by Jules Verne
Two months earlier we would have enjoyed permanent daylight at this latitude, but three- or four-hour nights were already falling, and later six months of shadow would be thrown over these circumpolar regions.
On 15 March we passed the latitude of the South Shetlands and South Orkney. The captain told me that numerous herds of seals had formerly lived on these islands, but British and American whalers had massacred adults and pregnant females in a destructive rage, leaving behind them, in place of vivacious life, the silence of death.
On 16 March, at about eight in the morning, the Nautilus, which was following the 55th meridian,* cut the Antarctic Circle. Ice surrounded us in all directions, closing the horizon. Nevertheless, Captain Nemo moved from pass to pass, always heading south.
‘But where is he going?’ I asked.
‘Straight ahead,’ replied Conseil. ‘But he will stop when he has to.’
‘I wouldn’t swear to it!’
And to be frank, I have to admit that this adventurous expedition rather pleased me. I cannot express how much the beauty of these new regions entranced me. The ice took on fantastic perspectives. Here it seemed to form an oriental town with its countless minarets and mosques, there a city that had collapsed, thrown down by an earthquake. Views were constantly varied by the oblique sunlight, or became lost in the grey mists of snowy dawns. From every side, explosions, landslides, and great inversions of icebergs changed the background, like the countryside in a diorama.
If the Nautilus happened to be submerged when these equilibriums broke, the sound would be transmitted underwater with frightening intensity, and the falling masses would create horrendous turbulence deep in the ocean. The Nautilus would then pitch and roll like a ship abandoned to the fury of the elements.
Often I could see no way out, and thought that we were definitely taken prisoner; but with his instinct guiding him, using the slightest sign, Captain Nemo would discover new passes. By observing the thin threads of bluish water streaking the icefields, he never faltered. I was convinced that he had already ventured into the Antarctic Ocean with the Nautilus.
However, on 16 March the ice completely blocked our route. It was not yet a single ice-cap, but many vast icefields stuck together by the cold. Such an obstacle could not stop Captain Nemo, and he threw himself at it with awesome violence. The Nautilus penetrated the crumbling mass like a wedge, breaking it up with terrifying cracking noises. It was the antique ram, but propelled by infinite power. Pieces of ice were thrown high into the air and fell back around us like hail. Our vessel was opening itself a channel using its own momentum. Sometimes, carried on by inertia, it mounted the icefield and crushed it under its weight; sometimes, when caught fast from underneath, it would split the icefield in two merely by rolling and producing a large crack.
During these few days, violent squalls sometimes hailed down on us. When there were thick fogs we could not see each other from one end of the platform to the other, and the wind brusquely jumped around all the points of the compass. The snow would build up in layers so hard that they had to be broken up with a pick. At a temperature of just −5° all the external parts of the Nautilus became covered in ice. Rigging could not possibly have functioned, for the falls would have been blocked in the grooves of the pulleys. A vessel without sails, driven by an electric motor and without the need for coal, was the only one able to face such high latitudes.
In these conditions the barometer generally stayed very low. It even fell to 73.5 degrees.* Compass readings no longer meant very much. The maddened needles marked contradictory directions as they approached the Southern Magnetic Pole, which should not be confused with the Geographic Pole. According to Hansteen,* the Magnetic Pole is actually situated at about 70° S, 130° E and according to Duperrey’s observations, at 135° E and 70° 30´ S. Hence repeated observations had to be made using the compasses at different places on the ship and then take their average. But often we relied on dead reckoning to calculate the route covered, a relatively unsatisfactory method in the sinuous passes, with their constantly changing landmarks.
Finally, on 18 March,* after twenty unsuccessful assaults, the Nautilus found itself blocked once and for all. It was no longer a question of streams, patches, or icefields, but an interminable and motionless barrier formed of mountains melded together.
‘The ice-cap!’ the Canadian said.
