Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

by Marie Sexton

  As for the liquid surface of the sea, there was no longer any semblance of it before our eyes. Before the Nautilus’s spur there lay vast broken plains, a tangle of confused chunks with all the helter-skelter unpredictability typical of a river’s surface a short while before its ice breakup, but in this case the proportions were gigantic. Here and there stood sharp peaks, lean spires that rose as high as two-hundred feet, farther off, a succession of steeply cut cliffs sporting a greyish tint, huge mirrors that reflected the sparse rays of a sun half drowned in mist. Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this desolate natural setting, a silence barely broken by the flapping wings of petrels or puffins. By this point everything was frozen, even sound.

  So the Nautilus had to halt in its venturesome course among these tracts of ice.

  “Sir,” Ned Land told me that day, “if your captain goes any farther…”

  “Yes?”

  “He’ll be a superman.”

  “How so, Ned?”

  “Because nobody can clear the Ice Bank. Your captain’s a powerful man, but damnation, he isn’t more powerful than nature. If she draws a boundary line, there you stop, like it or not.”

  “Correct, Ned Land, but I still want to know what’s behind this Ice Bank. Behold my greatest source of irritation—a wall.”

  “Master is right,” Conseil said. “Walls were invented simply to frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned.”

  “Fine,” the Canadian put in. “But we already know what’s behind this Ice Bank.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Ice, ice, and more ice.”

  “You may be sure of that, Ned,” I answered, “but I’m not. That’s why I want to see for myself.”

  “Well, Professor,” the Canadian replied, “you can just drop that idea. You’ve made it to the Ice Bank, which is already far enough, but you won’t get any farther, neither your Captain Nemo or his Nautilus. And whether he wants to or not, we’ll head north again—in other words, to the land of sensible people.”

  I had to agree that Ned Land was right, and until ships are built to navigate over tracts of ice, they’ll have to stop at the Ice Bank.

  Indeed, despite its efforts, despite the powerful methods it used to split this ice, the Nautilus was reduced to immobility. Ordinarily, when someone can’t go any farther, he still has the option of returning in his tracks. But here it was just as impossible to turn back as to go forward, because every passageway had closed behind us, and if our submersible remained even slightly stationary, it would be frozen in without delay. Which is exactly what happened near two o’clock in the afternoon, and fresh ice kept forming over the ship’s sides with astonishing speed. I had to admit that Captain Nemo’s leadership had been most injudicious.

  Just then I was on the platform. Observing the situation for some while, the captain said to me, “Well, Professor. What think you?”

  “I think we’re trapped, Captain.”

  “Trapped. What do you mean?”

  “I mean we can’t go forwards, backwards, or sideways. I think that’s the standard definition of ‘trapped’, at least in the civilised world.”

  “So, Professor Aronnax, you think the Nautilus won’t be able to float clear?”

  “Only with the greatest difficulty, Captain, since the season is already too advanced for you to depend on an ice breakup.”

  “Oh, Professor,” Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone, “you never change. You see only impediments and obstacles. I promise you, not only will the Nautilus float clear, it will go farther still.”

  “Farther south?” I asked, gaping at the captain.

  “Yes, sir, it will go to the pole.”

  “To the pole,” I exclaimed, unable to keep back a movement of disbelief.

  “Yes,” the captain replied coolly, “the Antarctic pole, that unknown spot crossed by every meridian on the globe. As you know, I do whatever I like with my Nautilus.”

  Yes, I did know that. I knew this man was daring to the point of being foolhardy. But to overcome all the obstacles around the South Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn’t been reached by the boldest navigators—wasn’t this an absolutely insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a madman?

  It then dawned on me to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered this pole, which no human being had ever trod underfoot.

  “No, sir,” he answered me, “but we’ll discover it together. Where others have failed, I’ll succeed. Never before has my Nautilus cruised so far into these southernmost seas, but I repeat—it will go farther still.”

