by Jules Verne
While I was looking at the inert mass, a dozen of its voracious relatives suddenly appeared around the boat; without worrying about us, they threw themselves upon the corpse and fought for the pieces.
At half past nine we were back on board the Nautilus.
I began to reflect upon the incidents of our excursion to Mannar Bank. Two considerations inevitably followed. One was the outstanding bravery of Captain Nemo; the other, his devotion to a fellow creature, a representative of the human race that he shunned under the seas. Whatever he might say, this strange man had not yet totally succeeded in killing his heart.
When I said as much to him he replied, with some little emotion:
‘That Indian, doctor, is the inhabitant of an oppressed country. I am his compatriot, and shall remain so to my very last breath!’
4
The Red Sea
On 29 January the island of Ceylon disappeared below the horizon, and the Nautilus, moving at 20 knots, slid into the labyrinth of channels separating the Maldives from the Laccadives. It even came close to Kiltan Island, a land of madreporian origin discovered in 1499 by Vasco da Gama,* and one of the nineteen main islands of the Laccadive archipelago, situated between 10° and 14° 30´ S and 69° and 50° 72´ E.
We had now covered 16,220 miles, or 7,500 leagues, since our starting-point in the seas of Japan.
When the Nautilus surfaced the next day, 30 January, there was no land in sight. It was moving north-north-westwards in the direction of the Gulf of Oman, which is hollowed out between Arabia and the Indian subcontinent and serves as an outlet for the Persian Gulf.
This was obviously a cul-de-sac, without any way out. So where was Captain Nemo taking us? I had no idea. My ignorance did not satisfy the Canadian, who asked me where we were heading.
‘We are heading, Master Ned, where the captain’s whims take us.’
‘His whims won’t take us anywhere. The Persian Gulf has no exit; so if we go in, we’ll be heading back out again in double-quick time.’
‘Well then, we will just head back, and if the Nautilus wishes to visit the Red Sea after the Persian Gulf, the strait of Bab el Mandeb will always be there to give us a way through.’
‘As you well know,’ replied Ned, ‘the Red Sea is just as closed as the Gulf, since the isthmus of Suez has not been cut through yet. And even if it had been, a mysterious boat like ours couldn’t venture into its canals with their regularly spaced lock gates. So the Red Sea is still not the route to take us back to Europe.’
‘Which is why I didn’t say we were going back to Europe.’
‘So what do you imagine?’
‘I imagine that after visiting the strange shores of Arabia and Egypt, the Nautilus will work its way back down the Indian Ocean, perhaps through the Mozambique Channel or past the Mascarene Islands, and hence reach the Cape of Good Hope.’
‘And once at the Cape of Good Hope?’ asked the Canadian with remarkable insistence.
‘Well, we will enter the Atlantic, which is still unknown to us. Ah Ned, my friend, are you already tired of our journey under the seas? Are you already blasé at this constantly changing spectacle of submarine wonders? For my part, I would be most upset to come to the end of this voyage which so few have had the chance to make.’
‘But don’t you realize, Dr Aronnax, that we’ve been imprisoned in the Nautilus for almost three months?’
‘No, Ned, I didn’t know, nor do I want to know, and I count neither the days nor the hours.’
‘So what is the conclusion to all this?’
‘The conclusion will come in its own good time. In any case, we can’t do anything about it, so there is no point in discussing it. If you came and told me, “A chance of escape is available to us”, I would talk it over with you, my good Ned. But such is not the case, and to be frank, I do not believe that Captain Nemo ever ventures into the seas of Europe.’
Through this short dialogue it will be seen that I had been reincarnated in the skin of the captain and had become a real Nautilus fanatic.
As for Ned, he concluded the conversation with a soliloquy: ‘All that is good and fine, but as far as I’m concerned, when you’re not relaxed you just don’t enjoy it any more.’
For four days, until 3 February, the Nautilus visited the Gulf of Oman at various speeds and depths. It seemed to be moving at random, as if hesitating about the route to follow, but it never went further than the tropic of Cancer.
