
have been strong enough to overcome the outside pressure.
Captain Nemo decided to make for the ocean floor by submerging on an
appropriately gradual diagonal with the help of his side fins, which
were set at a 45 degrees angle to the Nautilus’s waterline. Then the
propeller was brought to its maximum speed, and its four blades
churned the waves with indescribable violence.
Under this powerful thrust the Nautilus’s hull quivered like a
resonating chord, and the ship sank steadily under the
waters. Stationed in the lounge, the captain and I watched the needle
swerving swiftly over the pressure gauge. Soon we had gone below the
livable zone where most fish reside. Some of these animals can thrive
only at the surface of seas or rivers, but a minority can dwell at
fairly great depths. Among the latter I observed a species of dogfish
called the cow shark that’s equipped with six respiratory slits, the
telescope fish with its enormous eyes, the armored gurnard with gray
thoracic fins plus black pectoral fins and a breastplate protected by
pale red slabs of bone, then finally the grenadier, living at a depth
of 1,200 meters, by that point tolerating a pressure of 120
atmospheres.
I asked Captain Nemo if he had observed any fish at more considerable
depths.
“Fish? Rarely!” he answered me. “But given the current state of marine
science, who are we to presume, what do we really know of these
depths?”
“Just this, captain. In going toward the ocean’s lower strata, we know
that vegetable life disappears more quickly than animal life. We know
that moving creatures can still be encountered where water plants no
longer grow. We know that oysters and pilgrim scallops live in 2,000
meters of water, and that Admiral McClintock, England’s hero of the
polar seas, pulled in a live sea star from a depth of 2,500 meters. We
know that the crew of the Royal Navy’s Bulldog fished up a starfish
from 2,620 fathoms, hence from a depth of more than one vertical
league. Would you still say, Captain Nemo, that we really know
nothing?”
“No, professor,” the captain replied, “I wouldn’t be so
discourteous. Yet I’ll ask you to explain how these creatures can live
at such depths?”
“I explain it on two grounds,” I replied. “In the first place, because
vertical currents, which are caused by differences in the water’s
salinity and density, can produce enough motion to sustain the
rudimentary lifestyles of sea lilies and starfish.”
“True,” the captain put in.
“In the second place, because oxygen is the basis of life, and we know
that the amount of oxygen dissolved in salt water increases rather
than decreases with depth, that the pressure in these lower strata
helps to concentrate their oxygen content.”
“Oho! We know that, do we?” Captain Nemo replied in a tone of mild
surprise. “Well, professor, we have good reason to know it because
it’s the truth. I might add, in fact, that the air bladders of fish
contain more nitrogen than oxygen when these animals are caught at the
surface of the water, and conversely, more oxygen than nitrogen when
they’re pulled up from the lower depths. Which bears out your
formulation. But let’s continue our observations.”
My eyes flew back to the pressure gauge. The instrument indicated a
depth of 6,000 meters. Our submergence had been going on for an
hour. The Nautilus slid downward on its slanting fins, still
sinking. These deserted waters were wonderfully clear, with a
transparency impossible to convey. An hour later we were at 13,000
meters—about three and a quarter vertical leagues—and the ocean floor
was nowhere in sight.
However, at 14,000 meters I saw blackish peaks rising in the midst of
the waters. But these summits could have belonged to mountains as high
or even higher than the Himalayas or Mt. Blanc, and the extent of
these depths remained incalculable.
Despite the powerful pressures it was undergoing, the Nautilus sank
still deeper. I could feel its sheet-iron plates trembling down to
their riveted joins; metal bars arched; bulkheads groaned; the lounge
windows seemed to be warping inward under the water’s pressure. And
this whole sturdy mechanism would surely have given way, if, as its
captain had said, it weren’t capable of resisting like a solid block.
While grazing these rocky slopes lost under the waters, I still
spotted some seashells, tube worms, lively annelid worms from the
genus Spirorbis, and certain starfish specimens.
But soon these last representatives of animal life vanished, and three
vertical leagues down, the Nautilus passed below the limits of
underwater existence just as an air balloon rises above the breathable
zones in the sky. We reached a depth of 16,000 meters—four vertical
leagues—and by then the Nautilus’s plating was tolerating a pressure
of 1,600 atmospheres, in other words, 1,600 kilograms per each square
centimeter on its surface!
“What an experience!” I exclaimed. “Traveling these deep regions where
no man has ever ventured before! Look, captain! Look at these
magnificent rocks, these uninhabited caves, these last global haunts
where life is no longer possible! What unheard-of scenery, and why are
we reduced to preserving it only as a memory?”
“Would you like,” Captain Nemo asked me, “to bring back more than just
a memory?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that nothing could be easier than taking a photograph of this
underwater region!”
Before I had time to express the surprise this new proposition caused
me, a camera was carried into the lounge at Captain Nemo’s
request. The liquid setting, electrically lit, unfolded with perfect
clarity through the wide-open panels. No shadows, no blurs, thanks to
our artificial light. Not even sunshine could have been better for our
purposes. With the thrust of its propeller curbed by the slant of its
fins, the Nautilus stood still. The camera was aimed at the scenery on
the ocean floor, and in a few seconds we had a perfect negative.
I attach a print of the positive. In it you can view these primordial
rocks that have never seen the light of day, this nether granite that
forms the powerful foundation of our globe, the deep caves cut into
the stony mass, the outlines of incomparable distinctness whose far
edges stand out in black as if from the brush of certain Flemish
painters. In the distance is a mountainous horizon, a wondrously
undulating line that makes up the background of this landscape. The
general effect of these smooth rocks is indescribable: black,
polished, without moss or other blemish, carved into strange shapes,
sitting firmly on a carpet of sand that sparkled beneath our streams
of electric light.
Meanwhile, his photographic operations over, Captain Nemo told me:
“Let’s go back up, professor. We mustn’t push our luck and expose the
Nautilus too long to these pressures.”
“Let’s go back up!” I replied.
“Hold on tight.”
Before I had time to realize why the captain made this recommendation,
I was hurled to the carpet.
Its fins set vertically, its propeller thrown in gear at the captain’s
signal, the Nautilus rose with lightning speed, shooting upward like
an air balloon into the sky. Vibrating resonantly, it knifed through
the watery mass. Not a single detail was visible. In four minutes it
had cleared the four vertical leagues separating it from the surface
of the ocean, and after emerging like a flying fish, it fell back into
the sea, making the waves leap to prodigious heights.
CHAPTER 12
Sperm Whales and Baleen Whales
DURING THE NIGHT of March 13-14, the Nautilus resumed its southward
heading. Once it was abreast of Cape Horn, I thought it would strike
west of the cape, make for Pacific seas, and complete its tour of the
world. It did nothing of the sort and kept moving toward the
southernmost regions. So where was it bound? The pole? That was
insanity. I was beginning to think that the captain’s recklessness
more than justified Ned Land’s worst fears.
For a good while the Canadian had said nothing more to me about his
escape plans. He had become less sociable, almost sullen. I could see
how heavily this protracted imprisonment was weighing on him. I could
feel the anger building in him. Whenever he encountered the captain,
his eyes would flicker with dark fire, and I was in constant dread
that his natural vehemence would cause him to do something rash.
That day, March 14, he and Conseil managed to find me in my
stateroom. I asked them the purpose of their visit.
“To put a simple question to you, sir,” the Canadian answered me.
“Go on, Ned.”
“How many men do you think are on board the Nautilus?”
“I’m unable to say, my friend.”
“It seems to me,” Ned Land went on, “that it wouldn’t take much of a
crew to run a ship like this one.”
“Correct,” I replied. “Under existing conditions some ten men at the
most should be enough to operate it.”
“All right,” the Canadian said, “then why should there be any more
than that?”
“Why?” I answered.
I stared at Ned Land, whose motives were easy to guess.
“Because,” I said, “if I can trust my hunches, if I truly understand
the captain’s way of life, his Nautilus isn’t simply a ship. It’s
meant to be a refuge for people like its commander, people who have
severed all ties with the shore.”
“Perhaps,” Conseil said, “but in a nutshell, the Nautilus can hold
only a certain number of men, so couldn’t master estimate their
maximum?”
“How, Conseil?”
“By calculating it. Master is familiar with the ship’s capacity, hence
the amount of air it contains; on the other hand, master knows how
much air each man consumes in the act of breathing, and he can compare
this data with the fact that the Nautilus must rise to the surface
every twenty-four hours . . .”
Conseil didn’t finish his sentence, but I could easily see what he was
driving at.
“I follow you,” I said. “But while they’re simple to do, such
calculations can give only a very uncertain figure.”
“No problem,” the Canadian went on insistently.
“Then here’s how to calculate it,” I replied. “In one hour each man
consumes the oxygen contained in 100 liters of air, hence during
twenty-four hours the oxygen contained in 2,400 liters. Therefore, we
must look for the multiple of 2,400 liters of air that gives us the
amount found in the Nautilus.”
“Precisely,” Conseil said.
“Now then,” I went on, “the Nautilus’s capacity is 1,500 metric tons,
and that of a ton is 1,000 liters, so the Nautilus holds 1,500,000
liters of air, which, divided by 2,400 . . .”
I did a quick pencil calculation.
“. . . gives us the quotient of 625. Which is tantamount to saying
that the air contained in the Nautilus would be exactly enough for 625
men over twenty-four hours.”
“625!” Ned repeated.
“But rest assured,” I added, “that between passengers, seamen, or
officers, we don’t total one-tenth of that figure.”
“Which is still too many for three men!” Conseil muttered.
“So, my poor Ned, I can only counsel patience.”
“And,” Conseil replied, “even more than patience, resignation.”
Conseil had said the true word.
“Even so,” he went on, “Captain Nemo can’t go south forever! He’ll
surely have to stop, if only at the Ice Bank, and he’ll return to the
seas of civilization! Then it will be time to resume Ned Land’s
plans.”
The Canadian shook his head, passed his hand over his brow, made no
reply, and left us.
“With master’s permission, I’ll make an observation to him,” Conseil
then told me. “Our poor Ned broods about all the things he can’t
have. He’s haunted by his former life. He seems to miss everything
that’s denied us. He’s obsessed by his old memories and it’s breaking
his heart. We must understand him. What does he have to occupy him
here? Nothing. He isn’t a scientist like master, and he doesn’t share
our enthusiasm for the sea’s wonders. He would risk anything just to
enter a tavern in his own country!”
To be sure, the monotony of life on board must have seemed unbearable
to the Canadian, who was accustomed to freedom and activity. It was a
rare event that could excite him. That day, however, a development
occurred that reminded him of his happy years as a harpooner.
Near eleven o’clock in the morning, while on the surface of the ocean,
the Nautilus fell in with a herd of baleen whales. This encounter
didn’t surprise me, because I knew these animals were being hunted so
relentlessly that they took refuge in the ocean basins of the high
latitudes.
In the maritime world and in the realm of geographic exploration,
whales have played a major role. This is the animal that first dragged
the Basques in its wake, then Asturian Spaniards, Englishmen, and
Dutchmen, emboldening them against the ocean’s perils, and leading
them to the ends of the earth. Baleen whales like to frequent the
southernmost and northernmost seas. Old legends even claim that these
cetaceans led fishermen to within a mere seven leagues of the North
Pole. Although this feat is fictitious, it will someday come true,
because it’s likely that by hunting whales in the Arctic or Antarctic
regions, man will finally reach this unknown spot on the globe.
We were seated on the platform next to a tranquil sea. The month of
March, since it’s the equivalent of October in these latitudes, was
giving us some fine autumn days. It was the Canadian—on this topic he
was never mistaken—who sighted a baleen whale on the eastern
horizon. If you looked carefully, you could see its blackish back
alternately rise and fall above the waves, five miles from the
Nautilus.
“Wow!” Ned Land exclaimed. “If I were on board a whaler, there’s an
encounter that would be great fun! That’s one big animal! Look how
high its blowholes are spouting all that air and steam! Damnation! Why
am I chained to this hunk of sheet iron!”
“Why, Ned!” I replied. “You still aren’t over your old fishing urges?”
“How could a whale fisherman forget his old trade, sir? Who could ever
get tired of such exciting hunting?”
“You’ve never fished these seas, Ned?”
