Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

by Marie Sexton

  “It will finish, Ned.”

  “Where and when?”

  “Where? I don’t know. When? I can’t say. Or, rather, I suppose it will be over when these seas have nothing more to teach us. Everything that begins in this world must inevitably come to an end.”

  “I think as master does,” Conseil replied, “and it’s extremely possible that after crossing every sea on the globe, Captain Nemo will bid the three of us a fond farewell.”

  “Bid us a fond farewell?” the Canadian exclaimed. “You mean beat us to a fare-thee-well.”

  “Let’s not exaggerate, Mr Land,” I went on. “We have nothing to fear from the captain, but neither do I share Conseil’s views. We’re privy to the Nautilus’s secrets, and I don’t expect that its commander, just to set us free, will meekly stand by while we spread those secrets all over the world.”

  “But in that case what do you expect?” the Canadian asked.

  “That we’ll encounter advantageous conditions for escaping just as readily in six months as now.”

  “Great Scott,” Ned Land put in. “And where, if you please, will we be in six months, Mr Naturalist?”

  “Perhaps here, perhaps in China. You know how quickly the Nautilus moves. It crosses oceans like swallows cross the air or express trains continents. It doesn’t fear heavily travelled seas. Who can say it won’t hug the coasts of France, England, or America, where an escape attempt could be carried out just as effectively as here.”

  “Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied, “your arguments are rotten to the core. You talk way off in the future, ‘We’ll be here, we’ll be there.’ Me, I’m talking about right now—we are here, and we must take advantage of it.”

  I was hard pressed by Ned Land’s common sense, and I felt myself losing ground. I no longer knew what arguments to put forward on my behalf.

  “Sir,” Ned went on, “let’s suppose that by some impossibility, Captain Nemo offered your freedom to you this very day. Would you accept?”

  “I don’t know,” I replied and regretted it immediately when I saw the pain flash in his eyes.

  “And suppose he adds that this offer he’s making you today won’t ever be repeated, then would you accept?”

  I did not reply. I hoped to end the argument that way, but my lack of response was an answer in and of itself, and it did not please him.

  “And what thinks our friend Conseil?” Ned Land asked.

  “Your friend Conseil,” the fine lad replied serenely, “has nothing to say for himself.

  He’s a completely disinterested party on this question. Like his master, like his comrade Ned, he’s a bachelor. Neither wife, parents, nor children are waiting for him back home. He’s in master’s employ, he thinks like master, he speaks like master, and much to his regret, he can’t be counted on to form a majority. Only two persons face each other here—master on one side, Ned Land on the other. That said, your friend Conseil is listening, and he’s ready to keep score.”

  I couldn’t help smiling as Conseil wiped himself out of existence. Deep down, the Canadian must have been overjoyed at not having to contend with him.

  “Then, sir,” Ned Land said, “since Conseil is no more, we’ll have this discussion between just the two of us. I’ve talked, you’ve listened. What’s your reply?”

  It was obvious that the matter had to be settled, and evasions were distasteful to me. So were arguments.

  “Ned my love,” I said, “here’s my reply. You know I love you. You know I want to be with you, and I admit you have right on your side. My arguments can’t stand up to yours. It will never do to count on Captain Nemo’s benevolence. The most ordinary good sense would forbid him to set us free, and therefore good sense decrees that we take advantage of our first opportunity to leave the Nautilus.”

  “Fine, Professor Aronnax. That’s wisely said.”

  “But one proviso,” I said, “just one. The opportunity must be the real thing. Our first attempt to escape must succeed, because if it misfires, we won’t get a second chance, and Captain Nemo will never forgive us.”

  “That’s also well put,” the Canadian replied. “But your proviso applies to any escape attempt, whether it happens in two years or two days. So this is still the question—if a promising opportunity comes up, we will grab it?”

  “Agreed. And now, Ned, will you tell me what you mean by a promising opportunity?”

  “One that leads the Nautilus on a cloudy night within a short distance of some European coast.”

  “And you’ll try to get away by swimming?”