I understood that for Ned, like all the navigators who had preceded us, this was an insuperable obstacle. Since the sun appeared for a moment at about midday, Captain Nemo was able to obtain a relatively precise observation which gave our position as 51° 30´ W and 67° 39´ S. We had already reached an advanced point of the Antarctic.
Before our eyes there was no longer any sign of sea or of any liquid. A vast tormented plain stretched beyond the ram of the Nautilus, tangled, confused blocks, with all the capricious chaos that characterizes the surface of a river well before the ice starts to break up, but hugely magnified. Sharp peaks like slender needles rose here and there to a height of 200 feet; and a succession of cliffs, cut sheer and shaded in greyish tints, formed vast mirrors reflecting the few rays of sunlight, half drowned in the mist. Over this desolate nature loomed a savage silence, hardly broken by the petrels’ and shearwaters’ beating wings. Everything was frozen, even sound.
The Nautilus was accordingly forced to halt its adventurous route through the fields of ice.
‘Monsieur,’ Land said to me that day, ‘if your captain goes further . . .’
‘Well?’
‘Then he will be a master among men.’
‘Why, Ned?’
‘Because nobody can cross the ice-cap. Your captain is powerful, but hell, he is not as powerful as nature, and you always have to stop when she has laid down her limits.’
‘Right, Ned; and yet I would like to know what lies behind that icefield! Nothing annoys me more than a wall!’
‘Monsieur is right,’ said Conseil. ‘Walls were invented to annoy scientists. There shouldn’t be any walls.’
‘Hey!’ said the Canadian. ‘Everybody knows what’s behind the icefield.’
‘And that is?’ I said.
‘Ice, and yet more ice!’
‘You seem certain of the fact, Ned,’ I replied, ‘but I personally am not so sure. That is why I would like to go and see for myself.’
‘Well, please give up the idea. You have reached the ice-cap: that is already enough, and neither you, your Captain Nemo, nor his Nautilus will go any further. Whether he wants to or not, we will eventually have to head back north, towards the realm of honest folk.’
I must admit that Ned Land was right, and until ships are made to navigate over icefields, they will have to stop in front of them.
The Nautilus was effectively immobilized, despite all its efforts, and despite the powerful methods used to break up the ice. Normally, anyone who can go no further is quite satisfied to turn round and go back; but here going back was as impossible as going forward, for the passes had closed up again behind us, and indeed if our vessel remained stationary it would not take long to be totally blocked. This is in fact what happened at about two in the afternoon, with the young ice forming on the sides with astonishing speed. I must say that Captain Nemo’s behaviour appeared highly imprudent.
I was on the platform. The captain, who had been observing the situation for a while, said:
‘Well, monsieur, what do you think?’
‘I think that we are caught, captain.’
‘Caught! And what do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that we can go neither forwards nor backwards, nor in any other direction. This is, I believe, what people mean by “caught”, at least in inhabited lands.’
‘So, Dr Aronnax, you think the Nautilus will not be able to free itself?’
‘With difficulty, captain, for the season is already too advanced for you to count on the ice breaking up.’
‘Ah, monsieur,’ replied Captain Nemo in a sarcastic tone, ‘you’ll
always be the same! You only see snags and obstacles! I can personally tell you that not only will the Nautilus free itself, but it will go still further!’
‘Still further south?’ I asked, looking at the captain.
‘Yes, monsieur, to the Pole.’
‘To the Pole!’ I cried, unable to hide my incredulity.
‘Yes!’ the captain replied coldly. ‘To the South Pole, to that unknown point where the meridians of the globe meet. You know that I can do what I wish with the Nautilus.’*
Yes, I knew he could. I also knew that this man was bold to the point of madness! Only the deluded mind of a madman could contemplate overcoming the obstacles around the South Pole, even less accessible than the North Pole, itself still not reached by the bravest navigators!
It suddenly occurred to me to ask Captain Nemo if he had already been to the Pole, sullied by the foot of man.
‘No, monsieur, we will discover it together. Where others have failed, I will not. Never have I taken my Nautilus so far into the southern seas; but I repeat, it will go still further.’
