_ BY THE NEXT MORNING, November 18, I was fully recovered from my
exhaustion of the day before, and I climbed onto the platform just
as the Nautilus's chief officer was pronouncing his daily phrase.
It then occurred to me that these words either referred to the state
of the sea, or that they meant: "There's nothing in sight."
And in truth, the ocean was deserted. Not a sail on the horizon.
The tips of Crespo Island had disappeared during the night.
The sea, absorbing every color of the prism except its blue rays,
reflected the latter in every direction and sported a wonderful
indigo tint. The undulating waves regularly took on the appearance
of watered silk with wide stripes.
I was marveling at this magnificent ocean view when
Captain Nemo appeared. He didn't seem to notice my presence and began
a series of astronomical observations. Then, his operations finished,
he went and leaned his elbows on the beacon housing, his eyes
straying over the surface of the ocean.
Meanwhile some twenty of the Nautilus's sailors--all energetic,
well-built fellows--climbed onto the platform. They had come
to pull up the nets left in our wake during the night.
These seamen obviously belonged to different nationalities, although
indications of European physical traits could be seen in them all.
If I'm not mistaken, I recognized some Irishmen, some Frenchmen,
a few Slavs, and a native of either Greece or Crete. Even so,
these men were frugal of speech and used among themselves
only that bizarre dialect whose origin I couldn't even guess.
So I had to give up any notions of questioning them.
The nets were hauled on board. They were a breed of trawl resembling
those used off the Normandy coast, huge pouches held half open
by a floating pole and a chain laced through the lower meshes.
Trailing in this way from these iron glove makers, the resulting
receptacles scoured the ocean floor and collected every marine exhibit
in their path. That day they gathered up some unusual specimens
from these fish-filled waterways: anglerfish whose comical movements
qualify them for the epithet "clowns," black Commerson anglers equipped
with their antennas, undulating triggerfish encircled by little
red bands, bloated puffers whose venom is extremely insidious,
some olive-hued lampreys, snipefish covered with silver scales,
cutlass fish whose electrocuting power equals that of the electric eel
and the electric ray, scaly featherbacks with brown crosswise bands,
greenish codfish, several varieties of goby, etc.; finally, some fish
of larger proportions: a one-meter jack with a prominent head,
several fine bonito from the genus Scomber decked out in the colors
blue and silver, and three magnificent tuna whose high speeds
couldn't save them from our trawl.
I estimate that this cast of the net brought in more than 1,000
pounds of fish. It was a fine catch but not surprising.
In essence, these nets stayed in our wake for several hours,
incarcerating an entire aquatic world in prisons made of thread.
So we were never lacking in provisions of the highest quality,
which the Nautilus's speed and the allure of its electric light
could continually replenish.
These various exhibits from the sea were immediately lowered
down the hatch in the direction of the storage lockers, some to be
eaten fresh, others to be preserved.
After its fishing was finished and its air supply renewed,
I thought the Nautilus would resume its underwater excursion,
and I was getting ready to return to my stateroom, when Captain Nemo
turned to me and said without further preamble:
"Look at this ocean, professor! Doesn't it have the actual
gift of life? Doesn't it experience both anger and affection?
Last evening it went to sleep just as we did, and there it is,
waking up after a peaceful night!"
No hellos or good mornings for this gent! You would have thought
this eccentric individual was simply continuing a conversation
we'd already started!
"See!" he went on. "It's waking up under the sun's caresses!
It's going to relive its daily existence! What a fascinating
field of study lies in watching the play of its organism.
It owns a pulse and arteries, it has spasms, and I side with the
scholarly Commander Maury, who discovered that it has a circulation
as real as the circulation of blood in animals."
I'm sure that Captain Nemo expected no replies from me, and it
seemed pointless to pitch in with "Ah yes," "Exactly," or "How
right you are!" Rather, he was simply talking to himself,
with long pauses between sentences. He was meditating out loud.
"Yes," he said, "the ocean owns a genuine circulation,
and to start it going, the Creator of All Things has only
to increase its heat, salt, and microscopic animal life.
In essence, heat creates the different densities that lead
to currents and countercurrents. Evaporation, which is nil
in the High Arctic regions and very active in equatorial zones,
brings about a constant interchange of tropical and polar waters.
What's more, I've detected those falling and rising currents that make
up the ocean's true breathing. I've seen a molecule of salt water
heat up at the surface, sink into the depths, reach maximum density
at -2 degrees centigrade, then cool off, grow lighter, and rise again.
At the poles you'll see the consequences of this phenomenon,
and through this law of farseeing nature, you'll understand why
water can freeze only at the surface!"
As the captain was finishing his sentence, I said to myself:
"The pole! Is this brazen individual claiming he'll take us even
to that location?"