As we left this sea, we briefly sighted Muscat, the largest town in Oman. I admired its strange appearance, with its pale houses and forts standing out from the black rocks all around. I noticed the round domes of its mosques, the elegant tips of its minarets, its fresh, green terraces. But this was just a vision, and soon the Nautilus plunged again under the dark waves of those shores.
It followed the Arabian coasts of Mahrah and Hadramaut at a distance of six miles, parallel to the undulating line of the mountains, relieved by a few ancient ruins. On 5 February we finally entered the Gulf of Aden, a funnel into the bottleneck of Bab el Mandeb that pours Indian waters into the Red Sea.
On 6 February the Nautilus was floating in sight of Aden, which is perched on a promontory with a narrow neck connecting it to the mainland. It forms an unassailable Gibraltar, whose fortifications the British have rebuilt since seizing them in 1839. I caught sight of the octagonal minarets of this town, which was once the richest and biggest trading entrepot on the coast, according to the historian Idrisi.*
I firmly believed that, having reached this point, Captain Nemo would turn round; but to my great surprise, he did not.
The following day, 7 February, we entered the strait of Bab el Mandeb, which means ‘Gate of Tears’ in Arabic. Twenty miles wide, it is a mere 52 kilometres long, and the Nautilus took hardly an hour to cover it at full speed. I saw nothing, not even the island of Perim which the British government has used to strengthen the position of Aden. There were too many British and French steamers serving routes between Suez and Bombay, Calcutta, Melbourne, Reunion, and Mauritius through this narrow passage for the Nautilus to attempt to show itself. So it remained prudently submerged.
Finally, at midday, we were ploughing the waves of the Red Sea.
That celebrated lake of biblical tradition is hardly refreshed by rainwater, has no major river flowing into it, is constantly being reduced by evaporation, and loses a liquid layer 1½ metres deep each year. The Red Sea is a remarkable gulf which would probably dry up entirely, if it were closed like a lake; it is worse off in this respect than its neighbours the Caspian or the Dead Sea, whose levels have only lowered to the point where their evaporation is equal to the sum of waters running into their basins.
The Red Sea is 2,600 kilometres long and 240 kilometres wide on average. At the time of the Ptolemies and the Roman emperors it was the main commercial artery in the world, and the cutting of the isthmus will restore this classical importance, one which the railways of Suez have already brought back in part.*
I did not even try to understand the whim that had led Captain Nemo to bring us into this gulf. Rather I unreservedly approved the Nautilus’s entering it. It went at moderate speed, sometimes staying on the surface, at others diving to avoid a ship, so I was able to observe both the depths and the surface of this remarkable sea.
During the early hours of 8 February Mocha appeared to us, a town now in ruins, with walls that crumble at the mere sound of cannons and which is shaded here and there by green date trees. Formerly a major city, it has public markets, twenty-six mosques, and a three-kilometre-long city wall defended by fourteen forts.
Next the Nautilus drew close to the African shore where the sea is quite deep, and the water as clear as crystal. Through the open panels we could contemplate wonderful shrubs of dazzling corals and huge slabs of rock covered in a splendid green fur of seaweeds and wracks. What indescribable sights, and what variety of places and scenery where the reefs and volcanic islands drop away off the Libyan coast! But where the arbore
scences appeared in all their glory was near the eastern shores, which the Nautilus wasted no time in heading for. Off the coasts of Tihama, not only did the displays of zoophytes flourish below sea level, but they also formed picturesque intertwinings unwinding 60 feet over its surface; the latter more capricious but less highly coloured than the former, which used the water’s vitality to maintain their freshness.
How many charmed hours I spent in this way at the window of the salon! How many new specimens of submarine flora and fauna I admired in the bright light of our electric lamp! I saw umbrella-shaped fungus coral, blue-grey sea anemones including Thalassianthus aster, horizontal tubipores like flutes that waited only for the breath of the god Pan; shells particular to this sea, which settle in the madreporian excavations and whose bases are formed of short spirals; and finally a thousand specimens of a polypary that I had not yet observed, the common sponge.