  “Yes, if we’re close enough to shore and the ship’s afloat on the surface. No, if we’re well out and the ship’s navigating under the waters.”

  “And in that event?”

  “In that event I’ll try to get hold of the skiff. I know how to handle it. We’ll stick ourselves inside, undo the bolts, and rise to the surface, without the helmsman in the bow seeing a thing.”

  “Fine, Ned. Stay on the lookout for such an opportunity. Whatever you decide, I am with you, but don’t forget, one slipup will finish us.”

  “I won’t forget, sir.”

  “And now, Ned, would you like to know my overall thinking on your plan?”

  “Gladly, Professor Aronnax.”

  “Well then, I think—and I don’t mean ‘I hope’—that your promising opportunity won’t ever arise.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Captain Nemo recognises that we haven’t given up all hope of recovering our freedom, and he’ll keep on his guard, above all in seas within sight of the coasts of Europe.”

  “I’m of master’s opinion,” Conseil said.

  “We’ll soon see,” Ned Land replied, shaking his head with a determined expression.

  “And now, Ned Land,” I added, “let’s leave it at that. Not another word on any of this. I don’t want to argue. The day you’re ready, alert us and we’re with you. I turn it all over to you.”

  That’s how we ended this conversation, which later was to have such serious consequences. At first, I must say, events seemed to confirm my forecasts, much to the Canadian’s despair. Did Captain Nemo view us with distrust in these heavily travelled seas, or did he simply want to hide from the sight of those ships of every nation that ploughed the Mediterranean? I have no idea, but usually he stayed in midwater and well out from any coast. Either the Nautilus surfaced only enough to let its pilothouse emerge, or it slipped away to the lower depths, although, between the Greek Islands and Asia Minor, we didn’t find bottom even at two-thousand metres down.

  Accordingly, I became aware of the isle of Karpathos, one of the Sporades Islands, only when Captain Nemo placed his finger over a spot on the world map and quoted me this verse from Virgil—

  Est in Carpathio Neptuni gurgite vates

  Caeruleus Proteus…

  It was indeed that bygone abode of Proteus, the old shepherd of King Neptune’s flocks—an island located between Rhodes and Crete, which Greeks now call Karpathos, Italians Scarpanto. Through the lounge window I could see only its granite bedrock.

  The next day, February 14, I decided to spend a few hours studying the fish of this island group, but for whatever reason, the panels remained hermetically sealed. After determining the Nautilus’s heading, I noted that it was proceeding towards the ancient island of Crete, also called Candia. At the time I had shipped aboard the Abraham Lincoln, this whole island was in rebellion against its tyrannical rulers, the Ottoman Empire of Turkey. But since then I had absolutely no idea what happened to this revolution, and Captain Nemo, deprived of all contact with the shore, was hardly the man to keep me informed.

  So I didn’t allude to this event when, that evening, I chanced to be alone with the captain in the lounge. Besides, he seemed silent and preoccupied. Then, contrary to custom, he ordered that both panels in the lounge be opened, and going from the one to the other, he carefully observed the watery mass. For what purpose? I hadn’t a guess, and for my p
art, I spent my time studying the fish that passed before my eyes.

  I was suddenly jolted by an unexpected apparition.

  In the midst of the waters, a man appeared, a diver carrying a little leather bag at his belt. It was no corpse lost in the waves. It was a living man, swimming vigorously, sometimes disappearing to breathe at the surface, then instantly diving again.

  I turned to Captain Nemo, and in an agitated voice, “A man. A castaway,” I exclaimed.

  “We must rescue him at all cost.”

  The captain didn’t reply but went to lean against the window.

  The man drew near, and gluing his face to the panel, he stared at us.

  To my deep astonishment, Captain Nemo gave him a signal. The diver answered with his hand, immediately swam up to the surface of the sea, and didn’t reappear.

  “Don’t be alarmed,” the captain told me. “That’s Nicolas from Cape Matapan, nicknamed ‘Il Pesce.’ He’s well known throughout the Cyclades Islands. A bold diver. Water is his true element, and he lives in the sea more than on shore, going constantly from one island to another, even to Crete.”

