All at once, carried away by its frightful excess load, the Nautilus

sank into the waters like a cannonball, in other words, dropping as if

in a vacuum!

Our full electric power was then put on the pumps, which instantly

began to expel water from the ballast tanks. After a few minutes we

had checked our fall. The pressure gauge soon indicated an ascending

movement. Brought to full speed, the propeller made the sheet-iron

hull tremble down to its rivets, and we sped northward.

But how long would it take to navigate under the Ice Bank to the open

sea? Another day? I would be dead first!

Half lying on a couch in the library, I was suffocating. My face was

purple, my lips blue, my faculties in abeyance. I could no longer see

or hear. I had lost all sense of time. My muscles had no power to

contract.

I’m unable to estimate the hours that passed in this way. But I was

aware that my death throes had begun. I realized that I was about to

die . . .

Suddenly I regained consciousness. A few whiffs of air had entered my

lungs. Had we risen to the surface of the waves? Had we cleared the

Ice Bank?

No! Ned and Conseil, my two gallant friends, were sacrificing

themselves to save me. A few atoms of air were still left in the

depths of one Rouquayrol device. Instead of breathing it themselves,

they had saved it for me, and while they were suffocating, they poured

life into me drop by drop! I tried to push the device away. They held

my hands, and for a few moments I could breathe luxuriously.

My eyes flew toward the clock. It was eleven in the morning. It had to

be March 28. The Nautilus was traveling at the frightful speed of

forty miles per hour. It was writhing in the waters.

Where was Captain Nemo? Had he perished? Had his companions died with

him?

Just then the pressure gauge indicated we were no more than twenty

feet from the surface. Separating us from the open air was a mere

tract of ice. Could we break through it?

Perhaps! In any event the Nautilus was going to try. In fact, I could

feel it assuming an oblique position, lowering its stern and raising

its spur. The admission of additional water was enough to shift its

balance. Then, driven by its powerful propeller, it attacked this ice

field from below like a fearsome battering ram. It split the barrier

little by little, backing up, then putting on full speed against the

punctured tract of ice; and finally, carried away by its supreme

momentum, it lunged through and onto this frozen surface, crushing the

ice beneath its weight.

The hatches were opened—or torn off, if you prefer—and waves of clean

air were admitted into every part of the Nautilus.

CHAPTER 17

From Cape Horn to the Amazon

HOW I GOT ONTO the platform I’m unable to say. Perhaps the Canadian

transferred me there. But I could breathe, I could inhale the

life-giving sea air. Next to me my two companions were getting tipsy

on the fresh oxygen particles. Poor souls who have suffered from long

starvation mustn’t pounce heedlessly on the first food given them. We,

on the other hand, didn’t have to practice such moderation: we could

suck the atoms from the air by the lungful, and it was the breeze, the

breeze itself, that poured into us this luxurious intoxication!

“Ahhh!” Conseil was putting in. “What fine oxygen! Let master have no

fears about breathing. There’s enough for everyone.”

As for Ned Land, he didn’t say a word, but his wide-open jaws would

have scared off a shark. And what powerful inhalations! The Canadian

“drew” like a furnace going full blast.

Our strength returned promptly, and when I looked around, I saw that

we were alone on the platform. No crewmen. Not even Captain

Nemo. Those strange seamen on the Nautilus were content with the

oxygen circulating inside. Not one of them had come up to enjoy the

open air.

The first words I pronounced were words of appreciation and gratitude

to my two companions. Ned and Conseil had kept me alive during the

final hours of our long death throes. But no expression of thanks

could repay them fully for such devotion.

“Good lord, professor,” Ned Land answered me, “don’t mention it! What

did we do that’s so praiseworthy? Not a thing. It was a question of

simple arithmetic. Your life is worth more than ours. So we had to

save it.”

“No, Ned,” I replied, “it isn’t worth more. Nobody could be better

than a kind and generous man like yourself!”

“All right, all right!” the Canadian repeated in embarrassment.

“And you, my gallant Conseil, you suffered a great deal.”

“Not too much, to be candid with master. I was lacking a few

throatfuls of air, but I would have gotten by. Besides, when I saw

master fainting, it left me without the slightest desire to

breathe. It took my breath away, in a manner of . . .”

Confounded by this lapse into banality, Conseil left his sentence

hanging.

“My friends,” I replied, very moved, “we’re bound to each other

forever, and I’m deeply indebted to you—”

“Which I’ll take advantage of,” the Canadian shot back.

“Eh?” Conseil put in.

“Yes,” Ned Land went on. “You can repay your debt by coming with me

when I leave this infernal Nautilus.”

“By the way,” Conseil said, “are we going in a favorable direction?”

“Yes,” I replied, “because we’re going in the direction of the sun,

and here the sun is due north.”

“Sure,” Ned Land went on, “but it remains to be seen whether we’ll

make for the Atlantic or the Pacific, in other words, whether we’ll

end up in well-traveled or deserted seas.”

I had no reply to this, and I feared that Captain Nemo wouldn’t take

us homeward but rather into that huge ocean washing the shores of both

Asia and America. In this way he would complete his underwater tour of

the world, going back to those seas where the Nautilus enjoyed the

greatest freedom. But if we returned to the Pacific, far from every

populated shore, what would happen to Ned Land’s plans?

We would soon settle this important point. The Nautilus traveled

swiftly. Soon we had cleared the Antarctic Circle plus the promontory

of Cape Horn. We were abreast of the tip of South America by March 31

at seven o’clock in the evening.

By then all our past sufferings were forgotten. The memory of that

imprisonment under the ice faded from our minds. We had thoughts only

of the future. Captain Nemo no longer appeared, neither in the lounge

nor on the platform. The positions reported each day on the world map

were put there by the chief officer, and they enabled me to determine

the Nautilus’s exact heading. Now then, that evening it became

obvious, much to my satisfaction, that we were returning north by the

Atlantic route.

I shared the results of my observations with the Canadian and Conseil.

“That’s good news,” the Canadian replied, “but where’s the Nautilus

going?”

“I’m unable to say, Ned.”

“After the South Pole, does our captain want to tackle the North Pole,

then go back to the Pacific by the notorious Northwest Passage?”

“I wouldn’t double dare him,” Conseil replied.

“Oh well,” the Canadian said, “we’ll give him the slip long before

then.”

“In any event,” Conseil added, “he’s a superman, that Captain Nemo,

and we’ll never regret having known him.”

“Especially once we’ve left him,” Ned Land shot back.

The next day, April 1, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the

waves a few minutes before noon, we raised land to the west. It was

Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire, a name given it by early

navigators after they saw numerous curls of smoke rising from the

natives’ huts. This Land of Fire forms a huge cluster of islands over

thirty leagues long and eighty leagues wide, extending between

latitude 53 degrees and 56 degrees south, and between longitude 67

degrees 50′ and 77 degrees 15′ west. Its coastline looked flat, but

high mountains rose in the distance. I even thought I glimpsed

Mt. Sarmiento, whose elevation is 2,070 meters above sea level: a

pyramid-shaped block of shale with a very sharp summit, which,

depending on whether it’s clear or veiled in vapor, “predicts fair

weather or foul,” as Ned Land told me.

“A first-class barometer, my friend.”

“Yes, sir, a natural barometer that didn’t let me down when I

navigated the narrows of the Strait of Magellan.”

Just then its peak appeared before us, standing out distinctly against

the background of the skies. This forecast fair weather. And so it

proved.

Going back under the waters, the Nautilus drew near the coast,

cruising along it for only a few miles. Through the lounge windows I

could see long creepers and gigantic fucus plants, bulb-bearing

seaweed of which the open sea at the pole had revealed a few

specimens; with their smooth, viscous filaments, they measured as much

as 300 meters long; genuine cables more than an inch thick and very

tough, they’re often used as mooring lines for ships. Another weed,

known by the name velp and boasting four-foot leaves, was crammed into

the coral concretions and carpeted the ocean floor. It served as both

nest and nourishment for myriads of crustaceans and mollusks, for

crabs and cuttlefish. Here seals and otters could indulge in a

sumptuous meal, mixing meat from fish with vegetables from the sea,

like the English with their Irish stews.

The Nautilus passed over these lush, luxuriant depths with tremendous

speed. Near evening it approached the Falkland Islands, whose rugged

summits I recognized the next day. The sea was of moderate depth. So

not without good reason, I assumed that these two islands, plus the

many islets surrounding them, used to be part of the Magellan

coastline. The Falkland Islands were probably discovered by the famous

navigator John Davis, who gave them the name Davis Southern

Islands. Later Sir Richard Hawkins called them the Maidenland, after

the Blessed Virgin. Subsequently, at the beginning of the 18th

century, they were named the Malouines by fishermen from Saint-Malo in

Brittany, then finally dubbed the Falklands by the English, to whom

they belong today.

In these waterways our nets brought up fine samples of algae, in

particular certain fucus plants whose roots were laden with the

world’s best mussels. Geese and duck alighted by the dozens on the

platform and soon took their places in the ship’s pantry. As for fish,

I specifically observed some bony fish belonging to the goby genus,

especially some gudgeon two decimeters long, sprinkled with whitish

and yellow spots.

I likewise marveled at the numerous medusas, including the most

beautiful of their breed, the compass jellyfish, unique to the

Falkland seas. Some of these jellyfish were shaped like very smooth,

semispheric parasols with russet stripes and fringes of twelve neat

festoons. Others looked like upside-down baskets from which wide

leaves and long red twigs were gracefully trailing. They swam with

quiverings of their four leaflike arms, letting the opulent tresses of

their tentacles dangle in the drift. I wanted to preserve a few

specimens of these delicate zoophytes, but they were merely clouds,

shadows, illusions, melting and evaporating outside their native

element.

When the last tips of the Falkland Islands had disappeared below the

horizon, the Nautilus submerged to a depth between twenty and

twenty-five meters and went along the South American coast. Captain

Nemo didn’t put in an appearance.

We didn’t leave these Patagonian waterways until April 3, sometimes

cruising under the ocean, sometimes on its surface. The Nautilus

passed the wide estuary formed by the mouth of the Rio de la Plata,

and on April 4 we lay abreast of Uruguay, albeit fifty miles

out. Keeping to its northerly heading, it followed the long windings

of South America. By then we had fared 16,000 leagues since coming on

board in the seas of Japan.

Near eleven o’clock in the morning, we cut the Tropic of Capricorn on

the 37th meridian, passing well out from Cape Frio. Much to Ned Land’s

displeasure, Captain Nemo had no liking for the neighborhood of

Brazil’s populous shores, because he shot by with dizzying speed. Not

even the swiftest fish or birds could keep up with us, and the natural

curiosities in these seas completely eluded our observation.

This speed was maintained for several days, and on the evening of

April 9, we raised South America’s easternmost tip, Cape São

Roque. But then the Nautilus veered away again and went looking for

the lowest depths of an underwater valley gouged between this cape and

Sierra Leone on the coast of Africa. Abreast of the West Indies, this

valley forks into two arms, and to the north it ends in an enormous

depression 9,000 meters deep. From this locality to the Lesser

Antilles, the ocean’s geologic profile features a steeply cut cliff

six kilometers high, and abreast of the Cape Verde Islands, there’s

another wall just as imposing; together these two barricades confine

the whole submerged continent of Atlantis. The floor of this immense

valley is made picturesque by mountains that furnish these underwater

depths with scenic views. This description is based mostly on certain

hand-drawn charts kept in the Nautilus’s library, charts obviously

rendered by Captain Nemo himself from his own personal observations.

For two days we visited these deep and deserted waters by means of our

slanting fins. The Nautilus would do long, diagonal dives that took us

to every level. But on April 11 it rose suddenly, and the shore

reappeared at the mouth of the Amazon River, a huge estuary whose

outflow is so considerable, it desalts the sea over an area of several

leagues.

We cut the Equator. Twenty miles to the west lay Guiana, French

territory where we could easily have taken refuge. But the wind was

blowing a strong gust, and the furious billows would not allow us to

face them in a mere skiff. No doubt Ned Land understood this because

he said nothing to me. For my part, I made no allusion to his escape

plans because I didn’t want to push him into an attempt that was

certain to misfire.

I was readily compensated for this delay by fascinating

research. During those two days of April 11-12, the Nautilus didn’t

leave the surface of the sea, and its trawl brought up a simply

miraculous catch of zoophytes, fish, and reptiles.