“Never, sir. Just the northernmost seas, equally in the Bering Strait
and the Davis Strait.”
“So the southern right whale is still unknown to you. Until now it’s
the bowhead whale you’ve hunted, and it won’t risk going past the warm
waters of the equator.”
“Oh, professor, what are you feeding me?” the Canadian answered in a
tolerably skeptical tone.
“I’m feeding you the facts.”
“By thunder! In ’65, just two and a half years ago, I to whom you
speak, I myself stepped onto the carcass of a whale near Greenland,
and its flank still carried the marked harpoon of a whaling ship from
the Bering Sea. Now I ask you, after it had been wounded west of
America, how could this animal be killed in the east, unless it had
cleared the equator and doubled Cape Horn or the Cape of Good Hope?”
“I agree with our friend Ned,” Conseil said, “and I’m waiting to hear
how master will reply to him.”
“Master will reply, my friends, that baleen whales are localized,
according to species, within certain seas that they never leave. And
if one of these animals went from the Bering Strait to the Davis
Strait, it’s quite simply because there’s some passageway from the one
sea to the other, either along the coasts of Canada or Siberia.”
“You expect us to fall for that?” the Canadian asked, tipping me a
wink.
“If master says so,” Conseil replied.
“Which means,” the Canadian went on, “since I’ve never fished these
waterways, I don’t know the whales that frequent them?”
“That’s what I’ve been telling you, Ned.”
“All the more reason to get to know them,” Conseil answered.
“Look! Look!” the Canadian exclaimed, his voice full of
excitement. “It’s approaching! It’s coming toward us! It’s thumbing
its nose at me! It knows I can’t do a blessed thing to it!”
Ned stamped his foot. Brandishing an imaginary harpoon, his hands
positively trembled.
“These cetaceans,” he asked, “are they as big as the ones in the
northernmost seas?”
“Pretty nearly, Ned.”
“Because I’ve seen big baleen whales, sir, whales measuring up to 100
feet long! I’ve even heard that those rorqual whales off the Aleutian
Islands sometimes get over 150 feet.”
“That strikes me as exaggerated,” I replied. “Those animals are only
members of the genus Balaenoptera furnished with dorsal fins, and like
sperm whales, they’re generally smaller than the bowhead whale.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the Canadian, whose eyes hadn’t left the ocean. “It’s
getting closer, it’s coming into the Nautilus’s waters!”
Then, going on with his conversation:
“You talk about sperm whales,” he said, “as if they were little
beasts! But there are stories of gigantic sperm whales. They’re shrewd
cetaceans. I hear that some will cover themselves with algae and fucus
plants. People mistake them for islets. They pitch camp on top, make
themselves at home, light a fire—”
“Build houses,” Conseil said.
“Yes, funny man,” Ned Land replied. “Then one fine day the animal
dives and drags all its occupants down into the depths.”
“Like in the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor,” I answered, laughing. “Oh,
Mr. Land, you’re addicted to tall tales! What sperm whales you’re
handing us! I hope you don’t really believe in them!”
“Mr. Naturalist,” the Canadian replied in all seriousness, “when it
comes to whales, you can believe anything! (Look at that one move!
Look at it stealing away!) People claim these animals can circle
around the world in just fifteen days.”
“I don’t say nay.”
“But what you undoubtedly don’t know, Professor Aronnax, is that at
the beginning of the world, whales traveled even quicker.”
“Oh really, Ned! And why so?”
“Because in those days their tails moved side to side, like those on
fish, in other words, their tails were straight up, thrashing the
water from left to right, right to left. But spotting that they swam
too fast, our Creator twisted their tails, and ever since they’ve been
thrashing the waves up and down, at the expense of their speed.”
“Fine, Ned,” I said, then resurrected one of the Canadian’s
expressions. “You expect us to fall for that?”
“Not too terribly,” Ned Land replied, “and no more than if I told you
there are whales that are 300 feet long and weigh 1,000,000 pounds.”
“That’s indeed considerable,” I said. “But you must admit that certain
cetaceans do grow to significant size, since they’re said to supply as
much as 120 metric tons of oil.”
“That I’ve seen,” the Canadian said.
“I can easily believe it, Ned, just as I can believe that certain
baleen whales equal 100 elephants in bulk. Imagine the impact of such
a mass if it were launched at full speed!”
“Is it true,” Conseil asked, “that they can sink ships?”
“Ships? I doubt it,” I replied. “However, they say that in 1820, right
in these southern seas, a baleen whale rushed at the Essex and pushed
it backward at a speed of four meters per second. Its stern was
flooded, and the Essex went down fast.”
Ned looked at me with a bantering expression.
“Speaking for myself,” he said, “I once got walloped by a whale’s
tail—in my longboat, needless to say. My companions and I were
launched to an altitude of six meters. But next to the professor’s
whale, mine was just a baby.”
“Do these animals live a long time?” Conseil asked.
“A thousand years,” the Canadian replied without hesitation.
“And how, Ned,” I asked, “do you know that’s so?”
“Because people say so.”
“And why do people say so?”
“Because people know so.”
“No, Ned! People don’t know so, they suppose so, and here’s the logic
with which they back up their beliefs. When fishermen first hunted
whales 400 years ago, these animals grew to bigger sizes than they do
today. Reasonably enough, it’s assumed that today’s whales are smaller
because they haven’t had time to reach their full growth. That’s why
the Count de Buffon’s encyclopedia says that cetaceans can live, and
even must live, for a thousand years. You understand?”
Ned Land didn’t understand. He no longer even heard me. That baleen
whale kept coming closer. His eyes devoured it.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “It’s not just one whale, it’s ten, twenty, a
whole gam! And I can’t do a thing! I’m tied hand and foot!”
“But Ned my friend,” Conseil said, “why not ask Captain Nemo for
permission to hunt—”
Before Conseil could finish his sentence, Ned Land scooted down the
hatch and ran to look for the captain. A few moments later, the two of
them reappeared on the platform.
Captain Nemo observed the herd of cetaceans cavorting on the waters a
mile from the Nautilus.
“They’re southern right whales,” he said. “There goes the fortune of a
whole whaling fleet.”
“Well, sir,” the Canadian asked, “couldn’t I hunt them, just so I
don’t forget my old harpooning trade?”
“Hunt them? What for?” Captain Nemo replied. “Simply to destroy them?
We have no use for whale oil on this ship.”
“But, sir,” the Canadian went on, “in the Red Sea you authorized us to
chase a dugong!”
“There it was an issue of obtaining fresh meat for my crew. Here it
would be killing for the sake of killing. I’m well aware that’s a
privilege reserved for mankind, but I don’t allow such murderous
pastimes. When your peers, Mr. Land, destroy decent, harmless
creatures like the southern right whale or the bowhead whale, they
commit a reprehensible offense. Thus they’ve already depopulated all
of Baffin Bay, and they’ll wipe out a whole class of useful
animals. So leave these poor cetaceans alone. They have quite enough
natural enemies, such as sperm whales, swordfish, and sawfish, without
you meddling with them.”
I’ll let the reader decide what faces the Canadian made during this
lecture on hunting ethics. Furnishing such arguments to a professional
harpooner was a waste of words. Ned Land stared at Captain Nemo and
obviously missed his meaning. But the captain was right. Thanks to the
mindless, barbaric bloodthirstiness of fishermen, the last baleen
whale will someday disappear from the ocean.
Ned Land whistled “Yankee Doodle” between his teeth, stuffed his hands
in his pockets, and turned his back on us.
Meanwhile Captain Nemo studied the herd of cetaceans, then addressed
me:
“I was right to claim that baleen whales have enough natural enemies
without counting man. These specimens will soon have to deal with
mighty opponents. Eight miles to leeward, Professor Aronnax, can you
see those blackish specks moving about?”
“Yes, captain,” I replied.
“Those are sperm whales, dreadful animals that I’ve sometimes
encountered in herds of 200 or 300! As for them, they’re cruel,
destructive beasts, and they deserve to be exterminated.”
The Canadian turned swiftly at these last words.
“Well, captain,” I said, “on behalf of the baleen whales, there’s
still time—”
“It’s pointless to run any risks, professor. The Nautilus will suffice
to disperse these sperm whales. It’s armed with a steel spur quite
equal to Mr. Land’s harpoon, I imagine.”
The Canadian didn’t even bother shrugging his shoulders. Attacking
cetaceans with thrusts from a spur! Who ever heard of such malarkey!
“Wait and see, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said. “We’ll show you
a style of hunting with which you aren’t yet familiar. We’ll take no
pity on these ferocious cetaceans. They’re merely mouth and teeth!”
Mouth and teeth! There’s no better way to describe the long-skulled
sperm whale, whose length sometimes exceeds twenty-five meters. The
enormous head of this cetacean occupies about a third of its
body. Better armed than a baleen whale, whose upper jaw is adorned
solely with whalebone, the sperm whale is equipped with twenty-five
huge teeth that are twenty centimeters high, have cylindrical, conical
summits, and weigh two pounds each. In the top part of this enormous
head, inside big cavities separated by cartilage, you’ll find 300 to
400 kilograms of that valuable oil called “spermaceti.” The sperm
whale is an awkward animal, more tadpole than fish, as Professor
Frédol has noted. It’s poorly constructed, being “defective,” so to
speak, over the whole left side of its frame, with good eyesight only
in its right eye.
Meanwhile that monstrous herd kept coming closer. It had seen the
baleen whales and was preparing to attack. You could tell in advance
that the sperm whales would be victorious, not only because they were
better built for fighting than their harmless adversaries, but also
because they could stay longer underwater before returning to breathe
at the surface.
There was just time to run to the rescue of the baleen whales. The
Nautilus proceeded to midwater. Conseil, Ned, and I sat in front of
the lounge windows. Captain Nemo made his way to the helmsman’s side
to operate his submersible as an engine of destruction. Soon I felt
the beats of our propeller getting faster, and we picked up speed.
The battle between sperm whales and baleen whales had already begun
when the Nautilus arrived. It maneuvered to cut into the herd of
long-skulled predators. At first the latter showed little concern at
the sight of this new monster meddling in the battle. But they soon
had to sidestep its thrusts.
What a struggle! Ned Land quickly grew enthusiastic and even ended up
applauding. Brandished in its captain’s hands, the Nautilus was simply
a fearsome harpoon. He hurled it at those fleshy masses and ran them
clean through, leaving behind two squirming animal halves. As for
those daunting strokes of the tail hitting our sides, the ship never
felt them. No more than the collisions it caused. One sperm whale
exterminated, it ran at another, tacked on the spot so as not to miss
its prey, went ahead or astern, obeyed its rudder, dived when the
cetacean sank to deeper strata, rose with it when it returned to the
surface, struck it head-on or slantwise, hacked at it or tore it, and
from every direction and at any speed, skewered it with its dreadful
spur.
What bloodshed! What a hubbub on the surface of the waves! What sharp
hisses and snorts unique to these frightened animals! Their tails
churned the normally peaceful strata into actual billows.
This Homeric slaughter dragged on for an hour, and the long-skulled
predators couldn’t get away. Several times ten or twelve of them
teamed up, trying to crush the Nautilus with their sheer mass. Through
the windows you could see their enormous mouths paved with teeth,
their fearsome eyes. Losing all self-control, Ned Land hurled threats
and insults at them. You could feel them clinging to the submersible
like hounds atop a wild boar in the underbrush. But by forcing the
pace of its propeller, the Nautilus carried them off, dragged them
under, or brought them back to the upper level of the waters,
untroubled by their enormous weight or their powerful grip.
Finally this mass of sperm whales thinned out. The waves grew tranquil
again. I felt us rising to the surface of the ocean. The hatch opened
and we rushed onto the platform.
The sea was covered with mutilated corpses. A fearsome explosion
couldn’t have slashed, torn, or shredded these fleshy masses with
greater violence. We were floating in the midst of gigantic bodies,
bluish on the back, whitish on the belly, and all deformed by enormous
protuberances. A few frightened sperm whales were fleeing toward the
horizon. The waves were dyed red over an area of several miles, and
the Nautilus was floating in the middle of a sea of blood.
Captain Nemo rejoined us.
“Well, Mr. Land?” he said.
