by Jules Verne
‘The inhabited world,’ he repeated, shaking his head. ‘Calm down, Conseil, my friend, you’ll never see it again!’
It was five in the morning. Just then, a jolt reverberated from the front of the Nautilus. I understood that its ram had hit a wall of ice. This had to be an accident — the underwater tunnel, strewn with odd blocks, did not make for easy navigation. I thought that Captain Nemo would now adjust his route and work his way round the obstacle by following the outside of the tunnel. In any case, the forward motion would not be stopped. However, against my expectation, the Nautilus began moving backwards very fast.
‘Have we changed direction?’ said Conseil.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘the tunnel must have no way out at this end.’
‘But then . . .?’
‘Then the consequence is quite simple. We head back and we leave by the southern exit. That’s all.’
Speaking like this, I wished to appear more confident than I really was. The backwards movement of the Nautilus increased, and proceeding on reverse propeller, it carried us along at tremendous speed.
‘This will slow us down,’ said Ned.
‘What difference do a few hours more or less make, provided we get out?’
‘Yes,’ said Ned, ‘provided we do get out.’
I spent a while walking around the salon and the library. My companions remained seated without saying a word. I soon threw myself on to a sofa, and picked up a book, which my eyes began mechanically scanning.
Quarter of an hour later, Conseil came up to me and said:
‘Is monsieur reading something interesting?’
‘Very interesting,’ I replied.
‘I agree. Monsieur is reading his own book.’
‘My own book?’
I was indeed holding The Ocean Deeps. I had had no idea I was doing this. I closed the volume and continued my pacing. Ned and Conseil got up to go to bed.
‘Please remain, my friends,’ I said, restraining them, ‘let’s stay together until we have got out of this cul-de-sac.’
‘As monsieur pleases,’ replied Conseil.
A few hours went by. I often looked at the instruments on the salon walls. The pressure-gauge indicated that the Nautilus was staying at a constant depth of 300 metres, the compass, that it was still heading south, and the logline, that it was moving at 20 knots, a very high speed in such an enclosed space. But Captain Nemo knew that no speed could be too great, that minutes were in this case worth centuries.
At 8.25 we felt a second jolt, at the back this time. I turned pale. My companions had come close. I had taken Conseil’s hand. We questioned each other with our eyes, more directly than if our thoughts had been expressed in words.
The captain entered the salon. I went up to him.
‘So the route is blocked to the south?’
‘Yes, monsieur. When the iceberg overturned, it closed every way out.’
‘Then we’re trapped?’
‘Yes, we are.’
16
Not Enough Air
So all around the Nautilus, above and below, was an impenetrable wall of ice. We were prisoners of the ice-cap. The Canadian struck the table with his tremendous fist. Conseil remained silent. I looked at the captain. His face had resumed its customary impassiveness. He had pensively crossed his arms. The Nautilus was no longer moving.
Then the captain spoke again:
‘Messieurs,’ he said in a calm voice, ‘there are two ways of dying in our present circumstances.’
The incomprehensible character resembled a professor of mathematics carrying out a demonstration for his students.
‘The first is to die through being crushed. The second is to die of asphyxiation. I do not mention the possibility of dying from hunger, for the provisions of the Nautilus will certainly last longer than we will. Let us therefore consider our chances of being crushed and of being asphyxiated.’
‘As for asphyxiation, captain,’ I replied, ‘there is little danger because our tanks are full.’
‘True,’ said Captain Nemo, ‘but they will only provide us with two days of air. We have been underwater for thirty-six hours, and already the heavy atmosphere of the Nautilus needs replenishing. In forty-eight hours’ time our reserves will also be exhausted.’
‘Well, captain, let’s make sure we are safe within forty-eight hours!’
‘We will at least try cutting through the wall surrounding us,’ he replied.
‘In which direction?’ I asked.