Some zoophytes were dredged up by the chain of our trawl. Most were

lovely sea anemone belonging to the family Actinidia, including among

other species, the Phyctalis protexta, native to this part of the

ocean: a small cylindrical trunk adorned with vertical lines, mottled

with red spots, and crowned by a wondrous blossoming of tentacles. As

for mollusks, they consisted of exhibits I had already observed:

turret snails, olive shells of the “tent olive” species with neatly

intersecting lines and russet spots standing out sharply against a

flesh-colored background, fanciful spider conchs that looked like

petrified scorpions, transparent glass snails, argonauts, some highly

edible cuttlefish, and certain species of squid that the naturalists

of antiquity classified with the flying fish, which are used chiefly

as bait for catching cod.

As for the fish in these waterways, I noted various species that I

hadn’t yet had the opportunity to study. Among cartilaginous fish:

some brook lamprey, a type of eel fifteen inches long, head greenish,

fins violet, back bluish gray, belly a silvery brown strewn with

bright spots, iris of the eye encircled in gold, unusual animals that

the Amazon’s current must have swept out to sea because their natural

habitat is fresh water; sting rays, the snout pointed, the tail long,

slender, and armed with an extensive jagged sting; small one-meter

sharks with gray and whitish hides, their teeth arranged in several

backward-curving rows, fish commonly known by the name carpet shark;

batfish, a sort of reddish isosceles triangle half a meter long, whose

pectoral fins are attached by fleshy extensions that make these fish

look like bats, although an appendage made of horn, located near the

nostrils, earns them the nickname of sea unicorns; lastly, a couple

species of triggerfish, the cucuyo whose stippled flanks glitter with

a sparkling gold color, and the bright purple leatherjacket whose hues

glisten like a pigeon’s throat.

I’ll finish up this catalog, a little dry but quite accurate, with the

series of bony fish I observed: eels belonging to the genus

Apteronotus whose snow-white snout is very blunt, the body painted a

handsome black and armed with a very long, slender, fleshy whip; long

sardines from the genus Odontognathus, like three-decimeter pike,

shining with a bright silver glow; Guaranian mackerel furnished with

two anal fins; black-tinted rudderfish that you catch by using

torches, fish measuring two meters and boasting white, firm, plump

meat that, when fresh, tastes like eel, when dried, like smoked

salmon; semired wrasse sporting scales only at the bases of their

dorsal and anal fins; grunts on which gold and silver mingle their

luster with that of ruby and topaz; yellow-tailed gilthead whose flesh

is extremely dainty and whose phosphorescent properties give them away

in the midst of the waters; porgies tinted orange, with slender

tongues; croakers with gold caudal fins; black surgeonfish; four-eyed

fish from Surinam, etc.

This “et cetera” won’t keep me from mentioning one more fish that

Conseil, with good reason, will long remember.

One of our nets had hauled up a type of very flat ray that weighed

some twenty kilograms; with its tail cut off, it would have formed a

perfect disk. It was white underneath and reddish on top, with big

round spots of deep blue encircled in black, its hide quite smooth and

ending in a double-lobed fin. Laid out on the platform, it kept

struggling with convulsive movements, trying to turn over, making such

efforts that its final lunge was about to flip it into the sea. But

Conseil, being very possessive of his fish, rushed at it, and before I

could stop him, he seized it with both hands.

Instantly there he was, thrown on his back, legs in the air, his body

half paralyzed, and yelling:

“Oh, sir, sir! Will you help me!”

For once in his life, the poor lad didn’t address me “in the third

person.”

The Canadian and I sat him up; we massaged his contracted arms, and

when he regained his five senses, that eternal classifier mumbled in a

broken voice:

“Class of cartilaginous fish, order Chondropterygia with fixed gills,

suborder Selacia, family Rajiiforma, genus electric ray.”

“Yes, my friend,” I answered, “it was an electric ray that put you in

this deplorable state.”

“Oh, master can trust me on this,” Conseil shot back. “I’ll be

revenged on that animal!”

“How?”

“I’ll eat it.”

Which he did that same evening, but strictly as retaliation. Because,

frankly, it tasted like leather.

Poor Conseil had assaulted an electric ray of the most dangerous

species, the cumana. Living in a conducting medium such as water, this

bizarre animal can electrocute other fish from several meters away, so

great is the power of its electric organ, an organ whose two chief

surfaces measure at least twenty-seven square feet.

During the course of the next day, April 12, the Nautilus drew near

the coast of Dutch Guiana, by the mouth of the Maroni River. There

several groups of sea cows were living in family units. These were

manatees, which belong to the order Sirenia, like the dugong and

Steller’s sea cow. Harmless and unaggressive, these fine animals were

six to seven meters long and must have weighed at least 4,000

kilograms each. I told Ned Land and Conseil that farseeing nature had

given these mammals a major role to play. In essence, manatees, like

seals, are designed to graze the underwater prairies, destroying the

clusters of weeds that obstruct the mouths of tropical rivers.

“And do you know,” I added, “what happened since man has almost

completely wiped out these beneficial races? Rotting weeds have

poisoned the air, and this poisoned air causes the yellow fever that

devastates these wonderful countries. This toxic vegetation has

increased beneath the seas of the Torrid Zone, so the disease spreads

unchecked from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Florida!”

And if Professor Toussenel is correct, this plague is nothing compared

to the scourge that will strike our descendants once the seas are

depopulated of whales and seals. By then, crowded with jellyfish,

squid, and other devilfish, the oceans will have become huge centers

of infection, because their waves will no longer possess “these huge

stomachs that God has entrusted with scouring the surface of the sea.”

Meanwhile, without scorning these theories, the Nautilus’s crew

captured half a dozen manatees. In essence, it was an issue of

stocking the larder with excellent red meat, even better than beef or

veal. Their hunting was not a fascinating sport. The manatees let

themselves be struck down without offering any resistance. Several

thousand kilos of meat were hauled below, to be dried and stored.

The same day an odd fishing practice further increased the Nautilus’s

stores, so full of game were these seas. Our trawl brought up in its

meshes a number of fish whose heads were topped by little oval slabs

with fleshy edges. These were suckerfish from the third family of the

subbrachian Malacopterygia. These flat disks on their heads consist of

crosswise plates of movable cartilage, between which the animals can

create a vacuum, enabling them to stick to objects like suction cups.

The remoras I had observed in the Mediterranean were related to this

species. But the creature at issue here was an Echeneis osteochara,

unique to this sea. Right after catching them, our seamen dropped them

in buckets of water.

Its fishing finished, the Nautilus drew nearer to the coast. In this

locality a number of sea turtles were sleeping on the surface of the

waves. It would have been difficult to capture these valuable

reptiles, because they wake up at the slightest sound, and their solid

carapaces are harpoon-proof. But our suckerfish would effect their

capture with extraordinary certainty and precision. In truth, this

animal is a living fishhook, promising wealth and happiness to the

greenest fisherman in the business.

The Nautilus’s men attached to each fish’s tail a ring that was big

enough not to hamper its movements, and to this ring a long rope whose

other end was moored on board.

Thrown into the sea, the suckerfish immediately began to play their

roles, going and fastening themselves onto the breastplates of the

turtles. Their tenacity was so great, they would rip apart rather than

let go. They were hauled in, still sticking to the turtles that came

aboard with them.

In this way we caught several loggerheads, reptiles a meter wide and

weighing 200 kilos. They’re extremely valuable because of their

carapaces, which are covered with big slabs of horn, thin, brown,

transparent, with white and yellow markings. Besides, they were

excellent from an edible viewpoint, with an exquisite flavor

comparable to the green turtle.

This fishing ended our stay in the waterways of the Amazon, and that

evening the Nautilus took to the high seas once more.

CHAPTER 18

The Devilfish

FOR SOME DAYS the Nautilus kept veering away from the American

coast. It obviously didn’t want to frequent the waves of the Gulf of

Mexico or the Caribbean Sea. Yet there was no shortage of water under

its keel, since the average depth of these seas is 1,800 meters; but

these waterways, strewn with islands and plowed by steamers, probably

didn’t agree with Captain Nemo.

On April 16 we raised Martinique and Guadalupe from a distance of

about thirty miles. For one instant I could see their lofty peaks.

The Canadian was quite disheartened, having counted on putting his

plans into execution in the gulf, either by reaching shore or by

pulling alongside one of the many boats plying a coastal trade from

one island to another. An escape attempt would have been quite

feasible, assuming Ned Land managed to seize the skiff without the

captain’s knowledge. But in midocean it was unthinkable.

The Canadian, Conseil, and I had a pretty long conversation on this

subject. For six months we had been prisoners aboard the Nautilus. We

had fared 17,000 leagues, and as Ned Land put it, there was no end in

sight. So he made me a proposition I hadn’t anticipated. We were to

ask Captain Nemo this question straight out: did the captain mean to

keep us on board his vessel permanently?

This measure was distasteful to me. To my mind it would lead

nowhere. We could hope for nothing from the Nautilus’s commander but

could depend only on ourselves. Besides, for some time now the man had

been gloomier, more withdrawn, less sociable. He seemed to be avoiding

me. I encountered him only at rare intervals. He used to take pleasure

in explaining the underwater wonders to me; now he left me to my

research and no longer entered the lounge.

What changes had come over him? From what cause? I had no reason to

blame myself. Was our presence on board perhaps a burden to him? Even

so, I cherished no hopes that the man would set us free.

So I begged Ned to let me think about it before taking action. If this

measure proved fruitless, it could arouse the captain’s suspicions,

make our circumstances even more arduous, and jeopardize the

Canadian’s plans. I might add that I could hardly use our state of

health as an argument. Except for that grueling ordeal under the Ice

Bank at the South Pole, we had never felt better, neither Ned,

Conseil, nor I. The nutritious food, life-giving air, regular routine,

and uniform temperature kept illness at bay; and for a man who didn’t

miss his past existence on land, for a Captain Nemo who was at home

here, who went where he wished, who took paths mysterious to others if

not himself in attaining his ends, I could understand such a life. But

we ourselves hadn’t severed all ties with humanity. For my part, I

didn’t want my new and unusual research to be buried with my bones. I

had now earned the right to pen the definitive book on the sea, and

sooner or later I wanted that book to see the light of day.

There once more, through the panels opening into these Caribbean

waters ten meters below the surface of the waves, I found so many

fascinating exhibits to describe in my daily notes! Among other

zoophytes there were Portuguese men-of-war known by the name Physalia

pelagica, like big, oblong bladders with a pearly sheen, spreading

their membranes to the wind, letting their blue tentacles drift like

silken threads; to the eye delightful jellyfish, to the touch actual

nettles that ooze a corrosive liquid. Among the articulates there were

annelid worms one and a half meters long, furnished with a pink

proboscis, equipped with 1,700 organs of locomotion, snaking through

the waters, and as they went, throwing off every gleam in the solar

spectrum. From the fish branch there were manta rays, enormous

cartilaginous fish ten feet long and weighing 600 pounds, their

pectoral fin triangular, their midback slightly arched, their eyes

attached to the edges of the face at the front of the head; they

floated like wreckage from a ship, sometimes fastening onto our

windows like opaque shutters. There were American triggerfish for

which nature has ground only black and white pigments, feather-shaped

gobies that were long and plump with yellow fins and jutting jaws,

sixteen-decimeter mackerel with short, sharp teeth, covered with small

scales, and related to the albacore species. Next came swarms of red

mullet corseted in gold stripes from head to tail, their shining fins

all aquiver, genuine masterpieces of jewelry, formerly sacred to the

goddess Diana, much in demand by rich Romans, and about which the old

saying goes: “He who catches them doesn’t eat them!” Finally, adorned

with emerald ribbons and dressed in velvet and silk, golden angelfish

passed before our eyes like courtiers in the paintings of Veronese;

spurred gilthead stole by with their swift thoracic fins; thread

herring fifteen inches long were wrapped in their phosphorescent

glimmers; gray mullet thrashed the sea with their big fleshy tails;

red salmon seemed to mow the waves with their slicing pectorals; and

silver moonfish, worthy of their name, rose on the horizon of the

waters like the whitish reflections of many moons.

How many other marvelous new specimens I still could have observed if,

little by little, the Nautilus hadn’t settled to the lower strata! Its

slanting fins drew it to depths of 2,000 and 3,500 meters. There

animal life was represented by nothing more than sea lilies, starfish,

delightful crinoids with bell-shaped heads like little chalices on

straight stems, top-shell snails, blood-red tooth shells, and

fissurella snails, a large species of coastal mollusk.

By April 20 we had risen to an average level of 1,500 meters. The

nearest land was the island group of the Bahamas, scattered like a

batch of cobblestones over the surface of the water. There high

underwater cliffs reared up, straight walls made of craggy chunks

arranged like big stone foundations, among which there gaped black

caves so deep our electric rays couldn’t light them to the far ends.

