Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas

by Jules Verne

  At noon on that day, 21 January 1868, the first officer came to take the height of the sun. I went up on top, lit a cigar, and followed the operation. It seemed clear that this man could not understand French, for I made observations out loud several times which would have drawn some involuntary sign of attention if he had understood them, but he remained mute and impassive.*

  Whilst the officer was carrying out his observations with the sextant, one of the Nautilus’s sailors — the vigorous man who had accompanied us to Crespo Island on our first underwater excursion — came to clean the glass of the searchlight. I studied the workings of the apparatus, whose power was multiplied a hundred times by rounded lenses like those on lighthouses, and which served to direct the light in a particular direction. The electric lamp was set up in such a way as to provide the maximum power of illumination. Thus its light was produced in a vacuum, which ensured it was both uniform and intense. The vacuum also economized on the graphite points generating the luminous arc. In these conditions they hardly ever wore out — an important saving for Captain Nemo, who would not have been easily able to renew his supply.

  While the Nautilus prepared to continue its underwater travel, I went back down to the salon. The hatches closed again and we set sail due west.

  We were ploughing the waves of the Indian Ocean, a vast liquid plain covering 550 million hectares, with waters so transparent that anyone looking down from the surface feels dizzy. The Nautilus was generally sailing at between 100 and 200 metres’ depth. This carried on for a few days. To anyone but I, with my immense love for the sea, the hours would surely have seemed long and monotonous, but the time was fully occupied by daily excursions to the platform, where I got new strength from the invigorating ocean air, viewing the rich waters through the salon’s windows, reading the books in the library, and writing my memoirs, the sum of which did not leave a moment for fatigue or boredom.

  The health of all of us remained in a very satisfactory state. The diet on board suited us perfectly, and personally, I could easily have managed without the variety that Ned spent his efforts on producing, through a spirit of protest. Even colds were not frequent in this constant temperature. In any case, there was a supply of the stony coral dendrophyllia on board, known in the South of France as sea fennel, which provided an excellent cough pastille in the form of its polyps’ melting flesh.

  For a few days we saw many aquatic birds, palmipeds and seagulls of various sorts. Some were adroitly killed and when prepared in a certain way provided a very acceptable water-game. Amongst the great long-flight birds, winging at a considerable distance from all land and resting on the waves from the fatigues of flight, I spotted some magnificent albatrosses with discordant cries like donkeys’ braying, birds belonging to the family of longipennates. The representatives of the family of totipalmates included swift frigate birds which fished deftly on the surface, and large numbers of boatswain birds or tropic-birds, including ones that were as large as pigeons, with red ribbing and white plumage shaded in varieties of pink, bringing out the black of their wings.

  The Nautilus’s nets brought in several kinds of turtle of the hawksbill genus, with curved shells that are much appreciated. These reptiles are good at diving, for they can stay underwater for a long time by closing the fleshy valves where their nasal tubes emerge. When caught, some of the hawksbills were still sleeping in their shells, safe from marine animals. The flesh of these turtles was generally second-rate, but their eggs produced a dish fit for kings.

  As for the fish, they never failed to fill us with admiration as we surprised them in their secret aquatic life through the open panels. I observed several species that I had not had the opportunity to study until then.

  I will cite principally ostracions, peculiar to the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and the tropical oceans off the coasts of America. These fish resemble tortoises, armadillos, sea urchins, and crustaceans in being protected by an armour which is neither cretaceous nor lapideous, but actual bone. Its armour is solid and is triangular or quadrangular. Amongst the triangular ones, I noted some that were 5 centimetres long, with a health-giving flesh of an exquisite flavour, and brown tails and yellow fins; I recommend their acclimatization even in fresh water, to which a certain number of salt-water fish easily become accustomed. I will also cite the quadrangular ostracions with four large tubercules mounted on their backs; speckled ostracions with white points on their lower bodies, which can be domesticated like birds; trigonals fitted with spurs formed by the extension of their bony hides, whose bizarre groaning has given them the nickname of ‘sea pigs’; and dromedaries with large conical humps and flesh that is tough and leathery.