The class of Porifera, the first of the group of polyps, was created for precisely this strange product, of such obvious usefulness. The sponge is not a vegetable, as a few naturalists still believe, but an animal of the lowest order, a polypary which is below coral. Its animal nature cannot be doubted, and one cannot support the ancients who considered it a being intermediate between the plants and animals. I must say, however, that naturalists are not in agreement on how the sponge is organized. For some it is a polypary, and for others, such as M. Milne-Edwards, it is an isolated and unique individual.
The class of Porifera contains about three hundred species, which are encountered in a large number of seas and even certain rivers, where they have been described as ‘fluviatile’. But their preferred waters are the Mediterranean, the Greek Islands, and the coasts of Syria and the Red Sea. There the fine soft sponges, which can fetch up to a hundred and fifty francs apiece, reproduce and grow: the golden sponge of Syria, the hard sponge of Barbary, etc. But since I could not hope to study these zoophytes in the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, from which we were separated by the uncrossable isthmus of Suez, I was content to observe them in the waters of the Red Sea.
I called Conseil to my side, while the Nautilus, at an average depth of 8 or 9 metres, slowly skimmed over the beautiful rocks on the eastern coastline.
There grew sponges of all forms: pediculate, foliaceous, globular, and digitate. They aptly deserved their names of baskets, chalices, bulrushes, elkhorns, lions’ feet, peacocks’ tails, and Neptune’s gloves, given them by fishermen, who are more poetic than scientific. Little dribbles of water, after carrying life into each cell, were constantly being squeezed out by their fibrous material, covered with a sticky, semi-fluid substance. This substance disappears after the death of the polypary and putrefies while giving off ammonia. Nothing then remains apart from the hard or gelatinous fibres making up the domestic sponge, which takes on a reddish tint and is used for various purposes, according to its degree of elasticity, permeability, and resistance to maceration.
These polyparies stuck to the rocks, to the shells of molluscs, and even to the stalks of hydrophytes. They filled the smallest gaps, some spreading out and others standing up or hanging down like coral growths. I informed Conseil that sponges were collected in two ways, either by net or by hand. The latter method, requiring the use of divers, is preferable,* for it leaves the polypary undamaged and so guarantees a much higher price.
The other zoophytes proliferating near the poriferans consisted mainly of jellyfish of a very elegant species; molluscs were represented by varieties of squid which d’Orbigny says are found only in the Red Sea; and reptiles by virgata turtles belonging to the genus of Chelones, which provided us with a healthy and delicate dish.
As for fish, they were numerous and often remarkable. The following were brought in most frequently by the nets of the Nautilus: rays, amongst them lymma with oval bodies of a dull red colour and irregular blue spots, recognizable from their twin serrated stings; Forsskal’s stingrays with silvery backs; whip-tailed stingrays with dotted tails; bockats, huge two-metre-long cloaks undulating through the water; totally toothless aodons, which are a sort of cartilaginous fish closely related to the shark; dromedary Ostracea, whose hump ends in a curved sting a foot and a half long; ophidians, which are actually moray eels with silver tails, blue backs, and brown pectorals bordered in grey; fiatolae, species of stromateids zigzagged with narrow golden strips and decked out in the three colours of France; 40-centimetre-long gourami blennies; superb scads with seven transversal bands of a fine black tint, blue and yellow fins, and gold and silver scales; snooks; oriflamme mullets with yellow heads; parrot fish, wrasses, triggerfish, gobies, etc., and a thousand other fish found in the oceans we had already visited.
On 9 February the Nautilus was floating on the broadest part of the Red Sea, between Suakin on the west coast and Al Qunfudhah on the east, where it is 190 miles wide.
At noon that day, once our position had been taken, Captain Nemo came up on the platform after me. I promised myself not to let him go down again without at least sounding him out on his plans for the future. He came up as soon as he spotted me, graciously offered me a cigar, and said:
‘Well, monsieur, does the Red Sea please you? Have you seen enough of the wonders it contains, fish and zoophytes, its beds of sponges and the forests of corals? Have you seen the towns dotted along its shores?’
