Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

by Marie Sexton

  “Go ahead, sir.”

  “You said we’d be free aboard your vessel?”

  “Completely.”

  “Then I would ask what you mean by this freedom.”

  “Why, the freedom to come, go, see, and even closely observe everything happening here—except under certain rare circumstances—in short, the freedom we ourselves enjoy, my companions and I.”

  It was obvious that we did not understand each other.

  “Pardon me, sir,” I went on, “but that’s merely the freedom that every prisoner has, the freedom to pace his cell. That’s not enough for us.”

  “Nevertheless, it will have to do.”

  “What. We must give up seeing our homeland, friends, and relatives ever again?”

  “Yes, sir. But giving up that intolerable earthly yoke that some men call freedom is perhaps less painful than you think.”

  “By thunder,” Ned Land shouted. “I’ll never promise I won’t try getting out of here.”

  “I didn’t ask for such a promise, Mr Land,” the commander replied coldly.

  “Sir,” I replied, flaring up in spite of myself, “you’re taking unfair advantage of us. This is sheer cruelty.”

  “No, sir, it’s an act of mercy. You’re my prisoners of war. I’ve cared for you when, with a single word, I could plunge you back into the ocean depths. You attacked me. You’ve just stumbled on a secret no living man must probe, the secret of my entire existence. Do you think I’ll send you back to a world that must know nothing more of me? Never. By keeping you on board, it isn’t you whom I care for, it’s me.”

  These words indicated that the commander pursued a policy impervious to arguments.

  “Then, sir,” I went on, “you give us, quite simply, a choice between life and death?”

  “Quite simply.”

  “My friends,” I said, “to a question couched in these terms, our answer can be taken for granted. But no solemn promises bind us to the commander of this vessel.”

  “None, sir,” the stranger replied.

  Then, in a gentler voice, he went on, “Now, allow me to finish what I have to tell you.

  I’ve heard of you, Professor Aronnax. You, if not your companions, won’t perhaps complain too much about the stroke of fate that has brought us together. Among the books that make up my favourite reading, you’ll find the work you’ve published on the great ocean depths.

  I’ve pored over it. You’ve taken your studies as far as terrestrial science can go. But you don’t know everything because you haven’t seen everything. Let me tell you, Professor, you won’t regret the time you spend aboard my vessel. You’re going to voyage through a land of wonders. Stunned amazement will probably be your habitual state of mind. It will be a long while before you tire of the sights constantly before your eyes. I’m going to make another underwater tour of the world—perhaps my last, who knows?—and I’ll review everything I’ve studied in the depths of these seas that I’ve crossed so often, and you can be my fellow student. Starting this very day, you’ll enter a new element, you’ll see what no human being has ever seen before—since my men and I no longer count—and thanks to me, you’re going to learn the ultimate secrets of our planet.”

  I can’t deny it, the commander’s words had a tremendous effect on me. He had caught me on my weak side, and I momentarily forgot that not even this sublime experience was worth the loss of my freedom. Besides, I counted on the future to resolve this important question. So I was content to reply, “Sir, even though you’ve cut yourself off from humanity, I can see that you haven’t disowned all human feeling. We’re castaways whom you’ve charitably taken aboard, we’ll never forget that. Speaking for myself, I don’t rule out that the interests of science could override even the need for freedom, which promises me that, in exchange, our encounter will provide great rewards.”

  I thought the commander would offer me his hand, to seal our agreement. He did nothing of the sort. I regretted that.

  “One last question,” I said, just as this inexplicable being seemed ready to withdraw.

  “Ask it, Professor.”

  “By what name am I to call you?”

  “Sir,” the commander replied, “to you, I’m simply Captain Nemo, to me, you and your companions are simply passengers on the Nautilus.”

  Captain Nemo called out. A steward appeared. The captain gave him his orders in that strange language I couldn’t even identify. Then, turning to the Canadian and Conseil,

  “Kindly follow this man.”

  Ned glanced nervously my way, betraying his concern. “And what of the professor?”