  “I’d like to believe you, Captain,” I went on in a tone of some sarcasm. “Oh I do believe you. Let’s forge ahead. There are no obstacles for us. Let’s shatter this Ice Bank. Let’s blow it up, and if it still resists, let’s put wings on the Nautilus and fly over it.”

  “Over it, Professor?” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “No, not over it, but under it.”

  “Under it?”

  A sudden insight into Captain Nemo’s plans had just flashed through my mind. I understood. The marvellous talents of his Nautilus would be put to work once again in this superhuman undertaking.

  “I can see we’re starting to understand each other, Professor,” Captain Nemo told me with a half smile. “You already glimpse the potential—myself, I’d say the success—of this attempt. Manoeuvres that aren’t feasible for an ordinary ship are easy for the Nautilus. If a continent emerges at the pole, we’ll stop at that continent. But on the other hand, if open sea washes the pole, we’ll go to that very place.”

  “Right,” I said, carried away by the captain’s logic. “Even though the surface of the sea has solidified into ice, its lower strata are still open, thanks to that divine justice that puts the maximum density of salt water one degree above its freezing point. And if I’m not mistaken, the submerged part of this Ice Bank is in a four-to-one ratio to its emerging part.”

  “Very nearly, Professor. For each foot of iceberg above the sea, there are three more below. Now then, since these ice mountains don’t exceed a height of one-hundred metres, they sink only to a depth of three-hundred metres. And what are three-hundred metres to the Nautilus?”

  “A mere nothing, sir.”

  “We could even go to greater depths and find that temperature layer common to all ocean water, and there we’d brave with impunity the -30 degrees or -40 degrees cold on the surface.”

  “True, sir, very true,” I replied with growing excitement.

  “Our sole difficulty,” Captain Nemo went on, “lies in our staying submerged for several days without renewing our air supply.”

  “That’s all?” I answered. “The Nautilus has huge air tanks, we’ll fill them up and they’ll supply all the oxygen we need.”

  “Good thinking, Professor Aronnax,” the captain replied with a smile. “But since I don’t want to be accused of foolhardiness, I’m giving you all my objections in advance.”

  “You have more?”

  “Just one. If a sea exists at the South Pole, it’s possible this sea may be completely frozen over, so we couldn’t come up to the surface.”

  “My dear sir, have you forgotten that the Nautilus is armed with a fearsome spur?

  Couldn’t it be launched diagonally against those tracts of ice, which would break open from the impact?”

  “Ah, Professor, you’re full of ideas today.”

  “Besides, Captain,” I added with still greater enthusiasm, “why wouldn’t we find open sea at the South Pole just as at the North Pole? The cold-temperature poles and the geographical poles don’t coincide in either the northern or southern hemispheres, and until proof to the contrary, we can assume these two spots on the earth feature either a continent or an ice-free ocean.”

  “I think as you do, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied. “I’ll only point out that after raising so many objections against my plan, you’re now crushing me under arguments in its favour.�
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  Captain Nemo was right. I was outdoing him in daring. It was I who was sweeping him to the pole. I was leading the way, I was out in front…but no. I was a silly fool. Captain Nemo already knew the pros and cons of this question, and it amused him to see me flying off into impossible fantasies.

  Nevertheless, he didn’t waste an instant. At his signal, the chief officer appeared. The two men held a quick exchange in their incomprehensible language, and either the chief officer had been alerted previously or he found the plan feasible, because he showed no surprise.

  But as unemotional as he was, he couldn’t have been more impeccably emotionless than Conseil when I told the fine lad our intention of pushing on to the South Pole. He greeted my announcement with the usual “As master wishes,” and I had to be content with that. As for Ned Land, no human shoulders ever executed a higher shrug than the pair belonging to our Canadian.

  “Honestly, sir,” he told me. “You and your Captain Nemo, I pity you both.”

  “But we will go to the pole, Mr Land.”

  “Maybe, but you won’t come back.” And Ned Land re-entered his cabin. “To end this argument before it starts and to keep from doing something desperate,” he said as he left me.