‘Soundings will tell us. I am going to ground the Nautilus on the lower surface, and using their diving suits my men will attack the iceberg at its thinnest wall.’
‘Can we open the panels of the salon?’
‘Certainly. We are not moving.’
Captain Nemo went out. Soon hissing sounds told me that water was being let into the tanks. The Nautilus slowly sank and came to rest on the icy floor at a barometric reading of 350 metres, the depth of the lower surface of ice.
‘My friends,’ I said, ‘our situation is serious, but I am counting on your courage and energy.’
‘Monsieur, I will not bother you with my reproaches at this stage. I am ready to do anything for our collective safety.’
‘Good, Ned,’ I said, stretching out my hand to him.
‘I’ll add that I’m as good with a pickaxe as a harpoon, and so am at the captain’s service if I can be of any use.’
‘He will not refuse your help. Come, Ned.’
I took him to the room where the crew of the Nautilus were putting on their diving suits. I told the captain of Ned’s offer, which he accepted. The Canadian put on his sea clothing, and was soon as ready as his work companions. Each man carried a Rouquayrol apparatus on his back, to which the tanks had added a large amount of pure air. A considerable but necessary borrowing from the Nautilus’s reserves. As for the Ruhmkorff lamps, they were useless in waters fully illuminated by electric beams.
When Ned was ready I went back to the salon, where the windows were already uncovered, and took up position with Conseil to study the water around the Nautilus.
A few moments later, we saw a dozen crewmen stepping out on to the floor of ice, Ned Land amongst them, identifiable by his size. Captain Nemo was also there.
Before proceeding to hollow out the walls, he had soundings made in order to ensure the work would proceed in the right direction. Long sounds were inserted into the side walls, but after 50 metres they were still blocked by the thick ice. It was useless to attack the top surface because this was the ice-cap itself, stretching more than 400 metres above us. Finally Captain Nemo had the lower surface sounded. There 10 metres of wall separated us from the water. We needed to cut a piece of solid ice 30 feet thick and of the same surface area as the flotation line of the Nautilus. This meant cutting out about 6,500 cubic metres so as to make a hole through which we could reach the water below the ice-cap.
The work began immediately, executed with unyielding single-mindedness. Instead of digging around the Nautilus, which would have been more difficult, Captain Nemo had a massive trench outlined 8 metres from its port quarter. Then his men simultaneously pierced several points on its outer limit. Soon pickaxes were vigorously attacking the dense material, bringing large blocks out of the ice. Through a strange effect of specific gravity, the blocks were lighter than water, and flew up, so to speak, to the vault of the tunnel, which grew thicker at the top by the same amount it reduced at the bottom. But this hardly mattered, given that the floor was getting progressively thinner.
After two hours of hard work, Ned returned exhausted. He and his companions were replaced by new hands, whom Conseil and I joined. The first officer of the Nautilus directed us.
The water seemed extraordinarily cold, but I soon warmed up using the pickaxe. My movements felt very free, although produced at a pressure of 30 atmospheres.
When I returned after two hours of work to take some food and rest, I found a notable difference between the pure ai
r that the Rouquayrol apparatus had been giving me and the atmosphere of the Nautilus, already full of carbon dioxide. The air had not been renewed for forty-eight hours, and its life-giving qualities were considerably reduced. Also, in a period of twelve hours we had only removed a slab of ice a metre thick from the designated area, that is about 600 cubic metres. Assuming the same amount of work was executed every twelve hours, we still needed five nights and four days to finish.
‘Five nights and four days,’ I said to my companions, ‘and we only have two days of air left in the tanks.’
‘Not to mention’, replied Ned, ‘that even if we get out of this damned prison, we’ll still be under the ice-cap without being able to reach the open air.’
It was true. Who could calculate the minimum time needed for our final deliverance? Would we not be smothered and asphyxiated before the Nautilus got back up to the surface? Was the Nautilus destined to perish in this icy tomb with all those it contained? Such a prospect seemed terrifying, but everyone had clearly faced up to it and was determined to do his duty until the end.