These rocks were hung with huge weeds, immense sea tangle, gigantic

fucus—a genuine trellis of water plants fit for a world of giants.

In discussing these colossal plants, Conseil, Ned, and I were

naturally led into mentioning the sea’s gigantic animals. The former

were obviously meant to feed the latter. However, through the windows

of our almost motionless Nautilus, I could see nothing among these

long filaments other than the chief articulates of the division

Brachyura: long-legged spider crabs, violet crabs, and sponge crabs

unique to the waters of the Caribbean.

It was about eleven o’clock when Ned Land drew my attention to a

fearsome commotion out in this huge seaweed.

“Well,” I said, “these are real devilfish caverns, and I wouldn’t be

surprised to see some of those monsters hereabouts.”

“What!” Conseil put in. “Squid, ordinary squid from the class

Cephalopoda?”

“No,” I said, “devilfish of large dimensions. But friend Land is no

doubt mistaken, because I don’t see a thing.”

“That’s regrettable,” Conseil answered. “I’d like to come face to face

with one of those devilfish I’ve heard so much about, which can drag

ships down into the depths. Those beasts go by the name of krake—”

“Fake is more like it,” the Canadian replied sarcastically.

“Krakens!” Conseil shot back, finishing his word without wincing at

his companion’s witticism.

“Nobody will ever make me believe,” Ned Land said, “that such animals

exist.”

“Why not?” Conseil replied. “We sincerely believed in master’s

narwhale.”

“We were wrong, Conseil.”

“No doubt, but there are others with no doubts who believe to this

day!”

“Probably, Conseil. But as for me, I’m bound and determined not to

accept the existence of any such monster till I’ve dissected it with

my own two hands.”

“Yet,” Conseil asked me, “doesn’t master believe in gigantic

devilfish?”

“Yikes! Who in Hades ever believed in them?” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Many people, Ned my friend,” I said.

“No fishermen. Scientists maybe!”

“Pardon me, Ned. Fishermen and scientists!”

“Why, I to whom you speak,” Conseil said with the world’s straightest

face, “I recall perfectly seeing a large boat dragged under the waves

by the arms of a cephalopod.”

“You saw that?” the Canadian asked.

“Yes, Ned.”

“With your own two eyes?”

“With my own two eyes.”

“Where, may I ask?”

“In Saint-Malo,” Conseil returned unflappably.

“In the harbor?” Ned Land said sarcastically.

“No, in a church,” Conseil replied.

“In a church!” the Canadian exclaimed.

“Yes, Ned my friend. It had a picture that portrayed the devilfish in

question.”

“Oh good!” Ned Land exclaimed with a burst of laughter. “Mr. Conseil

put one over on me!”

“Actually he’s right,” I said. “I’ve heard about that picture. But the

subject it portrays is taken from a legend, and you know how to rate

legends in matters of natural history! Besides, when it’s an issue of

monsters, the human imagination always tends to run wild. People not

only claimed these devilfish could drag ships under, but a certain

Olaus Magnus tells of a cephalopod a mile long that looked more like

an island than an animal. There’s also the story of how the Bishop of

Trondheim set up an altar one day on an immense rock. After he

finished saying mass, this rock started moving and went back into the

sea. The rock was a devilfish.”

“And that’s everything we know?” the Canadian asked.

“No,” I replied, “another bishop, Pontoppidan of Bergen, also tells of

a devilfish so large a whole cavalry regiment could maneuver on it.”

“They sure did go on, those oldtime bishops!” Ned Land said.

“Finally, the naturalists of antiquity mention some monsters with

mouths as big as a gulf, which were too huge to get through the Strait

of Gibraltar.”

“Good work, men!” the Canadian put in.

“But in all these stories, is there any truth?” Conseil asked.

“None at all, my friends, at least in those that go beyond the bounds

of credibility and fly off into fable or legend. Yet for the

imaginings of these storytellers there had to be, if not a cause, at

least an excuse. It can’t be denied that some species of squid and

other devilfish are quite large, though still smaller than

cetaceans. Aristotle put the dimensions of one squid at five cubits,

or 3.1 meters. Our fishermen frequently see specimens over 1.8 meters

long. The museums in Trieste and Montpellier have preserved some

devilfish carcasses measuring two meters. Besides, according to the

calculations of naturalists, one of these animals only six feet long

would have tentacles as long as twenty-seven. Which is enough to make

a fearsome monster.”

“Does anybody fish for ’em nowadays?” the Canadian asked.

“If they don’t fish for them, sailors at least sight them. A friend of

mine, Captain Paul Bos of Le Havre, has often sworn to me that he

encountered one of these monsters of colossal size in the seas of the

East Indies. But the most astonishing event, which proves that these

gigantic animals undeniably exist, took place a few years ago in

1861.”

“What event was that?” Ned Land asked.

“Just this. In 1861, to the northeast of Tenerife and fairly near the

latitude where we are right now, the crew of the gunboat Alecto

spotted a monstrous squid swimming in their waters. Commander Bouguer

approached the animal and attacked it with blows from harpoons and

blasts from rifles, but without much success because bullets and

harpoons crossed its soft flesh as if it were semiliquid jelly. After

several fruitless attempts, the crew managed to slip a noose around

the mollusk’s body. This noose slid as far as the caudal fins and came

to a halt. Then they tried to haul the monster on board, but its

weight was so considerable that when they tugged on the rope, the

animal parted company with its tail; and deprived of this adornment,

it disappeared beneath the waters.”

“Finally, an actual event,” Ned Land said.

“An indisputable event, my gallant Ned. Accordingly, people have

proposed naming this devilfish Bouguer’s Squid.”

“And how long was it?” the Canadian asked.

“Didn’t it measure about six meters?” said Conseil, who was stationed

at the window and examining anew the crevices in the cliff.

“Precisely,” I replied.

“Wasn’t its head,” Conseil went on, “crowned by eight tentacles that

quivered in the water like a nest of snakes?”

“Precisely.”

“Weren’t its eyes prominently placed and considerably enlarged?”

“Yes, Conseil.”

“And wasn’t its mouth a real parrot’s beak but of fearsome size?”

“Correct, Conseil.”

“Well, with all due respect to master,” Conseil replied serenely, “if

this isn’t Bouguer’s Squid, it’s at least one of his close relatives!”

I stared at Conseil. Ned Land rushed to the window.

“What an awful animal!” he exclaimed.

I stared in my turn and couldn’t keep back a movement of

revulsion. Before my eyes there quivered a horrible monster worthy of

a place among the most farfetched teratological legends.

It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long. It was

traveling backward with tremendous speed in the same direction as the

Nautilus. It gazed with enormous, staring eyes that were tinted sea

green. Its eight arms (or more accurately, feet) were rooted in its

head, which has earned these animals the name cephalopod; its arms

stretched a distance twice the length of its body and were writhing

like the serpentine hair of the Furies. You could plainly see its 250

suckers, arranged over the inner sides of its tentacles and shaped

like semispheric capsules. Sometimes these suckers fastened onto the

lounge window by creating vacuums against it. The monster’s mouth—a

beak made of horn and shaped like that of a parrot—opened and closed

vertically. Its tongue, also of horn substance and armed with several

rows of sharp teeth, would flicker out from between these genuine

shears. What a freak of nature! A bird’s beak on a mollusk! Its body

was spindle-shaped and swollen in the middle, a fleshy mass that must

have weighed 20,000 to 25,000 kilograms. Its unstable color would

change with tremendous speed as the animal grew irritated, passing

successively from bluish gray to reddish brown.

What was irritating this mollusk? No doubt the presence of the

Nautilus, even more fearsome than itself, and which it couldn’t grip

with its mandibles or the suckers on its arms. And yet what monsters

these devilfish are, what vitality our Creator has given them, what

vigor in their movements, thanks to their owning a triple heart!

Sheer chance had placed us in the presence of this squid, and I didn’t

want to lose this opportunity to meticulously study such a cephalopod

specimen. I overcame the horror that its appearance inspired in me,

picked up a pencil, and began to sketch it.

“Perhaps this is the same as the Alecto’s,” Conseil said.

“Can’t be,” the Canadian replied, “because this one’s complete while

the other one lost its tail!”

“That doesn’t necessarily follow,” I said. “The arms and tails of

these animals grow back through regeneration, and in seven years the

tail on Bouguer’s Squid has surely had time to sprout again.”

“Anyhow,” Ned shot back, “if it isn’t this fellow, maybe it’s one of

those!”

Indeed, other devilfish had appeared at the starboard window. I

counted seven of them. They provided the Nautilus with an escort, and

I could hear their beaks gnashing on the sheet-iron hull. We couldn’t

have asked for a more devoted following.

I continued sketching. These monsters kept pace in our waters with

such precision, they seemed to be standing still, and I could have

traced their outlines in miniature on the window. But we were moving

at a moderate speed.

All at once the Nautilus stopped. A jolt made it tremble through its

entire framework.

“Did we strike bottom?” I asked.

“In any event we’re already clear,” the Canadian replied, “because

we’re afloat.”

The Nautilus was certainly afloat, but it was no longer in motion. The

blades of its propeller weren’t churning the waves. A minute

passed. Followed by his chief officer, Captain Nemo entered the

lounge.

I hadn’t seen him for a good while. He looked gloomy to me. Without

speaking to us, without even seeing us perhaps, he went to the panel,

stared at the devilfish, and said a few words to his chief officer.

The latter went out. Soon the panels closed. The ceiling lit up.

I went over to the captain.

“An unusual assortment of devilfish,” I told him, as carefree as a

collector in front of an aquarium.

“Correct, Mr. Naturalist,” he answered me, “and we’re going to fight

them at close quarters.”

I gaped at the captain. I thought my hearing had gone bad.

“At close quarters?” I repeated.

“Yes, sir. Our propeller is jammed. I think the horn-covered mandibles

of one of these squid are entangled in the blades. That’s why we

aren’t moving.”

“And what are you going to do?”

“Rise to the surface and slaughter the vermin.”

“A difficult undertaking.”

“Correct. Our electric bullets are ineffective against such soft

flesh, where they don’t meet enough resistance to go off. But we’ll

attack the beasts with axes.”

“And harpoons, sir,” the Canadian said, “if you don’t turn down my

help.”

“I accept it, Mr. Land.”

“We’ll go with you,” I said. And we followed Captain Nemo, heading to

the central companionway.

There some ten men were standing by for the assault, armed with

boarding axes. Conseil and I picked up two more axes. Ned Land seized

a harpoon.

By then the Nautilus had returned to the surface of the

waves. Stationed on the top steps, one of the seamen undid the bolts

of the hatch. But he had scarcely unscrewed the nuts when the hatch

flew up with tremendous violence, obviously pulled open by the suckers

on a devilfish’s arm.

Instantly one of those long arms glided like a snake into the opening,

and twenty others were quivering above. With a sweep of the ax,

Captain Nemo chopped off this fearsome tentacle, which slid writhing

down the steps.

Just as we were crowding each other to reach the platform, two more

arms lashed the air, swooped on the seaman stationed in front of

Captain Nemo, and carried the fellow away with irresistible violence.

Captain Nemo gave a shout and leaped outside. We rushed after him.

What a scene! Seized by the tentacle and glued to its suckers, the

unfortunate man was swinging in the air at the mercy of this enormous

appendage. He gasped, he choked, he yelled: “Help! Help!” These words,

pronounced in French, left me deeply stunned! So I had a fellow

countryman on board, perhaps several! I’ll hear his harrowing plea the

rest of my life!

The poor fellow was done for. Who could tear him from such a powerful

grip? Even so, Captain Nemo rushed at the devilfish and with a sweep

of the ax hewed one more of its arms. His chief officer struggled

furiously with other monsters crawling up the Nautilus’s sides. The

crew battled with flailing axes. The Canadian, Conseil, and I sank our

weapons into these fleshy masses. An intense, musky odor filled the

air. It was horrible.

For an instant I thought the poor man entwined by the devilfish might

be torn loose from its powerful suction. Seven arms out of eight had

been chopped off. Brandishing its victim like a feather, one lone

tentacle was writhing in the air. But just as Captain Nemo and his

chief officer rushed at it, the animal shot off a spout of blackish

liquid, secreted by a pouch located in its abdomen. It blinded

us. When this cloud had dispersed, the squid was gone, and so was my

poor fellow countryman!

What rage then drove us against these monsters! We lost all

self-control. Ten or twelve devilfish had overrun the Nautilus’s

platform and sides. We piled helter-skelter into the thick of these

sawed-off snakes, which darted over the platform amid waves of blood

and sepia ink. It seemed as if these viscous tentacles grew back like

the many heads of Hydra. At every thrust Ned Land’s harpoon would

plunge into a squid’s sea-green eye and burst it. But my daring

companion was suddenly toppled by the tentacles of a monster he could

not avoid.

