Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas

by Jules Verne

They were gold bars. Where had this precious metal come from, representing as it did an enormous sum of money?* How had the captain accumulated this gold, and what was he planning to do with it?

  I did not say a word, but simply looked. Captain Nemo took the bars one by one and methodically arranged them in the trunk which he completely filled up. I estimated that it contained more than 1,000 kilograms of gold, that is nearly five million francs’ worth.

  The trunk was securely closed, and the captain wrote an address on its lid, using characters that looked like modern Greek.*

  Then Captain Nemo pressed the button connected by wires to the crew room. Four men appeared, and with some effort they hauled the trunk out of the salon. Then I heard them moving it up the metal stairs using a hoist.

  Suddenly Captain Nemo turned to me:

  ‘You were saying, monsieur?’

  ‘Nothing, captain.’

  ‘Then, monsieur, you will allow me to say goodnight.’

  And with this Captain Nemo left the salon.

  I returned to my room highly intrigued, as can be imagined. I tried in vain to sleep. I endeavoured to find a connection between the appearance of the diver and the trunk full of gold. Soon I felt from the pitching and rolling that the Nautilus was leaving the lower strata of the water to come back up to the surface.

  Then I heard the sound of feet on the platform. I understood that the dinghy was being taken out and launched. It struck the side of the Nautilus, and then all sounds ceased.

  Two hours later, the same sounds and the same comings and goings. The boat was hoisted on board, then fitted into its recess, and the Nautilus dived under the waves once more.

  The millions had been transported to their destination. To what part of the land? Who had Captain Nemo sent them to?

  The following day, I recounted the night’s events to Conseil and the Canadian, my curiosity aroused to the highest possible degree. My companions were no less surprised than I.

  ‘But where does he get it all?’ asked Land.

  To that, we had no answer. I went back to the salon after lunch, and set to work. Until five o’clock I wrote up my notes.* Suddenly — was it due to some personal indisposition? — I felt extremely hot, and had to take my byssus jacket off. This was incomprehensible, for we were not at high latitudes,* and in any case the Nautilus, submerged, should not have suffered from any rise in temperature. I looked at the pressure-gauge. It marked a depth of 60 feet, which heat from the atmosphere could not have reached.

  I continued my work, but the temperature rose to the point of becoming unbearable.

  Might there be a fire on board? I wondered.

  I was just going to leave the salon, when Captain Nemo came in. He went to the thermometer, examined it, and turned to me:

  ‘Forty-two degrees.’

  ‘I had noticed, captain, and if this heat increases a little more, we won’t be able to bear it.’

  ‘Oh, monsieur, this heat will only increase if we want it to.’

  ‘So you can vary it as you wish?’

  ‘No, but I can move away from the source producing it.’

  ‘It is coming from the outside then?’

  ‘Yes. We are floating in a stream of boiling water.’

  ‘You’re joking!’

  ‘Look.’

  The panels opened, and I saw that the sea was entirely white around the Nautilus. A smoky sulphurous vapour was curling through the current which was bubbling like water in a boiler. I leaned my hand on one of the windows, but the heat was so intense I had to withdraw it.

  ‘But where are we?’

  ‘Near the island of Santorini, monsieur. To be precise, in the channel separating Nea Kameni from Palea Kameni. I wanted to show you the interesting sight of a submarine eruption.’

  ‘I thought these new islands had finished forming.’

  ‘Nothing is ever finished in the vicinity of volcanoes,’ he replied, ‘and the globe is still worked by underground fires. According to Cassiodorus* and Pliny, as early as the year 19 of our era a new island, Thira the divine, appeared on the same spot where these small islands were recently formed. Then it disappeared under the waves, to appear again in 69, only to plunge down once more. From then until the modern era, the plutonic work ceased. But on 3 February 1866 a new piece of land, which was named George Island, emerged in the midst of sulphurous vapours near Nea Kameni and united with it on 6 February. A week later, on the 13th, Aphroessa Island appeared, leaving a channel of 10 metres between it and Nea Kameni. I was in these seas when it happened, and could observe each of the phases. Aphroessa Island measured 300 feet across by 30 feet high. It was composed of black vitreous lavas mixed with feldspathic fragments. Finally, on 10 March a small island called Reka appeared* near Nea Kameni, and since then these three little pieces of land have joined together, and now form a single island.’

  ‘And the channel where we are now . . .?’ I asked.