As I expected, a new layer 1 metre thick was removed from the enormous hole during the night. But when I put my diving suit on again in the morning, and entered the liquid element at a temperature of −6° or −7°, I noticed the side wall was getting gradually closer. The water furthest from the trench was not being warmed by the work of the men or the action of their tools and so was prone to freezing. In the presence of this new and imminent danger, what were our chances of survival — how could we prevent the solidification of the liquid, which might crush the sides of the Nautilus like glass?
I did not inform my two companions of this new danger. What was the point of running the risk of damping their ardour for the difficult work of saving us? But when I came back on board, I mentioned the serious complication to Captain Nemo.
‘I know,’ he said in that calm tone which the worst situations could not alter. ‘It is an additional danger, but I can see no way of stopping it. The only chance of survival is to work more quickly than the solidification process. We need to finish first, that’s all.’
Finish first! But I suppose I should have been used to such forms of expression.
For several hours that day I wielded the pickaxe with considerable obduracy. The work maintained my morale. In any case, to labour was to leave the Nautilus and to breathe the pure air supplied by the apparatus straight from the tanks. It was to leave an atmosphere which was impoverished and vitiated.
In the evening the trench was a metre deeper. When I returned on board, I was almost suffocated by the carbon dioxide filling the air. Ah, why did we not have some chemical means to eliminate this noxious gas? There was plenty of oxygen, for all this water contained huge quantities of the element, and decomposing it with our powerful batteries would have given us access to the life-giver. I had indeed thought of this, but what was the point, since the carbon dioxide we breathed out permeated every part of the ship? To absorb it, we would have needed containers of caustic potash, constantly shaken. But we had none on board, and nothing could replace it.
That evening, Captain Nemo had to open the taps of his tanks and send a few columns of pure air into the interior of the Nautilus. If he had not done so we would not have woken up again.
The next day, 26 March, I continued my miner’s work and began on the fifth metre. The sides and ceiling of the ice-cap were getting visibly thicker. It was evident that they would join up before the Nautilus was able to free itself. Despair took hold of me for a moment. My pickaxe came near to falling from my hands. What was the point of digging if I was to suffocate to death, crushed by this water turning to stone, a torture that even the ferocity of savages could not have invented? It was as if I lay between the formidable jaws of a monster, ones inexorably snapping shut.
Just then Captain Nemo, directing the work and himself labouring, passed near me. I touched him with my glove, and showed him the walls of our prison. The port wall was now less than four metres from the Nautilus’s hull.
The captain understood, and signalled that I should follow him. We went back on board. Once my diving suit was off, I followed him into the salon.
‘Dr Aronnax,’ he said to me, ‘we need to employ desperate measures, or else we are going to be sealed in this frozen water as if in concrete.’
‘Yes, but what should we do?’
‘Ah, if only my Nautilus were strong enough to bear this pressure without crumpling!’
‘Well?’ I asked, not really understanding his idea.
‘Don’t you understand that the freezing of the water would actually help us? Can you not see that the solidifying process would crack the walls of ice imprisoning us, as it cracks hard stones when they freeze! Can you not appreciate that it would then be an agent of survival rather than one of destruction!’
‘Yes, captain, perhaps. But whatever resistance to being crushed the Nautilus has, it will not be able to bear such an awesome pressure, and would end up as flat as a pancake.’
‘I know, monsieur. So we must not rely on help from nature, but only ourselves. We must prevent the solidification, or at least slow it down. Not only are the sides closing in, but there remain only 10 feet of water fore and aft of the Nautilus. The freezing is gaining on us in all directions.’
‘How much time will the air from the tanks allow us to breathe on board?’
The captain looked me squarely in the face.
‘The tanks will be empty the day after tomorrow!’
