In fact, the mystery of that last afternoon when we were locked inprison and put to sleep, the captain's violent precaution of snatchingfrom my grasp a spyglass poised to scour the horizon, and the fatalwound given that man during some unexplained collision sufferedby the Nautilus, all led me down a plain trail. No! Captain Nemowasn't content simply to avoid humanity! His fearsome submersibleserved not only his quest for freedom, but also, perhaps, it wasused in lord-knows-what schemes of dreadful revenge.
Right now, nothing is clear to me, I still glimpse only glimmersin the dark, and I must limit my pen, as it were, to takingdictation from events.
But nothing binds us to Captain Nemo. He believes that escaping fromthe Nautilus is impossible. We are not even constrained by our wordof honor. No promises fetter us. We're simply captives, prisonersmasquerading under the name "guests" for the sake of everyday courtesy.Even so, Ned Land hasn't given up all hope of recovering his freedom.He's sure to take advantage of the first chance that comes his way.No doubt I will do likewise. And yet I will feel some regret at makingoff with the Nautilus's secrets, so generously unveiled for us byCaptain Nemo! Because, ultimately, should we detest or admire this man?Is he the persecutor or the persecuted? And in all honesty,before I leave him forever, I want to finish this underwatertour of the world, whose first stages have been so magnificent.I want to observe the full series of these wonders gathered underthe seas of our globe. I want to see what no man has seen yet,even if I must pay for this insatiable curiosity with my life!What are my discoveries to date? Nothing, relatively speaking--since so far we've covered only 6,000 leagues across the Pacific!
Nevertheless, I'm well aware that the Nautilus is drawing nearto populated shores, and if some chance for salvation becomesavailable to us, it would be sheer cruelty to sacrifice mycompanions to my passion for the unknown. I must go with them,perhaps even guide them. But will this opportunity ever arise?The human being, robbed of his free will, craves such an opportunity;but the scientist, forever inquisitive, dreads it.
That day, January 21, 1868, the chief officer went at noon to takethe sun's altitude. I climbed onto the platform, lit a cigar,and watched him at work. It seemed obvious to me that this man didn'tunderstand French, because I made several remarks in a loud voicethat were bound to provoke him to some involuntary show of interesthad he understood them; but he remained mute and emotionless.
While he took his sights with his sextant, one of the Nautilus's sailors--that muscular man who had gone with us to Crespo Island during our firstunderwater excursion--came up to clean the glass panes of the beacon.I then examined the fittings of this mechanism, whose power wasincreased a hundredfold by biconvex lenses that were designedlike those in a lighthouse and kept its rays productively focused.This electric lamp was so constructed as to yield its maximumilluminating power. In essence, its light was generated in a vacuum,insuring both its steadiness and intensity. Such a vacuum also reducedwear on the graphite points between which the luminous arc expanded.This was an important savings for Captain Nemo, who couldn'teasily renew them. But under these conditions, wear and tearwere almost nonexistent.
When the Nautilus was ready to resume its underwater travels,I went below again to the lounge. The hatches closed once more,and our course was set due west.
We then plowed the waves of the Indian Ocean, vast liquid plainswith an area of 550,000,000 hectares, whose waters are so transparentit makes you dizzy to lean over their surface. There the Nautilusgenerally drifted at a depth between 100 and 200 meters.It behaved in this way for some days. To anyone without my grandpassion for the sea, these hours would surely have seemed longand monotonous; but my daily strolls on the platform where I wasrevived by the life-giving ocean air, the sights in the rich watersbeyond the lounge windows, the books to be read in the library,and the composition of my memoirs, took up all my time and left mewithout a moment of weariness or boredom.
All in all, we enjoyed a highly satisfactory state of health.The diet on board agreed with us perfectly, and for my part,I could easily have gone without those changes of pace that Ned Land,in a spirit of protest, kept taxing his ingenuity to supply us.What's more, in this constant temperature we didn't even have toworry about catching colds. Besides, the ship had a good stock ofthe madrepore Dendrophylia, known in Provence by the name sea fennel,and a poultice made from the dissolved flesh of its polyps willfurnish an excellent cough medicine.