‘Yes, captain, and the Nautilus lent itself marvellously to all this study. Ah, what an intelligent boat it is!’
‘Yes, intelligent, audacious, and invulnerable! It fears neither the terrifying storms of the Red Sea, nor its currents, nor even its reefs.’
‘This sea is indeed one of the worst, and if I am not mistaken, had an atrocious reputation in ancient times.’
‘Yes indeed, Dr Aronnax. The Greek and Latin historians never speak well of it, and Strabo* says that it is particularly difficult in the Etesian winds and the rainy season. The Arab Idrisi, who calls it the Gulf of Colzoum, recounts that ships perished in great numbers on its sandbanks and that nobody ventured to navigate it at night. It is, he claims, a sea subject to terrible hurricanes, dotted with inhospitable islands, and “has nothing good” either in its depths or on its surface. The same views were held by Arrian, Agatharchidas, and Artemidorus.’*
‘It is easy to see that these historians never sailed on the Nautilus.’
‘Indeed,’ the captain replied smiling, ‘but in this respect, the moderns are little further advanced than the ancients. Many centuries were needed to discover the mechanical power of steam! Who knows whether a second Nautilus will appear in the next hundred years! Progress is slow, Dr Aronnax.’
‘Agreed. Your ship is a century ahead of its time, or perhaps several. What a shame that such a secret must die with its inventor!’
Captain Nemo did not reply. After a moment’s silence:
‘You were speaking of the ancient historians’ views on the dangers of navigating the Red Sea?’
‘Yes, but were their fears not exaggerated?’
‘Yes and no,’ replied the captain, who seemed to be an expert on all aspects of ‘his’ Red Sea. ‘What no longer poses a problem for a modern ship, well rigged, solidly constructed, master of its direction thanks to obedient steam, offered all sorts of dangers to the vessels of the ancients. One must try to imagine those early navigators venturing out on boats that were made of planks held together by ropes made of palm leaves, caulked with powdered resin, and waterproofed with tallow from dogfish. They didn’t even have instruments to determine their direction, and so sailed by dead reckoning in the midst of currents they hardly knew. In those conditions, shipwrecks were necessarily common. But in our time, the steamers plying between Suez and the South Seas no longer have anything to fear from the angers of this gulf, in spite of the contrary monsoons. Their captains and passengers do not prepare for departure with propitiary sacrifices, and, once back, they no longer adorn themselves with garlands and golden strips before going to thank the gods in their neighbourhood temples.’
�
��Admittedly,’ I said, ‘and steam seems to have killed the skill of observation in sailors. But captain, since you appear to have specially studied this sea, can you tell me where the name comes from?’
‘There are many explanations for it. Would you like to hear the ideas of a fourteenth-century chronicler?’*
‘Certainly.’
‘This joker claimed that it got its name from the crossing by the Israelites, when the pharaoh perished in the waves that closed up again on Moses’ command:
To miraculously portend
The dark sea encardin’d
And made them decree
Call it then the Red Sea.’
‘A poet’s explanation, Captain Nemo, but insufficient to convince me. I would like to ask your personal opinion.’
‘Here it is then. In my view, Dr Aronnax, the Red Sea’s name should be seen as a translation of the Hebrew word “Edom”,* the name the ancients gave it because of the peculiar colour of its waters.’
‘Until now, however, I have only seen waves which were clear, without any particular colour.’
‘No doubt, but when we head for the end of the Gulf, you will notice their remarkable appearance. I remember seeing the bay of El-Tor entirely red, like a sea of blood.’
‘And you attribute this colour to the presence of microscopic algae?’
‘Quite right. There is a viscous purple matter produced by those sickly-looking plantlets known as Trichodesma, of which forty thousand are contained in a square millimetre. Perhaps you will observe some at El-Tor.’
‘So, Captain Nemo, this is not the first time you have travelled through the Red Sea on the Nautilus?’
‘No, monsieur.’
‘Then, since you were speaking of the Crossing of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptians, I would like to ask if you have found underwater traces of that great historic event?’
