Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. English

  "Today," Ned Land said.

  "So be it. I'll see him today," I answered the Canadian, who,if he took action himself, would certainly have ruined everything.

  I was left to myself. His request granted, I decided to disposeof it immediately. I like things over and done with.

  I reentered my stateroom. From there I could hear movementsinside Captain Nemo's quarters. I couldn't pass up this chancefor an encounter. I knocked on his door. I received no reply.I knocked again, then tried the knob. The door opened.

  I entered. The captain was there. He was bending over his worktableand hadn't heard me. Determined not to leave without questioning him,I drew closer. He looked up sharply, with a frowning brow,and said in a pretty stern tone:

  "Oh, it's you! What do you want?"

  "To speak with you, captain."

  "But I'm busy, sir, I'm at work. I give you the freedom to enjoyyour privacy, can't I have the same for myself?"

  This reception was less than encouraging. But I was determinedto give as good as I got.

  "Sir," I said coolly, "I need to speak with you on a matter thatsimply can't wait."

  "Whatever could that be, sir?" he replied sarcastically."Have you made some discovery that has escaped me? Has the seayielded up some novel secret to you?"

  We were miles apart. But before I could reply, he showed mea manuscript open on the table and told me in a more serious tone:

  "Here, Professor Aronnax, is a manuscript written in several languages.It contains a summary of my research under the sea, and God willing, itwon't perish with me. Signed with my name, complete with my life story,this manuscript will be enclosed in a small, unsinkable contrivance.The last surviving man on the Nautilus will throw this contrivanceinto the sea, and it will go wherever the waves carry it."

  The man's name! His life story written by himself!So the secret of his existence might someday be unveiled?But just then I saw this announcement only as a lead-in to my topic.

  "Captain," I replied, "I'm all praise for this idea you're puttinginto effect. The fruits of your research must not be lost.But the methods you're using strike me as primitive. Who knows wherethe winds will take that contrivance, into whose hands it may fall?Can't you find something better? Can't you or one of your men--"

  "Never, sir," the captain said, swiftly interrupting me.

  "But my companions and I would be willing to safeguard this manuscript,and if you give us back our freedom--"

  "Your freedom!" Captain Nemo put in, standing up.

  "Yes, sir, and that's the subject on which I wanted to confer with you.For seven months we've been aboard your vessel, and I ask you today,in the name of my companions as well as myself, if you intendto keep us here forever."

  "Professor Aronnax," Captain Nemo said, "I'll answer you todayjust as I did seven months ago: whoever boards the Nautilus mustnever leave it."

  "What you're inflicting on us is outright slavery!"

  "Call it anything you like."

  "But every slave has the right to recover his freedom!By any worthwhile, available means!"

  "Who has denied you that right?" Captain Nemo replied."Did I ever try to bind you with your word of honor?"

  The captain stared at me, crossing his arms.

  "Sir," I told him, "to take up this subject a second time wouldbe distasteful to both of us. So let's finish what we've started.I repeat: it isn't just for myself that I raise this issue.To me, research is a relief, a potent diversion, an enticement,a passion that can make me forget everything else. Like you, I'm a manneglected and unknown, living in the faint hope that someday I can passon to future generations the fruits of my labors--figuratively speaking,by means of some contrivance left to the luck of winds and waves.In short, I can admire you and comfortably go with you while playinga role I only partly understand; but I still catch glimpsesof other aspects of your life that are surrounded by involvementsand secrets that, alone on board, my companions and I can't share.And even when our hearts could beat with yours, moved by some of yourgriefs or stirred by your deeds of courage and genius, we've had to stifleeven the slightest token of that sympathy that arises at the sightof something fine and good, whether it comes from friend or enemy.All right then! It's this feeling of being alien to your deepestconcerns that makes our situation unacceptable, impossible,even impossible for me but especially for Ned Land. Every man,by virtue of his very humanity, deserves fair treatment.Have you considered how a love of freedom and hatred of slavery couldlead to plans of vengeance in a temperament like the Canadian's,what he might think, attempt, endeavor . . . ?"