“Well, sir,” replied the Canadian, whose enthusiasm had subsided,
“it’s a dreadful sight for sure. But I’m a hunter not a butcher, and
this is plain butchery.”
“It was a slaughter of destructive animals,” the captain replied, “and
the Nautilus is no butcher knife.”
“I prefer my harpoon,” the Canadian answered.
“To each his own,” the captain replied, staring intently at Ned Land.
I was in dread the latter would give way to some violent outburst that
might have had deplorable consequences. But his anger was diverted by
the sight of a baleen whale that the Nautilus had pulled alongside of
just then.
This animal had been unable to escape the teeth of those sperm
whales. I recognized the southern right whale, its head squat, its
body dark all over. Anatomically, it’s distinguished from the white
whale and the black right whale by the fusion of its seven cervical
vertebrae, and it numbers two more ribs than its relatives. Floating
on its side, its belly riddled with bites, the poor cetacean was
dead. Still hanging from the tip of its mutilated fin was a little
baby whale that it had been unable to rescue from the slaughter. Its
open mouth let water flow through its whalebone like a murmuring surf.
Captain Nemo guided the Nautilus next to the animal’s corpse. Two of
his men climbed onto the whale’s flank, and to my astonishment, I saw
them draw from its udders all the milk they held, in other words,
enough to fill two or three casks.
The captain offered me a cup of this still-warm milk. I couldn’t help
showing my distaste for such a beverage. He assured me that this milk
was excellent, no different from cow’s milk.
I sampled it and agreed. So this milk was a worthwhile reserve ration
for us, because in the form of salt butter or cheese, it would provide
a pleasant change of pace from our standard fare.
From that day on, I noted with some uneasiness that Ned Land’s
attitudes toward Captain Nemo grew worse and worse, and I decided to
keep a close watch on the Canadian’s movements and activities.
CHAPTER 13
The Ice Bank
THE NAUTILUS resumed its unruffled southbound heading. It went along
the 50th meridian with considerable speed. Would it go to the pole? I
didn’t think so, because every previous attempt to reach this spot on
the globe had failed. Besides, the season was already quite advanced,
since March 13 on Antarctic shores corresponds with September 13 in
the northernmost regions, which marks the beginning of the equinoctial
period.
On March 14 at latitude 55 degrees, I spotted floating ice, plain pale
bits of rubble twenty to twenty-five feet long, which formed reefs
over which the sea burst into foam. The Nautilus stayed on the surface
of the ocean. Having fished in the Arctic seas, Ned Land was already
familiar with the sight of icebergs. Conseil and I were marveling at
them for the first time.
In the sky toward the southern horizon, there stretched a dazzling
white band. English whalers have given this the name “ice blink.” No
matter how heavy the clouds may be, they can’t obscure this
phenomenon. It announces the presence of a pack, or shoal, of ice.
Indeed, larger blocks of ice soon appeared, their brilliance varying
at the whim of the mists. Some of these masses displayed green veins,
as if scrawled with undulating lines of copper sulfate. Others looked
like enormous amethysts, letting the light penetrate their
insides. The latter reflected the sun’s rays from the thousand facets
of their crystals. The former, tinted with a bright limestone sheen,
would have supplied enough building material to make a whole marble
town.
The farther down south we went, the more these floating islands grew
in numbers and prominence. Polar birds nested on them by the
thousands. These were petrels, cape pigeons, or puffins, and their
calls were deafening. Mistaking the Nautilus for the corpse of a
whale, some of them alighted on it and prodded its resonant sheet iron
with pecks of their beaks.
During this navigating in the midst of the ice, Captain Nemo often
stayed on the platform. He observed these deserted waterways
carefully. I saw his calm eyes sometimes perk up. In these polar seas
forbidden to man, did he feel right at home, the lord of these
unreachable regions? Perhaps. But he didn’t say. He stood still,
reviving only when his pilot’s instincts took over. Then, steering his
Nautilus with consummate dexterity, he skillfully dodged the masses of
ice, some of which measured several miles in length, their heights
varying from seventy to eighty meters. Often the horizon seemed
completely closed off. Abreast of latitude 60 degrees, every
passageway had disappeared. Searching with care, Captain Nemo soon
found a narrow opening into which he brazenly slipped, well aware,
however, that it would close behind him.
Guided by his skillful hands, the Nautilus passed by all these
different masses of ice, which are classified by size and shape with a
precision that enraptured Conseil: “icebergs,” or mountains; “ice
fields,” or smooth, limitless tracts; “drift ice,” or floating floes;
“packs,” or broken tracts, called “patches” when they’re circular and
“streams” when they form long strips.
The temperature was fairly low. Exposed to the outside air, the
thermometer marked -2 degrees to -3 degrees centigrade. But we were
warmly dressed in furs, for which seals and aquatic bears had paid the
price. Evenly heated by all its electric equipment, the Nautilus’s
interior defied the most intense cold. Moreover, to find a bearable
temperature, the ship had only to sink just a few meters beneath the
waves.
Two months earlier we would have enjoyed perpetual daylight in this
latitude; but night already fell for three or four hours, and later it
would cast six months of shadow over these circumpolar regions.
On March 15 we passed beyond the latitude of the South Shetland and
South Orkney Islands. The captain told me that many tribes of seals
used to inhabit these shores; but English and American whalers, in a
frenzy of destruction, slaughtered all the adults, including pregnant
females, and where life and activity once existed, those fishermen
left behind only silence and death.
Going along the 55th meridian, the Nautilus cut the Antarctic Circle
on March 16 near eight o’clock in the morning. Ice completely
surrounded us and closed off the horizon. Nevertheless, Captain Nemo
went from passageway to passageway, always proceeding south.
“But where’s he going?” I asked.
“Straight ahead,” Conseil replied. “Ultimately, when he can’t go any
farther, he’ll stop.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it!” I replied.
And in all honesty, I confess that this venturesome excursion was far
from displeasing to me. I can’t express the intensity of my amazement
at the beauties of these new regions. The ice struck superb
poses. Here, its general effect suggested an oriental town with
countless minarets and mosques. There, a city in ruins, flung to the
ground by convulsions in the earth. These views were varied
continuously by the sun’s oblique rays, or were completely swallowed
up by gray mists in the middle of blizzards. Then explosions,
cave-ins, and great iceberg somersaults would occur all around us,
altering the scenery like the changing landscape in a diorama.
If the Nautilus was submerged during these losses of balance, we heard
the resulting noises spread under the waters with frightful intensity,
and the collapse of these masses created daunting eddies down to the
ocean’s lower strata. The Nautilus then rolled and pitched like a ship
left to the fury of the elements.
Often, no longer seeing any way out, I thought we were imprisoned for
good, but Captain Nemo, guided by his instincts, discovered new
passageways from the tiniest indications. He was never wrong when he
observed slender threads of bluish water streaking through these ice
fields. Accordingly, I was sure that he had already risked his
Nautilus in the midst of the Antarctic seas.
However, during the day of March 16, these tracts of ice completely
barred our path. It wasn’t the Ice Bank as yet, just huge ice fields
cemented together by the cold. This obstacle couldn’t stop Captain
Nemo, and he launched his ship against the ice fields with hideous
violence. The Nautilus went into these brittle masses like a wedge,
splitting them with dreadful cracklings. It was an old-fashioned
battering ram propelled with infinite power. Hurled aloft, ice rubble
fell back around us like hail. Through brute force alone, the
submersible carved out a channel for itself. Carried away by its
momentum, the ship sometimes mounted on top of these tracts of ice and
crushed them with its weight, or at other times, when cooped up
beneath the ice fields, it split them with simple pitching movements,
creating wide punctures.
Violent squalls assaulted us during the daytime. Thanks to certain
heavy mists, we couldn’t see from one end of the platform to the
other. The wind shifted abruptly to every point on the compass. The
snow was piling up in such packed layers, it had to be chipped loose
with blows from picks. Even in a temperature of merely -5 degrees
centigrade, every outside part of the Nautilus was covered with ice. A
ship’s rigging would have been unusable, because all its tackle would
have jammed in the grooves of the pulleys. Only a craft without sails,
driven by an electric motor that needed no coal, could face such high
latitudes.
Under these conditions the barometer generally stayed quite low. It
fell as far as 73.5 centimeters. Our compass indications no longer
offered any guarantees. The deranged needles would mark contradictory
directions as we approached the southern magnetic pole, which doesn’t
coincide with the South Pole proper. In fact, according to the
astronomer Hansteen, this magnetic pole is located fairly close to
latitude 70 degrees and longitude 130 degrees, or abiding by the
observations of Louis-Isidore Duperrey, in longitude 135 degrees and
latitude 70 degrees 30′. Hence we had to transport compasses to
different parts of the ship, take many readings, and strike an
average. Often we could chart our course only by guesswork, a less
than satisfactory method in the midst of these winding passageways
whose landmarks change continuously.
At last on March 18, after twenty futile assaults, the Nautilus was
decisively held in check. No longer was it an ice stream, patch, or
field—it was an endless, immovable barrier formed by ice mountains
fused to each other.
“The Ice Bank!” the Canadian told me.
For Ned Land, as well as for every navigator before us, I knew that
this was the great insurmountable obstacle. When the sun appeared for
an instant near noon, Captain Nemo took a reasonably accurate sight
that gave our position as longitude 51 degrees 30′ and latitude 67
degrees 39′ south. This was a position already well along in these
Antarctic regions.
As for the liquid surface of the sea, there was no longer any
semblance of it before our eyes. Before the Nautilus’s spur there lay
vast broken plains, a tangle of confused chunks with all the
helter-skelter unpredictability typical of a river’s surface a short
while before its ice breakup; but in this case the proportions were
gigantic. Here and there stood sharp peaks, lean spires that rose as
high as 200 feet; farther off, a succession of steeply cut cliffs
sporting a grayish tint, huge mirrors that reflected the sparse rays
of a sun half drowned in mist. Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this
desolate natural setting, a silence barely broken by the flapping
wings of petrels or puffins. By this point everything was frozen, even
sound.
So the Nautilus had to halt in its venturesome course among these
tracts of ice.
“Sir,” Ned Land told me that day, “if your captain goes any farther
. . .”
“Yes?”
“He’ll be a superman.”
“How so, Ned?”
“Because nobody can clear the Ice Bank. Your captain’s a powerful man,
but damnation, he isn’t more powerful than nature. If she draws a
boundary line, there you stop, like it or not!”
“Correct, Ned Land, but I still want to know what’s behind this Ice
Bank! Behold my greatest source of irritation—a wall!”
“Master is right,” Conseil said. “Walls were invented simply to
frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned.”
“Fine!” the Canadian put in. “But we already know what’s behind this
Ice Bank.”
“What?” I asked.
“Ice, ice, and more ice.”
“You may be sure of that, Ned,” I answered, “but I’m not. That’s why I
want to see for myself.”
“Well, professor,” the Canadian replied, “you can just drop that idea!
You’ve made it to the Ice Bank, which is already far enough, but you
won’t get any farther, neither your Captain Nemo or his Nautilus. And
whether he wants to or not, we’ll head north again, in other words, to
the land of sensible people.”
I had to agree that Ned Land was right, and until ships are built to
navigate over tracts of ice, they’ll have to stop at the Ice Bank.
Indeed, despite its efforts, despite the powerful methods it used to
split this ice, the Nautilus was reduced to immobility. Ordinarily,
when someone can’t go any farther, he still has the option of
returning in his tracks. But here it was just as impossible to turn
back as to go forward, because every passageway had closed behind us,
and if our submersible remained even slightly stationary, it would be
frozen in without delay. Which is exactly what happened near two
o’clock in the afternoon, and fresh ice kept forming over the ship’s
sides with astonishing speed. I had to admit that Captain Nemo’s
leadership had been most injudicious.
Just then I was on the platform. Observing the situation for some
while, the captain said to me:
“Well, professor! What think you?”
“I think we’re trapped, captain.”
“Trapped! What do you mean?”
“I mean we can’t go forward, backward, or sideways. I think that’s the
standard definition of ‘trapped,’ at least in the civilized world.”
“So, Professor Aronnax, you think the Nautilus won’t be able to float
clear?”