  Meanwhile, preparations for this daring attempt were getting under way. The Nautilus’s powerful pumps forced air down into the tanks and stored it under high pressure. Near four o’clock Captain Nemo informed me that the platform hatches were about to be closed. I took a last look at the dense Ice Bank we were going to conquer. The weather was fair, the skies reasonably clear, the cold quite brisk, namely -12 degrees centigrade, but after the wind had lulled, this temperature didn’t seem too unbearable.

  Equipped with picks, some ten men climbed onto the Nautilus’s sides and cracked loose the ice around the ship’s lower plating, which was soon set free. This operation was swiftly executed because the fresh ice was still thin. We all re-entered the interior. The main ballast tanks were filled with the water that hadn’t yet congealed at our line of flotation. The Nautilus submerged without delay.

  I took a seat in the lounge with Conseil. Through the open window we stared at the lower strata of this southernmost ocean. The thermometer rose again. The needle on the pressure gauge swerved over its dial.

  About three-hundred metres down, just as Captain Nemo had predicted, we cruised beneath the undulating surface of the Ice Bank. But the Nautilus sank deeper still. It reached a depth of eight-hundred metres. At the surface this water gave a temperature of -12 degrees centigrade, but now it gave no more than -10 degrees. Two degrees had already been gained.

  Thanks to its heating equipment, the Nautilus’s temperature, needless to say, stayed at a much higher degree. Every manoeuvre was accomplished with extraordinary precision.

  “With all due respect to master,” Conseil told me, “we’ll pass it by.”

  “I fully expect to,” I replied in a tone of deep conviction.

  Now in open water, the Nautilus took a direct course to the pole without veering from the 52nd meridian. From 67 degrees 30’ to 90 degrees, twenty-two and a half degrees of latitude were left to cross, in other words, slightly more than five-hundred leagues. The Nautilus adopted an average speed of twenty-six miles per hour, the speed of an express train. If it kept up this pace, forty hours would do it for reaching the pole.

  For part of the night, the novelty of our circumstances kept Conseil and me at the lounge window. The sea was lit by our beacon’s electric rays. But the depths were deserted.

  Fish didn’t linger in these imprisoned waters. Here they found merely a passageway for going from the Antarctic Ocean to open sea at the pole. Our progress was swift. You could feel it in the vibrations of the long steel hull.

  Near two o’clock in the morning, I went to snatch a few hours of sleep. Conseil did likewise. I didn’t encounter Captain Nemo while going down the gangways. I assumed that he was keeping to the pilothouse.

  The next day, March 19, at five o’clock in the morning, I was back at my post in the lounge. The electric log indicated that the Nautilus had reduced speed. By then it was rising to the surface, but cautiously, while slowly emptying its ballast tanks.

  My heart was pounding. Would we emerge into the open and find the polar air again?

  No. A jolt told me that the Nautilus had bumped the underbelly of the Ice Bank, still quite thick to judge from the hollowness of the accompanying noise. Indeed, we had ‘struck bottom’, to use nautical terminology, but in the opposite direction and at a depth of three-thousand feet. That gave us four-thousand feet of ice overhead, of which one-thousand feet emerged above water. So the Ice Bank was higher here than we had found it on the outskirts.

  A circumstance less than encouraging.

  Several times that day, the Nautilus repeated the same experiment and always it bumped against this surface that formed a ceiling above it. At certain moments the ship encountered ice at a depth of nine-hundred metres, denoting a thickness of one-thousand, two-hundred metres, of which three-hundred metres rose above the level of the ocean. This height had tripled since the moment the Nautilus had dived beneath the waves.

  I meticulously noted these different depths, obtaining the underwater profile of this upside-down mountain chain that stretched beneath the sea.

  By evening there was still no improvement in our situation. The ice stayed between four-hundred and five-hundred metres deep. It was obviously shrinking, but what a barrier still lay between us and the surface of the ocean.

  By then it was eight o’clock. The air inside the Nautilus should have been renewed four hours earlier, following daily practice on board. But I didn’t suffer very much, although Captain Nemo hadn’t yet made demands on the supplementary oxygen in his air tanks.