  I fell silent. Captain Nemo stood up.

  "Ned Land can think, attempt, or endeavor anything he wants,what difference is it to me? I didn't go looking for him!I don't keep him on board for my pleasure! As for you, Professor Aronnax,you're a man able to understand anything, even silence.I have nothing more to say to you. Let this first time you've cometo discuss this subject also be the last, because a second time Iwon't even listen."

  I withdrew. From that day forward our position was very strained.I reported this conversation to my two companions.

  "Now we know," Ned said, "that we can't expect a thing from this man.The Nautilus is nearing Long Island. We'll escape, no matterwhat the weather."

  But the skies became more and more threatening. There wereconspicuous signs of a hurricane on the way. The atmosphere wasturning white and milky. Slender sheaves of cirrus clouds werefollowed on the horizon by layers of nimbocumulus. Other low cloudsfled swiftly. The sea grew towering, inflated by long swells.Every bird had disappeared except a few petrels, friends of the storms.The barometer fell significantly, indicating a tremendous tensionin the surrounding haze. The mixture in our stormglass decomposedunder the influence of the electricity charging the air.A struggle of the elements was approaching.

  The storm burst during the daytime of May 13, just as the Nautiluswas cruising abreast of Long Island, a few miles from the narrowsto Upper New York Bay. I'm able to describe this struggle ofthe elements because Captain Nemo didn't flee into the ocean depths;instead, from some inexplicable whim, he decided to brave it outon the surface.

  The wind was blowing from the southwest, initially a stiff breeze,in other words, with a speed of fifteen meters per second,which built to twenty-five meters near three o'clock in the afternoon.This is the figure for major storms.

  Unshaken by these squalls, Captain Nemo stationed himselfon the platform. He was lashed around the waist to withstandthe monstrous breakers foaming over the deck. I hoisted and attachedmyself to the same place, dividing my wonderment between the stormand this incomparable man who faced it head-on.

  The raging sea was swept with huge tattered clouds drenchedby the waves. I saw no more of the small intervening billowsthat form in the troughs of the big crests. Just long,soot-colored undulations with crests so compact they didn't foam.They kept growing taller. They were spurring each other on.The Nautilus, sometimes lying on its side, sometimes standing on endlike a mast, rolled and pitched frightfully.

  Near five o'clock a torrential rain fell, but it lulled neitherwind nor sea. The hurricane was unleashed at a speed of forty-fivemeters per second, hence almost forty leagues per hour.Under these conditions houses topple, roof tiles puncture doors,iron railings snap in two, and twenty-four-pounder cannons relocate.And yet in the midst of this turmoil, the Nautilus lived up to that sayingof an expert engineer: "A well-constructed hull can defy any sea!"This submersible was no resisting rock that waves could demolish;it was a steel spindle, obediently in motion, without riggingor masting, and able to brave their fury with impunity.

  Meanwhile I was carefully examining these unleashed breakers.They measured up to fifteen meters in height over a lengthof 150 to 175 meters, and the speed of their propagation(half that of the wind) was fifteen meters per second.Their volume and power increased with the depth of the waters.I then understood the role played by these waves, which trap airi
n their flanks and release it in the depths of the sea where itsoxygen brings life. Their utmost pressure--it has been calculated--can build to 3,000 kilograms on every square foot of surface they strike.It was such waves in the Hebrides that repositioned a stone blockweighing 84,000 pounds. It was their relatives in the tidal waveon December 23, 1854, that toppled part of the Japanese city of Tokyo,then went that same day at 700 kilometers per hour to break onthe beaches of America.

  After nightfall the storm grew in intensity. As in the 1860 cycloneon R?union Island, the barometer fell to 710 millimeters. At the closeof day, I saw a big ship passing on the horizon, struggling painfully.It lay to at half steam in an effort to hold steady on the waves.It must have been a steamer on one of those lines out of New Yorkto Liverpool or Le Havre. It soon vanished into the shadows.