For some days we saw a large number of aquatic birds with webbed feet,known as gulls or sea mews. Some were skillfully slain, and when cookedin a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of water game.Among the great wind riders--carried over long distances from everyshore and resting on the waves from their exhausting flights--I spotted some magnificent albatross, birds belonging to the Longipennes(long-winged) family, whose discordant calls sound like the brayingof an ass. The Totipalmes (fully webbed) family was representedby swift frigate birds, nimbly catching fish at the surface,and by numerous tropic birds of the genus Phaeton, among othersthe red-tailed tropic bird, the size of a pigeon, its white plumageshaded with pink tints that contrasted with its dark-hued wings.
The Nautilus's nets hauled up several types of sea turtle fromthe hawksbill genus with arching backs whose scales are highly prized.Diving easily, these reptiles can remain a good while underwaterby closing the fleshy valves located at the external openings of theirnasal passages. When they were captured, some hawksbills were stillasleep inside their carapaces, a refuge from other marine animals.The flesh of these turtles was nothing memorable, but their eggsmade an excellent feast.
As for fish, they always filled us with wonderment when, staring throughthe open panels, we could unveil the secrets of their aquatic lives.I noted several species I hadn't previously been able to observe.
I'll mention chiefly some trunkfish unique to the Red Sea, the seaof the East Indies, and that part of the ocean washing the coastsof equinoctial America. Like turtles, armadillos, sea urchins,and crustaceans, these fish are protected by armor plate that'sneither chalky nor stony but actual bone. Sometimes this armor takesthe shape of a solid triangle, sometimes that of a solid quadrangle.Among the triangular type, I noticed some half a decimeter long,with brown tails, yellow fins, and wholesome, exquisitely tasty flesh;I even recommend that they be acclimatized to fresh water, a change,incidentally, that a number of saltwater fish can make with ease.I'll also mention some quadrangular trunkfish topped by four largeprotuberances along the back; trunkfish sprinkled with white spots onthe underside of the body, which make good house pets like certain birds;boxfish armed with stings formed by extensions of their bony crusts,and whose odd grunting has earned them the nickname "sea pigs";then some trunkfish known as dromedaries, with tough, leathery fleshand big conical humps.
From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrievecertain fish from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas:southern puffers with red backs and white chests distinguished bythree lengthwise rows of filaments, and jugfish, seven inches long,decked out in the brightest colors. Then, as specimens of other genera,blowfish resembling a dark brown egg, furrowed with white bands,and lacking tails; globefish, genuine porcupines of the sea,armed with stings and able to inflate themselves until they looklike a pin cushion bristling with needles; seahorses common toevery ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts and highly distendedpectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable them, if not to fly,at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped paddlefish whosetails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish with long jaws,excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and gleaming withthe most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with wrinkled heads;myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and long pectoral fins,gliding over the surface of the water with prodigious speed;delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a favorable currentlike so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on which naturehas lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow mackerelwith wings made of filaments; bullheads fo
rever spattered with mud,which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers are thoughtto be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids; finally,archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing flycatchers,armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or Chassepot:it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of water.
From the eighty-ninth fish genus in Lac?p?de's system of classification,belonging to his second subclass of bony fish (characterized by gillcovers and a bronchial membrane), I noted some scorpionfish whoseheads are adorned with stings and which have only one dorsal fin;these animals are covered with small scales, or have none at all,depending on the subgenus to which they belong. The second subgenusgave us some Didactylus specimens three to four decimeters long,streaked with yellow, their heads having a phantasmagoric appearance.As for the first subgenus, it furnished several specimens of thatbizarre fish aptly nicknamed "toadfish," whose big head is sometimesgouged with deep cavities, sometimes swollen with protuberances;bristling with stings and strewn with nodules, it sports hideouslyirregular horns; its body and tail are adorned with callosities;its stings can inflict dangerous injuries; it's repulsive and horrible.