  ‘Here,’ replied Captain Nemo, showing me a map of the Greek islands. ‘You can see that I have traced the new lands on it.’

  ‘But will this channel fill up one day?’

  ‘Possibly, Dr Aronnax, for eight islets of lava have sprung up opposite St Nicholas Port on Palea Kameni since 1866. It is therefore evident that Nea and Palea will join up relatively soon. In the middle of the Pacific, it is the infusoria that form the landmasses, but here it is eruptive phenomena. Look, monsieur, look at the work going on under the waves.’

  I went back to the window. The Nautilus was no longer moving. The heat was becoming intolerable. Previously white, the sea was now becoming red, due to the presence of an iron salt. In spite of the hermetically closed salon, an unbearable sulphurous smell was being given off, and I noticed scarlet flames whose vividness killed the brightness of the electricity.

  I was dripping with perspiration, stifling, I felt I was going to cook. Yes, in truth, I felt myself cooking!

  ‘We cannot remain in this boiling water any longer!’ I cried.

  ‘No, it would not be prudent,’ replied an impassive Nemo.

  An order was given. The Nautilus went about and headed away from this furnace that it could not defy with impunity. Quarter of an hour later, we were breathing on the surface again.

  The thought then occurred to me that if Ned had chosen these shores to carry out our escape, we would not have come out alive from this sea of fire.

  The next day, 16 February, we left the basin between Rhodes and Alexandria, which has depths of 3,000 metres. The Nautilus passed Cerigo, rounded Cape Matapan, and left the Greek Islands.

  7

  The Mediterranean in Forty-Eight Hours

  The blue sea par excellence, the ‘Great Sea’ of the Hebrews, ‘the Sea’ of the Greeks, the mare nostrum of the Romans.* Bordered by orange trees, aloes, cacti, maritime pines, embalmed in the perfume of myrtle trees, framed by severe mountains, saturated with a pure, transparent air, but constantly worked by the fires of the earth — the Mediterranean is a veritable battlefield where Neptune and Pluto* still fight for world domination. It is there, says Michelet, on its shores and in its waters that man bathes in one of the globe’s most invigorating climates.

  But however beautiful, I was only able to catch a fleeting glimpse of this basin of 2 million square kilometres. And nor was Captain Nemo’s personal knowledge made available to me, for that enigmatic character did not appear once during our high-speed trajectory. I estimate the distance the Nautilus covered under the waves of this sea to be about 600 leagues, and it finished the voyage in forty-eight hours. Having left the shores of Greece on the morning of 16 February, we had passed through the Strait of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.

  It was clear to me that the Mediterranean displeased Captain Nemo, pressed in as it was by the lands he wished to flee. Its waves and breezes brought back too many memories, perhaps too many regrets. Here he no longer had that freedom of movement, that manoeuvrability which the other seas afforded, and his Nautilus felt cramp
ed between the narrow shores of Africa and Europe.

  Accordingly our speed was 25 knots, that is 12 leagues of 4 kilometres per hour. It goes without saying that Ned Land had to give up his escape plans, to his great annoyance. He could not use the dinghy while being transported at a speed of 12 or 13 metres a second. To have left the Nautilus would have been like jumping off a train moving at the same speed, a dangerous action if ever there was one. In addition, our vessel only surfaced in order to renew its supply of air at night, steering using the compass and information from the logline.

  As a result I saw of the Mediterranean’s depths merely what the traveller on an express glimpses of countryside passing before his eyes: far-off horizons, and not the close-ups which go past in a flash. However, Conseil and I were able to observe some Mediterranean fish whose powerful fins kept them alongside the Nautilus for a few seconds. We remained on the lookout at the windows of the salon, and our notes allow me to summarize the ichthyology of that sea in a few words.

  Of the various fish living there, I saw some and glimpsed others, and many were whisked away from my eyes by the speeding Nautilus. Please permit me then to classify them according to this eccentric method. It will better depict my swift observation.