  At ten o'clock in the evening, the skies caught on fire.The air was streaked with violent flashes of lightning.I couldn't stand this brightness, but Captain Nemo staredstraight at it, as if to inhale the spirit of the storm.A dreadful noise filled the air, a complicated noise made up of the roarof crashing breakers, the howl of the wind, claps of thunder.The wind shifted to every point of the horizon, and the cycloneleft the east to return there after passing through north, west,and south, moving in the opposite direction of revolving stormsin the southern hemisphere.

  Oh, that Gulf Stream! It truly lives up to its nickname,the Lord of Storms! All by itself it creates these fearsomecyclones through the difference in temperature between its currentsand the superimposed layers of air.

  The rain was followed by a downpour of fire. Droplets of waterchanged into exploding tufts. You would have thought Captain Nemo wascourting a death worthy of himself, seeking to be struck by lightning.In one hideous pitching movement, the Nautilus reared its steelspur into the air like a lightning rod, and I saw long sparksshoot down it.

  Shattered, at the end of my strength, I slid flat on my bellyto the hatch. I opened it and went below to the lounge.By then the storm had reached its maximum intensity.It was impossible to stand upright inside the Nautilus.

  Captain Nemo reentered near midnight. I could hear the ballasttanks filling little by little, and the Nautilus sank gently beneaththe surface of the waves.

  Through the lounge's open windows, I saw large, frightened fishpassing like phantoms in the fiery waters. Some were struckby lightning right before my eyes!

  The Nautilus kept descending. I thought it would find calm again atfifteen meters down. No. The upper strata were too violently agitated.It needed to sink to fifty meters, searching for a resting placein the bowels of the sea.

  But once there, what tranquility we found, what silence, what peaceall around us! Who would have known that a dreadful hurricanewas then unleashed on the surface of this ocean?

  CHAPTER 20

  In Latitude 47 degrees 24' and Longitude 17 degrees 28'

  IN THE AFTERMATH of this storm, we were thrown back to the east.Away went any hope of

  escaping to the landing places of New York or the St. Lawrence.In despair, poor Ned went into seclusion like Captain Nemo. Conseil andI no longer left each other.

  As I said, the Nautilus veered to the east. To be more accurate,I should have said to the northeast. Sometimes on the surfaceof the waves, sometimes beneath them, the ship wandered for daysamid these mists so feared by navigators. These are causedchiefly by melting ice, which keeps the air extremely damp.How many ships have perished in these waterways as theytried to get directions from the hazy lights on the coast!How many casualties have been caused by these opaque mists!How many collisions have occurred with these reefs,where the breaking surf is covered by the noise of the wind!How many vessels have rammed each other, despite their running lights,despite the warnings given by their bosun's pipes and alarm bells!

  So the floor of this sea had the appearance of a battlefield where everyship defeated by the ocean still lay, some already old and encrusted,others newer and reflecting our beacon light on their ironworkand copper undersides. Among these vessels, how many went down withall hands, with their crews and hosts of immigrants, at these troublespots so prominent in the statistics: Cape Race, St. Paul Island,the Strait of Belle Isle, the St. Lawrence estuary!And in only a few years, how many victims have been furnished tothe obituary notices by the Royal Mail, Inman, and Montreal lines;by vessels named the Solway, the Isis, the Paramatta, the Hungarian,the Canadian, the Anglo-Saxon, the Humboldt, and the United States,all run aground; by the Arctic and the Lyonnais, sunk in collisions;by the President, the Pacific, and the City of Glasgow,lost for reasons unknown; in the midst of their gloomy rubble,the Nautilus navigated as if passing the dead in review!

  By May 15 we were off the southern tip of the Grand Banksof Newfoundland. These banks are the result of marine sedimentation,an extensive accumulation of organic waste brought either fromthe equator by the Gulf Stream's current, or from the North Poleby the countercurrent of cold water that skirts the American coast.Here, too, erratically drifting chunks collect from the ice breakup.Here a huge boneyard forms from fish, mollusks, and zoophytes dyingover it by the billions.

  The sea is of no great depth at the Grand Banks. A few hundredfathoms at best. But to the south there is a deep, suddenly occurringdepression, a 3,000-meter pit. Here the Gulf Stream widens.Its waters come to full bloom. It loses its speed and temperature,but it turns into a sea.