From January 21 to the 23rd, the Nautilus traveled at the rate of 250leagues in twenty-four hours, hence 540 miles at twenty-two milesper hour. If, during our trip, we were able to identify these differentvarieties of fish, it's because they were attracted by our electriclight and tried to follow alongside; but most of them were outdistancedby our speed and soon fell behind; temporarily, however, a fewmanaged to keep pace in the Nautilus's waters.
On the morning of the 24th, in latitude 12 degrees 5'south and longitude 94 degrees 33', we raised Keeling Island,a madreporic upheaving planted with magnificent coconut trees,which had been visited by Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautiluscruised along a short distance off the shore of this desert island.Our dragnets brought up many specimens of polyps and echinodermsplus some unusual shells from the branch Mollusca. Captain Nemo'streasures were enhanced by some valuable exhibits from the delphinulasnail species, to which I joined some pointed star coral, a sortof parasitic polypary that often attaches itself to seashells.
Soon Keeling Island disappeared below the horizon, and our coursewas set to the northwest, toward the tip of the Indian peninsula.
"Civilization!" Ned Land told me that day. "Much better thanthose Papuan Islands where we ran into more savages than venison!On this Indian shore, professor, there are roads and railways,English, French, and Hindu villages. We wouldn't go five mileswithout bumping into a fellow countryman. Come on now, isn't ittime for our sudden departure from Captain Nemo?"
"No, no, Ned," I replied in a very firm tone. "Let's ride it out,as you seafaring fellows say. The Nautilus is approachingpopulated areas. It's going back toward Europe, let it take us there.After we arrive in home waters, we can do as we see fit.Besides, I don't imagine Captain Nemo will let us go huntingon the coasts of Malabar or Coromandel as he did in the forestsof New Guinea."
"Well, sir, can't we manage without his permission?"
I didn't answer the Canadian. I wanted no arguments. Deep down,I was determined to fully exploit the good fortune that had put meon board the Nautilus.
After leaving Keeling Island, our pace got generally slower.It also got more unpredictable, often taking us to great depths.Several times we used our slanting fins, which internal levers couldset at an oblique angle to our waterline. Thus we went as deepas two or three kilometers down but without ever verifying the lowestdepths of this sea near India, which soundings of 13,000 meters havebeen unable to reach. As for the temperature in these lower strata,the thermometer always and invariably indicated 4 degrees centigrade.I merely observed that in the upper layers, the water was alwayscolder over shallows than in the open sea.
On January 25, the ocean being completely deserted, the Nautilus spentthe day on the surface, churning the waves with its powerful propellerand making them spurt to great heights. Under these conditions,who wouldn't have mistaken it for a gigantic cetacean? I spentthree-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the sea.Nothing on the horizon, except near four o'clock in the afternoona long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack.Its masting was visible for an instant, but it couldn't haveseen the Nautilus because we were lying too low in the water.I imagine that steamboat belonged to the Peninsular & Oriental line,which provides service from the island of Ceylon to Sidney,also calling at King George Sound and Melbourne.
At five o'clock in the afternoon, just before that brief twilightthat links day with night in tropical zones, Conseil and I marveledat an unusual sight.
It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients,is a sign of good luck. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppianstudied its habits and lavished on its behalf all the scientific poetryof Greece and Italy. They called it "nautilus" and "pompilius."But modern science has not endorsed these designations, and thismollusk is now known by the name argonaut.