“Only with the greatest difficulty, captain, since the season is
already too advanced for you to depend on an ice breakup.”
“Oh, professor,” Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone, “you never
change! You see only impediments and obstacles! I promise you, not
only will the Nautilus float clear, it will go farther still!”
“Farther south?” I asked, gaping at the captain.
“Yes, sir, it will go to the pole.”
“To the pole!” I exclaimed, unable to keep back a movement of
disbelief.
“Yes,” the captain replied coolly, “the Antarctic pole, that unknown
spot crossed by every meridian on the globe. As you know, I do
whatever I like with my Nautilus.”
Yes, I did know that! I knew this man was daring to the point of being
foolhardy. But to overcome all the obstacles around the South
Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn’t
been reached by the boldest navigators—wasn’t this an absolutely
insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a
madman?
It then dawned on me to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered
this pole, which no human being had ever trod underfoot.
“No, sir,” he answered me, “but we’ll discover it together. Where
others have failed, I’ll succeed. Never before has my Nautilus cruised
so far into these southernmost seas, but I repeat: it will go farther
still.”
“I’d like to believe you, captain,” I went on in a tone of some
sarcasm. “Oh I do believe you! Let’s forge ahead! There are no
obstacles for us! Let’s shatter this Ice Bank! Let’s blow it up, and
if it still resists, let’s put wings on the Nautilus and fly over it!”
“Over it, professor?” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “No, not over it,
but under it.”
“Under it!” I exclaimed.
A sudden insight into Captain Nemo’s plans had just flashed through my
mind. I understood. The marvelous talents of his Nautilus would be put
to work once again in this superhuman undertaking!
“I can see we’re starting to understand each other, professor,”
Captain Nemo told me with a half smile. “You already glimpse the
potential—myself, I’d say the success—of this attempt. Maneuvers that
aren’t feasible for an ordinary ship are easy for the Nautilus. If a
continent emerges at the pole, we’ll stop at that continent. But on
the other hand, if open sea washes the pole, we’ll go to that very
place!”
“Right,” I said, carried away by the captain’s logic. “Even though the
surface of the sea has solidified into ice, its lower strata are still
open, thanks to that divine justice that puts the maximum density of
salt water one degree above its freezing point. And if I’m not
mistaken, the submerged part of this Ice Bank is in a four-to-one
ratio to its emerging part.”
“Very nearly, professor. For each foot of iceberg above the sea, there
are three more below. Now then, since these ice mountains don’t exceed
a height of 100 meters, they sink only to a depth of 300 meters. And
what are 300 meters to the Nautilus?”
“A mere nothing, sir.”
“We could even go to greater depths and find that temperature layer
common to all ocean water, and there we’d brave with impunity the -30
degrees or -40 degrees cold on the surface.”
“True, sir, very true,” I replied with growing excitement.
“Our sole difficulty,” Captain Nemo went on, “lies in our staying
submerged for several days without renewing our air supply.”
“That’s all?” I answered. “The Nautilus has huge air tanks; we’ll fill
them up and they’ll supply all the oxygen we need.”
“Good thinking, Professor Aronnax,” the captain replied with a
smile. “But since I don’t want to be accused of foolhardiness, I’m
giving you all my objections in advance.”
“You have more?”
“Just one. If a sea exists at the South Pole, it’s possible this sea
may be completely frozen over, so we couldn’t come up to the surface!”
“My dear sir, have you forgotten that the Nautilus is armed with a
fearsome spur? Couldn’t it be launched diagonally against those tracts
of ice, which would break open from the impact?”
“Ah, professor, you’re full of ideas today!”
“Besides, captain,” I added with still greater enthusiasm, “why
wouldn’t we find open sea at the South Pole just as at the North Pole?
The cold-temperature poles and the geographical poles don’t coincide
in either the northern or southern hemispheres, and until proof to the
contrary, we can assume these two spots on the earth feature either a
continent or an ice-free ocean.”
“I think as you do, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied. “I’ll
only point out that after raising so many objections against my plan,
you’re now crushing me under arguments in its favor.”
Captain Nemo was right. I was outdoing him in daring! It was I who was
sweeping him to the pole. I was leading the way, I was out in front
. . . but no, you silly fool! Captain Nemo already knew the pros and
cons of this question, and it amused him to see you flying off into
impossible fantasies!
Nevertheless, he didn’t waste an instant. At his signal, the chief
officer appeared. The two men held a quick exchange in their
incomprehensible language, and either the chief officer had been
alerted previously or he found the plan feasible, because he showed no
surprise.
But as unemotional as he was, he couldn’t have been more impeccably
emotionless than Conseil when I told the fine lad our intention of
pushing on to the South Pole. He greeted my announcement with the
usual “As master wishes,” and I had to be content with that. As for
Ned Land, no human shoulders ever executed a higher shrug than the
pair belonging to our Canadian.
“Honestly, sir,” he told me. “You and your Captain Nemo, I pity you
both!”
“But we will go to the pole, Mr. Land.”
“Maybe, but you won’t come back!”
And Ned Land reentered his cabin, “to keep from doing something
desperate,” he said as he left me.
Meanwhile preparations for this daring attempt were getting under
way. The Nautilus’s powerful pumps forced air down into the tanks and
stored it under high pressure. Near four o’clock Captain Nemo informed
me that the platform hatches were about to be closed. I took a last
look at the dense Ice Bank we were going to conquer. The weather was
fair, the skies reasonably clear, the cold quite brisk, namely -12
degrees centigrade; but after the wind had lulled, this temperature
didn’t seem too unbearable.
Equipped with picks, some ten men climbed onto the Nautilus’s sides
and cracked loose the ice around the ship’s lower plating, which was
soon set free. This operation was swiftly executed because the fresh
ice was still thin. We all reentered the interior. The main ballast
tanks were filled with the water that hadn’t yet congealed at our line
of flotation. The Nautilus submerged without delay.
I took a seat in the lounge with Conseil. Through the open window we
stared at the lower strata of this southernmost ocean. The thermometer
rose again. The needle on the pressure gauge swerved over its dial.
About 300 meters down, just as Captain Nemo had predicted, we cruised
beneath the undulating surface of the Ice Bank. But the Nautilus sank
deeper still. It reached a depth of 800 meters. At the surface this
water gave a temperature of -12 degrees centigrade, but now it gave no
more than -10 degrees. Two degrees had already been gained. Thanks to
its heating equipment, the Nautilus’s temperature, needless to say,
stayed at a much higher degree. Every maneuver was accomplished with
extraordinary precision.
“With all due respect to master,” Conseil told me, “we’ll pass it by.”
“I fully expect to!” I replied in a tone of deep conviction.
Now in open water, the Nautilus took a direct course to the pole
without veering from the 52nd meridian. From 67 degrees 30′ to 90
degrees, twenty-two and a half degrees of latitude were left to cross,
in other words, slightly more than 500 leagues. The Nautilus adopted
an average speed of twenty-six miles per hour, the speed of an express
train. If it kept up this pace, forty hours would do it for reaching
the pole.
For part of the night, the novelty of our circumstances kept Conseil
and me at the lounge window. The sea was lit by our beacon’s electric
rays. But the depths were deserted. Fish didn’t linger in these
imprisoned waters. Here they found merely a passageway for going from
the Antarctic Ocean to open sea at the pole. Our progress was
swift. You could feel it in the vibrations of the long steel hull.
Near two o’clock in the morning, I went to snatch a few hours of
sleep. Conseil did likewise. I didn’t encounter Captain Nemo while
going down the gangways. I assumed that he was keeping to the
pilothouse.
The next day, March 19, at five o’clock in the morning, I was back at
my post in the lounge. The electric log indicated that the Nautilus
had reduced speed. By then it was rising to the surface, but
cautiously, while slowly emptying its ballast tanks.
My heart was pounding. Would we emerge into the open and find the
polar air again?
No. A jolt told me that the Nautilus had bumped the underbelly of the
Ice Bank, still quite thick to judge from the hollowness of the
accompanying noise. Indeed, we had “struck bottom,” to use nautical
terminology, but in the opposite direction and at a depth of 3,000
feet. That gave us 4,000 feet of ice overhead, of which 1,000 feet
emerged above water. So the Ice Bank was higher here than we had found
it on the outskirts. A circumstance less than encouraging.
Several times that day, the Nautilus repeated the same experiment and
always it bumped against this surface that formed a ceiling above
it. At certain moments the ship encountered ice at a depth of 900
meters, denoting a thickness of 1,200 meters, of which 300 meters rose
above the level of the ocean. This height had tripled since the moment
the Nautilus had dived beneath the waves.
I meticulously noted these different depths, obtaining the underwater
profile of this upside-down mountain chain that stretched beneath the
sea.
By evening there was still no improvement in our situation. The ice
stayed between 400 and 500 meters deep. It was obviously shrinking,
but what a barrier still lay between us and the surface of the ocean!
By then it was eight o’clock. The air inside the Nautilus should have
been renewed four hours earlier, following daily practice on
board. But I didn’t suffer very much, although Captain Nemo hadn’t yet
made demands on the supplementary oxygen in his air tanks.
That night my sleep was fitful. Hope and fear besieged me by turns. I
got up several times. The Nautilus continued groping. Near three
o’clock in the morning, I observed that we encountered the Ice Bank’s
underbelly at a depth of only fifty meters. So only 150 feet separated
us from the surface of the water. Little by little the Ice Bank was
turning into an ice field again. The mountains were changing back into
plains.
My eyes didn’t leave the pressure gauge. We kept rising on a diagonal,
going along this shiny surface that sparkled beneath our electric
rays. Above and below, the Ice Bank was subsiding in long
gradients. Mile after mile it was growing thinner.
Finally, at six o’clock in the morning on that memorable day of March
19, the lounge door opened. Captain Nemo appeared.
“Open sea!” he told me.
CHAPTER 14
The South Pole
I RUSHED UP onto the platform. Yes, open sea! Barely a few sparse
floes, some moving icebergs; a sea stretching into the distance; hosts
of birds in the air and myriads of fish under the waters, which varied
from intense blue to olive green depending on the depth. The
thermometer marked 3 degrees centigrade. It was as if a comparative
springtime had been locked up behind that Ice Bank, whose distant
masses were outlined on the northern horizon.
“Are we at the pole?” I asked the captain, my heart pounding.
“I’ve no idea,” he answered me. “At noon we’ll fix our position.”
“But will the sun show through this mist?” I said, staring at the
grayish sky.
“No matter how faintly it shines, it will be enough for me,” the
captain replied.
To the south, ten miles from the Nautilus, a solitary islet rose to a
height of 200 meters. We proceeded toward it, but cautiously, because
this sea could have been strewn with reefs.
In an hour we had reached the islet. Two hours later we had completed
a full circle around it. It measured four to five miles in
circumference. A narrow channel separated it from a considerable
shore, perhaps a continent whose limits we couldn’t see. The existence
of this shore seemed to bear out Commander Maury’s hypotheses. In
essence, this ingenious American has noted that between the South Pole
and the 60th parallel, the sea is covered with floating ice of
dimensions much greater than any found in the north Atlantic. From
this fact he drew the conclusion that the Antarctic Circle must
contain considerable shores, since icebergs can’t form on the high
seas but only along coastlines. According to his calculations, this
frozen mass enclosing the southernmost pole forms a vast ice cap whose
width must reach 4,000 kilometers.
Meanwhile, to avoid running aground, the Nautilus halted three cable
lengths from a strand crowned by superb piles of rocks. The skiff was
launched to sea. Two crewmen carrying instruments, the captain,
Conseil, and I were on board. It was ten o’clock in the morning. I
hadn’t seen Ned Land. No doubt, in the presence of the South Pole, the
Canadian hated having to eat his words.
A few strokes of the oar brought the skiff to the sand, where it ran
aground. Just as Conseil was about to jump ashore, I held him back.
“Sir,” I told Captain Nemo, “to you belongs the honor of first setting
foot on this shore.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain replied, “and if I have no hesitation in
treading this polar soil, it’s because no human being until now has
left a footprint here.”
So saying, he leaped lightly onto the sand. His heart must have been
throbbing with intense excitement. He scaled an overhanging rock that
ended in a small promontory and there, mute and motionless, with
crossed arms and blazing eyes, he seemed to be laying claim to these
southernmost regions. After spending five minutes in this trance, he
turned to us.
“Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he called to me.
I got out, Conseil at my heels, leaving the two men in the skiff.
Over an extensive area, the soil consisted of that igneous gravel
called “tuff,” reddish in color as if made from crushed bricks. The
ground was covered with slag, lava flows, and pumice stones. Its
volcanic origin was unmistakable. In certain localities thin smoke
holes gave off a sulfurous odor, showing that the inner fires still
kept their wide-ranging power. Nevertheless, when I scaled a high
escarpment, I could see no volcanoes within a radius of several
miles. In these Antarctic districts, as is well known, Sir James Clark
Ross had found the craters of Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror in fully
active condition on the 167th meridian at latitude 77 degrees 32′.
The vegetation on this desolate continent struck me as quite
limited. A few lichens of the species Usnea melanoxanthra sprawled
over the black rocks. The whole meager flora of this region consisted
of certain microscopic buds, rudimentary diatoms made up of a type of
cell positioned between two quartz-rich shells, plus long purple and
crimson fucus plants, buoyed by small air bladders and washed up on
the coast by the surf.
The beach was strewn with mollusks: small mussels, limpets, smooth
heart-shaped cockles, and especially some sea butterflies with oblong,
membrane-filled bodies whose heads are formed from two rounded
lobes. I also saw myriads of those northernmost sea butterflies three
centimeters long, which a baleen whale can swallow by the thousands in
one gulp. The open waters at the shoreline were alive with these
delightful pteropods, true butterflies of the sea.
Among other zoophytes present in these shallows, there were a few
coral tree forms that, according to Sir James Clark Ross, live in
these Antarctic seas at depths as great as 1,000 meters; then small
alcyon coral belonging to the species Procellaria pelagica, also a
large number of starfish unique to these climes, plus some feather
stars spangling the sand.
But it was in the air that life was superabundant. There various
species of birds flew and fluttered by the thousands, deafening us
with their calls. Crowding the rocks, other fowl watched without fear
as we passed and pressed familiarly against our feet. These were auks,
as agile and supple in water, where they are sometimes mistaken for
fast bonito, as they are clumsy and heavy on land. They uttered
outlandish calls and participated in numerous public assemblies that
featured much noise but little action.
Among other fowl I noted some sheathbills from the wading-bird family,
the size of pigeons, white in color, the beak short and conical, the
eyes framed by red circles. Conseil laid in a supply of them, because
when they’re properly cooked, these winged creatures make a pleasant
dish. In the air there passed sooty albatross with four-meter
wingspans, birds aptly dubbed “vultures of the ocean,” also gigantic
petrels including several with arching wings, enthusiastic eaters of
seal that are known as quebrantahuesos,* and cape pigeons, a sort of
small duck, the tops of their bodies black and white—in short, a whole
series of petrels, some whitish with wings trimmed in brown, others
blue and exclusive to these Antarctic seas, the former “so oily,” I
told Conseil, “that inhabitants of the Faroe Islands simply fit the
bird with a wick, then light it up.”
*Spanish: “ospreys.” Ed.
“With that minor addition,” Conseil replied, “these fowl would make
perfect lamps! After this, we should insist that nature equip them
with wicks in advance!”
Half a mile farther on, the ground was completely riddled with penguin
nests, egg-laying burrows from which numerous birds emerged. Later
Captain Nemo had hundreds of them hunted because their black flesh is
highly edible. They brayed like donkeys. The size of a goose with
slate-colored bodies, white undersides, and lemon-colored neck bands,
these animals let themselves be stoned to death without making any
effort to get away.
Meanwhile the mists didn’t clear, and by eleven o’clock the sun still
hadn’t made an appearance. Its absence disturbed me. Without it, no
sights were possible. Then how could we tell whether we had reached
the pole?
When I rejoined Captain Nemo, I found him leaning silently against a
piece of rock and staring at the sky. He seemed impatient,
baffled. But what could we do? This daring and powerful man couldn’t
control the sun as he did the sea.
Noon arrived without the orb of day appearing for a single
instant. You couldn’t even find its hiding place behind the curtain of
mist. And soon this mist began to condense into snow.
“Until tomorrow,” the captain said simply; and we went back to the
Nautilus, amid flurries in the air.
During our absence the nets had been spread, and I observed with
fascination the fish just hauled on board. The Antarctic seas serve as
a refuge for an extremely large number of migratory fish that flee
from storms in the subpolar zones, in truth only to slide down the
gullets of porpoises and seals. I noted some one-decimeter southern
bullhead, a species of whitish cartilaginous fish overrun with bluish
gray stripes and armed with stings, then some Antarctic rabbitfish
three feet long, the body very slender, the skin a smooth silver
white, the head rounded, the topside furnished with three fins, the
snout ending in a trunk that curved back toward the mouth. I sampled
its flesh but found it tasteless, despite Conseil’s views, which were
largely approving.
The blizzard lasted until the next day. It was impossible to stay on
the platform. From the lounge, where I was writing up the incidents of
this excursion to the polar continent, I could hear the calls of
petrel and albatross cavorting in the midst of the turmoil. The
Nautilus didn’t stay idle, and cruising along the coast, it advanced
some ten miles farther south amid the half light left by the sun as it
skimmed the edge of the horizon.
The next day, March 20, it stopped snowing. The cold was a little more
brisk. The thermometer marked -2 degrees centigrade. The mist had
cleared, and on that day I hoped our noon sights could be
accomplished.
Since Captain Nemo hadn’t yet appeared, only Conseil and I were taken
ashore by the skiff. The soil’s nature was still the same:
volcanic. Traces of lava, slag, and basaltic rock were everywhere, but
I couldn’t find the crater that had vomited them up. There as yonder,
myriads of birds enlivened this part of the polar continent. But they
had to share their dominion with huge herds of marine mammals that
looked at us with gentle eyes. These were seals of various species,
some stretched out on the ground, others lying on drifting ice floes,
several leaving or reentering the sea. Having never dealt with man,
they didn’t run off at our approach, and I counted enough of them
thereabouts to provision a couple hundred ships.
“Ye gods,” Conseil said, “it’s fortunate that Ned Land didn’t come
with us!”
“Why so, Conseil?”
“Because that madcap hunter would kill every animal here.”
“Every animal may be overstating it, but in truth I doubt we could
keep our Canadian friend from harpooning some of these magnificent
cetaceans. Which would be an affront to Captain Nemo, since he hates
to slay harmless beasts needlessly.”
“He’s right.”
“Certainly, Conseil. But tell me, haven’t you finished classifying
these superb specimens of marine fauna?”
“Master is well aware,” Conseil replied, “that I’m not seasoned in
practical application. When master has told me these animals’ names
. . .”
“They’re seals and walruses.”
“Two genera,” our scholarly Conseil hastened to say, “that belong to
the family Pinnipedia, order Carnivora, group Unguiculata, subclass
Monodelphia, class Mammalia, branch Vertebrata.”
“Very nice, Conseil,” I replied, “but these two genera of seals and
walruses are each divided into species, and if I’m not mistaken, we
now have a chance to actually look at them. Let’s.”
It was eight o’clock in the morning. We had four hours to ourselves
before the sun could be productively observed. I guided our steps
toward a huge bay that made a crescent-shaped incision in the granite
cliffs along the beach.
There, all about us, I swear that the shores and ice floes were
crowded with marine mammals as far as the eye could see, and I
involuntarily looked around for old Proteus, that mythological
shepherd who guarded King Neptune’s immense flocks. To be specific,
these were seals. They formed distinct male-and-female groups, the
father watching over his family, the mother suckling her little ones,
the stronger youngsters emancipated a few paces away. When these
mammals wanted to relocate, they moved in little jumps made by
contracting their bodies, clumsily helped by their imperfectly
developed flippers, which, as with their manatee relatives, form
actual forearms. In the water, their ideal element, I must say these
animals swim wonderfully thanks to their flexible backbones, narrow
pelvises, close-cropped hair, and webbed feet. Resting on shore, they
assumed extremely graceful positions. Consequently, their gentle
features, their sensitive expressions equal to those of the loveliest
women, their soft, limpid eyes, their charming poses, led the ancients
to glorify them by metamorphosing the males into sea gods and the
females into mermaids.
I drew Conseil’s attention to the considerable growth of the cerebral
lobes found in these intelligent cetaceans. No mammal except man has
more abundant cerebral matter. Accordingly, seals are quite capable of
being educated; they make good pets, and together with certain other
naturalists, I think these animals can be properly trained to perform
yeoman service as hunting dogs for fishermen.
Most of these seals were sleeping on the rocks or the sand. Among
those properly termed seals—which have no external ears, unlike sea
lions whose ears protrude—I observed several varieties of the species
stenorhynchus, three meters long, with white hair, bulldog heads, and
armed with ten teeth in each jaw: four incisors in both the upper and
lower, plus two big canines shaped like the fleur-de-lis. Among them
slithered some sea elephants, a type of seal with a short, flexible
trunk; these are the giants of the species, with a circumference of
twenty feet and a length of ten meters. They didn’t move as we
approached.
“Are these animals dangerous?” Conseil asked me.
“Only if they’re attacked,” I replied. “But when these giant seals
defend their little ones, their fury is dreadful, and it isn’t rare
for them to smash a fisherman’s longboat to bits.”
“They’re within their rights,” Conseil answered.
“I don’t say nay.”
Two miles farther on, we were stopped by a promontory that screened
the bay from southerly winds. It dropped straight down to the sea, and
surf foamed against it. From beyond this ridge there came fearsome
bellows, such as a herd of cattle might produce.
“Gracious,” Conseil put in, “a choir of bulls?”
“No,” I said, “a choir of walruses.”
“Are they fighting with each other?”
“Either fighting or playing.”
“With all due respect to master, this we must see.”
“Then see it we must, Conseil.”
And there we were, climbing these blackish rocks amid sudden
landslides and over stones slippery with ice. More than once I took a
tumble at the expense of my backside. Conseil, more cautious or more
stable, barely faltered and would help me up, saying:
“If master’s legs would kindly adopt a wider stance, master will keep
his balance.”
Arriving at the topmost ridge of this promontory, I could see vast
white plains covered with walruses. These animals were playing among
themselves. They were howling not in anger but in glee.
Walruses resemble seals in the shape of their bodies and the
arrangement of their limbs. But their lower jaws lack canines and
incisors, and as for their upper canines, they consist of two tusks
eighty centimeters long with a circumference of thirty-three
centimeters at the socket. Made of solid ivory, without striations,
harder than elephant tusks, and less prone to yellowing, these teeth
are in great demand. Accordingly, walruses are the victims of a
mindless hunting that soon will destroy them all, since their hunters
indiscriminately slaughter pregnant females and youngsters, and over
4,000 individuals are destroyed annually.
Passing near these unusual animals, I could examine them at my leisure
since they didn’t stir. Their hides were rough and heavy, a tan color
leaning toward a reddish brown; their coats were short and less than
abundant. Some were four meters long. More tranquil and less fearful
than their northern relatives, they posted no sentinels on guard duty
at the approaches to their campsite.
After examining this community of walruses, I decided to return in my
tracks. It was eleven o’clock, and if Captain Nemo found conditions
favorable for taking his sights, I wanted to be present at the
operation. But I held no hopes that the sun would make an appearance
that day. It was hidden from our eyes by clouds squeezed together on
the horizon. Apparently the jealous orb didn’t want to reveal this
inaccessible spot on the globe to any human being.
Yet I decided to return to the Nautilus. We went along a steep, narrow
path that ran over the cliff’s summit. By 11:30 we had arrived at our
landing place. The beached skiff had brought the captain ashore. I
spotted him standing on a chunk of basalt. His instruments were beside
him. His eyes were focused on the northern horizon, along which the
sun was sweeping in its extended arc.
I found a place near him and waited without speaking. Noon arrived,
and just as on the day before, the sun didn’t put in an appearance.
It was sheer bad luck. Our noon sights were still lacking. If we
couldn’t obtain them tomorrow, we would finally have to give up any
hope of fixing our position.