‘I want to believe you, captain,’ I said in a sarcastic tone. ‘I do believe you! Let’s go forward! There are no obstacles for us! Let us break the ice-cap! Let’s blow it up, and if it resists, give the Nautilus wings so that it can pass over!’
‘Over?’ calmly replied Captain Nemo. ‘Not over, but under.’
‘Under!’
A sudden revelation had just filled my mind. I had finally understood the captain’s project. The marvellous capabilities of the Nautilus were going to serve it once again in this superhuman endeavour!
‘I can see that we are beginning to understand each other,’ the captain said to me, half smiling. ‘You can already glimpse the feasibility — I would say the chance of a successful conclusion — of such an attempt. What is impossible for an ordinary ship is child’s play for the Nautilus.* If there is a landmass at the Pole, the Nautilus will stop at that landmass. But if the Pole is open sea, the Nautilus will go to the Pole itself!’
‘Exactly,’ I said, carried away by the captain’s reasoning; ‘if the surface of the sea is frozen, its lower layers will be free, by that providential law which places the maximum density of sea water at a temperature above freezing. And if I am not mistaken, isn’t the ratio of the underwater part of the icefield to the part above the water four to one?’*
‘Approximately, monsieur. For each foot that icebergs stand up above sea level, they have three below. Now since these mountains of ice do not exceed a height of 100 metres, they go no more than 300 into the water. Now what are 300 metres to the Nautilus?’
‘Nothing, monsieur.’
‘It can even seek the uniform temperature of the marine waters at a greater depth, and there we can defy with impunity the thirty or forty degrees of cold on the surface.’
‘Absolutely, monsieur, perfectly!’ I cried, getting excited.
‘The only difficulty’, continued Captain Nemo, ‘will be to remain several days underwater without replenishing our reserves of air.’
‘Is that all?’ I replied. ‘The Nautilus has vast tanks, we can fill them up and they will provide us with all the oxygen we need.’
‘Well thought out, Dr Aronnax,’ the captain replied smiling. ‘But not wishing to be accused of temerity, I am submitting all my objections to you in advance.’
‘You still have some?’
‘Only one more. If there is a sea at the South Pole, it is possible that this sea is entirely frozen, and consequently that we will not be able to surface.’
‘All right, monsieur, but have you forgotten that the Nautilus is armed with a redoubtable ram, which could break up these icefields if we launched it diagonally against them?’
‘Well, monsieur, we are producing ideas today!’
‘In any case, captain,’ I added, getting more and more enthusiastic, ‘what will stop us finding an open sea at the South Pole just like the North Pole? The actual Poles and the Magnetic Poles of the earth are not found at the same spot in either hemisphere, and until proof to the contrary, it has to be assumed that there is either a continent or an ocean free of ice at these two points of the globe.’
‘I agree, Dr Aronnax,’ replied Captain Nemo. ‘I will only observe that after producing so many objections to my plan, you are now overwhelming me with arguments in its favour.’
Captain Nemo was right. I had got to the point of overtaking him in audacity. It was I who was carrying him off to the Pole! I was moving ahead of him. I was leaving him behind . . . But no, poor fool! Captain Nemo knew much better than you the pros and cons of the question, and was enjoying seeing you indulging in fantastic reveries!
He did not waste a moment. On a signal, the first officer appeared. The two men quickly spoke in their incomprehensible language, and either the first officer had been told about it before, or he saw no problem in carrying out the plan, for he showed no surprise at all.
However impassible, his impassiveness failed to match Conseil’s when I announced to the worthy fellow that we were heading for the South Pole. An ‘As monsieur pleases’ was all that greeted my news, and I had to be content with that. As for Ned, if ever shoulders were shrugged, the Canadian’s were.
‘Can’t you see?’ he said. ‘I pity you, and your Captain Nemo!’
‘But we are going to the Pole, Master Ned.’
‘Possibly, but we shan’t be coming back!’