Anyone consulting Conseil would soon learn from the gallant ladthat the branch Mollusca is divided into five classes; that the firstclass features the Cephalopoda (whose members are sometimes naked,sometimes covered with a shell), which consists of two families,the Dibranchiata and the Tetrabranchiata, which are distinguishedby their number of gills; that the family Dibranchiata includesthree genera, the argonaut, the squid, and the cuttlefish, and thatthe family Tetrabranchiata contains only one genus, the nautilus.After this catalog, if some recalcitrant listener confusesthe argonaut, which is acetabuliferous (in other words, a bearerof suction tubes), with the nautilus, which is tentaculiferous(a bearer of tentacles), it will be simply unforgivable.
Now, it was a school of argonauts then voyaging on the surfaceof the ocean. We could count several hundred of them.They belonged to that species of argonaut covered with protuberancesand exclusive to the seas near India.
These graceful mollusks were swimming backward by means of theirlocomotive tubes, sucking water into these tubes and then expelling it.Six of their eight tentacles were long, thin, and floatedon the water, while the other two were rounded into palmsand spread to the wind like light sails. I could see perfectlytheir undulating, spiral-shaped shells, which Cuvier aptlycompared to an elegant cockleboat. It's an actual boat indeed.It transports the animal that secretes it without the animalsticking to it.
"The argonaut is free to leave its shell," I told Conseil,"but it never does."
"Not unlike Captain Nemo," Conseil replied sagely. "Which is whyhe should have christened his ship the Argonaut."
For about an hour the Nautilus cruised in the midst of this schoolof mollusks. Then, lord knows why, they were gripped with a sudden fear.As if at a signal, every sail was abruptly lowered; arms folded,bodies contracted, shells turned over by changing their centerof gravity, and the whole flotilla disappeared under the waves.It was instantaneous, and no squadron of ships ever maneuveredwith greater togetherness.
Just then night fell suddenly, and the waves barely surged in the breeze,spreading placidly around the Nautilus's side plates.
The next day, January 26, we cut the equator on the 82nd meridianand we reentered the northern hemisphere.
During that day a fearsome school of sharks provided us with an escort.Dreadful animals that teem in these seas and make themextremely dangerous. There were Port Jackson sharks with a brown back,a whitish belly, and eleven rows of teeth, bigeye sharks with necksmarked by a large black spot encircled in white and resembling an eye,and Isabella sharks whose rounded snouts were strewn with dark speckles.Often these powerful animals rushed at the lounge window with aviolence less than comforting. By this point Ned Land had lostall self-control. He wanted to rise to the surface of the wavesand harpoon the monsters, especially certain smooth-hound sharks whosemouths were paved with teeth arranged like a mosaic, and some bigfive-meter tiger sharks that insisted on personally provoking him.But the Nautilus soon picked up speed and easily left asternthe fastest of th
ese man-eaters.
On January 27, at the entrance to the huge Bay of Bengal,we repeatedly encountered a gruesome sight: human corpses floatingon the surface of the waves! Carried by the Ganges to the high seas,these were deceased Indian villagers who hadn't been fully devouredby vultures, the only morticians in these parts. But there was noshortage of sharks to assist them with their undertaking chores.
Near seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus layhalf submerged, navigating in the midst of milky white waves.As far as the eye could see, the ocean seemed lactified.Was it an effect of the moon's rays? No, because the new moon was barelytwo days old and was still lost below the horizon in the sun's rays.The entire sky, although lit up by stellar radiation, seemed pitch-blackin comparison with the whiteness of these waters.
Conseil couldn't believe his eyes, and he questioned me aboutthe causes of this odd phenomenon. Luckily I was in a positionto answer him.
"That's called a milk sea," I told him, "a vast expanse of white wavesoften seen along the coasts of Amboina and in these waterways."
"But," Conseil asked, "could master tell me the cause of this effect,because I presume this water hasn't really changed into milk!"
"No, my boy, and this whiteness that amazes you is merely dueto the presence of myriads of tiny creatures called infusoria,a sort of diminutive glowworm that's colorless and gelatinousin appearance, as thick as a strand of hair, and no longer thanone-fifth of a millimeter. Some of these tiny creatures sticktogether over an area of several leagues."