by Jules Verne
On his orders, the vessel was eased, that is, removed from its frozen resting place by slightly changing its specific weight. While floating it was hauled until it was over the massive trench shaped like its flotation line. Then its water tanks were opened slightly, it sank down again, and fitted into the hole.
The whole crew returned on board, and the double communication doors were closed. The Nautilus rested on the ice layer, less than a metre thick, pierced in a thousand places by bore holes.
The tanks’ taps were then opened wide, and 100 cubic metres of water rushed into them, increasing the weight of the Nautilus by 100,000 kilograms.
We waited, we listened, forgetting our suffering, still hoping. We were gambling our lives on a last attempt.
In spite of the roaring sounds filling my head, I soon felt tremblings under the Nautilus’s hull. It shifted. The ice cracked with a bizarre sound like paper tearing and the Nautilus dropped down.
‘We are going through!’ Conseil murmured in my ear.
I was not able to reply. I grabbed his hand. I pressed it in the throes of an involuntary convulsion.
Suddenly, carried away by its massive overload, the Nautilus sank like a cannonball dropped in water — it fell as if in a vacuum. The whole electric force was then sent into the pumps, which immediately began to expel water from the tanks.
After a few minutes our fall stopped. Soon the pressure-gauge even indicated upward movement. The propeller, working at full speed, made the metal hull tremble down to the very bolts, and carried us off northwards.
But how long would this race under the ice-cap take before we reached the open sea? Another day? I would be dead by then.
Half stretched out on a sofa in the library, I was suffocating. My face was purple, my lips blue, my faculties suspended. I could no longer see, I could no longer hear. All idea of time had vanished from my mind. My muscles would not contract.
I could not count the hours that went by in this way, but I was aware that death-throes were coming on. I realized that I was on the point of perishing.
Suddenly I came to. A few mouthfuls of air had reached my lungs. Had we made it back up to the surface? Had we got through the icefield?
No! It was Ned and Conseil, my two good friends, depriving themselves to save me. A few atoms of air still remained at the bottom of a device. Instead of breathing it themselves, they had kept it for me; while themselves suffocating, they poured life into me drop by drop! I tried to push back the device. But they held my hands, and for a few moments I breathed in with voluptuousness.
My eyes turned to the clock. It was eleven in the morning. It must have been 28 March. The Nautilus was slicing through the water at a speed of 40 knots.
Where was Captain Nemo? Had he succumbed? Were his companions dead with him?
The pressure-gauge indicated that we were only 20 feet from the surface. A mere sheet of ice separated us from the free air. Could we not break it?
In any case, the Nautilus was going to try. I could feel it manoeuvring into an oblique position, lowering its stern and lifting its prow. Introducing some water had been enough to break the equilibrium. Then, pushed on by its powerful propeller, it thrust up into the icefield like a formidable ram. It was breaking it up piece by piece, the Nautilus was withdrawing, then again launching itself at full speed against the field. The ice began to perforate, and carrying through in a supreme lunge, it threw itself on to the icy surface, which it crushed under its weight.
The hatch was opened, or rather torn off, as pure air poured into every part of the Nautilus.
17
From Cape Horn to the Amazon
How I reached the platform I cannot say. Perhaps the Canadian dragged me there. But I was breathing, I was gulping down the invigorating sea air. Beside me, my two companions were drunk on the fresh air. Wretches who are deprived of food for too long must not throw themselves thoughtlessly on the first food they find. But we had no need to ration ourselves. We could breathe in great lungfuls of atmosphere, and the wind itself suffused us with its voluptuous intoxication!
‘Ah,’ said Conseil, ‘how good oxygen is! Monsieur need not hold back from breathing it in. There is plenty for everyone.’
As for Ned, he was not speaking but had his mouth gaping to an extent that would have frightened a shark. And what powerful breathing! The Canadian was ‘drawing’ like a roaring stove.
Our strength soon came back, and when I looked round I realized that we were alone on the platform. No crew member, not even Captain Nemo. The strange sailors of the Nautilus satisfied themselves with the air circulating inside. Not one had come for refreshment in the open air.