Oh, my heart nearly exploded with excitement and horror! The squid’s

fearsome beak was wide open over Ned Land. The poor man was about to

be cut in half. I ran to his rescue. But Captain Nemo got there

first. His ax disappeared between the two enormous mandibles, and the

Canadian, miraculously saved, stood and plunged his harpoon all the

way into the devilfish’s triple heart.

“Tit for tat,” Captain Nemo told the Canadian. “I owed it to myself!”

Ned bowed without answering him.

This struggle had lasted a quarter of an hour. Defeated, mutilated,

battered to death, the monsters finally yielded to us and disappeared

beneath the waves.

Red with blood, motionless by the beacon, Captain Nemo stared at the

sea that had swallowed one of his companions, and large tears streamed

from his eyes.

CHAPTER 19

The Gulf Stream

THIS DREADFUL SCENE on April 20 none of us will ever be able to

forget. I wrote it up in a state of intense excitement. Later I

reviewed my narrative. I read it to Conseil and the Canadian. They

found it accurate in detail but deficient in impact. To convey such

sights, it would take the pen of our most famous poet, Victor Hugo,

author of The Toilers of the Sea.

As I said, Captain Nemo wept while staring at the waves. His grief was

immense. This was the second companion he had lost since we had come

aboard. And what a way to die! Smashed, strangled, crushed by the

fearsome arms of a devilfish, ground between its iron mandibles, this

friend would never rest with his companions in the placid waters of

their coral cemetery!

As for me, what had harrowed my heart in the thick of this struggle

was the despairing yell given by this unfortunate man. Forgetting his

regulation language, this poor Frenchman had reverted to speaking his

own mother tongue to fling out one supreme plea! Among the Nautilus’s

crew, allied body and soul with Captain Nemo and likewise fleeing from

human contact, I had found a fellow countryman! Was he the only

representative of France in this mysterious alliance, obviously made

up of individuals from different nationalities? This was just one more

of those insoluble problems that kept welling up in my mind!

Captain Nemo reentered his stateroom, and I saw no more of him for a

good while. But how sad, despairing, and irresolute he must have felt,

to judge from this ship whose soul he was, which reflected his every

mood! The Nautilus no longer kept to a fixed heading. It drifted back

and forth, riding with the waves like a corpse. Its propeller had been

disentangled but was barely put to use. It was navigating at

random. It couldn’t tear itself away from the setting of this last

struggle, from this sea that had devoured one of its own!

Ten days went by in this way. It was only on May 1 that the Nautilus

openly resumed its northbound course, after raising the Bahamas at the

mouth of Old Bahama Channel. We then went with the current of the

sea’s greatest river, which has its own banks, fish, and

temperature. I mean the Gulf Stream.

It is indeed a river that runs independently through the middle of the

Atlantic, its waters never mixing with the ocean’s waters. It’s a

salty river, saltier than the sea surrounding it. Its average depth is

3,000 feet, its average width sixty miles. In certain localities its

current moves at a speed of four kilometers per hour. The unchanging

volume of its waters is greater than that of all the world’s rivers

combined.

As discovered by Commander Maury, the true source of the Gulf Stream,

its starting point, if you prefer, is located in the Bay of

Biscay. There its waters, still weak in temperature and color, begin

to form. It goes down south, skirts equatorial Africa, warms its waves

in the rays of the Torrid Zone, crosses the Atlantic, reaches Cape São

Roque on the coast of Brazil, and forks into two branches, one going

to the Caribbean Sea for further saturation with heat particles. Then,

entrusted with restoring the balance between hot and cold temperatures

and with mixing tropical and northern waters, the Gulf Stream begins

to play its stabilizing role. Attaining a white heat in the Gulf of

Mexico, it heads north up the American coast, advances as far as

Newfoundland, swerves away under the thrust of a cold current from the

Davis Strait, and resumes its ocean course by going along a great

circle of the earth on a rhumb line; it then divides into two arms

near the 43rd parallel; one, helped by the northeast trade winds,

returns to the Bay of Biscay and the Azores; the other washes the

shores of Ireland and Norway with lukewarm water, goes beyond

Spitzbergen, where its temperature falls to 4 degrees centigrade, and

fashions the open sea at the pole.

It was on this oceanic river that the Nautilus was then

navigating. Leaving Old Bahama Channel, which is fourteen leagues wide

by 350 meters deep, the Gulf Stream moves at the rate of eight

kilometers per hour. Its speed steadily decreases as it advances

northward, and we must pray that this steadiness continues, because,

as experts agree, if its speed and direction were to change, the

climates of Europe would undergo disturbances whose consequences are

incalculable.

Near noon I was on the platform with Conseil. I shared with him the

relevant details on the Gulf Stream. When my explanation was over, I

invited him to dip his hands into its current.

Conseil did so, and he was quite astonished to experience no sensation

of either hot or cold.

“That comes,” I told him, “from the water temperature of the Gulf

Stream, which, as it leaves the Gulf of Mexico, is barely different

from your blood temperature. This Gulf Stream is a huge heat generator

that enables the coasts of Europe to be decked in eternal

greenery. And if Commander Maury is correct, were one to harness the

full warmth of this current, it would supply enough heat to keep

molten a river of iron solder as big as the Amazon or the Missouri.”

Just then the Gulf Stream’s speed was 2.25 meters per second. So

distinct is its current from the surrounding sea, its confined waters

stand out against the ocean and operate on a different level from the

colder waters. Murky as well, and very rich in saline material, their

pure indigo contrasts with the green waves surrounding them. Moreover,

their line of demarcation is so clear that abreast of the Carolinas,

the Nautilus’s spur cut the waves of the Gulf Stream while its

propeller was still churning those belonging to the ocean.

This current swept along with it a whole host of moving

creatures. Argonauts, so common in the Mediterranean, voyaged here in

schools of large numbers. Among cartilaginous fish, the most

remarkable were rays whose ultra slender tails made up nearly a third

of the body, which was shaped like a huge diamond twenty-five feet

long; then little one-meter sharks, the head large, the snout short

and rounded, the teeth sharp and arranged in several rows, the body

seemingly covered with scales.

Among bony fish, I noted grizzled wrasse unique to these seas,

deep-water gilthead whose iris has a fiery gleam, one-meter croakers

whose large mouths bristle with small teeth and which let out thin

cries, black rudderfish like those I’ve already discussed, blue

dorados accented with gold and silver, rainbow-hued parrotfish that

can rival the loveliest tropical birds in coloring, banded blennies

with triangular heads, bluish flounder without scales, toadfish

covered with a crosswise yellow band in the shape of a Greek t, swarms

of little freckled gobies stippled with brown spots, lungfish with

silver heads and yellow tails, various specimens of salmon, mullet

with slim figures and a softly glowing radiance that Lacépède

dedicated to the memory of his wife, and finally the American cavalla,

a handsome fish decorated by every honorary order, bedizened with

their every ribbon, frequenting the shores of this great nation where

ribbons and orders are held in such low esteem.

I might add that during the night, the Gulf Stream’s phosphorescent

waters rivaled the electric glow of our beacon, especially in the

stormy weather that frequently threatened us.

On May 8, while abreast of North Carolina, we were across from Cape

Hatteras once more. There the Gulf Stream is seventy-five miles wide

and 210 meters deep. The Nautilus continued to wander at

random. Seemingly, all supervision had been jettisoned. Under these

conditions I admit that we could easily have gotten away. In fact, the

populous shores offered ready refuge everywhere. The sea was plowed

continuously by the many steamers providing service between the Gulf

of Mexico and New York or Boston, and it was crossed night and day by

little schooners engaged in coastal trade over various points on the

American shore. We could hope to be picked up. So it was a promising

opportunity, despite the thirty miles that separated the Nautilus from

these Union coasts.

But one distressing circumstance totally thwarted the Canadian’s

plans. The weather was thoroughly foul. We were approaching waterways

where storms are commonplace, the very homeland of tornadoes and

cyclones specifically engendered by the Gulf Stream’s current. To face

a frequently raging sea in a frail skiff was a race to certain

disaster. Ned Land conceded this himself. So he champed at the bit, in

the grip of an intense homesickness that could be cured only by our

escape.

“Sir,” he told me that day, “it’s got to stop. I want to get to the

bottom of this. Your Nemo’s veering away from shore and heading up

north. But believe you me, I had my fill at the South Pole and I’m not

going with him to the North Pole.”

“What can we do, Ned, since it isn’t feasible to escape right now?”

“I keep coming back to my idea. We’ve got to talk to the captain. When

we were in your own country’s seas, you didn’t say a word. Now that

we’re in mine, I intend to speak up. Before a few days are out, I

figure the Nautilus will lie abreast of Nova Scotia, and from there to

Newfoundland is the mouth of a large gulf, and the St. Lawrence

empties into that gulf, and the St. Lawrence is my own river, the

river running by Quebec, my hometown—and when I think about all this,

my gorge rises and my hair stands on end! Honestly, sir, I’d rather

jump overboard! I can’t stay here any longer! I’m suffocating!”

The Canadian was obviously at the end of his patience. His vigorous

nature couldn’t adapt to this protracted imprisonment. His facial

appearance was changing by the day. His moods grew gloomier and

gloomier. I had a sense of what he was suffering because I also was

gripped by homesickness. Nearly seven months had gone by without our

having any news from shore. Moreover, Captain Nemo’s reclusiveness,

his changed disposition, and especially his total silence since the

battle with the devilfish all made me see things in a different

light. I no longer felt the enthusiasm of our first days on board. You

needed to be Flemish like Conseil to accept these circumstances,

living in a habitat designed for cetaceans and other denizens of the

deep. Truly, if that gallant lad had owned gills instead of lungs, I

think he would have made an outstanding fish!

“Well, sir?” Ned Land went on, seeing that I hadn’t replied.

“Well, Ned, you want me to ask Captain Nemo what he intends to do with

us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though he has already made that clear?”

“Yes. I want it settled once and for all. Speak just for me, strictly

on my behalf, if you want.”

“But I rarely encounter him. He positively avoids me.”

“All the more reason you should go look him up.”

“I’ll confer with him, Ned.”

“When?” the Canadian asked insistently.

“When I encounter him.”

“Professor Aronnax, would you like me to go find him myself?”

“No, let me do it. Tomorrow—”

“Today,” Ned Land said.

“So be it. I’ll see him today,” I answered the Canadian, who, if he

took action himself, would certainly have ruined everything.

I was left to myself. His request granted, I decided to dispose of it

immediately. I like things over and done with.

I reentered my stateroom. From there I could hear movements inside

Captain Nemo’s quarters. I couldn’t pass up this chance for an

encounter. I knocked on his door. I received no reply. I knocked

again, then tried the knob. The door opened.

I entered. The captain was there. He was bending over his worktable

and hadn’t heard me. Determined not to leave without questioning him,

I drew closer. He looked up sharply, with a frowning brow, and said in

a pretty stern tone:

“Oh, it’s you! What do you want?”

“To speak with you, captain.”

“But I’m busy, sir, I’m at work. I give you the freedom to enjoy your

privacy, can’t I have the same for myself?”

This reception was less than encouraging. But I was determined to give

as good as I got.

“Sir,” I said coolly, “I need to speak with you on a matter that

simply can’t wait.”

“Whatever could that be, sir?” he replied sarcastically. “Have you

made some discovery that has escaped me? Has the sea yielded up some

novel secret to you?”

We were miles apart. But before I could reply, he showed me a

manuscript open on the table and told me in a more serious tone:

“Here, Professor Aronnax, is a manuscript written in several

languages. It contains a summary of my research under the sea, and God

willing, it won’t perish with me. Signed with my name, complete with

my life story, this manuscript will be enclosed in a small, unsinkable

contrivance. The last surviving man on the Nautilus will throw this

contrivance into the sea, and it will go wherever the waves carry it.”

The man’s name! His life story written by himself! So the secret of

his existence might someday be unveiled? But just then I saw this

announcement only as a lead-in to my topic.

“Captain,” I replied, “I’m all praise for this idea you’re putting

into effect. The fruits of your research must not be lost. But the

methods you’re using strike me as primitive. Who knows where the winds

will take that contrivance, into whose hands it may fall? Can’t you

find something better? Can’t you or one of your men—”

“Never, sir,” the captain said, swiftly interrupting me.

“But my companions and I would be willing to safeguard this

manuscript, and if you give us back our freedom—”

“Your freedom!” Captain Nemo put in, standing up.