  I again pick out from the daily notes kept by Master Conseil two fish of the genus tetrodon peculiar to these seas: seven-inch Electridae eels of the brightest colours and bandtail puffers with red backs and white breasts and with three highly distinctive longitudinal rows of filaments. Next, from other genera: tail-less oviforms looking like black-brown eggs covered in white stripes; porcupine-fish, veritable sea porcupines armed with stings and able to swell up to form a ball bristling with darts; the seahorses found in all oceans; flying pegasi with long snouts and very long pectoral fins arranged in the form of wings, thus allowing them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; longtail sea-moths whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; macrognathic fish with long jaws, fine 25-centimetre fish shining in the most pleasant colours; pale Callionymidae with rough heads; thousands of jumping blennies with black stripes and long pectoral fins gliding over the surface at tremendous speeds; delicious veliferous fish able to hoist their fins as if unfurling sails to catch favourable winds; splendid specimens of Kurtus on which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; trichoptera whose wings are formed of filaments; Cottus always soiled with silt and which produce a swishing sound; gurnards whose livers are considered poisonous; Bodiani with moving eye-flaps; and finally snipefish with long tubular snouts, the veritable fly-catchers of the ocean, armed with guns not designed by any Chassepot or Remington,* but which kill insects by simply hitting them with a drop of water.

  In the 89th genus of fish classified by Lacépède, belonging to the second sub-class of osseous fish characterized by a gill cover and a bronchial membrane, I noticed the scorpion fish, whose head has stings on it and which has only one dorsal fin: according to the subgenus, these creatures are either devoid of small scales or covered in them. The latter subgenus provided us with specimens of didactyls 30 to 40 centimetres long, with yellow stripes and fantastic-looking heads. As for the former, it offered several specimens of that bizarre fish fittingly nicknamed the ‘sea toad’, a fish with a big head, sometimes hollowed out with deep sinuses, sometimes swollen with protuberances; it bristles with spurs and is studded with tubercules; it has hideous irregular horns; its body and tail are covered with calluses; its stings produce dangerous injuries; and it is vile and repugnant.

  From 21 to 23 January, every twenty-four hours the Nautilus covered 250 leagues, or 540 miles, averaging 22 knots. If the diverse varieties of fish could be identified as they went past, this was because they were attracted by the electric light and tried to travel with us; most were left behind by the speed and quickly fell back; some, however, managed to keep up with the Nautilus for a while.

  On the morning of the 24th, at latitude 12° 5´ S and longitude 94° 33´ E, we sighted Keeling Island, a madreporian upheaval covered in magnificent coconut trees, visited by Mr Darwin and Captain Fitzroy.* The Nautilus followed the coasts of this desert island close in. Its dredges brought in numerous specimens of polyps and echinoderms, as well as curious tests from the branch of molluscs. A few precious examples of the species of delphinium added to Captain Nemo’s treasures, to which I joined a punctiferous astrea, a sort of parasitic polypary often attached to a shell.

  Soon Keeling Island disappeared below the horizon, and sail was set for the north-west and the tip of the Indian subcontinent.

  �
��Civilized lands,’ Land said to me that day. ‘Better than those islands of Papua, where there are more savages than deer! In India, Dr Aronnax, there are roads, railways, and British, French, and Indian towns. You can’t go five miles without meeting a compatriot. Hey, isn’t this the time to take our leave from Captain Nemo?’

  ‘No, Ned, no,’ I answered in a very determined tone. ‘Let it run, as you sailors say. The Nautilus is getting closer to the inhabited landmasses. It is heading for Europe, so let it take us there. Once we are back in our own seas, we can see about what we should do. In any case, I don’t suppose that Captain Nemo will let us go hunting on the Malabar or Coromandel Coasts as he did in the forests of New Guinea.’

  ‘Well, sir! Can’t you try without his permission?’

  I did not reply. I didn’t want to talk about it. Deep down, I longed to see through to the end the events brought about by destiny, the one that had cast me on board the Nautilus.