  “You know him, captain?”

  “Why not, Professor Aronnax?”

  This said, Captain Nemo went to a cabinet standing near the lounge’s left panel. Next to this cabinet I saw a chest bound with hoops of iron, its lid bearing a copper plaque that displayed the Nautilus’s monogram with its motto Mobilis in Mobili.

  Just then, ignoring my presence, the captain opened this cabinet, a sort of safe that contained a large number of ingots.

  They were gold ingots. And they represented an enormous sum of money. Where had this precious metal come from? How had the captain amassed this gold, and what was he about to do with it?

  I didn’t pronounce a word. I gaped. Captain Nemo took out the ingots one by one and arranged them methodically inside the chest, filling it to the top. At which point I estimate that it held more than one-thousand kilograms of gold, in other words, close to five-million francs.

  After securely fastening the chest, Captain Nemo wrote an address on its lid in characters that must have been modern Greek.

  This done, the captain pressed a button whose wiring was in communication with the crew’s quarters. Four men appeared and, not without difficulty, pushed the chest out of the lounge. Then I heard them hoist it up the iron companionway by means of pulleys.

  Just then Captain Nemo turned to me. “You were saying, Professor?” he asked me.

  “I wasn’t saying a thing, Captain.”

  “Then, sir, with your permission, I’ll bid you good evening.”

  And with that, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

  I re-entered my stateroom, very puzzled, as you can imagine. Ned was already asleep. I tried in vain to do the same. I kept searching for a relationship between the appearance of the diver and that chest filled with gold. Soon, from certain rolling and pitching movements, I sensed that the Nautilus had left the lower strata and was back on the surface of the water.

  Then I heard the sound of footsteps on the platform. I realised that the skiff was being detached and launched to sea. For an instant it bumped the Nautilus’s side, then all sounds ceased.

  Two hours later, the same noises, the same comings and goings, were repeated. Hoisted on board, the longboat was readjusted into its socket, and the Nautilus plunged back beneath the waves.

  So those millions had been delivered to their address. At what spot on the continent?

  Who was the recipient of Captain Nemo’s gold?

  The next day I related the night’s events to Conseil and the Canadian, events that had aroused my curiosity to a fever pitch. My companions were as startled as I was.

  “But where does he get those millions?” Ned Land asked.

  To this no reply was possible. After breakfast I made my way to the lounge and went about my work. I wrote up my notes until five o’clock in the afternoon. Just then—was it due to some personal indisposition?—I felt extremely hot and had to take off my jacket made of fan mussel fabric. A perplexing circumstance because we weren’t in the low latitudes, and besides, once the Nautilus was submerged, it shouldn’t be subject to any rise in temperature. I looked at the pressure gauge. It marked a depth of sixty feet, a depth beyond the reach of atmospheric heat.

  I kept on working, but the temperature rose to the point of becoming unbearable.

  “Could there be a fire on board?” I wondered.

  I was about to leave the lounge when Captain Nemo entered. He approached the thermometer, consulted it, and turned to me. “Forty-two degrees centigrade,” he said.

  “I’ve detected as much, Captain,” I replied, “and if it gets even slightly hotter, we won’t be able to stand it.”

  “Oh, Professor, it won’t get any hotter unless we want it to.”

  “You mean you can control this heat?”

  “No, but I can back away from the fireplace producing it.”

  “So it’s outside?”

  “Surely. We’re cruising in a current of boiling water.”

  “It can’t be,” I exclaimed.

  “Look.”

  The panels had opened, and I could see a completely white sea around the Nautilus.

  Steaming sulphurous fumes uncoiled in the midst of waves bubbling like water in a boiler. I leaned my hand against one of the windows, but the heat was so great, I had to snatch it back.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Near the island of Santorini, Professor,” the captain answered me, “and right in the channel that separates the volcanic islets of Nea Kameni and Palea Kameni. I wanted to offer you the unusual sight of an underwater eruption.”