“Yes, sir, and that’s the subject on which I wanted to confer with

you. For seven months we’ve been aboard your vessel, and I ask you

today, in the name of my companions as well as myself, if you intend

to keep us here forever.”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said, “I’ll answer you today just as

I did seven months ago: whoever boards the Nautilus must never leave

it.”

“What you’re inflicting on us is outright slavery!”

“Call it anything you like.”

“But every slave has the right to recover his freedom! By any

worthwhile, available means!”

“Who has denied you that right?” Captain Nemo replied. “Did I ever try

to bind you with your word of honor?”

The captain stared at me, crossing his arms.

“Sir,” I told him, “to take up this subject a second time would be

distasteful to both of us. So let’s finish what we’ve started. I

repeat: it isn’t just for myself that I raise this issue. To me,

research is a relief, a potent diversion, an enticement, a passion

that can make me forget everything else. Like you, I’m a man neglected

and unknown, living in the faint hope that someday I can pass on to

future generations the fruits of my labors—figuratively speaking, by

means of some contrivance left to the luck of winds and waves. In

short, I can admire you and comfortably go with you while playing a

role I only partly understand; but I still catch glimpses of other

aspects of your life that are surrounded by involvements and secrets

that, alone on board, my companions and I can’t share. And even when

our hearts could beat with yours, moved by some of your griefs or

stirred by your deeds of courage and genius, we’ve had to stifle even

the slightest token of that sympathy that arises at the sight of

something fine and good, whether it comes from friend or enemy. All

right then! It’s this feeling of being alien to your deepest concerns

that makes our situation unacceptable, impossible, even impossible for

me but especially for Ned Land. Every man, by virtue of his very

humanity, deserves fair treatment. Have you considered how a love of

freedom and hatred of slavery could lead to plans of vengeance in a

temperament like the Canadian’s, what he might think, attempt,

endeavor . . . ?”

I fell silent. Captain Nemo stood up.

“Ned Land can think, attempt, or endeavor anything he wants, what

difference is it to me? I didn’t go looking for him! I don’t keep him

on board for my pleasure! As for you, Professor Aronnax, you’re a man

able to understand anything, even silence. I have nothing more to say

to you. Let this first time you’ve come to discuss this subject also

be the last, because a second time I won’t even listen.”

I withdrew. From that day forward our position was very strained. I

reported this conversation to my two companions.

“Now we know,” Ned said, “that we can’t expect a thing from this

man. The Nautilus is nearing Long Island. We’ll escape, no matter what

the weather.”

But the skies became more and more threatening. There were conspicuous

signs of a hurricane on the way. The atmosphere was turning white and

milky. Slender sheaves of cirrus clouds were followed on the horizon

by layers of nimbocumulus. Other low clouds fled swiftly. The sea grew

towering, inflated by long swells. Every bird had disappeared except a

few petrels, friends of the storms. The barometer fell significantly,

indicating a tremendous tension in the surrounding haze. The mixture

in our stormglass decomposed under the influence of the electricity

charging the air. A struggle of the elements was approaching.

The storm burst during the daytime of May 13, just as the Nautilus was

cruising abreast of Long Island, a few miles from the narrows to Upper

New York Bay. I’m able to describe this struggle of the elements

because Captain Nemo didn’t flee into the ocean depths; instead, from

some inexplicable whim, he decided to brave it out on the surface.

The wind was blowing from the southwest, initially a stiff breeze, in

other words, with a speed of fifteen meters per second, which built to

twenty-five meters near three o’clock in the afternoon. This is the

figure for major storms.

Unshaken by these squalls, Captain Nemo stationed himself on the

platform. He was lashed around the waist to withstand the monstrous

breakers foaming over the deck. I hoisted and attached myself to the

same place, dividing my wonderment between the storm and this

incomparable man who faced it head-on.

The raging sea was swept with huge tattered clouds drenched by the

waves. I saw no more of the small intervening billows that form in the

troughs of the big crests. Just long, soot-colored undulations with

crests so compact they didn’t foam. They kept growing taller. They

were spurring each other on. The Nautilus, sometimes lying on its

side, sometimes standing on end like a mast, rolled and pitched

frightfully.

Near five o’clock a torrential rain fell, but it lulled neither wind

nor sea. The hurricane was unleashed at a speed of forty-five meters

per second, hence almost forty leagues per hour. Under these

conditions houses topple, roof tiles puncture doors, iron railings

snap in two, and twenty-four-pounder cannons relocate. And yet in the

midst of this turmoil, the Nautilus lived up to that saying of an

expert engineer: “A well-constructed hull can defy any sea!” This

submersible was no resisting rock that waves could demolish; it was a

steel spindle, obediently in motion, without rigging or masting, and

able to brave their fury with impunity.

Meanwhile I was carefully examining these unleashed breakers. They

measured up to fifteen meters in height over a length of 150 to 175

meters, and the speed of their propagation (half that of the wind) was

fifteen meters per second. Their volume and power increased with the

depth of the waters. I then understood the role played by these waves,

which trap air in their flanks and release it in the depths of the sea

where its oxygen brings life. Their utmost pressure—it has been

calculated—can build to 3,000 kilograms on every square foot of

surface they strike. It was such waves in the Hebrides that

repositioned a stone block weighing 84,000 pounds. It was their

relatives in the tidal wave on December 23, 1854, that toppled part of

the Japanese city of Tokyo, then went that same day at 700 kilometers

per hour to break on the beaches of America.

After nightfall the storm grew in intensity. As in the 1860 cyclone on

Réunion Island, the barometer fell to 710 millimeters. At the close of

day, I saw a big ship passing on the horizon, struggling painfully. It

lay to at half steam in an effort to hold steady on the waves. It must

have been a steamer on one of those lines out of New York to Liverpool

or Le Havre. It soon vanished into the shadows.

At ten o’clock in the evening, the skies caught on fire. The air was

streaked with violent flashes of lightning. I couldn’t stand this

brightness, but Captain Nemo stared straight at it, as if to inhale

the spirit of the storm. A dreadful noise filled the air, a

complicated noise made up of the roar of crashing breakers, the howl

of the wind, claps of thunder. The wind shifted to every point of the

horizon, and the cyclone left the east to return there after passing

through north, west, and south, moving in the opposite direction of

revolving storms in the southern hemisphere.

Oh, that Gulf Stream! It truly lives up to its nickname, the Lord of

Storms! All by itself it creates these fearsome cyclones through the

difference in temperature between its currents and the superimposed

layers of air.

The rain was followed by a downpour of fire. Droplets of water changed

into exploding tufts. You would have thought Captain Nemo was courting

a death worthy of himself, seeking to be struck by lightning. In one

hideous pitching movement, the Nautilus reared its steel spur into the

air like a lightning rod, and I saw long sparks shoot down it.

Shattered, at the end of my strength, I slid flat on my belly to the

hatch. I opened it and went below to the lounge. By then the storm had

reached its maximum intensity. It was impossible to stand upright

inside the Nautilus.

Captain Nemo reentered near midnight. I could hear the ballast tanks

filling little by little, and the Nautilus sank gently beneath the

surface of the waves.

Through the lounge’s open windows, I saw large, frightened fish

passing like phantoms in the fiery waters. Some were struck by

lightning right before my eyes!

The Nautilus kept descending. I thought it would find calm again at

fifteen meters down. No. The upper strata were too violently

agitated. It needed to sink to fifty meters, searching for a resting

place in the bowels of the sea.

But once there, what tranquility we found, what silence, what peace

all around us! Who would have known that a dreadful hurricane was then

unleashed on the surface of this ocean?

CHAPTER 20

In Latitude 47° 24′ and Longitude 17° 28′

IN THE AFTERMATH of this storm, we were thrown back to the east. Away

went any hope of escaping to the landing places of New York or the

St. Lawrence. In despair, poor Ned went into seclusion like Captain

Nemo. Conseil and I no longer left each other.

As I said, the Nautilus veered to the east. To be more accurate, I

should have said to the northeast. Sometimes on the surface of the

waves, sometimes beneath them, the ship wandered for days amid these

mists so feared by navigators. These are caused chiefly by melting

ice, which keeps the air extremely damp. How many ships have perished

in these waterways as they tried to get directions from the hazy

lights on the coast! How many casualties have been caused by these

opaque mists! How many collisions have occurred with these reefs,

where the breaking surf is covered by the noise of the wind! How many

vessels have rammed each other, despite their running lights, despite

the warnings given by their bosun’s pipes and alarm bells!

So the floor of this sea had the appearance of a battlefield where

every ship defeated by the ocean still lay, some already old and

encrusted, others newer and reflecting our beacon light on their

ironwork and copper undersides. Among these vessels, how many went

down with all hands, with their crews and hosts of immigrants, at

these trouble spots so prominent in the statistics: Cape Race,

St. Paul Island, the Strait of Belle Isle, the St. Lawrence estuary!

And in only a few years, how many victims have been furnished to the

obituary notices by the Royal Mail, Inman, and Montreal lines; by

vessels named the Solway, the Isis, the Paramatta, the Hungarian, the

Canadian, the Anglo-Saxon, the Humboldt, and the United States, all

run aground; by the Arctic and the Lyonnais, sunk in collisions; by

the President, the Pacific, and the City of Glasgow, lost for reasons

unknown; in the midst of their gloomy rubble, the Nautilus navigated

as if passing the dead in review!

By May 15 we were off the southern tip of the Grand Banks of

Newfoundland. These banks are the result of marine sedimentation, an

extensive accumulation of organic waste brought either from the

equator by the Gulf Stream’s current, or from the North Pole by the

countercurrent of cold water that skirts the American coast. Here,

too, erratically drifting chunks collect from the ice breakup. Here a

huge boneyard forms from fish, mollusks, and zoophytes dying over it

by the billions.

The sea is of no great depth at the Grand Banks. A few hundred fathoms

at best. But to the south there is a deep, suddenly occurring

depression, a 3,000-meter pit. Here the Gulf Stream widens. Its waters

come to full bloom. It loses its speed and temperature, but it turns

into a sea.

Among the fish that the Nautilus startled on its way, I’ll mention a

one-meter lumpfish, blackish on top with orange on the belly and rare

among its brethren in that it practices monogamy, a good-sized

eelpout, a type of emerald moray whose flavor is excellent, wolffish

with big eyes in a head somewhat resembling a canine’s, viviparous

blennies whose eggs hatch inside their bodies like those of snakes,

bloated gobio (or black gudgeon) measuring two decimeters, grenadiers

with long tails and gleaming with a silvery glow, speedy fish

venturing far from their High Arctic seas.

Our nets also hauled in a bold, daring, vigorous, and muscular fish

armed with prickles on its head and stings on its fins, a real

scorpion measuring two to three meters, the ruthless enemy of cod,

blennies, and salmon; it was the bullhead of the northerly seas, a

fish with red fins and a brown body covered with nodules. The

Nautilus’s fishermen had some trouble getting a grip on this animal,

which, thanks to the formation of its gill covers, can protect its

respiratory organs from any parching contact with the air and can live

out of water for a good while.

And I’ll mention—for the record—some little banded blennies that

follow ships into the northernmost seas, sharp-snouted carp exclusive

to the north Atlantic, scorpionfish, and lastly the gadoid family,

chiefly the cod species, which I detected in their waters of choice

over these inexhaustible Grand Banks.

Because Newfoundland is simply an underwater peak, you could call

these cod mountain fish. While the Nautilus was clearing a path

through their tight ranks, Conseil couldn’t refrain from making this

comment:

“Mercy, look at these cod!” he said. “Why, I thought cod were flat,

like dab or sole!”

“Innocent boy!” I exclaimed. “Cod are flat only at the grocery store,

where they’re cut open and spread out on display. But in the water

they’re like mullet, spindle-shaped and perfectly built for speed.”

“I can easily believe master,” Conseil replied. “But what crowds of

them! What swarms!”

“Bah! My friend, there’d be many more without their enemies,

scorpionfish and human beings! Do you know how many eggs have been

counted in a single female?”

“I’ll go all out,” Conseil replied. “500,000.”

“11,000,000, my friend.”

“11,000,000! I refuse to accept that until I count them myself.”

“So count them, Conseil. But it would be less work to believe

me. Besides, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Danes, and Norwegians

catch these cod by the thousands. They’re eaten in prodigious

quantities, and without the astonishing fertility of these fish, the

seas would soon be depopulated of them. Accordingly, in England and

America alone, 5,000 ships manned by 75,000 seamen go after cod. Each

ship brings back an average catch of 4,400 fish, making

22,000,000. Off the coast of Norway, the total is the same.”

“Fine,” Conseil replied, “I’ll take master’s word for it. I won’t

count them.”

“Count what?”

“Those 11,000,000 eggs. But I’ll make one comment.”