The first words I said were words of thanks to my two companions. Ned and Conseil had saved my life in the last hours of that long death agony. My wholesale gratitude was not too much to give for such devotion.
‘All right, monsieur!’ Ned Land replied. ‘Why go on about it? What did we have to do with it? Nothing. It was just a matter of arithmetic. Your life was worth more than ours, so we had to save you.’
‘No, Ned,’ I replied, ‘it was not worth more, nobody is better than a man who is generous and good, and you are both of these!’
‘All right, all right!’ said the Canadian, embarrassed.
‘And you, my good Conseil, also suffered tremendously.’
‘Not too much, to tell the truth, monsieur. A few mouthfuls of air would not have gone astray, but I believe I would have got used to the situation. In any case, I saw monsieur fainting, and that did not give me the least desire to inhale. It took, as they say, my breath . . .’
Embarrassed to have launched himself into such a cliché, Conseil did not finish.
‘My friends,’ I said, greatly moved, ‘we are bound to each other for life, and I am for ever in your debt.’
‘Which I will draw on.’
‘Eh?’ said Conseil.
‘Yes,’ continued Land, ‘I will call on the right to take you with me when I leave this infernal Nautilus.’
‘Come to mention it,’ said Conseil, ‘are we heading in the right direction?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘since we are moving towards the sun, and the sun is in the north here.’
‘Agreed,’ said Ned. ‘But we still need to know whether we’re heading for the Pacific or the Atlantic, that is, for empty or for crowded seas.’
I could not reply, fearing that Captain Nemo was in fact taking us back to that vast ocean which washes the coasts of both Asia and America. He would thus complete his submarine journey round the world, and return to the seas where the Nautilus found the most independence. But if we were going back to the Pacific, far from friendly shores, what would become of Ned Land’s plans?
This important point would be settled before long. The Nautilus was moving quickly. The polar circle was soon crossed, and sail set for Cape Horn. We were off the tip of America at seven in the evening of 31 March.
All our suffering was long forgotten. The memory of our icy imprisonment was fast fading from our minds. We only thought of the future. Captain Nemo did not appear either in the salon or on the platform. The position as measured by the first officer and plotted each day on the planisphere allowed me to follow the exact route of the Nautilus. And to my great satisfaction it became evident that evening that we were heading back north via the Atlantic.
I informed Ned and Conseil of the results of my deductions.
‘Good news,’ replied the Canadian, ‘but where exactly is the Nautilus going?’
‘I cannot say, Ned.’
‘Does the captain now wish to conquer the North Pole having done the South Pole, and return to the Pacific via the famous Northwest Passage?’
‘We must not try to dissuade him even if he does wish to do that,’ replied Conseil.
‘Well, we’ll part company from him before then!’
‘In any case,’ added Conseil, ‘Captain Nemo is a remarkable man, and we will not regret having known him.’
/> ‘Above all when we’ve left!’ retorted Ned.
The following day, 1 April, when the Nautilus surfaced a few minutes before noon, we sighted a coast to the west. This was Tierra del Fuego, so called by the first navigators because they saw large amounts of smoke rising from the native huts. Tierra del Fuego forms a vast collection of islands more than 80 leagues in length by 30 leagues in width, between 53° and 56° S and 67° 50´ and 77° 14´ W. The coast seemed low, but high mountains rose in the distance. I even thought I glimpsed Mount Sarmiento, 2,070 metres above sea level. This is a block of schist in the shape of a pyramid with a very sharp summit, and whether it is covered in mists or is free of vapour ‘forecasts good or bad weather’, as Ned Land told me.
‘A wonderful barometer, my friend.’
‘Yes, monsieur, a natural barometer which has always been accurate when I’ve sailed the passes of the Strait of Magellan.’
Just then the peak appeared, clearly etched against the background of the sky: in other words, a portent of good weather.