In essence, it was precisely March 20. Tomorrow, the 21st, was the day
of the equinox; the sun would disappear below the horizon for six
months not counting refraction, and after its disappearance the long
polar night would begin. Following the September equinox, the sun had
emerged above the northerly horizon, rising in long spirals until
December 21. At that time, the summer solstice of these southernmost
districts, the sun had started back down, and tomorrow it would cast
its last rays.
I shared my thoughts and fears with Captain Nemo.
“You’re right, Professor Aronnax,” he told me. “If I can’t take the
sun’s altitude tomorrow, I won’t be able to try again for another six
months. But precisely because sailors’ luck has led me into these seas
on March 21, it will be easy to get our bearings if the noonday sun
does appear before our eyes.”
“Why easy, captain?”
“Because when the orb of day sweeps in such long spirals, it’s
difficult to measure its exact altitude above the horizon, and our
instruments are open to committing serious errors.”
“Then what can you do?”
“I use only my chronometer,” Captain Nemo answered me. “At noon
tomorrow, March 21, if, after accounting for refraction, the sun’s
disk is cut exactly in half by the northern horizon, that will mean
I’m at the South Pole.”
“Right,” I said. “Nevertheless, it isn’t mathematically exact proof,
because the equinox needn’t fall precisely at noon.”
“No doubt, sir, but the error will be under 100 meters, and that’s
close enough for us. Until tomorrow then.”
Captain Nemo went back on board. Conseil and I stayed behind until
five o’clock, surveying the beach, observing and studying. The only
unusual object I picked up was an auk’s egg of remarkable size, for
which a collector would have paid more than 1,000 francs. Its
cream-colored tint, plus the streaks and markings that decorated it
like so many hieroglyphics, made it a rare trinket. I placed it in
Conseil’s hands, and holding it like precious porcelain from China,
that cautious, sure-footed lad got it back to the Nautilus in one
piece.
There I put this rare egg inside one of the glass cases in the
museum. I ate supper, feasting with appetite on an excellent piece of
seal liver whose flavor reminded me of pork. Then I went to bed; but
not without praying, like a good Hindu, for the favors of the radiant
orb.
The next day, March 21, bright and early at five o’clock in the
morning, I climbed onto the platform. I found Captain Nemo there.
“The weather is clearing a bit,” he told me. “I have high hopes. After
breakfast we’ll make our way ashore and choose an observation post.”
This issue settled, I went to find Ned Land. I wanted to take him with
me. The obstinate Canadian refused, and I could clearly see that his
tight-lipped mood and his bad temper were growing by the day. Under
the circumstances I ultimately wasn’t sorry that he refused. In truth,
there were too many seals ashore, and it would never do to expose this
impulsive fisherman to such temptations.
Breakfast over, I made my way ashore. The Nautilus had gone a few more
miles during the night. It lay well out, a good league from the coast,
which was crowned by a sharp peak 400 to 500 meters high. In addition
to me, the skiff carried Captain Nemo, two crewmen, and the
instruments—in other words, a chronometer, a spyglass, and a
barometer.
During our crossing I saw numerous baleen whales belonging to the
three species unique to these southernmost seas: the bowhead whale (or
“right whale,” according to the English), which has no dorsal fin; the
humpback whale from the genus Balaenoptera (in other words, “winged
whales”), beasts with wrinkled bellies and huge whitish fins that,
genus name regardless, do not yet form wings; and the finback whale,
yellowish brown, the swiftest of all cetaceans. This powerful animal
is audible from far away when it sends up towering spouts of air and
steam that resemble swirls of smoke. Herds of these different mammals
were playing about in the tranquil waters, and I could easily see that
this Antarctic polar basin now served as a refuge for those cetaceans
too relentlessly pursued by hunters.
I also noted long, whitish strings of salps, a type of mollusk found
in clusters, and some jellyfish of large size that swayed in the
eddies of the billows.
By nine o’clock we had pulled up to shore. The sky was growing
brighter. Clouds were fleeing to the south. Mists were rising from the
cold surface of the water. Captain Nemo headed toward the peak, which
he no doubt planned to make his observatory. It was an arduous climb
over sharp lava and pumice stones in the midst of air often reeking
with sulfurous fumes from the smoke holes. For a man out of practice
at treading land, the captain scaled the steepest slopes with a supple
agility I couldn’t equal, and which would have been envied by hunters
of Pyrenees mountain goats.
It took us two hours to reach the summit of this half-crystal,
half-basalt peak. From there our eyes scanned a vast sea, which
scrawled its boundary line firmly against the background of the
northern sky. At our feet: dazzling tracts of white. Over our heads: a
pale azure, clear of mists. North of us: the sun’s disk, like a ball
of fire already cut into by the edge of the horizon. From the heart of
the waters: jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent
bouquets. Far off, like a sleeping cetacean: the Nautilus. Behind us
to the south and east: an immense shore, a chaotic heap of rocks and
ice whose limits we couldn’t see.
Arriving at the summit of this peak, Captain Nemo carefully determined
its elevation by means of his barometer, since he had to take this
factor into account in his noon sights.
At 11:45 the sun, by then seen only by refraction, looked like a
golden disk, dispersing its last rays over this deserted continent and
down to these seas not yet plowed by the ships of man.
Captain Nemo had brought a spyglass with a reticular eyepiece, which
corrected the sun’s refraction by means of a mirror, and he used it to
observe the orb sinking little by little along a very extended
diagonal that reached below the horizon. I held the chronometer. My
heart was pounding mightily. If the lower half of the sun’s disk
disappeared just as the chronometer said noon, we were right at the
pole.
“Noon!” I called.
“The South Pole!” Captain Nemo replied in a solemn voice, handing me
the spyglass, which showed the orb of day cut into two exactly equal
parts by the horizon.
I stared at the last rays wreathing this peak, while shadows were
gradually climbing its gradients.
Just then, resting his hand on my shoulder, Captain Nemo said to me:
“In 1600, sir, the Dutchman Gheritk was swept by storms and currents,
reaching latitude 64 degrees south and discovering the South Shetland
Islands. On January 17, 1773, the famous Captain Cook went along the
38th meridian, arriving at latitude 67 degrees 30′; and on January 30,
1774, along the 109th meridian, he reached latitude 71 degrees 15′. In
1819 the Russian Bellinghausen lay on the 69th parallel, and in 1821
on the 66th at longitude 111 degrees west. In 1820 the Englishman
Bransfield stopped at 65 degrees. That same year the American Morrel,
whose reports are dubious, went along the 42nd meridian, finding open
sea at latitude 70 degrees 14′. In 1825 the Englishman Powell was
unable to get beyond 62 degrees. That same year a humble seal
fisherman, the Englishman Weddell, went as far as latitude 72 degrees
14′ on the 35th meridian, and as far as 74 degrees 15′ on the 36th. In
1829 the Englishman Forster, commander of the Chanticleer, laid claim
to the Antarctic continent in latitude 63 degrees 26′ and longitude 66
degrees 26′. On February 1, 1831, the Englishman Biscoe discovered
Enderby Land at latitude 68 degrees 50′, Adelaide Land at latitude 67
degrees on February 5, 1832, and Graham Land at latitude 64 degrees
45′ on February 21. In 1838 the Frenchman Dumont d’Urville stopped at
the Ice Bank in latitude 62 degrees 57′, sighting the Louis-Philippe
Peninsula; on January 21 two years later, at a new southerly position
of 66 degrees 30′, he named the Adélie Coast and eight days later, the
Clarie Coast at 64 degrees 40′. In 1838 the American Wilkes advanced
as far as the 69th parallel on the 100th meridian. In 1839 the
Englishman Balleny discovered the Sabrina Coast at the edge of the
polar circle. Lastly, on January 12, 1842, with his ships, the Erebus
and the Terror, the Englishman Sir James Clark Ross found Victoria
Land in latitude 70 degrees 56′ and longitude 171 degrees 7′ east; on
the 23rd of that same month, he reached the 74th parallel, a position
denoting the Farthest South attained until then; on the 27th he lay at
76 degrees 8′; on the 28th at 77 degrees 32′; on February 2 at 78
degrees 4′; and late in 1842 he returned to 71 degrees but couldn’t
get beyond it. Well now! In 1868, on this 21st day of March, I myself,
Captain Nemo, have reached the South Pole at 90 degrees, and I hereby
claim this entire part of the globe, equal to one-sixth of the known
continents.”
“In the name of which sovereign, captain?”
“In my own name, sir!”
So saying, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag bearing a gold “N” on
its quartered bunting. Then, turning toward the orb of day, whose last
rays were licking at the sea’s horizon:
“Farewell, O sun!” he called. “Disappear, O radiant orb! Retire
beneath this open sea, and let six months of night spread their
shadows over my new domains!”
CHAPTER 15
Accident or Incident?
THE NEXT DAY, March 22, at six o’clock in the morning, preparations
for departure began. The last gleams of twilight were melting into
night. The cold was brisk. The constellations were glittering with
startling intensity. The wonderful Southern Cross, polar star of the
Antarctic regions, twinkled at its zenith.
The thermometer marked -12 degrees centigrade, and a fresh breeze left
a sharp nip in the air. Ice floes were increasing over the open
water. The sea was starting to congeal everywhere. Numerous blackish
patches were spreading over its surface, announcing the imminent
formation of fresh ice. Obviously this southernmost basin froze over
during its six-month winter and became utterly inaccessible. What
happened to the whales during this period? No doubt they went beneath
the Ice Bank to find more feasible seas. As for seals and walruses,
they were accustomed to living in the harshest climates and stayed on
in these icy waterways. These animals know by instinct how to gouge
holes in the ice fields and keep them continually open; they go to
these holes to breathe. Once the birds have migrated northward to
escape the cold, these marine mammals remain as sole lords of the
polar continent.
Meanwhile the ballast tanks filled with water and the Nautilus sank
slowly. At a depth of 1,000 feet, it stopped. Its propeller churned
the waves and it headed due north at a speed of fifteen miles per
hour. Near the afternoon it was already cruising under the immense
frozen carapace of the Ice Bank.
As a precaution, the panels in the lounge stayed closed, because the
Nautilus’s hull could run afoul of some submerged block of ice. So I
spent the day putting my notes into final form. My mind was completely
wrapped up in my memories of the pole. We had reached that
inaccessible spot without facing exhaustion or danger, as if our
seagoing passenger carriage had glided there on railroad tracks. And
now we had actually started our return journey. Did it still have
comparable surprises in store for me? I felt sure it did, so
inexhaustible is this series of underwater wonders! As it was, in the
five and a half months since fate had brought us on board, we had
cleared 14,000 leagues, and over this track longer than the earth’s
equator, so many fascinating or frightening incidents had beguiled our
voyage: that hunting trip in the Crespo forests, our running aground
in the Torres Strait, the coral cemetery, the pearl fisheries of
Ceylon, the Arabic tunnel, the fires of Santorini, those millions in
the Bay of Vigo, Atlantis, the South Pole! During the night all these
memories crossed over from one dream to the next, not giving my brain
a moment’s rest.
At three o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by a violent
collision. I sat up in bed, listening in the darkness, and then was
suddenly hurled into the middle of my stateroom. Apparently the
Nautilus had gone aground, then heeled over sharply.
Leaning against the walls, I dragged myself down the gangways to the
lounge, whose ceiling lights were on. The furniture had been knocked
over. Fortunately the glass cases were solidly secured at the base and
had stood fast. Since we were no longer vertical, the starboard
pictures were glued to the tapestries, while those to port had their
lower edges hanging a foot away from the wall. So the Nautilus was
lying on its starboard side, completely stationary to boot.
In its interior I heard the sound of footsteps and muffled voices. But
Captain Nemo didn’t appear. Just as I was about to leave the lounge,
Ned Land and Conseil entered.
“What happened?” I instantly said to them.
“I came to ask master that,” Conseil replied.
“Damnation!” the Canadian exclaimed. “I know full well what happened!
The Nautilus has gone aground, and judging from the way it’s listing,
I don’t think it’ll pull through like that first time in the Torres
Strait.”
“But,” I asked, “are we at least back on the surface of the sea?”
“We have no idea,” Conseil replied.
“It’s easy to find out,” I answered.
I consulted the pressure gauge. Much to my surprise, it indicated a
depth of 360 meters.