“What’s that?”

“If all their eggs hatched, just four codfish could feed England,

America, and Norway.”

As we skimmed the depths of the Grand Banks, I could see perfectly

those long fishing lines, each armed with 200 hooks, that every boat

dangled by the dozens. The lower end of each line dragged the bottom

by means of a small grappling iron, and at the surface it was secured

to the buoy-rope of a cork float. The Nautilus had to maneuver

shrewdly in the midst of this underwater spiderweb.

But the ship didn’t stay long in these heavily traveled waterways. It

went up to about latitude 42 degrees. This brought it abreast of

St. John’s in Newfoundland and Heart’s Content, where the Atlantic

Cable reaches its end point.

Instead of continuing north, the Nautilus took an easterly heading, as

if to go along this plateau on which the telegraph cable rests, where

multiple soundings have given the contours of the terrain with the

utmost accuracy.

It was on May 17, about 500 miles from Heart’s Content and 2,800

meters down, that I spotted this cable lying on the seafloor. Conseil,

whom I hadn’t alerted, mistook it at first for a gigantic sea snake

and was gearing up to classify it in his best manner. But I

enlightened the fine lad and let him down gently by giving him various

details on the laying of this cable.

The first cable was put down during the years 1857-1858; but after

transmitting about 400 telegrams, it went dead. In 1863 engineers

built a new cable that measured 3,400 kilometers, weighed 4,500 metric

tons, and was shipped aboard the Great Eastern. This attempt also

failed.

Now then, on May 25 while submerged to a depth of 3,836 meters, the

Nautilus lay in precisely the locality where this second cable

suffered the rupture that ruined the undertaking. It happened 638

miles from the coast of Ireland. At around two o’clock in the

afternoon, all contact with Europe broke off. The electricians on

board decided to cut the cable before fishing it up, and by eleven

o’clock that evening they had retrieved the damaged part. They

repaired the joint and its splice; then the cable was resubmerged. But

a few days later it snapped again and couldn’t be recovered from the

ocean depths.

These Americans refused to give up. The daring Cyrus Field, who had

risked his whole fortune to promote this undertaking, called for a new

bond issue. It sold out immediately. Another cable was put down under

better conditions. Its sheaves of conducting wire were insulated

within a gutta-percha covering, which was protected by a padding of

textile material enclosed in a metal sheath. The Great Eastern put

back to sea on July 13, 1866.

The operation proceeded apace. Yet there was one hitch. As they

gradually unrolled this third cable, the electricians observed on

several occasions that someone had recently driven nails into it,

trying to damage its core. Captain Anderson, his officers, and the

engineers put their heads together, then posted a warning that if the

culprit were detected, he would be thrown overboard without a

trial. After that, these villainous attempts were not repeated.

By July 23 the Great Eastern was lying no farther than 800 kilometers

from Newfoundland when it received telegraphed news from Ireland of an

armistice signed between Prussia and Austria after the Battle of

Sadova. Through the mists on the 27th, it sighted the port of Heart’s

Content. The undertaking had ended happily, and in its first dispatch,

young America addressed old Europe with these wise words so rarely

understood: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth to men of

good will.”

I didn’t expect to find this electric cable in mint condition, as it

looked on leaving its place of manufacture. The long snake was covered

with seashell rubble and bristling with foraminifera; a crust of caked

gravel protected it from any mollusks that might bore into it. It

rested serenely, sheltered from the sea’s motions, under a pressure

favorable to the transmission of that electric spark that goes from

America to Europe in 32/100 of a second. This cable will no doubt last

indefinitely because, as observers note, its gutta-percha casing is

improved by a stay in salt water.

Besides, on this well-chosen plateau, the cable never lies at depths

that could cause a break. The Nautilus followed it to its lowest

reaches, located 4,431 meters down, and even there it rested without

any stress or strain. Then we returned to the locality where the 1863

accident had taken place.

There the ocean floor formed a valley 120 kilometers wide, into which

you could fit Mt. Blanc without its summit poking above the surface of

the waves. This valley is closed off to the east by a sheer wall 2,000

meters high. We arrived there on May 28, and the Nautilus lay no

farther than 150 kilometers from Ireland.

Would Captain Nemo head up north and beach us on the British Isles?

No. Much to my surprise, he went back down south and returned to

European seas. As we swung around the Emerald Isle, I spotted Cape

Clear for an instant, plus the lighthouse on Fastnet Rock that guides

all those thousands of ships setting out from Glasgow or Liverpool.

An important question then popped into my head. Would the Nautilus

dare to tackle the English Channel? Ned Land (who promptly reappeared

after we hugged shore) never stopped questioning me. What could I

answer him? Captain Nemo remained invisible. After giving the Canadian

a glimpse of American shores, was he about to show me the coast of

France?

But the Nautilus kept gravitating southward. On May 30, in sight of

Land’s End, it passed between the lowermost tip of England and the

Scilly Islands, which it left behind to starboard.

If it was going to enter the English Channel, it clearly needed to

head east. It did not.

All day long on May 31, the Nautilus swept around the sea in a series

of circles that had me deeply puzzled. It seemed to be searching for a

locality that it had some trouble finding. At noon Captain Nemo

himself came to take our bearings. He didn’t address a word to me. He

looked gloomier than ever. What was filling him with such sadness? Was

it our proximity to these European shores? Was he reliving his

memories of that country he had left behind? If so, what did he feel?

Remorse or regret? For a good while these thoughts occupied my mind,

and I had a hunch that fate would soon give away the captain’s

secrets.

The next day, June 1, the Nautilus kept to the same tack. It was

obviously trying to locate some precise spot in the ocean. Just as on

the day before, Captain Nemo came to take the altitude of the sun. The

sea was smooth, the skies clear. Eight miles to the east, a big

steamship was visible on the horizon line. No flag was flapping from

the gaff of its fore-and-aft sail, and I couldn’t tell its

nationality.

A few minutes before the sun passed its zenith, Captain Nemo raised

his sextant and took his sights with the utmost precision. The

absolute calm of the waves facilitated this operation. The Nautilus

lay motionless, neither rolling nor pitching.

I was on the platform just then. After determining our position, the

captain pronounced only these words:

“It’s right here!”

He went down the hatch. Had he seen that vessel change course and

seemingly head toward us? I’m unable to say.

I returned to the lounge. The hatch closed, and I heard water hissing

in the ballast tanks. The Nautilus began to sink on a vertical line,

because its propeller was in check and no longer furnished any forward

motion.

Some minutes later it stopped at a depth of 833 meters and came to

rest on the seafloor.

The ceiling lights in the lounge then went out, the panels opened, and

through the windows I saw, for a half-mile radius, the sea brightly

lit by the beacon’s rays.

I looked to port and saw nothing but the immenseness of these tranquil

waters.

To starboard, a prominent bulge on the sea bottom caught my

attention. You would have thought it was some ruin enshrouded in a

crust of whitened seashells, as if under a mantle of snow. Carefully

examining this mass, I could identify the swollen outlines of a ship

shorn of its masts, which must have sunk bow first. This casualty

certainly dated from some far-off time. To be so caked with the

limestone of these waters, this wreckage must have spent many a year

on the ocean floor.

What ship was this? Why had the Nautilus come to visit its grave? Was

it something other than a maritime accident that had dragged this

craft under the waters?

I wasn’t sure what to think, but next to me I heard Captain Nemo’s

voice slowly say:

“Originally this ship was christened the Marseillais. It carried

seventy-four cannons and was launched in 1762. On August 13, 1778,

commanded by La Poype-Vertrieux, it fought valiantly against the

Preston. On July 4, 1779, as a member of the squadron under Admiral

d’Estaing, it assisted in the capture of the island of Grenada. On

September 5, 1781, under the Count de Grasse, it took part in the

Battle of Chesapeake Bay. In 1794 the new Republic of France changed

the name of this ship. On April 16 of that same year, it joined the

squadron at Brest under Rear Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse, who was

entrusted with escorting a convoy of wheat coming from America under

the command of Admiral Van Stabel. In this second year of the French

Revolutionary Calendar, on the 11th and 12th days in the Month of

Pasture, this squadron fought an encounter with English vessels. Sir,

today is June 1, 1868, or the 13th day in the Month of

Pasture. Seventy-four years ago to the day, at this very spot in

latitude 47 degrees 24′ and longitude 17 degrees 28′, this ship sank

after a heroic battle; its three masts gone, water in its hold, a

third of its crew out of action, it preferred to go to the bottom with

its 356 seamen rather than surrender; and with its flag nailed up on

the afterdeck, it disappeared beneath the waves to shouts of ‘Long

live the Republic!’”

“This is the Avenger!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir! The Avenger! A splendid name!” Captain Nemo murmured,

crossing his arms.

CHAPTER 21

A Mass Execution

THE WAY HE SAID THIS, the unexpectedness of this scene, first the

biography of this patriotic ship, then the excitement with which this

eccentric individual pronounced these last words—the name Avenger

whose significance could not escape me—all this, taken together, had a

profound impact on my mind. My eyes never left the captain. Hands

outstretched toward the sea, he contemplated the proud wreck with

blazing eyes. Perhaps I would never learn who he was, where he came

from or where he was heading, but more and more I could see a

distinction between the man and the scientist. It was no ordinary

misanthropy that kept Captain Nemo and his companions sequestered

inside the Nautilus’s plating, but a hate so monstrous or so sublime

that the passing years could never weaken it.

Did this hate also hunger for vengeance? Time would soon tell.

Meanwhile the Nautilus rose slowly to the surface of the sea, and I

watched the Avenger’s murky shape disappearing little by little. Soon

a gentle rolling told me that we were afloat in the open air.

Just then a hollow explosion was audible. I looked at the captain. The

captain did not stir.

“Captain?” I said.

He didn’t reply.

I left him and climbed onto the platform. Conseil and the Canadian

were already there.

“What caused that explosion?” I asked.

“A cannon going off,” Ned Land replied.

I stared in the direction of the ship I had spotted. It was heading

toward the Nautilus, and you could tell it had put on steam. Six miles

separated it from us.

“What sort of craft is it, Ned?”

“From its rigging and its low masts,” the Canadian replied, “I bet

it’s a warship. Here’s hoping it pulls up and sinks this damned

Nautilus!”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “what harm could it do the Nautilus?

Will it attack us under the waves? Will it cannonade us at the bottom

of the sea?”

“Tell me, Ned,” I asked, “can you make out the nationality of that

craft?”

Creasing his brow, lowering his lids, and puckering the corners of his

eyes, the Canadian focused the full power of his gaze on the ship for

a short while.

“No, sir,” he replied. “I can’t make out what nation it’s from. It’s

flying no flag. But I’ll swear it’s a warship, because there’s a long

pennant streaming from the peak of its mainmast.”

For a quarter of an hour, we continued to watch the craft bearing down

on us. But it was inconceivable to me that it had discovered the

Nautilus at such a distance, still less that it knew what this

underwater machine really was.

Soon the Canadian announced that the craft was a big battleship, a

double-decker ironclad complete with ram. Dark, dense smoke burst from

its two funnels. Its furled sails merged with the lines of its

yardarms. The gaff of its fore-and-aft sail flew no flag. Its distance

still kept us from distinguishing the colors of its pennant, which was

fluttering like a thin ribbon.

It was coming on fast. If Captain Nemo let it approach, a chance for

salvation might be available to us.

“Sir,” Ned Land told me, “if that boat gets within a mile of us, I’m

jumping overboard, and I suggest you follow suit.”

I didn’t reply to the Canadian’s proposition but kept watching the

ship, which was looming larger on the horizon. Whether it was English,

French, American, or Russian, it would surely welcome us aboard if we

could just get to it.

“Master may recall,” Conseil then said, “that we have some experience

with swimming. He can rely on me to tow him to that vessel, if he’s

agreeable to going with our friend Ned.”

Before I could reply, white smoke streamed from the battleship’s

bow. Then, a few seconds later, the waters splashed astern of the

Nautilus, disturbed by the fall of a heavy object. Soon after, an

explosion struck my ears.

“What’s this? They’re firing at us!” I exclaimed.

“Good lads!” the Canadian muttered.

“That means they don’t see us as castaways clinging to some wreckage!”

“With all due respect to master—gracious!” Conseil put in, shaking off

the water that had sprayed over him from another shell. “With all due

respect to master, they’ve discovered the narwhale and they’re

cannonading the same.”

“But it must be clear to them,” I exclaimed, “that they’re dealing

with human beings.”

“Maybe that’s why!” Ned Land replied, staring hard at me.