  Amidst the waters, brightly lit by the electric beams, snaked past some of those metre-long lampreys common to almost every climate. Oxyrhynchous creatures, kinds of five-foot-wide rays with white stomachs and ash-grey spotted backs, appeared like huge shawls carried off by the currents. Other rays passed so quickly that I could not tell whether they deserved the title of eagle given them by the Greeks, or the epithets of rat, toad, and bat which modern fishermen give them. Dogfish sharks, twelve feet long and particularly feared by divers, raced each other. Eight-foot marine foxes, blessed with a very fine sense of smell, appeared like great blue shadows. Dorados of the genus Sparus, some measuring up to 1.3 metres, paraded in their circular-banded silver and azure clothing, contrasting with the dark colours of their fins. These are fish devoted to Venus, with eyes highlighted by golden eyebrows: a precious species, at home in fresh and salt water, living in the rivers, lakes, and oceans of all climates, adapting to every temperature. Their race goes back to the early geological periods of the earth and has kept all its beauty from the first days. Travelling long distances, magnificent sturgeons of nine or ten metres struck the glass of the panels with their powerful tails and showed their bluish backs with small brown spots; they resembled sharks though they are not so powerful and are encountered in all seas; in the springtime they like to ascend the great rivers, fighting the currents of the Volga, Danube, Po, Rhine, Loire, and Oder. They live off herring, mackerel, salmon, and gadid; although they belong to the cartilaginous class they are delicate, are eaten fresh, dried, marinated, or salted, and were formerly carried in triumph to the table of Lucullus.* But of the various Mediterranean denizens, those that I could observe the most usefully when the Nautilus approached the surface belonged to the sixty-third genus of bony fish. These were scombrid tuna, with blue-black backs, silver stomachs, and dorsal combs radiating golden gleams. They have the reputation of following moving ships, seeking their cool shadows under the fire of the tropical sky; and they lived up to their reputation, escorting the Nautilus as they accompanied the ships of La Pérouse in times past. For long hours, they raced our vessel. I never grew tired of admiring animals so well designed for speed, with their little heads, their streamlined, slender bodies, in certain cases longer than 3 metres, their pectorals of remarkable strength, and their forked caudal fins. They swam in a triangular formation, like certain flocks of birds whose speed they matched, prompting the ancients to say that geometry and strategy were known to them. And yet they do not escape the pursuit of the Provençaux, who appreciate them as much as the inhabitants of Italy and the Sea of Marmara, for these precious animals throw themselves by the thousand into the nets of Marseilles, there to perish blindly and silently.

  I will cite, from memory, the Mediterranean fish that Conseil or I merely glimpsed. There were whitish fierasfers-knifefish passing like imperceptible vapours; conger Muraenae, three- or four-metre serpents, bright in their green, blue, and yellow shades; three-foot-long cod-hakes, whose livers make a delicacy; taenia-bandfish floating like fine seaweed; gurnards that the poets call lyre-fish, and sailors whistler-fish, whose snouts are adorned with two triangular serrated blades that reproduce ancient Homer’s instrument; swallow-gurnards swimming with the speed of the bird whose name they have taken; grouper-soldierfish with red heads and dorsal fins adorned with filaments; shad decorated with black, grey, brown, blue, yellow, and green spots, and which respond to the silvery sound of bells; splendid turbots, the pheasants of the sea, diamond-shaped with yellowish fins, dotted with brown, and whose upper left part is usually marbled brown and yellow; and finally admirable shoals of grey mullet, veritable oceanic birds of paradise for which the Romans paid up to ten thousand sesterces each, and which they killed on their tables, so as to follow with cruel eyes the colour-changes from the cinnabar red of life to the pallid white of death.

  And if I was not able to observe the miraleti, the triggerfish, the tetrodons, the sea-horses, the jewel-fish, the trumpetfish, the blennies, the surmullets, the wrasses, the smelts, the flying fish, the anchovies, the bream, the bogues, the orfes, nor any of the main representatives of the order of pleuronectes, namely the dab, flounders, plaice, soles, and flatfish common to the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, the blame should be placed on the dizzying speed of the Nautilus through these rich waters.

  As for marine mammals, near the opening of the Adriatic I believe I recognized two or three sperm whales of the genus Physeter with dorsal fins, a few dolphins of the genus Globicephala particular to the Mediterranean with foreheads adorned with small light lines, and a dozen seals with white stomachs and black coats, known as Mediterranean monk seals and which perfectly resemble 3-metre-long Dominicans.

  For his part, Conseil thinks he saw a six-foot-wide turtle adorned with three lengthwise ridges. I regret not seeing this reptile, for I thought I recognized the leatherback from the description Conseil gave me — quite a rare species. For my part, I only noticed a few loggerhead turtles with their long carapaces.