  Captain Nemo smiled. “Do not worry, Mr Land. You’ll not be kept apart indefinitely.

  But for now, a meal is waiting for you in your cabin.”

  Ned was visibly relieved. “That’s an offer I can’t refuse,” the harpooner replied.

  After being confined for over thirty hours, he and Conseil were finally out of this cell.

  “And now, Professor Aronnax, our own breakfast is ready. Allow me to lead the way.”

  “Yours to command, Captain.”

  I followed Captain Nemo, and as soon as I passed through the doorway, I went down a kind of electrically lit passageway that resembled a gangway on a ship. After a stretch of some ten metres, a second door opened before me.

  I then entered a dining room, decorated and furnished in austere good taste. Inlaid with ebony trim, tall oaken sideboards stood at both ends of this room, and sparkling on their shelves were staggered rows of earthenware, porcelain, and glass of incalculable value. There silver-plated dinnerware gleamed under rays pouring from light fixtures in the ceiling, whose glare was softened and tempered by delicately painted designs.

  In the centre of this room stood a table, richly spread. Captain Nemo indicated the place I was to occupy.

  “Be seated,” he told me, “and eat like the famished man you must be.”

  Our breakfast consisted of several dishes whose contents were all supplied by the sea, and some foods whose nature and derivation were unknown to me. They were good, I admit, but with a peculiar flavour to which I would soon grow accustomed. These various food items seemed to be rich in phosphorous, and I thought that they, too, must have been of marine origin.

  Captain Nemo stared at me. I had asked him nothing, but he read my thoughts, and on his own he answered the questions I was itching to address him.

  “Most of these dishes are new to you,” he told me. “But you can consume them without fear. They’re healthy and nourishing. I renounced terrestrial foods long ago, and I’m none the worse for it. My crew are strong and full of energy, and they eat what I eat.”

  “So,” I said, “all these foods are products of the sea?”

  “Yes, Professor, the sea supplies all my needs. Sometimes I cast my nets in our wake, and I pull them up ready to burst. Sometimes I go hunting right in the midst of this element that has long seemed so far out of man’s reach, and I corner the game that dwells in my underwater forests. Like the flocks of old Proteus, King Neptune’s shepherd, my herds graze without fear on the ocean’s immense prairies. There I own vast properties that I harvest myself, and which are forever sown by the hand of the Creator of All Things.”

  I stared at Captain Nemo in definite astonishment, and I answered him, “Sir, I understand perfectly how your nets can furnish excellent fish for your table, I understand less how you can chase aquatic game in your underwater forests, but how a piece of red meat, no matter how small, can figure in your menu, that I don’t understand at all.”

  “Nor I, sir,” Captain Nemo answered me. “I never touch the flesh of land animals.”

  “Nevertheless, this…” I went on, pointing to a dish where some slices of loin were still left.

  “What you believe to be red meat, Professor, is nothing other than loin of sea turtle.

  Similarly, here are some dolphin livers you might mistake for stewed pork. My chef is a skilful food processor who excels at pi
ckling and preserving these various exhibits from the ocean. Feel free to sample all of these foods. Here are some preserves of sea cucumber that a Malaysian would declare to be unrivalled in the entire world, here’s cream from milk furnished by the udders of cetaceans, and sugar from the huge fucus plants in the North Sea, and finally, allow me to offer you some marmalade of sea anemone, equal to that from the tastiest fruits.”

  So I sampled away, more as a curiosity seeker than an epicure, while Captain Nemo delighted me with his incredible anecdotes.

  “But this sea, Professor Aronnax,” he told me, “this prodigious, inexhaustible wet nurse of a sea not only feeds me, she dresses me as well. That fabric covering you was woven from the masses of filaments that anchor certain seashells, as the ancients were wont to do, it was dyed with purple ink from the murex snail and shaded with violet tints that I extract from a marine slug, the Mediterranean sea hare. The perfumes you’ll find on the washstand in your cabin were produced from the oozings of marine plants. Your mattress was made from the ocean’s softest eelgrass. Your quill pen will be whalebone, your ink a juice secreted by cuttlefish or squid. Everything comes to me from the sea, just as someday everything will return to it.”