The full truth dawned on me. Undoubtedly people now knew where they

stood on the existence of this so-called monster. Undoubtedly the

latter’s encounter with the Abraham Lincoln, when the Canadian hit it

with his harpoon, had led Commander Farragut to recognize the narwhale

as actually an underwater boat, more dangerous than any unearthly

cetacean!

Yes, this had to be the case, and undoubtedly they were now chasing

this dreadful engine of destruction on every sea!

Dreadful indeed, if, as we could assume, Captain Nemo had been using

the Nautilus in works of vengeance! That night in the middle of the

Indian Ocean, when he imprisoned us in the cell, hadn’t he attacked

some ship? That man now buried in the coral cemetery, wasn’t he the

victim of some collision caused by the Nautilus? Yes, I repeat: this

had to be the case. One part of Captain Nemo’s secret life had been

unveiled. And now, even though his identity was still unknown, at

least the nations allied against him knew they were no longer hunting

some fairy-tale monster, but a man who had sworn an implacable hate

toward them!

This whole fearsome sequence of events appeared in my mind’s

eye. Instead of encountering friends on this approaching ship, we

would find only pitiless enemies.

Meanwhile shells fell around us in increasing numbers. Some, meeting

the liquid surface, would ricochet and vanish into the sea at

considerable distances. But none of them reached the Nautilus.

By then the ironclad was no more than three miles off. Despite its

violent cannonade, Captain Nemo hadn’t appeared on the platform. And

yet if one of those conical shells had scored a routine hit on the

Nautilus’s hull, it could have been fatal to him.

The Canadian then told me:

“Sir, we’ve got to do everything we can to get out of this jam! Let’s

signal them! Damnation! Maybe they’ll realize we’re decent people!”

Ned Land pulled out his handkerchief to wave it in the air. But he had

barely unfolded it when he was felled by an iron fist, and despite his

great strength, he tumbled to the deck.

“Scum!” the captain shouted. “Do you want to be nailed to the

Nautilus’s spur before it charges that ship?”

Dreadful to hear, Captain Nemo was even more dreadful to see. His face

was pale from some spasm of his heart, which must have stopped beating

for an instant. His pupils were hideously contracted. His voice was no

longer speaking, it was bellowing. Bending from the waist, he shook

the Canadian by the shoulders.

Then, dropping Ned and turning to the battleship, whose shells were

showering around him:

“O ship of an accursed nation, you know who I am!” he shouted in his

powerful voice. “And I don’t need your colors to recognize you! Look!

I’ll show you mine!”

And in the bow of the platform, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag,

like the one he had left planted at the South Pole.

Just then a shell hit the Nautilus’s hull obliquely, failed to breach

it, ricocheted near the captain, and vanished into the sea.

Captain Nemo shrugged his shoulders. Then, addressing me:

“Go below!” he told me in a curt tone. “You and your companions, go

below!”

“Sir,” I exclaimed, “are you going to attack this ship?”

“Sir, I’m going to sink it.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I will,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “You’re ill-advised to pass

judgment on me, sir. Fate has shown you what you weren’t meant to

see. The attack has come. Our reply will be dreadful. Get back

inside!”

“From what country is that ship?”

“You don’t know? Fine, so much the better! At least its nationality

will remain a secret to you. Go below!”

The Canadian, Conseil, and I could only obey. Some fifteen of the

Nautilus’s seamen surrounded their captain and stared with a feeling

of implacable hate at the ship bearing down on them. You could feel

the same spirit of vengeance enkindling their every soul.

I went below just as another projectile scraped the Nautilus’s hull,

and I heard the captain exclaim:

“Shoot, you demented vessel! Shower your futile shells! You won’t

escape the Nautilus’s spur! But this isn’t the place where you’ll

perish! I don’t want your wreckage mingling with that of the Avenger!”

I repaired to my stateroom. The captain and his chief officer stayed

on the platform. The propeller was set in motion. The Nautilus swiftly

retreated, putting us outside the range of the vessel’s shells. But

the chase continued, and Captain Nemo was content to keep his

distance.

Near four o’clock in the afternoon, unable to control the impatience

and uneasiness devouring me, I went back to the central

companionway. The hatch was open. I ventured onto the platform. The

captain was still strolling there, his steps agitated. He stared at

the ship, which stayed to his leeward five or six miles off. He was

circling it like a wild beast, drawing it eastward, letting it chase

after him. Yet he didn’t attack. Was he, perhaps, still undecided?

I tried to intervene one last time. But I had barely queried Captain

Nemo when the latter silenced me:

“I’m the law, I’m the tribunal! I’m the oppressed, and there are my

oppressors! Thanks to them, I’ve witnessed the destruction of

everything I loved, cherished, and venerated—homeland, wife, children,

father, and mother! There lies everything I hate! Not another word out

of you!”

I took a last look at the battleship, which was putting on steam. Then

I rejoined Ned and Conseil.

“We’ll escape!” I exclaimed.

“Good,” Ned put in. “Where’s that ship from?”

“I’ve no idea. But wherever it’s from, it will sink before

nightfall. In any event, it’s better to perish with it than be

accomplices in some act of revenge whose merits we can’t gauge.”

“That’s my feeling,” Ned Land replied coolly. “Let’s wait for

nightfall.”

Night fell. A profound silence reigned on board. The compass indicated

that the Nautilus hadn’t changed direction. I could hear the beat of

its propeller, churning the waves with steady speed. Staying on the

surface of the water, it rolled gently, sometimes to one side,

sometimes to the other.

My companions and I had decided to escape as soon as the vessel came

close enough for us to be heard—or seen, because the moon would wax

full in three days and was shining brightly. Once we were aboard that

ship, if we couldn’t ward off the blow that threatened it, at least we

could do everything that circumstances permitted. Several times I

thought the Nautilus was about to attack. But it was content to let

its adversary approach, and then it would quickly resume its

retreating ways.

Part of the night passed without incident. We kept watch for an

opportunity to take action. We talked little, being too keyed up. Ned

Land was all for jumping overboard. I forced him to wait. As I saw it,

the Nautilus would attack the double-decker on the surface of the

waves, and then it would be not only possible but easy to escape.

At three o’clock in the morning, full of uneasiness, I climbed onto

the platform. Captain Nemo hadn’t left it. He stood in the bow next to

his flag, which a mild breeze was unfurling above his head. His eyes

never left that vessel. The extraordinary intensity of his gaze seemed

to attract it, beguile it, and draw it more surely than if he had it

in tow!

The moon then passed its zenith. Jupiter was rising in the east. In

the midst of this placid natural setting, sky and ocean competed with

each other in tranquility, and the sea offered the orb of night the

loveliest mirror ever to reflect its image.

And when I compared this deep calm of the elements with all the fury

seething inside the plating of this barely perceptible Nautilus, I

shivered all over.

The vessel was two miles off. It drew nearer, always moving toward the

phosphorescent glow that signaled the Nautilus’s presence. I saw its

green and red running lights, plus the white lantern hanging from the

large stay of its foremast. Hazy flickerings were reflected on its

rigging and indicated that its furnaces were pushed to the

limit. Showers of sparks and cinders of flaming coal escaped from its

funnels, spangling the air with stars.

I stood there until six o’clock in the morning, Captain Nemo never

seeming to notice me. The vessel lay a mile and a half off, and with

the first glimmers of daylight, it resumed its cannonade. The time

couldn’t be far away when the Nautilus would attack its adversary, and

my companions and I would leave forever this man I dared not judge.

I was about to go below to alert them, when the chief officer climbed

onto the platform. Several seamen were with him. Captain Nemo didn’t

see them, or didn’t want to see them. They carried out certain

procedures that, on the Nautilus, you could call “clearing the decks

for action.” They were quite simple. The manropes that formed a

handrail around the platform were lowered. Likewise the pilothouse and

the beacon housing were withdrawn into the hull until they lay exactly

flush with it. The surface of this long sheet-iron cigar no longer

offered a single protrusion that could hamper its maneuvers.

I returned to the lounge. The Nautilus still emerged above the

surface. A few morning gleams infiltrated the liquid strata. Beneath

the undulations of the billows, the windows were enlivened by the

blushing of the rising sun. That dreadful day of June 2 had dawned.

At seven o’clock the log told me that the Nautilus had reduced

speed. I realized that it was letting the warship approach. Moreover,

the explosions grew more intensely audible. Shells furrowed the water

around us, drilling through it with an odd hissing sound.

“My friends,” I said, “it’s time. Let’s shake hands, and may God be

with us!”

Ned Land was determined, Conseil calm, I myself nervous and barely in

control.

We went into the library. Just as I pushed open the door leading to

the well of the central companionway, I heard the hatch close sharply

overhead.

The Canadian leaped up the steps, but I stopped him. A well-known

hissing told me that water was entering the ship’s ballast

tanks. Indeed, in a few moments the Nautilus had submerged some meters

below the surface of the waves.

I understood this maneuver. It was too late to take action. The

Nautilus wasn’t going to strike the double-decker where it was clad in

impenetrable iron armor, but below its waterline, where the metal

carapace no longer protected its planking.

We were prisoners once more, unwilling spectators at the performance

of this gruesome drama. But we barely had time to think. Taking refuge

in my stateroom, we stared at each other without pronouncing a

word. My mind was in a total daze. My mental processes came to a dead

stop. I hovered in that painful state that predominates during the

period of anticipation before some frightful explosion. I waited, I

listened, I lived only through my sense of hearing!

Meanwhile the Nautilus’s speed had increased appreciably. So it was

gathering momentum. Its entire hull was vibrating.

Suddenly I let out a yell. There had been a collision, but it was

comparatively mild. I could feel the penetrating force of the steel

spur. I could hear scratchings and scrapings. Carried away with its

driving power, the Nautilus had passed through the vessel’s mass like

a sailmaker’s needle through canvas!

I couldn’t hold still. Frantic, going insane, I leaped out of my

stateroom and rushed into the lounge.

Captain Nemo was there. Mute, gloomy, implacable, he was staring

through the port panel.

An enormous mass was sinking beneath the waters, and the Nautilus,

missing none of its death throes, was descending into the depths with

it. Ten meters away, I could see its gaping hull, into which water was

rushing with a sound of thunder, then its double rows of cannons and

railings. Its deck was covered with dark, quivering shadows.

The water was rising. Those poor men leaped up into the shrouds, clung

to the masts, writhed beneath the waters. It was a human anthill that

an invading sea had caught by surprise!

Paralyzed, rigid with anguish, my hair standing on end, my eyes

popping out of my head, short of breath, suffocating, speechless, I

stared—I too! I was glued to the window by an irresistible allure!

The enormous vessel settled slowly. Following it down, the Nautilus

kept watch on its every movement. Suddenly there was an eruption. The

air compressed inside the craft sent its decks flying, as if the

powder stores had been ignited. The thrust of the waters was so great,

the Nautilus swerved away.

The poor ship then sank more swiftly. Its mastheads appeared, laden

with victims, then its crosstrees bending under clusters of men,

finally the peak of its mainmast. Then the dark mass disappeared, and

with it a crew of corpses dragged under by fearsome eddies. . . .

I turned to Captain Nemo. This dreadful executioner, this true

archangel of hate, was still staring. When it was all over, Captain

Nemo headed to the door of his stateroom, opened it, and entered. I

followed him with my eyes.

On the rear paneling, beneath the portraits of his heroes, I saw the

portrait of a still-youthful woman with two little children. Captain

Nemo stared at them for a few moments, stretched out his arms to them,

sank to his knees, and melted into sobs.

CHAPTER 22

The Last Words of Captain Nemo

THE PANELS CLOSED over this frightful view, but the lights didn’t go

on in the lounge. Inside the Nautilus all was gloom and silence. It

left this place of devastation with prodigious speed, 100 feet beneath

the waters. Where was it going? North or south? Where would the man

flee after this horrible act of revenge?

I reentered my stateroom, where Ned and Conseil were waiting

silently. Captain Nemo filled me with insurmountable horror. Whatever

he had once suffered at the hands of humanity, he had no right to mete

out such punishment. He had made me, if not an accomplice, at least an

eyewitness to his vengeance! Even this was intolerable.

At eleven o’clock the electric lights came back on. I went into the

lounge. It was deserted. I consulted the various instruments. The

Nautilus was fleeing northward at a speed of twenty-five miles per

hour, sometimes on the surface of the sea, sometimes thirty feet

beneath it.

After our position had been marked on the chart, I saw that we were

passing into the mouth of the English Channel, that our heading would

take us to the northernmost seas with incomparable speed.

I could barely glimpse the swift passing of longnose sharks,

hammerhead sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters, big

eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard,

eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fled

obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally

schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus. But

by this point observing, studying, and classifying were out of the

question.