  As regards the zoophytes, for a few moments I was able to appreciate a beautiful orange Galeola which attached itself to the window of the port panel; it formed a long fine filament, spreading into infinite branches and terminating in the finest lace ever spun by the rivals of Arachne.* Unfortunately, I was not able to catch this splendid specimen, and perhaps no other Mediterranean zoophytes would have shown themselves if, on the evening of the 16th, the Nautilus had not markedly slowed down. This is what happened.

  We were passing between Sicily and Tunisia. In the confined space between Cape Bon and the Strait of Messina, the sea-floor rises very suddenly. A ridge is located there covered in only 17 metres of water, whilst on either side the depth is 170 metres. Accordingly the Nautilus had to manoeuvre carefully in order to avoid the submarine barrier.

  I showed Conseil this long reef on the map of the Mediterranean.

  ‘With due respect, monsieur,’ observed Conseil, ‘it is like an isthmus connecting Europe and Africa.’

  ‘Yes, my good fellow,’ I replied, ‘it blocks the whole of the Strait of Libya, and Smyth’s soundings prove that the two continents were formerly connected between Capes Bon and Farina.’*

  ‘I can easily believe it.’

  ‘I will add that a similar barrier exists between Gibraltar and Ceuta, and completely closed the Mediterranean in earlier geological periods.’

  ‘So what if one day a volcanic thrust were to lift the two barriers out of the waves!’

  ‘It is hardly probable, Conseil.’

  ‘But, if monsieur would allow me to finish, if this did happen, it would be quite annoying for M. de Lesseps, working so hard to cut his isthmus!’

  ‘I agree, but I repeat that this phenomenon will not happen. The strength of the underg
round forces is constantly diminishing. Volcanoes, so numerous in the first days of the world, are gradually dying; their internal heat is reducing, for the temperature of the earth’s lower strata is lessening by a perceptible amount each century — and our globe will be the worse for it, since this heat is life.’

  ‘However, the sun . . .’

  ‘The sun is insufficient, Conseil. Can it restore heat to a dead body?’

  ‘I do not know about that.’

  ‘Well, my friend, the earth will one day be a cold corpse. It will become uninhabitable and consequently uninhabited like the moon, which lost its vital heat a long time ago.’

  ‘In how many centuries?’ asked Conseil.

  ‘In some hundreds of thousands of years, my good man.’

  ‘Well then, we still have time to finish our voyage, provided, that is, Ned does not meddle with things!’

  And Conseil, reassured, returned to his study of the shallows that the Nautilus was closely skimming over at moderate speed.

  On that rocky and volcanic ground flourished a whole living flora of sponges, holothurians, hyalin Cydippes adorned with reddish tendrils giving off a slight phosphorescence, beroes, popularly known as sea cucumbers, bathing in the shimmerings of the solar spectrum, metre-wide itinerant comatulids whose purple tint reddened the waters, arborescent sea spiders of the greatest beauty, pavonaceous plants with long stalks, a large number of edible sea urchins of various species, and finally green sea anemones with brown discs on greyish trunks which disappeared amongst the olive-coloured hair of their tentacles.

  Conseil worked hard at observing the molluscs and the articulates, and although the nomenclature is a little arid, I do not wish to upset the good fellow by omitting his personal observations.

  In the branch of molluscs, he cites numerous pectiniform scallops, asses-foot thorny oysters piled up on each other, triangular donaxes, tridentate hyalinae with yellow fins and transparent shells, orange pleurobranchiates, which are eggs with greenish dots or stippling, aplysias sometimes known as sea hares, small dolabriforms, plump Accrata, umbrella shells specific to the Mediterranean, earshells whose shells produced a much-sought-after mother-of-pearl, flammulated scallops, beaked cockles that the Languedocians are said to prefer to oysters, the clam that is so dear to the Marseillais, fat white double clams, some of the kinds of clams so abundant on the coasts of North America and so quickly snapped up in New York, opercular pectens with varied colours, date mussels hiding in their holes and whose peppery taste I greatly appreciated, furrowed heart cockles with bulging sides to their ventricose shells, cynthiae bristling with scarlet tubers, carinariae with curved points like delicate gondolas, crowned ferules, atlantas with spiral shells, grey tethys with white spots and fringed mantilla, eoliths like little slugs, cavolinids crawling on their backs, Auriculae including the forget-me-not Auricula in its oval shell, timid angel fish, periwinkles, ianthines, cineraria, petricola, Lamellariidae, cabochons, pandoridae, etc.