I was covered in a cold sweat, and yet how could I be surprised by his reply? The Nautilus had dived under the open seas of the Pole on 22 March. It was now the 26th. We had been living on the reserves for four days, and what breathable air remained needed to be given to the workers. As I write these things, my impressions are still so vivid that my whole body is stricken with involuntary terror and the air feels as if it is being tugged from my lungs!
However, Captain Nemo was reflecting, silent and motionless. An idea was clearly going through his mind, but he seemed to be rejecting it. He was responding to himself in the negative. At last, words escaped his lips:
‘Boiling water,’ he murmured.
‘Boiling water!’
‘Yes. We are enclosed in a relatively confined space. Would sending jets of boiling water continuously from the Nautilus’s pumps not raise the general temperature and so slow down the freezing?’
‘We must try,’ I said resolutely.
‘Let’s try then.’
The temperature outside read −7°. Captain Nemo took me to the kitchens, where vast distillation machinery produced drinking water by means of evaporation. It was now filled with water, then all the energy from the electric batteries was sent through the liquid in the coils. In a few minutes the water reached 100°. While it was sent to the pumps, an equivalent amount of fresh water was introduced. The heat developed by the batteries was such that, merely by going through this equipment, cold water drawn from the sea arrived boiling at the pumping machinery.
Three hours after the pumping began, the thermometer showed −6° outside. We had gained one degree. Two hours later, the thermometer read −4°.
‘We’re going to win,’ I told the captain, having followed the progress of this operation and accompanying it with numerous comments.
‘Perhaps,’ he replied. ‘We’re not going to be crushed. We only have asphyxiation to worry about.’
Overnight the temperature of the water went up to −1°. The pumping could not make it rise any further. But since sea water freezes only at −2°, I finally stopped worrying about the dangers of solidification.
The following day, 27 March, six metres of ice had been torn from the hole. There remained only four metres to go. This was still forty-eight hours of work. The air could not be renewed inside the Nautilus. Accordingly, the day got gradually worse and worse.
An unbearable heaviness came over me. At about three in the afternoon, the feeling of anguish grew dev
astatingly. Yawns dislocated my jaws. My lungs worked fast as they searched for the combustive gas indispensable for breathing, now more and more rarefied. A mortal torpor took hold of me. I was stretched out feeling very weak, almost unconscious. My good Conseil, undergoing the same symptoms, suffering the same suffering, refused to leave me. He took my hand, he encouraged me, and I kept hearing him murmur:
‘Ah, if only I could refrain from breathing in order to leave more air for monsieur!’
Tears came to my eyes when I heard him speak like this.
If the situation inside was intolerable for all of us, with what haste, with what joy we would put on our diving suits to take our turn to work! The pickaxes rang out on the frozen floor. Arms grew tired, hands blistered, but who cared about fatigue and pain! The vital air was entering our lungs! We were breathing, really breathing!
And yet no one prolonged his work underwater beyond the specified time. Once the task was over, each entrusted to his gasping companion the tank which would pour life into him. Captain Nemo showed the example, submitting first to this severe discipline. Once the time had come, he gave his apparatus to another and returned to the ship’s vitiated atmosphere, always calm, without a moment of weakness, without a murmur.
That day, the work was carried out with still more vigour. Only two metres remained to be removed from the area. Only two metres separated us from the open sea, but the tanks were almost empty. The little which remained had to be kept for the workers. Not a single atom for the Nautilus!
When I returned on board, I half suffocated. What a night! I cannot depict it. Such suffering cannot be described. The next day my breathing was oppressed. I had headaches combined with stupefying dizziness, which made a drunkard of me. My companions experienced the same symptoms. A few crewmen were on their last legs.
That day, the sixth of our imprisonment,* Captain Nemo found the pick and pickaxe too slow, and resolved to assault the layer of ice still separating us from the liquid element. This man had kept his sang-froid and energy. He overcame his physical ills with moral force. He thought, he took himself in hand, he acted.