Diving again, the Nautilus approached the coast and followed it for a few miles. Through the salon windows I could see long creepers and gigantic wracks, those pyrifera kelps of which the open sea at the Pole had contained a few specimens. With their shiny, viscous filaments, they measured up to 300 metres long. Veritable cables, thicker than a thumb and very strong, they often serve as ships’ mooring ropes. Another plant, a sort of kelp, with 4-foot leaves covered in coral accretions, carpeted the depths. It served as a nest and as food for myriads of crustaceans and molluscs such as crabs and cuttlefish. Seals and otters enjoyed splendid meals there, combining fish with marine vegetables, a bit like the British do.
The Nautilus moved at great speed over the rich, luxuriant bottoms. In the evening it approached the Falkland Islands, whose rough summits I spotted the next day. The sea was not very deep. I accordingly thought, with good reason, that the two main islands, surrounded by a large number of smaller islands, were formerly part of the ‘Magellanic Lands’. The Falklands were probably discovered by the celebrated John Davis,* who gave them the name of Davis Southern Islands. Later Richard Hawkins* called them Maidenland. At the beginning of the eighteenth century they were named the Malouines by fishermen from Saint-Malo, and finally the Falklands by the British, to whom they belong today.
On these shores, our nets brought in fine specimens of seaweed, and particularly a certain wrack with roots laden with mussels that are the best in the world. Dozens of geese and ducks rained down on to the platform, and soon took their places in the sculleries. As regards fish, I particularly observed bony ones belonging to the goby genus, and above all 20-centimetre double-spotted gobies, completely covered in white and yellow spots.
I also admired numerous jellyfish, particularly the most beautiful of the type, the Chrysaora, peculiar to the seas off the Falklands. Sometimes they formed very smooth hemispherical parasols with reddish-brown stripes, culminating in twelve regularly shaped scallops. Sometimes they constituted upside-down waste-paper baskets, from which grew broad, gracious leaves and long red twigs. They swam by, waving their four foliaceous arms and allowing their sumptuous head of tentacles to drift behind. I would have liked to keep a few specimens of these delicate zoophytes; but they are only clouds, shadows, appearances, which melt and evaporate once outside their native environment.
When the last hills of the Falklands had disappeared below the horizon, the Nautilus dived to between 20 and 25 metres and started following the American coast. Captain Nemo did not appear.
Until 3 April, sometimes below and sometimes on the surface, we did not leave the shores of Patagonia. The Nautilus passed the broad estuary of the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and on 4 April was 50 miles off Uruguay. Its direction was still northerly as it followed the long curves of South America. We had now done 16,000 leagues since embarking in the seas of Japan.
At eleven in the morning we crossed the tropic of Capricorn on the 37th meridian, and passed Cape Frio in the distance. To Ned’s great annoyance, Captain Nemo obviously disliked the neighbourhood of these populated coasts of Brazil, for he moved at dizzying speed. Not even the quickest of fish or birds could keep up with us, and observing the natural curiosities of these seas was no longer possible.
This speed was maintained for several days, and in the evening of 9 April we sighted the easternmost point of South America, Cape São Roque.* But then the Nautilus moved offshore again, and went to seek greater depths in a sunken valley between this cape and Sierra Leone on the African coast. The valley divides off the West Indies, and finishes in the north in an enormous depression 9,000 metres deep. At that point, the geological cross-section of the ocean forms a cliff 6,000 metres high, cut sheer as far as the Lesser Antilles, and, together with a similar wall off Cape Verde, encloses the whole of the sunken continent of Atlantis. The floor of this enormous valley is broken up by a few mountains which contribute to the picturesque views of the submarine depths. I speak about such matters on the basis of the hand-drawn maps in the Nautilus’s library. Maps evidently produced by Captain Nemo, based on his personal observations.
For two days we visited the deep deserted waters using the inclined planes on the Nautilus to make long diagonal descents, thus reaching any required depth. But on 11 April we suddenly resurfaced, and sighted land again near the opening of the Amazon, a vast estuary delivering so much water that it desalinates the sea for a distance of several leagues.