By evening we had cleared 200 leagues up the Atlantic. Shadows

gathered and gloom overran the sea until the moon came up.

I repaired to my stateroom. I couldn’t sleep. I was assaulted by

nightmares. That horrible scene of destruction kept repeating in my

mind’s eye.

From that day forward, who knows where the Nautilus took us in the

north Atlantic basin? Always at incalculable speed! Always amid the

High Arctic mists! Did it call at the capes of Spitzbergen or the

shores of Novaya Zemlya? Did it visit such uncharted seas as the White

Sea, the Kara Sea, the Gulf of Ob, the Lyakhov Islands, or those

unknown beaches on the Siberian coast? I’m unable to say. I lost track

of the passing hours. Time was in abeyance on the ship’s clocks. As

happens in the polar regions, it seemed that night and day no longer

followed their normal sequence. I felt myself being drawn into that

strange domain where the overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe

was at home. Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment

to see that “shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions

than any dweller among men,” thrown across the cataract that protects

the outskirts of the pole!

I estimate—but perhaps I’m mistaken—that the Nautilus’s haphazard

course continued for fifteen or twenty days, and I’m not sure how long

this would have gone on without the catastrophe that ended our

voyage. As for Captain Nemo, he was no longer in the picture. As for

his chief officer, the same applied. Not one crewman was visible for a

single instant. The Nautilus cruised beneath the waters almost

continuously. When it rose briefly to the surface to renew our air,

the hatches opened and closed as if automated. No more positions were

reported on the world map. I didn’t know where we were.

I’ll also mention that the Canadian, at the end of his strength and

patience, made no further appearances. Conseil couldn’t coax a single

word out of him and feared that, in a fit of delirium while under the

sway of a ghastly homesickness, Ned would kill himself. So he kept a

devoted watch on his friend every instant.

You can appreciate that under these conditions, our situation had

become untenable.

One morning—whose date I’m unable to specify—I was slumbering near the

first hours of daylight, a painful, sickly slumber. Waking up, I saw

Ned Land leaning over me, and I heard him tell me in a low voice:

“We’re going to escape!”

I sat up.

“When?” I asked.

“Tonight. There doesn’t seem to be any supervision left on the

Nautilus. You’d think a total daze was reigning on board. Will you be

ready, sir?”

“Yes. Where are we?”

“In sight of land. I saw it through the mists just this morning,

twenty miles to the east.”

“What land is it?”

“I’ve no idea, but whatever it is, there we’ll take refuge.”

“Yes, Ned! We’ll escape tonight even if the sea swallows us up!”

“The sea’s rough, the wind’s blowing hard, but a twenty-mile run in

the Nautilus’s nimble longboat doesn’t scare me. Unknown to the crew,

I’ve stowed some food and flasks of water inside.”

“I’m with you.”

“What’s more,” the Canadian added, “if they catch me, I’ll defend

myself, I’ll fight to the death.”

“Then we’ll die together, Ned my friend.”

My mind was made up. The Canadian left me. I went out on the platform,

where I could barely stand upright against the jolts of the

billows. The skies were threatening, but land lay inside those dense

mists, and we had to escape. Not a single day, or even a single hour,

could we afford to lose.

I returned to the lounge, dreading yet desiring an encounter with

Captain Nemo, wanting yet not wanting to see him. What would I say to

him? How could I hide the involuntary horror he inspired in me? No! It

was best not to meet him face to face! Best to try and forget him! And

yet . . . !

How long that day seemed, the last I would spend aboard the Nautilus!

I was left to myself. Ned Land and Conseil avoided speaking to me,

afraid they would give themselves away.

At six o’clock I ate supper, but I had no appetite. Despite my

revulsion, I forced it down, wanting to keep my strength up.

At 6:30 Ned Land entered my stateroom. He told me:

“We won’t see each other again before we go. At ten o’clock the moon

won’t be up yet. We’ll take advantage of the darkness. Come to the

skiff. Conseil and I will be inside waiting for you.”

The Canadian left without giving me time to answer him.

I wanted to verify the Nautilus’s heading. I made my way to the

lounge. We were racing north-northeast with frightful speed, fifty

meters down.

I took one last look at the natural wonders and artistic treasures

amassed in the museum, this unrivaled collection doomed to perish

someday in the depths of the seas, together with its curator. I wanted

to establish one supreme impression in my mind. I stayed there an

hour, basking in the aura of the ceiling lights, passing in review the

treasures shining in their glass cases. Then I returned to my

stateroom.

There I dressed in sturdy seafaring clothes. I gathered my notes and

packed them tenderly about my person. My heart was pounding

mightily. I couldn’t curb its pulsations. My anxiety and agitation

would certainly have given me away if Captain Nemo had seen me.

What was he doing just then? I listened at the door to his

stateroom. I heard the sound of footsteps. Captain Nemo was inside. He

hadn’t gone to bed. With his every movement I imagined he would appear

and ask me why I wanted to escape! I felt in a perpetual state of

alarm. My imagination magnified this sensation. The feeling became so

acute, I wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to enter the captain’s

stateroom, dare him face to face, brave it out with word and deed!

It was an insane idea. Fortunately I controlled myself and stretched

out on the bed to soothe my bodily agitation. My nerves calmed a

little, but with my brain so aroused, I did a swift review of my whole

existence aboard the Nautilus, every pleasant or unpleasant incident

that had crossed my path since I went overboard from the Abraham

Lincoln: the underwater hunting trip, the Torres Strait, our running

aground, the savages of Papua, the coral cemetery, the Suez

passageway, the island of Santorini, the Cretan diver, the Bay of

Vigo, Atlantis, the Ice Bank, the South Pole, our imprisonment in the

ice, the battle with the devilfish, the storm in the Gulf Stream, the

Avenger, and that horrible scene of the vessel sinking with its crew

. . . ! All these events passed before my eyes like backdrops

unrolling upstage in a theater. In this strange setting Captain Nemo

then grew fantastically. His features were accentuated, taking on

superhuman proportions. He was no longer my equal, he was the Man of

the Waters, the Spirit of the Seas.

By then it was 9:30. I held my head in both hands to keep it from

bursting. I closed my eyes. I no longer wanted to think. A half hour

still to wait! A half hour of nightmares that could drive me insane!

Just then I heard indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy

harmonies from some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul

trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at

once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical

trance that was drawing him beyond the bounds of this world.

Then a sudden thought terrified me. Captain Nemo had left his

stateroom. He was in the same lounge I had to cross in order to

escape. There I would encounter him one last time. He would see me,

perhaps speak to me! One gesture from him could obliterate me, a

single word shackle me to his vessel!

Even so, ten o’clock was about to strike. It was time to leave my

stateroom and rejoin my companions.

I dared not hesitate, even if Captain Nemo stood before me. I opened

the door cautiously, but as it swung on its hinges, it seemed to make

a frightful noise. This noise existed, perhaps, only in my

imagination!

I crept forward through the Nautilus’s dark gangways, pausing after

each step to curb the pounding of my heart.

I arrived at the corner door of the lounge. I opened it gently. The

lounge was plunged in profound darkness. Chords from the organ were

reverberating faintly. Captain Nemo was there. He didn’t see me. Even

in broad daylight I doubt that he would have noticed me, so completely

was he immersed in his trance.

I inched over the carpet, avoiding the tiniest bump whose noise might

give me away. It took me five minutes to reach the door at the far

end, which led into the library.

I was about to open it when a gasp from Captain Nemo nailed me to the

spot. I realized that he was standing up. I even got a glimpse of him

because some rays of light from the library had filtered into the

lounge. He was coming toward me, arms crossed, silent, not walking but

gliding like a ghost. His chest was heaving, swelling with sobs. And I

heard him murmur these words, the last of his to reach my ears:

“O almighty God! Enough! Enough!”

Was it a vow of repentance that had just escaped from this man’s

conscience . . . ?

Frantic, I rushed into the library. I climbed the central

companionway, and going along the upper gangway, I arrived at the

skiff. I went through the opening that had already given access to my

two companions.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” I exclaimed.

“Right away!” the Canadian replied.

First, Ned Land closed and bolted the opening cut into the Nautilus’s

sheet iron, using the monkey wrench he had with him. After likewise

closing the opening in the skiff, the Canadian began to unscrew the

nuts still bolting us to the underwater boat.

Suddenly a noise from the ship’s interior became audible. Voices were

answering each other hurriedly. What was it? Had they spotted our

escape? I felt Ned Land sliding a dagger into my hand.

“Yes,” I muttered, “we know how to die!”

The Canadian paused in his work. But one word twenty times repeated,

one dreadful word, told me the reason for the agitation spreading

aboard the Nautilus. We weren’t the cause of the crew’s concern.

“Maelstrom! Maelstrom!” they were shouting.

The Maelstrom! Could a more frightening name have rung in our ears

under more frightening circumstances? Were we lying in the dangerous

waterways off the Norwegian coast? Was the Nautilus being dragged into

this whirlpool just as the skiff was about to detach from its plating?

As you know, at the turn of the tide, the waters confined between the

Faroe and Lofoten Islands rush out with irresistible violence. They

form a vortex from which no ship has ever been able to

escape. Monstrous waves race together from every point of the

horizon. They form a whirlpool aptly called “the ocean’s navel,” whose

attracting power extends a distance of fifteen kilometers. It can suck

down not only ships but whales, and even polar bears from the

northernmost regions.

This was where the Nautilus had been sent accidentally—or perhaps

deliberately—by its captain. It was sweeping around in a spiral whose

radius kept growing smaller and smaller. The skiff, still attached to

the ship’s plating, was likewise carried around at dizzying speed. I

could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea

that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in

the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our

nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying!

And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from

several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against

sharp rocks on the seafloor, where the hardest objects are smashed,

where tree trunks are worn down and worked into “a shaggy fur,” as

Norwegians express it!

What a predicament! We were rocking frightfully. The Nautilus defended

itself like a human being. Its steel muscles were cracking. Sometimes

it stood on end, the three of us along with it!

“We’ve got to hold on tight,” Ned said, “and screw the nuts down

again! If we can stay attached to the Nautilus, we can still make it

. . . !”

He hadn’t finished speaking when a cracking sound occurred. The nuts

gave way, and ripped out of its socket, the skiff was hurled like a

stone from a sling into the midst of the vortex.

My head struck against an iron timber, and with this violent shock I

lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 23

Conclusion

WE COME TO the conclusion of this voyage under the seas. What happened

that night, how the skiff escaped from the Maelstrom’s fearsome

eddies, how Ned Land, Conseil, and I got out of that whirlpool, I’m

unable to say. But when I regained consciousness, I was lying in a

fisherman’s hut on one of the Lofoten Islands. My two companions, safe

and sound, were at my bedside clasping my hands. We embraced each

other heartily.

Just now we can’t even dream of returning to France. Travel between

upper Norway and the south is limited. So I have to wait for the

arrival of a steamboat that provides bimonthly service from North

Cape.

So it is here, among these gallant people who have taken us in, that

I’m reviewing my narrative of these adventures. It is accurate. Not a

fact has been omitted, not a detail has been exaggerated. It’s the

faithful record of this inconceivable expedition into an element now

beyond human reach, but where progress will someday make great

inroads.

Will anyone believe me? I don’t know. Ultimately it’s

unimportant. What I can now assert is that I’ve earned the right to

speak of these seas, beneath which in less than ten months, I’ve

cleared 20,000 leagues in this underwater tour of the world that has

shown me so many wonders across the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Red

Sea, the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, the southernmost and

northernmost seas!

But what happened to the Nautilus? Did it withstand the Maelstrom’s

clutches? Is Captain Nemo alive? Is he still under the ocean pursuing

his frightful program of revenge, or did he stop after that latest

mass execution? Will the waves someday deliver that manuscript that

contains his full life story? Will I finally learn the man’s name?

Will the nationality of the stricken warship tell us the nationality

of Captain Nemo?

I hope so. I likewise hope that his powerful submersible has defeated

the sea inside its most dreadful whirlpool, that the Nautilus has

survived where so many ships have perished! If this is the case and

Captain Nemo still inhabits the ocean—his adopted country—may the hate

be appeased in that fierce heart! May the contemplation of so many

wonders extinguish the spirit of vengeance in him! May the executioner

pass away, and the scientist continue his peaceful exploration of the

seas! If his destiny is strange, it’s also sublime. Haven’t I

encompassed it myself? Didn’t I lead ten months of this otherworldly

existence? Thus to that question asked 6,000 years ago in the Book of

Ecclesiastes—“Who can fathom the soundless depths?”—two men out of all

humanity have now earned the right to reply. Captain Nemo and I.

END OF THE SECOND PART