“What’s the meaning of this?” I exclaimed.
“We must confer with Captain Nemo,” Conseil said.
“But where do we find him?” Ned Land asked.
“Follow me,” I told my two companions.
We left the lounge. Nobody in the library. Nobody by the central
companionway or the crew’s quarters. I assumed that Captain Nemo was
stationed in the pilothouse. Best to wait. The three of us returned to
the lounge.
I’ll skip over the Canadian’s complaints. He had good grounds for an
outburst. I didn’t answer him back, letting him blow off all the steam
he wanted.
We had been left to ourselves for twenty minutes, trying to detect the
tiniest noises inside the Nautilus, when Captain Nemo entered. He
didn’t seem to see us. His facial features, usually so emotionless,
revealed a certain uneasiness. He studied the compass and pressure
gauge in silence, then went and put his finger on the world map at a
spot in the sector depicting the southernmost seas.
I hesitated to interrupt him. But some moments later, when he turned
to me, I threw back at him a phrase he had used in the Torres Strait:
“An incident, captain?”
“No, sir,” he replied, “this time an accident.”
“Serious?”
“Perhaps.”
“Is there any immediate danger?”
“No.”
“The Nautilus has run aground?”
“Yes.”
“And this accident came about . . . ?”
“Through nature’s unpredictability, not man’s incapacity. No errors
were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can’t prevent a loss
of balance from taking its toll. One may defy human laws, but no one
can withstand the laws of nature.”
Captain Nemo had picked an odd time to philosophize. All in all, this
reply told me nothing.
“May I learn, sir,” I asked him, “what caused this accident?”
“An enormous block of ice, an entire mountain, has toppled over,” he
answered me. “When an iceberg is eroded at the base by warmer waters
or by repeated collisions, its center of gravity rises. Then it
somersaults, it turns completely upside down. That’s what happened
here. When it overturned, one of these blocks hit the Nautilus as it
was cruising under the waters. Sliding under our hull, this block then
raised us with irresistible power, lifting us into less congested
strata where we now lie on our side.”
“But can’t we float the Nautilus clear by emptying its ballast tanks,
to regain our balance?”
“That, sir, is being done right now. You can hear the pumps
working. Look at the needle on the pressure gauge. It indicates that
the Nautilus is rising, but this block of ice is rising with us, and
until some obstacle halts its upward movement, our position won’t
change.”
Indeed, the Nautilus kept the same heel to starboard. No doubt it
would straighten up once the block came to a halt. But before that
happened, who knew if we might not hit the underbelly of the Ice Bank
and be hideously squeezed between two frozen surfaces?
I mused on all the consequences of this situation. Captain Nemo didn’t
stop studying the pressure gauge. Since the toppling of this iceberg,
the Nautilus had risen about 150 feet, but it still stayed at the same
angle to the perpendicular.
Suddenly a slight movement could be felt over the hull. Obviously the
Nautilus was straightening a bit. Objects hanging in the lounge were
visibly returning to their normal positions. The walls were
approaching the vertical. Nobody said a word. Hearts pounding, we
could see and feel the ship righting itself. The floor was becoming
horizontal beneath our feet. Ten minutes went by.
“Finally, we’re upright!” I exclaimed.
“Yes,” Captain Nemo said, heading to the lounge door.
“But will we float off?” I asked him.
“Certainly,” he replied, “since the ballast tanks aren’t yet empty,
and when they are, the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea.”
The captain went out, and soon I saw that at his orders, the Nautilus
had halted its upward movement. In fact, it soon would have hit the
underbelly of the Ice Bank, but it had stopped in time and was
floating in midwater.
“That was a close call!” Conseil then said.
“Yes. We could have been crushed between these masses of ice, or at
least imprisoned between them. And then, with no way to renew our air
supply. . . . Yes, that was a close call!”
“If it’s over with!” Ned Land muttered.
I was unwilling to get into a pointless argument with the Canadian and
didn’t reply. Moreover, the panels opened just then, and the outside
light burst through the uncovered windows.
We were fully afloat, as I have said; but on both sides of the
Nautilus, about ten meters away, there rose dazzling walls of
ice. There also were walls above and below. Above, because the Ice
Bank’s underbelly spread over us like an immense ceiling. Below,
because the somersaulting block, shifting little by little, had found
points of purchase on both side walls and had gotten jammed between
them. The Nautilus was imprisoned in a genuine tunnel of ice about
twenty meters wide and filled with quiet water. So the ship could
easily exit by going either ahead or astern, sinking a few hundred
meters deeper, and then taking an open passageway beneath the Ice
Bank.
The ceiling lights were off, yet the lounge was still brightly
lit. This was due to the reflecting power of the walls of ice, which
threw the beams of our beacon right back at us. Words cannot describe
the effects produced by our galvanic rays on these huge, whimsically
sculpted blocks, whose every angle, ridge, and facet gave off a
different glow depending on the nature of the veins running inside the
ice. It was a dazzling mine of gems, in particular sapphires and
emeralds, whose jets of blue and green crisscrossed. Here and there,
opaline hues of infinite subtlety raced among sparks of light that
were like so many fiery diamonds, their brilliance more than any eye
could stand. The power of our beacon was increased a hundredfold, like
a lamp shining through the biconvex lenses of a world-class
lighthouse.
“How beautiful!” Conseil exclaimed.
“Yes,” I said, “it’s a wonderful sight! Isn’t it, Ned?”
“Oh damnation, yes!” Ned Land shot back. “It’s superb! I’m furious
that I have to admit it. Nobody has ever seen the like. But this sight
could cost us dearly. And in all honesty, I think we’re looking at
things God never intended for human eyes.”
Ned was right. It was too beautiful. All at once a yell from Conseil
made me turn around.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Master must close his eyes! Master mustn’t look!”
With that, Conseil clapped his hands over his eyes.
“But what’s wrong, my boy?”
“I’ve been dazzled, struck blind!”
Involuntarily my eyes flew to the window, but I couldn’t stand the
fire devouring it.
I realized what had happened. The Nautilus had just started off at
great speed. All the tranquil glimmers of the ice walls had then
changed into blazing streaks. The sparkles from these myriads of
diamonds were merging with each other. Swept along by its propeller,
the Nautilus was traveling through a sheath of flashing light.
Then the panels in the lounge closed. We kept our hands over our eyes,
which were utterly saturated with those concentric gleams that swirl
before the retina when sunlight strikes it too intensely. It took some
time to calm our troubled vision.
Finally we lowered our hands.
“Ye gods, I never would have believed it,” Conseil said.
“And I still don’t believe it!” the Canadian shot back.
“When we return to shore, jaded from all these natural wonders,”
Conseil added, “think how we’ll look down on those pitiful land
masses, those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won’t be good
enough for us!”
Such words from the lips of this emotionless Flemish boy showed that
our enthusiasm was near the boiling point. But the Canadian didn’t
fail to throw his dram of cold water over us.
“The civilized world!” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry,
Conseil my friend, we’re never going back to that world!”
By this point it was five o’clock in the morning. Just then there was
a collision in the Nautilus’s bow. I realized that its spur had just
bumped a block of ice. It must have been a faulty maneuver because
this underwater tunnel was obstructed by such blocks and didn’t make
for easy navigating. So I had assumed that Captain Nemo, in adjusting
his course, would go around each obstacle or would hug the walls and
follow the windings of the tunnel. In either case our forward motion
wouldn’t receive an absolute check. Nevertheless, contrary to my
expectations, the Nautilus definitely began to move backward.
“We’re going astern?” Conseil said.
“Yes,” I replied. “Apparently the tunnel has no way out at this end.”
“And so . . . ?”
“So,” I said, “our maneuvers are quite simple. We’ll return in our
tracks and go out the southern opening. That’s all.”
As I spoke, I tried to sound more confident than I really
felt. Meanwhile the Nautilus accelerated its backward movement, and
running with propeller in reverse, it swept us along at great speed.
“This’ll mean a delay,” Ned said.
“What are a few hours more or less, so long as we get out.”
“Yes,” Ned Land repeated, “so long as we get out!”
I strolled for a little while from the lounge into the library. My
companions kept their seats and didn’t move. Soon I threw myself down
on a couch and picked up a book, which my eyes skimmed mechanically.
A quarter of an hour later, Conseil approached me, saying:
“Is it deeply fascinating, this volume master is reading?”
“Tremendously fascinating,” I replied.
“I believe it. Master is reading his own book!”
“My own book?”
Indeed, my hands were holding my own work on the great ocean depths. I
hadn’t even suspected. I closed the book and resumed my strolling. Ned
and Conseil stood up to leave.
“Stay here, my friends,” I said, stopping them. “Let’s stay together
until we’re out of this blind alley.”
“As master wishes,” Conseil replied.
The hours passed. I often studied the instruments hanging on the
lounge wall. The pressure gauge indicated that the Nautilus stayed at
a constant depth of 300 meters, the compass that it kept heading
south, the log that it was traveling at a speed of twenty miles per
hour, an excessive speed in such a cramped area. But Captain Nemo knew
that by this point there was no such thing as too fast, since minutes
were now worth centuries.
At 8:25 a second collision took place. This time astern. I grew
pale. My companions came over. I clutched Conseil’s hand. Our eyes
questioned each other, and more directly than if our thoughts had been
translated into words.
Just then the captain entered the lounge. I went to him.
“Our path is barred to the south?” I asked him.
“Yes, sir. When it overturned, that iceberg closed off every exit.”
“We’re boxed in?”
“Yes.”
CHAPTER 16
Shortage of Air
CONSEQUENTLY, above, below, and around the Nautilus, there were
impenetrable frozen walls. We were the Ice Bank’s prisoners! The
Canadian banged a table with his fearsome fist. Conseil kept still. I
stared at the captain. His face had resumed its usual
emotionlessness. He crossed his arms. He pondered. The Nautilus did
not stir.
The captain then broke into speech:
“Gentlemen,” he said in a calm voice, “there are two ways of dying
under the conditions in which we’re placed.”
This inexplicable individual acted like a mathematics professor
working out a problem for his pupils.
“The first way,” he went on, “is death by crushing. The second is
death by asphyxiation. I don’t mention the possibility of death by
starvation because the Nautilus’s provisions will certainly last
longer than we will. Therefore, let’s concentrate on our chances of
being crushed or asphyxiated.”
“As for asphyxiation, captain,” I replied, “that isn’t a cause for
alarm, because the air tanks are full.”
“True,” Captain Nemo went on, “but they’ll supply air for only two
days. Now then, we’ve been buried beneath the waters for thirty-six
hours, and the Nautilus’s heavy atmosphere already needs renewing. In
another forty-eight hours, our reserve air will be used up.”
“Well then, captain, let’s free ourselves within forty-eight hours!”
“We’ll try to at least, by cutting through one of these walls
surrounding us.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“Borings will tell us that. I’m going to ground the Nautilus on the
lower shelf, then my men will put on their diving suits and attack the
thinnest of these ice walls.”
“Can the panels in the lounge be left open?”
“Without ill effect. We’re no longer in motion.”
Captain Nemo went out. Hissing sounds soon told me that water was
being admitted into the ballast tanks. The Nautilus slowly settled and
rested on the icy bottom at a depth of 350 meters, the depth at which
the lower shelf of ice lay submerged.
“My friends,” I said, “we’re in a serious predicament, but I’m
counting on your courage and energy.”
“Sir,” the Canadian replied, “this is no time to bore you with my
complaints. I’m ready to do anything I can for the common good.”
“Excellent, Ned,” I said, extending my hand to the Canadian.
“I might add,” he went on, “that I’m as handy with a pick as a
harpoon. If I can be helpful to the captain, he can use me any way he
wants.”
“He won’t turn down your assistance. Come along, Ned.”
I led the Canadian to the room where the Nautilus’s men were putting
on their diving suits. I informed the captain of Ned’s proposition,
which was promptly accepted. The Canadian got into his underwater
costume and was ready as soon as his fellow workers. Each of them
carried on his back a Rouquayrol device that the air tanks had
supplied with a generous allowance of fresh oxygen. A considerable but
necessary drain on the Nautilus’s reserves. As for the Ruhmkorff
lamps, they were unnecessary in the midst of these brilliant waters
saturated with our electric rays.