  “I thought,” I said, “that the formation of such new islands had come to an end.”

  “Nothing ever comes to an end in these volcanic waterways,” Captain Nemo replied.

  “What about this channel we’re in right now?” I asked.

  “Here it is,” Captain Nemo replied, showing me a chart of the Greek Islands. “You observe that I’ve entered the new islets in their place.”

  “But will this channel fill up one day?”

  “Very likely, Professor Aronnax.”

  I returned to the window. The Nautilus was no longer moving. The heat had become unbearable. From the white it had recently been, the sea was turning red, a coloration caused by the presence of iron salts. Although the lounge was hermetically sealed, it was filling with an intolerable stink of sulphur, and I could see scarlet flames of such brightness, they overpowered our electric light.

  I was swimming in perspiration, I was stifling, I was about to be cooked. Yes, I felt myself cooking in actual fact.

  “We can’t stay any longer in this boiling water,” I told the captain.

  “No, it wouldn’t be advisable,” replied Nemo the Emotionless.

  He gave an order. The Nautilus tacked about and retreated from this furnace it couldn’t brave with impunity. A quarter of an hour later, we were breathing fresh air on the surface of the waves.

  It then occurred to me that if Ned had chosen these waterways for our escape attempt, we wouldn’t have come out alive from this sea of fire.

  The next day, February 16, we left this basin, which tallies depths of three-thousand metres between Rhodes and Alexandria, and passing well out from Cerigo Island after doubling Cape Matapan, the Nautilus left the Greek Islands behind.

  Chapter Seven

  The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours

  The mediterranean, your ideal blue sea—to Greeks simply ‘the sea’, to Hebrews ‘the great sea’, to Romans mare nostrum. Bordered by orange trees, aloes, cactus, and maritime pine trees, perfumed with the scent of myrtle, framed by rugged mountains, saturated with clean, transparent air but continuously under construction by fires in the earth, this sea is a genuine battlefield where Neptune and Pluto still struggle for world domination. Here on these beaches and waters, says the French historian Michelet, a man is revived by one o
f the most invigorating climates in the world.

  But as beautiful as it was, I could get only a quick look at this basin whose surface area comprises two-million square kilometres. Even Captain Nemo’s personal insights were denied me, because that mystifying individual didn’t appear one single time during our high-speed crossing. I estimate that the Nautilus covered a track of some six-hundred leagues under the waves of this sea, and this voyage was accomplished in just twenty-four hours times two. Departing from the waterways of Greece on the morning of February 16, we cleared the Strait of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.

  It was obvious to me that this Mediterranean, pinned in the middle of those shores he wanted to avoid, gave Captain Nemo no pleasure. Its waves and breezes brought back too many memories, if not too many regrets. Here he no longer had the ease of movement and freedom of manoeuvre that the oceans allowed him, and his Nautilus felt cramped so close to the coasts of both Africa and Europe.

  Accordingly, our speed was twenty-five miles—that is, twelve four-kilometre leagues—

  per hour. Needless to say, Ned Land had to give up his escape plans, much to his distress.

  Swept along at the rate of twelve to thirteen metres per second, he could hardly make use of the skiff. Leaving the Nautilus under these conditions would have been like jumping off a train racing at this speed, a rash move if there ever was one. Moreover, to renew our air supply, the submersible rose to the surface of the waves only at night, and relying solely on compass and log, it steered by dead reckoning.

  Inside the Mediterranean, then, I could catch no more of its fast-passing scenery than a traveller might see from an express train, in other words, I could view only the distant horizons because the foregrounds flashed by like lightning. But Conseil and I were able to observe those Mediterranean fish whose powerful fins kept pace for a while in the Nautilus’s waters.

  By then we were passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia. In the cramped space between Cape Bon and the Strait of Messina, the sea bottom rises almost all at once. It forms an actual ridge with only seventeen metres of water remaining above it, while the depth on either side is one-hundred and seventy metres. Consequently, the Nautilus had to manoeuvre with caution so as not to bump into this underwater barrier.