We crossed the equator. Twenty miles to the west stood the Guyanas, a French possession* where we could easily have found refuge. But a strong wind was blowing up, and the furious waves would not have allowed a mere dinghy to confront them. Land undoubtedly understood this, for he did not say anything. For my part, I made no reference to his escape plans, because I did not wish to encourage an attempt which would inevitably have failed.
I easily filled the time with interesting studies. On 11 and 12 April the Nautilus did not leave the surface and its trawl brought in a miraculous draught of zoophytes, fish, and reptiles.
Some zoophytes had been swept up by the chains of the dragnets. These were, for the most part, lovely Phyllactis belonging to the family of the actinias, and amongst other species the Phyllactis protexta: a native of this part of the ocean with a small cylindrical trunk, vertical lines, speckled with red points, and crowned with a spectacular burgeoning of tentacles. As for the molluscs, they consisted of products I had already observed: screw shells, porphyry olives with regular crisscrossing lines and red patches standing vividly out on a fleshy background, some fantastic scorpio shells like petrified scorpions, translucent hyales, argonauts, highly edible cuttlefish, and certain species of squid that the naturalists of antiquity classified amongst flying fish and which serve mostly as bait for cod fishing.
Amongst the fish of these waters that I had not yet had the opportunity to study, I noted a number of other species. Amongst the cartilaginous fish featured pike lampreys, sorts of 15-inch eels with greenish heads, violet fins, bluish-grey backs, brown and silver bellies dotted with bright patches, and bands of gold round the irises in their eyes: strange animals that the current of the Amazon must have carried down to the sea, for they live in fresh water; there were also tubercular rays with pointed snouts and long slender tails, armed with long toothed stings; small, one-metre sharks with grey milky skin and several rows of teeth curving backwards, commonly known as hammerheads; vespertilian Lophiidae, sorts of reddish isosceles triangles half a metre long, with pectorals connected to fleshy extensions giving them the look of bats and with horny appendixes near their nostrils that have given them the popular name of sea-unicorns; and finally two species of triggerfish, the curassavicus whose dotted flanks shine with a vivid golden colour and the light-purple capriscus with iridescent nuances like a pigeon’s throat.
I will finish this very precise nomenclature, albeit slightly dry, with the series of bony fish that I observed: ramblers from the Apteronotus genus, which have a beautif
ul black body and a very blunt snout as white as snow, and are equipped with a very long and very slender fleshy thong; prickly Odontognathas, 30-centimetre-long sardines resplendent in a bright silvery brilliance; Scomberesox saurus with two anal fins; two-metre-long butterfly blennies in dark hues that are taken using burning torches, with plump firm white flesh, which when fresh taste like eel and, when dried, smoked salmon; half-red wrasses clothed in scales only as far as the base of their dorsal and anal fins; chrysoptera on which gold and silver mix their brilliance with ruby and topaz; golden-tail sparids whose flesh is extremely delicate and whose phosphorescence gives them away in the heart of the water; bogue sparids with fine tongues and orange hues; Sciaena umbra with golden tail-fins; specimens of Acanthurus nigricans; four-eyed fish from Surinam, etc.
This ‘etcetera’ will not prevent me from quoting yet another fish Conseil will remember for a long while, and with good reason.
One of our nets had brought in a type of very flat ray which, without its tail, would have formed a perfect circle and which weighed about 20 kilograms. It was white underneath and verging on red on top, with large, round, deep-blue spots surrounded by black. Its very smooth skin ended in a bilobate fin. Stranded on the platform, it was struggling convulsively to turn itself over, and making so many attempts that a last somersault was about to carry it back into the sea. But Conseil, who was keen on his fish, threw himself on to it and took hold of it in both hands before I could stop him. He was on his back immediately, his legs in the air and half of his body paralysed, crying:
‘Ah, my master, my master! Help me.’
This was the first time the poor fellow hadn’t addressed me in the third person.
The Canadian and I picked him up. We rubbed him down with all our might, and when he was himself again, this persistent classifier murmured in a trembling voice:
‘Cartilaginous class, order of chondropterygians with fixed gills, suborder of selachians, family of rays, genus of torpedoes!’