After Ned was dressed, I reentered the lounge, whose windows had been
uncovered; stationed next to Conseil, I examined the strata
surrounding and supporting the Nautilus.
Some moments later, we saw a dozen crewmen set foot on the shelf of
ice, among them Ned Land, easily recognized by his tall
figure. Captain Nemo was with them.
Before digging into the ice, the captain had to obtain borings, to
insure working in the best direction. Long bores were driven into the
side walls; but after fifteen meters, the instruments were still
impeded by the thickness of those walls. It was futile to attack the
ceiling since that surface was the Ice Bank itself, more than 400
meters high. Captain Nemo then bored into the lower surface. There we
were separated from the sea by a ten-meter barrier. That’s how thick
the iceberg was. From this point on, it was an issue of cutting out a
piece equal in surface area to the Nautilus’s waterline. This meant
detaching about 6,500 cubic meters, to dig a hole through which the
ship could descend below this tract of ice.
Work began immediately and was carried on with tireless
tenacity. Instead of digging all around the Nautilus, which would have
entailed even greater difficulties, Captain Nemo had an immense trench
outlined on the ice, eight meters from our port quarter. Then his men
simultaneously staked it off at several points around its
circumference. Soon their picks were vigorously attacking this compact
matter, and huge chunks were loosened from its mass. These chunks
weighed less than the water, and by an unusual effect of specific
gravity, each chunk took wing, as it were, to the roof of the tunnel,
which thickened above by as much as it diminished below. But this
hardly mattered so long as the lower surface kept growing thinner.
After two hours of energetic work, Ned Land reentered, exhausted. He
and his companions were replaced by new workmen, including Conseil and
me. The Nautilus’s chief officer supervised us.
The water struck me as unusually cold, but I warmed up promptly while
wielding my pick. My movements were quite free, although they were
executed under a pressure of thirty atmospheres.
After two hours of work, reentering to snatch some food and rest, I
found a noticeable difference between the clean elastic fluid supplied
me by the Rouquayrol device and the Nautilus’s atmosphere, which was
already charged with carbon dioxide. The air hadn’t been renewed in
forty-eight hours, and its life-giving qualities were considerably
weakened. Meanwhile, after twelve hours had gone by, we had removed
from the outlined surface area a slice of ice only one meter thick,
hence about 600 cubic meters. Assuming the same work would be
accomplished every twelve hours, it would still take five nights and
four days to see the undertaking through to completion.
“Five nights and four days!” I told my companions. “And we have oxygen
in the air tanks for only two days.”
“Without taking into account,” Ned answered, “that once we’re out of
this damned prison, we’ll still be cooped up beneath the Ice Bank,
without any possible contact with the open air!”
An apt remark. For who could predict the minimum time we would need to
free ourselves? Before the Nautilus could return to the surface of the
waves, couldn’t we all die of asphyxiation? Were this ship and
everyone on board doomed to perish in this tomb of ice? It was a
dreadful state of affairs. But we faced it head-on, each one of us
determined to do his duty to the end.
During the night, in line with my forecasts, a new one-meter slice was
removed from this immense socket. But in the morning, wearing my
diving suit, I was crossing through the liquid mass in a temperature
of -6 degrees to -7 degrees centigrade, when I noted that little by
little the side walls were closing in on each other. The liquid strata
farthest from the trench, not warmed by the movements of workmen and
tools, were showing a tendency to solidify. In the face of this
imminent new danger, what would happen to our chances for salvation,
and how could we prevent this liquid medium from solidifying, then
cracking the Nautilus’s hull like glass?
I didn’t tell my two companions about this new danger. There was no
point in dampening the energy they were putting into our arduous
rescue work. But when I returned on board, I mentioned this serious
complication to Captain Nemo.
“I know,” he told me in that calm tone the most dreadful outlook
couldn’t change. “It’s one more danger, but I don’t know any way of
warding it off. Our sole chance for salvation is to work faster than
the water solidifies. We’ve got to get there first, that’s all.”
Get there first! By then I should have been used to this type of talk!
For several hours that day, I wielded my pick doggedly. The work kept
me going. Besides, working meant leaving the Nautilus, which meant
breathing the clean oxygen drawn from the air tanks and supplied by
our equipment, which meant leaving the thin, foul air behind.
Near evening one more meter had been dug from the trench. When I
returned on board, I was wellnigh asphyxiated by the carbon dioxide
saturating the air. Oh, if only we had the chemical methods that would
enable us to drive out this noxious gas! There was no lack of
oxygen. All this water contained a considerable amount, and after it
was decomposed by our powerful batteries, this life-giving elastic
fluid could have been restored to us. I had thought it all out, but to
no avail because the carbon dioxide produced by our breathing
permeated every part of the ship. To absorb it, we would need to fill
containers with potassium hydroxide and shake them continually. But
this substance was missing on board and nothing else could replace it.
That evening Captain Nemo was forced to open the spigots of his air
tanks and shoot a few spouts of fresh oxygen through the Nautilus’s
interior. Without this precaution we wouldn’t have awakened the
following morning.
The next day, March 26, I returned to my miner’s trade, working to
remove the fifth meter. The Ice Bank’s side walls and underbelly had
visibly thickened. Obviously they would come together before the
Nautilus could break free. For an instant I was gripped by despair. My
pick nearly slipped from my hands. What was the point of this digging
if I was to die smothered and crushed by this water turning to stone,
a torture undreamed of by even the wildest savages! I felt like I was
lying in the jaws of a fearsome monster, jaws irresistibly closing.
Supervising our work, working himself, Captain Nemo passed near me
just then. I touched him with my hand and pointed to the walls of our
prison. The starboard wall had moved forward to a point less than four
meters from the Nautilus’s hull.
The captain understood and gave me a signal to follow him. We returned
on board. My diving suit removed, I went with him to the lounge.
“Professor Aronnax,” he told me, “this calls for heroic measures, or
we’ll be sealed up in this solidified water as if it were cement.”
“Yes!” I said. “But what can we do?”
“Oh,” he exclaimed, “if only my Nautilus were strong enough to stand
that much pressure without being crushed!”
“Well?” I asked, not catching the captain’s meaning.
“Don’t you understand,” he went on, “that the congealing of this water
could come to our rescue? Don’t you see that by solidifying, it could
burst these tracts of ice imprisoning us, just as its freezing can
burst the hardest stones? Aren’t you aware that this force could be
the instrument of our salvation rather than our destruction?”
“Yes, captain, maybe so. But whatever resistance to crushing the
Nautilus may have, it still couldn’t stand such dreadful pressures,
and it would be squashed as flat as a piece of sheet iron.”
“I know it, sir. So we can’t rely on nature to rescue us, only our own
efforts. We must counteract this solidification. We must hold it in
check. Not only are the side walls closing in, but there aren’t ten
feet of water ahead or astern of the Nautilus. All around us, this
freeze is gaining fast.”
“How long,” I asked, “will the oxygen in the air tanks enable us to
breathe on board?”
The captain looked me straight in the eye.
“After tomorrow,” he said, “the air tanks will be empty!”
I broke out in a cold sweat. But why should I have been startled by
this reply? On March 22 the Nautilus had dived under the open waters
at the pole. It was now the 26th. We had lived off the ship’s stores
for five days! And all remaining breathable air had to be saved for
the workmen. Even today as I write these lines, my sensations are so
intense that an involuntary terror sweeps over me, and my lungs still
seem short of air!
Meanwhile, motionless and silent, Captain Nemo stood lost in
thought. An idea visibly crossed his mind. But he seemed to brush it
aside. He told himself no. At last these words escaped his lips:
“Boiling water!” he muttered.
“Boiling water?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, sir. We’re shut up in a relatively confined area. If the
Nautilus’s pumps continually injected streams of boiling water into
this space, wouldn’t that raise its temperature and delay its
freezing?”
“It’s worth trying!” I said resolutely.
“So let’s try it, professor.”
By then the thermometer gave -7 degrees centigrade outside. Captain
Nemo led me to the galley where a huge distilling mechanism was at
work, supplying drinking water via evaporation. The mechanism was
loaded with water, and the full electric heat of our batteries was
thrown into coils awash in liquid. In a few minutes the water reached
100 degrees centigrade. It was sent to the pumps while new water
replaced it in the process. The heat generated by our batteries was so
intense that after simply going through the mechanism, water drawn
cold from the sea arrived boiling hot at the body of the pump.
The steaming water was injected into the icy water outside, and after
three hours had passed, the thermometer gave the exterior temperature
as -6 degrees centigrade. That was one degree gained. Two hours later
the thermometer gave only -4 degrees.
After I monitored the operation’s progress, double-checking it with
many inspections, I told the captain, “It’s working.”
“I think so,” he answered me. “We’ve escaped being crushed. Now we
have only asphyxiation to fear.”
During the night the water temperature rose to -1 degrees
centigrade. The injections couldn’t get it to go a single degree
higher. But since salt water freezes only at -2 degrees, I was finally
assured that there was no danger of it solidifying.
By the next day, March 27, six meters of ice had been torn from the
socket. Only four meters were left to be removed. That still meant
forty-eight hours of work. The air couldn’t be renewed in the
Nautilus’s interior. Accordingly, that day it kept getting worse.
An unbearable heaviness weighed me down. Near three o’clock in the
afternoon, this agonizing sensation affected me to an intense
degree. Yawns dislocated my jaws. My lungs were gasping in their quest
for that enkindling elastic fluid required for breathing, now growing
scarcer and scarcer. My mind was in a daze. I lay outstretched,
strength gone, nearly unconscious. My gallant Conseil felt the same
symptoms, suffered the same sufferings, yet never left my side. He
held my hand, he kept encouraging me, and I even heard him mutter:
“Oh, if only I didn’t have to breathe, to leave more air for master!”
It brought tears to my eyes to hear him say these words.
Since conditions inside were universally unbearable, how eagerly, how
happily, we put on our diving suits to take our turns working! Picks
rang out on that bed of ice. Arms grew weary, hands were rubbed raw,
but who cared about exhaustion, what difference were wounds?
Life-sustaining air reached our lungs! We could breathe! We could
breathe!
And yet nobody prolonged his underwater work beyond the time allotted
him. His shift over, each man surrendered to a gasping companion the
air tank that would revive him. Captain Nemo set the example and was
foremost in submitting to this strict discipline. When his time was
up, he yielded his equipment to another and reentered the foul air on
board, always calm, unflinching, and uncomplaining.
That day the usual work was accomplished with even greater
energy. Over the whole surface area, only two meters were left to be
removed. Only two meters separated us from the open sea. But the
ship’s air tanks were nearly empty. The little air that remained had
to be saved for the workmen. Not an atom for the Nautilus!
When I returned on board, I felt half suffocated. What a night! I’m
unable to depict it. Such sufferings are indescribable. The next day I
was short-winded. Headaches and staggering fits of dizziness made me
reel like a drunk. My companions were experiencing the same
symptoms. Some crewmen were at their last gasp.
That day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo concluded that
picks and mattocks were too slow to deal with the ice layer still
separating us from open water—and he decided to crush this layer. The
man had kept his energy and composure. He had subdued physical pain
with moral strength. He could still think, plan, and act.
At his orders the craft was eased off, in other words, it was raised
from its icy bed by a change in its specific gravity. When it was
afloat, the crew towed it, leading it right above the immense trench
outlined to match the ship’s waterline. Next the ballast tanks filled
with water, the boat sank, and was fitted into its socket.
Just then the whole crew returned on board, and the double outside
door was closed. By this point the Nautilus was resting on a bed of
ice only one meter thick and drilled by bores in a thousand places.
The stopcocks of the ballast tanks were then opened wide, and 100
cubic meters of water rushed in, increasing the Nautilus’s weight by
100,000 kilograms.
We waited, we listened, we forgot our sufferings, we hoped once
more. We had staked our salvation on this one last gamble.
Despite the buzzing in my head, I soon could hear vibrations under the
Nautilus’s hull. We tilted. The ice cracked with an odd ripping sound,
like paper tearing, and the Nautilus began settling downward.
“We’re going through!” Conseil muttered in my ear.
I couldn’t answer him. I clutched his hand. I squeezed it in an
involuntary convulsion.