And Ned Land returned to his cabin, ‘so as not to do something stupid’, he said as he left.
Meanwhile the preparations for the audacious attempt had begun. The Nautilus’s powerful pumps were forcing air into the tanks, storing it at high pressure. At about four o’clock Captain Nemo announced that the platform hatches were going to close. I cast a final look at the thick ice-cap we were going to go under. The weather was clear, the atmosphere pure, the cold very keen at −12° C. But the wind had dropped, and the temperature did not seem too intolerable.
About ten men armed with pickaxes climbed on to the sides of the Nautilus, broke the ice around the hull, and freed it. The operation did not take long, for the young ice was still thin. We all went inside. The tanks were filled up as usual using water kept free at the flotation line. Soon the Nautilus dived.
I sat in the salon with Conseil. Through the open window we watched the depths of the Southern Ocean. The thermometer was rising. The needle of the pressure-gauge oscillated.
At about 300 metres, and as Captain Nemo had predicted, we were moving below the undulating lower surface of the ice-cap, as the Nautilus dived further. It reached a depth of 800 metres. The temperature of the water, −12° on the surface, was now only −11°. Two degrees already gained.* It goes without saying that the temperature of the Nautilus, raised by its heating devices, stayed at a much higher level. All these operations were carried out with extraordinary precision.
‘We’ll get through, if monsieur has no objection,’ said Conseil.
‘I’m counting on it!’ I replied in a tone of deepest conviction.
In this unobstructed sea, the Nautilus had taken a route going directly towards the Pole, not deviating from the 52nd meridian. From 67° 30´ to 90°, 22.5° remained to be covered, that is a little more than 500 leagues. The Nautilus maintained a moderate speed of 26 knots, the velocity of an express train. If it continued in the same way, forty hours would be enough to reach the Pole.
For part of the night, the novelty of the situation kept Conseil and me at the window of the salon. The sea was illuminated by the electric radiation of the searchlight, but seemed deserted. Fish did not live in the imprisoned waters. They only made their way through from the Antarctic Ocean to the open sea at the Pole. Our progress was swift. We could feel this from the tremblings of the long steel hull.
At about two o’clock, I went to take a few hours’ rest. Conseil did the same. Going through the gangways, I did not meet Captain Nemo. I supposed that he had stayed in the pilot-house.
At
five in the morning the next day, 19 March,* I took up my position again in the salon. The electric log told me that the Nautilus had slowed down. It was moving towards the surface, but carefully, slowly emptying its tanks.
My heart was beating. Were we going to come out and find the free polar air once more?
No. A jolt told me that the Nautilus had hit the lower surface of the ice-cap, still very thick to judge from the dullness of the impact. We had ‘touched’, to employ the marine expression, but in the other direction and at a depth of 1,000 feet: there were 2,000 feet of ice above us, of which 1,000 emerged. The ice-cap thus reached a greater height than we had noted at its perimeter. Not a very reassuring fact.
During the day the Nautilus tried the experiment again several times, and each time it came up against the ice forming a ceiling above. On occasion the Nautilus encountered ice at 900 metres, which implied 1,200 metres’ thickness of which 200 rose above the surface of the ocean.* This was twice its height at the spot where the Nautilus had dived under the waves.
I carefully noted the various depths of the ice encountered, and thus obtained a submarine profile of the range jutting down into the waters.
By evening there was no change in our situation. The ice was 400 to 500 metres deep. Definitely a reduction, but what a thickness still lay between us and the surface!
It was eight o’clock. According to the daily custom, the air should already have been renewed inside the Nautilus four hours before. However, I did not suffer too much, although Captain Nemo had not yet called for extra oxygen from the tanks.
My sleep was troubled that night. Hope and fear besieged me in turn. I got up several times. The Nautilus’s probes continued. At about three o’clock, I noted that we had touched the lower surface of the ice-cap at only 50 metres’ depth. A hundred and fifty feet separated us from the surface. The ice-cap was gradually becoming an isolated icefield. The mountain was changing into a plain.