  “You love the sea, Captain.”

  “Yes, I love it. The sea is the be all and end all. It covers seven-tenths of the planet Earth.

  Its breath is clean and healthy. It’s an immense wilderness where a man is never lonely, because he feels life astir on every side. The sea is simply the vehicle for a prodigious, unearthly mode of existence, it’s simply movement and love, it’s living infinity, as one of your poets put it. And in essence, Professor, nature is here made manifest by all three of her kingdoms, mineral, vegetable, and animal. The last of these is amply represented by the four zoophyte groups, three classes of articulates, five classes of molluscs, and three vertebrate classes, mammals, reptiles, and those countless legions of fish, an infinite order of animals totalling more than thirteen-thousand species, of which only one-tenth belong to fresh water.

  The sea is a vast pool of nature. Our globe began with the sea, so to speak, and who can say we won’t end with it. Here lies supreme tranquillity. The sea doesn’t belong to tyrants. On its surface they can still exercise their iniquitous claims, battle each other, devour each other, haul every earthly horror. But thirty feet below sea level, their dominion ceases, their influence fades, their power vanishes. Ah, sir, live. Live in the heart of the seas. Here alone lies independence. Here I recognise no superiors. Here I’m free.”

  Captain Nemo suddenly fell silent in the midst of this enthusiastic outpouring. Had he let himself get carried away, past the bounds of his habitual reserve? Had he said too much?

  For a few moments he strolled up and down, all aquiver. Then his nerves grew calmer, his facial features recovered their usual icy composure, and turning to me, “Now, Professor,” he said, “if you’d like to inspect the Nautilus, I’m yours to command.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Nautilus

  Captain Nemo stood up. I followed him. Contrived at the rear of the dining room, a double door opened, and I entered a room whose dimensions equalled the one I had just left.

  It was a library. Tall, black-rosewood bookcases, inlaid with copperwork, held on their wide shelves a large number of uniformly bound books. These furnishings followed the contours of the room, their lower parts leading to huge couches upholstered in maroon leather and curved for maximum comfort. Light, movable reading stands, which could be pushed away or pulled near as desired, allowed books to be positioned on them for easy study. In the centre stood a huge table covered with pamphlets, among which some newspapers, long out of date, were visible. Electric light flooded this whole harmonious totality, falling from four frosted half globes set in the scrollwork of the ceiling. I stared in genuine wonderment at this room so ingeniously laid out, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “Captain Nemo,” I told my host, who had just stretched out on a couch, “this is a library that would do credit to more than one continental palace, and I truly marvel to think it can go with you into the deepest seas.”

  “Where could one find greater silence or solitude, Professor?” Captain Nemo replied.

  “Did your study at the museum afford you such a perfect retreat?”

  “No, sir, and I might add that it’s quite a humble one next to yours. You own six-thousand or seven-thousand volumes here…”

  “Twelve-thousand, Professor Aronnax. They’re my sole remaining ties with dry land.

  But I was done with the shore the day my Nautilus submerged for the first time under the waters. That day I purchased my last volumes, my last pamphlets, my last newspapers, and ever since I’ve chosen to believe that humanity no longer thinks or writes. In any event, Professor, these books are at your disposal, and you may use them freely.”

  I thanked Captain Nemo and approached the shelves of this library. Written in every language, books on science, ethics, and literature were there in abundance, but I didn’t see a single work on economics—they seemed to be strictly banned on board. One odd detail, all these books were shelved indiscriminately without regard to the language in which they were written, and this jumble proved that the Nautilus’s captain could read fluently whatever volumes he chanced to pick up.