  Among the fish that the Nautilus startled on its way, I'll mentiona one-meter lumpfish, blackish on top with orange on the bellyand rare among its brethren in that it practices monogamy,a good-sized eelpout, a type of emerald moray whose flavor is excellent,wolffish with big eyes in a head somewhat resembling a canine's,viviparous blennies whose eggs hatch inside their bodies like thoseof snakes, bloated gobio (or black gudgeon) measuring two decimeters,grenadiers with long tails and gleaming with a silvery glow,speedy fish venturing far from their High Arctic seas.

  Our nets also hauled in a bold, daring, vigorous, and muscularfish armed with prickles on its head and stings on its fins,a real scorpion measuring two to three meters, the ruthless enemyof cod, blennies, and salmon; it was the bullhead of the northerly seas,a fish with red fins and a brown body covered with nodules.The Nautilus's fishermen had some trouble getting a grip onthis animal, which, thanks to the formation of its gill covers,can protect its respiratory organs from any parching contactwith the air and can live out of water for a good while.

  And I'll mention--for the record--some little banded blennies thatfollow ships into the northernmost seas, sharp-snouted carp exclusiveto the north Atlantic, scorpionfish, and lastly the gadoid family,chiefly the cod species, which I detected in their waters of choiceover these inexhaustible Grand Banks.

  Because Newfoundland is simply an underwater peak, you couldcall these cod mountain fish. While the Nautilus was clearinga path through their tight ranks, Conseil couldn't refrain frommaking this comment:

  "Mercy, look at these cod!" he said. "Why, I thought cod were flat,like dab or sole!"

  "Innocent boy!" I exclaimed. "Cod are flat only at thegrocery store, where they're cut open and spread out on display.But in the water they're like mullet, spindle-shaped and perfectlybuilt for speed."

  "I can easily believe master," Conseil replied. "But what crowdsof them! What swarms!"

  "Bah! My friend, there'd be many more without their enemies,scorpionfish and human beings! Do you know how many eggs have beencounted in a single female?"

  "I'll go all out," Conseil replied. "500,000."

  "11,000,000, my friend."

  "11,000,000! I refuse to accept that until I count them myself."

  "So count them, Conseil. But it would be less work to believe me.Besides, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Danes, and Norwegians catchthese cod by the thousands. They're eaten in prodigious quantities,and without the astonishing fertility of these fish, the seaswould soon be depopulated of them. Accordingly, in England andAmerica alone, 5,000 ships manned by 75,000 seamen go
after cod.Each ship brings back an average catch of 4,400 fish, making 22,000,000.Off the coast of Norway, the total is the same."

  "Fine," Conseil replied, "I'll take master's word for it.I won't count them."

  "Count what?"

  "Those 11,000,000 eggs. But I'll make one comment."

  "What's that?"

  "If all their eggs hatched, just four codfish could feedEngland, America, and Norway."

  As we skimmed the depths of the Grand Banks, I could see perfectlythose long fishing lines, each armed with 200 hooks, that everyboat dangled by the dozens. The lower end of each line draggedthe bottom by means of a small grappling iron, and at the surfaceit was secured to the buoy-rope of a cork float. The Nautilus hadto maneuver shrewdly in the midst of this underwater spiderweb.

  But the ship didn't stay long in these heavily traveled waterways.It went up to about latitude 42 degrees. This brought itabreast of St. John's in Newfoundland and Heart's Content,where the Atlantic Cable reaches its end point.

  Instead of continuing north, the Nautilus took an easterly heading,as if to go along this plateau on which the telegraph cable rests,where multiple soundings have given the contours of the terrainwith the utmost accuracy.

  It was on May 17, about 500 miles from Heart's Content and 2,800meters down, that I spotted this cable lying on the seafloor.Conseil, whom I hadn't alerted, mistook it at first for a giganticsea snake and was gearing up to classify it in his best manner.But I enlightened the fine lad and let him down gently by givinghim various details on the laying of this cable.