  From Keeling Island onwards, our speed usually reduced. It was more changeable and often took us down to great depths. Several times we used the inclined planes, placed at an angle to the waterline by means of internal levers. In this way we descended two or three kilometres, but without ever probing the distant bottoms of the Indian Ocean, that sounds of 13,000 metres have not been able to reach. As for the temperature of the lower strata, the thermometer still invariably indicated +4°.* I observed only that the water of the upper strata was always colder when above shallows than on the open sea.

  On 25 January the ocean was totally deserted, and the Nautilus spent the day on the surface, beating the waters with its powerful screw and making them spurt up to a great height. In these conditions, how could it not have been mistaken for a gigantic cetacean? I spent three-quarters of the time on the platform. I gazed at the sea. Nothing in view except, westerly at about 4 p.m., a long steamer, heading on the opposite tack. Its masts were visible for a while, but it could not sight the Nautilus, too flat and too low in the water. I decided that the steamer had to belong to the Peninsular and Oriental Line, which goes from the island of Ceylon to Sydney, putting in at King George Sound and Melbourne.

  At five o’clock, before that swift dusk which links day to night in the tropical zones, Conseil and I were marvelling at a strange spectacle.

  There is one charming animal whose encounter is a promise of good fortune, according to the ancients. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppian* studied its habits and exhausted on it the entire poetics of the Greek and Italian scholars. They called it Nautilus or Pompylius. But modern science has not endorsed their terminology, and the mollusc is now known as the argonaut.

  Anyone consulting the worthy Conseil would have learned that the branch of molluscs is divided into five classes; that the first class, the cephalopods, whose members are sometimes exposed and sometimes testaceous, consists of two families, the Dibranchia and the Tetrabranchia; that these two families are distinguished by the number of their gills; that the Dibranchia has three genera, the argonaut, the calamar, and the cuttlefish; and that the Tetrabranchia only has one, the nautilus. If, following this nomenclature, a rebel spirit confused the argonaut, which is ‘acetabuliform’, that is equipped with suckers, with the nautilus, which is ‘tentaculated’ or endowed with tentacles, he would have no excuse for his mistake.

  It was a school of these argonauts that were travelling over the surface of the ocean. We could count several hundred. They belonged to the species of tuberculous argonauts, unique to the seas round India.

  The gracious molluscs were using their propulsive tubes to move backwards using their tubes to expel the water they had taken in. Of their eight tentacles, six were long and thin and floating on the water, and two were rounded into palmate shapes raised for the wind like light sails.* I could easily see their spiral wavy shell, accurately compared by Cuvier to an elegant launch. A true vessel in fact. It transports the animal which has secreted it, but is no longer attached.

  ‘Although the argonaut is free to leave its shell,’ I said to Conseil, ‘it never does.’*

  ‘Just like Captain Nemo,’ he judiciously replied. ‘Which is why he should have called his ship the Argonaut.’*

  For another hour the Nautilus floated in the midst of this school of molluscs. Then some mysterious fright took hold of them all of a sudden. As if on a signal, all the sails were abruptly brought down, the arms brought in, the bodies contracted; the shells changed their centre of gravity and turned over, and the whole fleet disappeared under the waves. It happened instantaneously, and never did ships of a squadron manoeuvre with more precision.

  Night fell abruptly at this moment, as, hardly lifted by the breeze, the waves stretched peacefully out under the wales of the Nautilus.

  The following day, 26 January, we cut the equator at the 82nd meridian, and returned to the northern hemisphere.

  During the day, a formidable pack of sharks formed a procession around us. Terrible animals, which abound in these seas, making them highly dangerous. They were Heterodontus portusjacksoni with brown backs and whitish stomachs, armed with eleven rows of teeth, eyed sharks whose necks are marked with a large black spot surrounded by white, resembling an eye, and Isabella sharks with round muzzles and dotted with dark points. Often these powerful animals would throw themselves against the salon window with somewhat worrying force. Ned Land was no longer master of himself. He wanted to go back up to the surface and harpoon these monsters, especially certain dogfish sharks with jaws full of teeth laid out like a mosaic and great 5-metre striped sharks which provoked him with remarkable persistence. But soon the Nautilus would increase its speed and easily leave the fastest of these sharks behind.