  Among these books I noted masterpieces by the greats of ancient and modern times, in other words, all of humanity’s finest achievements in history, poetry, fiction, and science, from Homer to Victor Hugo, from Xenophon to Michelet, from Rabelais to Madame George Sand. But science, in particular, represented the major investment of this library, books on mechanics, ballistics, hydrography, meteorology, geography, geology, etc., held a place there no less important than works on natural history, and I realised that they made up the captain’s chief reading. There I saw the complete works of Humboldt, the complete Arago, as well as works by Foucault, Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, Chasles, Milne-Edwards, Quatrefages, John Tyndall, Faraday, Berthelot, Father Secchi, Petermann, Commander Maury, Louis Agassiz, etc., plus the transactions of France’s Academy of Sciences, bulletins from the various geographical societies, etc., and in a prime location, those two volumes on the great ocean depths that had perhaps earned me this comparatively charitable welcome from Captain Nemo. Among the works of Joseph Bertrand, his book entitled The Founders of Astronomy even gave me a definite date, and since I knew it had appeared in the course of 1865, I concluded that the fitting out of the Nautilus hadn’t taken place before then.

  Accordingly, three years ago at the most, Captain Nemo had begun his underwater existence. Moreover, I hoped some books even more recent would permit me to pinpoint the date precisely, but I had plenty of time to look for them, and I didn’t want to put off any longer our stroll through the wonders of the Nautilus.

  “Sir,” I told the captain, “thank you for placing this library at my disposal. There are scientific treasures here, and I’ll take advantage of them.”

  “This room isn’t only a library,” Captain Nemo said, “it’s also a smoking room.”

  “A smoking room?” I exclaimed. “Then one may smoke on board?”

  “Surely.”

  “In that case, sir, I’m forced to believe that you’ve kept up relations with Havana.”

  “None whatever,” the captain replied. “Try this cigar, Professor Aronnax, and even though it doesn’t come from Havana, it will satisfy you if you’re a connoisseur.”

  I took the cigar offered me, whose shape recalled those from Cuba, but it seemed to be made of gold leaf. I lit it at a small brazier supported by an elegant bronze stand, and I inhaled my first whiffs with the relish of a smoker who hasn’t had a puff in days.

  “It’s excellent,” I said, “but it’s not from the tobacco plant.”

  “Right,” the captain replied, “this tobacco comes from neither Havana nor the Orient.

  It’s a kind of nicotine-rich seaweed that the ocean supplies me, albeit sparingly. Do you still mis
s your Cubans, sir?”

  “Captain, I scorn them from this day forward.”

  “Then smoke these cigars whenever you like, without debating their origin. They bear no government seal of approval, but I imagine they’re none the worse for it.”

  “On the contrary.”

  Just then Captain Nemo opened a door facing the one by which I had entered the library, and I passed into an immense, splendidly lit lounge.

  It was a huge quadrilateral with canted corners, ten metres long, six wide, five high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with delicate arabesques, distributed a soft, clear daylight over all the wonders gathered in this museum. For a museum it truly was, in which clever hands had spared no expense to amass every natural and artistic treasure, displaying them with the helter-skelter picturesqueness that distinguishes a painter’s studio.

  Some thirty pictures by the masters, uniformly framed and separated by gleaming panoplies of arms, adorned walls on which were stretched tapestries of austere design. There I saw canvases of the highest value, the likes of which I had marvelled at in private European collections and art exhibitions. The various schools of the old masters were represented and some wonderful miniature statues in marble or bronze, modelled after antiquity’s finest originals, stood on their pedestals in the corners of this magnificent museum. As the Nautilus’s commander had predicted, my mind was already starting to fall into that promised state of stunned amazement.

  “Professor,” this strange man then said, “you must excuse the informality with which I receive you, and the disorder reigning in this lounge.”

  “Sir,” I replied, “without prying into who you are, might I venture to identify you as an artist?”

  “A collector, sir, nothing more. Formerly I loved acquiring these beautiful works created by the hand of man. I sought them greedily, ferreted them out tirelessly, and I’ve been able to gather some objects of great value. They’re my last mementos of those shores that are now dead for me. In my eyes, your modern artists are already as old as the ancients.