  That night my sleep was fitful. Ned did not come to my room. Hope and fear besieged me by turns. I got up several times. The Nautilus continued groping. Near three o’clock in the morning, I observed that we encountered the Ice Bank’s underbelly at a depth of only fifty metres. So only one-hundred and fifty feet separated us from the surface of the water. Little by little the Ice Bank was turning into an ice field again. The mountains were changing back into plains.

  My eyes didn’t leave the pressure gauge. We kept rising on a diagonal, going along this shiny surface that sparkled beneath our electric rays. Above and below, the Ice Bank was subsiding in long gradients. Mile after mile it was growing thinner.

  Finally, at six o’clock in the morning on that memorable day of March 19, the lounge door opened. Captain Nemo appeared.

  “Open sea.” he told me.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The South Pole

  I rushed up onto the platform. Yes, open sea. Barely a few sparse floes, some moving icebergs, a sea stretching into the distance, hosts of birds in the air and myriads of fish under the waters, which varied from intense blue to olive green depending on the depth. The thermometer marked 3 degrees centigrade. It was as if a comparative springtime had been locked up behind that Ice Bank, whose distant masses were outlined on the northern horizon.

  “Are we at the pole?” I asked the captain, my heart pounding.

  “I’ve no idea,” he answered me. “At noon we’ll fix our position.”

  “But will the sun show through this mist?” I said, staring at the greyish sky.

  “No matter how faintly it shines, it will be enough for me,” the captain replied.

  To the south, ten miles from the Nautilus, a solitary islet rose to a height of two-hundred metres. We proceeded towards it, but cautiously, because this sea could have been strewn with reefs.

  In an hour we had reached the islet. Two hours later we had completed a full circle around it. It measured four to five miles in circumference. A narrow channel separated it from a considerable shore, perhaps a continent whose limits we couldn’t see. The existence of this shore seemed to bear out Commander Maury’s hypotheses. In essence, this ingenious American has noted that between the South Pole and t
he 60th parallel, the sea is covered with floating ice of dimensions much greater than any found in the north Atlantic. From this fact he drew the conclusion that the Antarctic Circle must contain considerable shores, since icebergs can’t form on the high seas but only along coastlines. According to his calculations, this frozen mass enclosing the southernmost pole forms a vast ice cap whose width must reach four-thousand kilometres.

  Meanwhile, to avoid running aground, the Nautilus halted three cable lengths from a strand crowned by superb piles of rocks. The skiff was launched to sea. Two crewmen carrying instruments, the captain, Conseil, and I were on board. It was ten o’clock in the morning. I hadn’t seen Ned Land. No doubt, in the presence of the South Pole, the Canadian hated having to eat his words.

  A few strokes of the oar brought the skiff to the sand, where it ran aground. Just as Conseil was about to jump ashore, I held him back.

  “Sir,” I told Captain Nemo, “to you belongs the honour of first setting foot on this shore.”

  “Yes, sir,” the captain replied, “and if I have no hesitation in treading this polar soil, it’s because no human being until now has left a footprint here.”

  So saying, he leapt lightly onto the sand. His heart must have been throbbing with intense excitement. He scaled an overhanging rock that ended in a small promontory and there, mute and motionless, with crossed arms and blazing eyes, he seemed to be laying claim to these southernmost regions. After spending five minutes in this trance, he turned to us.

  “Whenever you’re ready, sir,” he called to me.

  I got out, Conseil at my heels, leaving the two men in the skiff.

  Over an extensive area, the soil consisted of that igneous gravel called ‘tuff’, reddish in colour as if made from crushed bricks. The ground was covered with slag, lava flows, and pumice stones. Its volcanic origin was unmistakable. In certain localities thin smoke holes gave off a sulphurous odour, showing that the inner fires still kept their wide-ranging power.

  Nevertheless, when I scaled a high escarpment, I could see no volcanoes within a radius of several miles. In these Antarctic districts, as is well known, Sir James Clark Ross had found the craters of Mt. Erebus and Mt. Terror in fully active condition on the 167th meridian at latitude 77 degrees 32’.