  On 27 January, at the opening of the vast Bay of Bengal, we encountered dead bodies floating on the surface on several occasions, a dreadful sight! These were the dead from Indian towns, washed down the Ganges and into the open sea, and which the vultures, the only grave-diggers of the country, had not finished eating. But there was no shortage of sharks to help them in their funereal work.

  At seven in the evening, the half-submerged Nautilus was sailing through a milky sea. As far as the eye could see, the ocean looked as if it had changed to milk. Was it the effect of the moon’s rays? Hardly, since the moon was scarcely two days old and still hidden below the horizon, in the rays of the sun. The whole sky, although lit up by the scintillations of the stars, seemed black in contrast with the whiteness of the waters.

  Conseil could hardly believe his eyes, and asked me the reason for this remarkable phenomenon. Fortunately I was in a position to reply.

  ‘It is what is called a sea of milk,’ I told him, ‘a vast expanse of white billows, often seen on the coasts of Amboina and the waters around.’

  ‘But could monsieur inform me what produces such an effect, for I do not imagine that the water has actually changed to milk!’

  ‘No, my good fellow, this whiteness which so surprises you is due merely to the presence of myriads of tiny infusoria creatures, types of tiny glow-worms of a gelatinous translucent appearance, the thickness of a hair, no longer than a fifth of a millimetre. Some of these creatures join together over a distance of several leagues.’

  ‘Several leagues!’

  ‘Yes, my good fellow, and do not try to calculate the number of such infusoria. You would not get far, for navigators have apparently sailed on these seas of milk for more than 40 miles.’

  I do not know if Conseil followed my recommendation, but he seemed plunged into deep thought, no doubt trying to calculate how many fifths of a millimetre there are in 40 miles square. As for me, I continued to observe the phenomenon. For several hours, the Nautilus’s prow cut the whitish waves, and I noticed that it floated soundlessly over the silky water, as if gliding over those foamy expanses that are sometimes produced in bays by the collision of currents and counter-currents.

  At about midnight the sea suddenly resumed its normal colour, but behind us, as far as the eye could see, the sky reflected the w
hiteness of the waves for a long time as if filled with the dim gleams of an aurora borealis.

  2

  A New Invitation from Captain Nemo

  At noon on 28 February,* when the Nautilus surfaced at latitude 9° 4´ N, it was in view of some land lying eight miles to the west. My eye was drawn to a range of mountains about 2,000 feet high, forming very wild shapes. Our position taken, I went back to the salon, and when it had been plotted on the map, I realized that we were in the environs of the island of Ceylon, that pearl hanging from the ear-lobe of the Indian subcontinent.

  I went into the library to look for a book about the island, the most fertile on the globe. I found a volume by H. C. Sirr, entitled Ceylon and the Cingalese.* Returning to the salon, I first noted the coordinates of Ceylon, which antiquity called by so many different names. It lies between 5° 55´ and 9° 49´ N and 79° 42´ and 82° 4´ E of the Greenwich meridian, its length is 275 miles, its maximum width 150 miles, its circumference 900 miles, and it covers 24,448 square miles, making it slightly smaller than Ireland.

  Captain Nemo and his first officer appeared.

  The captain glanced at the map, then turning to me:

  ‘The island of Ceylon,’ he said. ‘A realm famous for pearl fishing. Would it suit you, doctor, to visit one of the fishing grounds?’

  ‘Most certainly, captain.’

  ‘Good, it’s easy to arrange. But if we can see the fishery, we won’t be able to see the fishermen. The season has not started yet. No matter. I will give orders to head for the Gulf of Mannar, which we will reach tonight.’

  The captain said a few words to his first officer, who immediately went out. Soon the Nautilus returned to the liquid element, the pressure-gauge indicating a depth of 30 feet.