Meanwhile the captain fell silent and stared at the element he had
studied so thoroughly and unceasingly. Then, going on:
"Salts," he said, "fill the sea in considerable quantities, professor,
and if you removed all its dissolved saline content, you'd create
a mass measuring 4,500,000 cubic leagues, which if it were spread
all over the globe, would form a layer more than ten meters high.
And don't think that the presence of these salts is due merely
to some whim of nature. No. They make ocean water less open to
evaporation and prevent winds from carrying off excessive amounts
of steam, which, when condensing, would submerge the temperate zones.
Salts play a leading role, the role of stabilizer for the general
ecology of the globe!"
Captain Nemo stopped, straightened up, took a few steps along
the platform, and returned to me:
"As for those billions of tiny animals," he went on, "those infusoria
that live by the millions in one droplet of water, 800,000 of which
are needed to weigh one milligram, their role is no less important.
They absorb the marine salts, they assimilate the solid elements
in the water, and since they create coral and madrepores,
they're the true builders of limestone continents! And so,
after they've finished depriving our water drop of its mineral nutrients,
the droplet gets lighter, rises to the surface, there absorbs more
salts left behind through evaporation, gets heavier, sinks again,
and brings those tiny animals new elements to absorb. The outcome:
a double current, rising and falling, constant movement, constant life!
More intense than on land, more abundant, more infinite, such life
blooms in every part of this ocean, an element fatal to man,
they say, but vital to myriads of animals--and to me!"
When Captain Nemo spoke in this way, he was transfigured,
and he filled me with extraordinary excitement.
"There," he added, "out there lies true existence! And I can imagine
the founding of nautical towns, clusters of underwater households that,
like the Nautilus, would return to the surface of the sea to breathe
each morning, free towns if ever there were, independent cities!
Then again, who knows whether some tyrant . . ."
Captain Nemo finished his sentence with a vehement gesture.
Then, addressing me directly, as if to drive away an ugly thought:
"Professor Aronnax," he asked me, "do you know the depth of
the ocean floor?"
"At least, captain, I know what the major soundings tell us."
"Could you quote them to me, so I can double-check them as
the need arises?"
"Here," I replied, "are a few of them that stick in my memory.
If I'm not mistaken, an average depth of 8,200 meters was found in
the north Atlantic, and 2,500 meters in the Mediterranean. The most
remarkable soundings were taken in the south Atlantic near the 35th
parallel, and they gave 12,000 meters, 14,091 meters, and 15,149 meters.
All in all, it's estimated that if the sea bottom were made level,
its average depth would be about seven kilometers."
"Well, professor," Captain Nemo replied, "we'll show you better
than that, I hope. As for the average depth of this part of
the Pacific, I'll inform you that it's a mere 4,000 meters."
This said, Captain Nemo headed to the hatch and disappeared down
the ladder. I followed him and went back to the main lounge.
The propeller was instantly set in motion, and the log gave our speed
as twenty miles per hour.
Over the ensuing days and weeks, Captain Nemo was very frugal
with his visits. I saw him only at rare intervals. His chief
officer regularly fixed the positions I found reported on the chart,
and in such a way that I could exactly plot the Nautilus's course.
Conseil and Land spent the long hours with me. Conseil had told
his friend about the wonders of our undersea stroll, and the Canadian
was sorry he hadn't gone along. But I hoped an opportunity would
arise for a visit to the forests of Oceania.
Almost every day the panels in the lounge were open for some hours,
and our eyes never tired of probing the mysteries of the underwater world.
The Nautilus's general heading was southeast, and it stayed at a depth
between 100 and 150 meters. However, from lord-knows-what whim,
one day it did a diagonal dive by means of its slanting fins,
reaching strata located 2,000 meters underwater. The thermometer
indicated a temperature of 4.25 degrees centigrade, which at this
depth seemed to be a temperature common to all latitudes.
On November 26, at three o'clock in the morning, the Nautilus
cleared the Tropic of Cancer at longitude 172 degrees. On the 27th
it passed in sight of the Hawaiian Islands, where the famous
Captain Cook met his death on February 14, 1779. By then we
had fared 4,860 leagues from our starting point. When I arrived
on the platform that morning, I saw the Island of Hawaii two miles
to leeward, the largest of the seven islands making up this group.
I could clearly distinguish the tilled soil on its outskirts,
the various mountain chains running parallel with its coastline,
and its volcanoes, crowned by Mauna Kea, whose elevation is 5,000
meters above sea level. Among other specimens from these waterways,
our nets brought up some peacock-tailed flabellarian coral,
polyps flattened into stylish shapes and unique to this part
of the ocean.
The Nautilus kept to its southeasterly heading. On December 1
it cut the equator at longitude 142 degrees, and on the 4th
of the same month, after a quick crossing marked by no incident,
we raised the Marquesas Islands. Three miles off, in latitude 8
degrees 57' south and longitude 139 degrees 32' west, I spotted
Martin Point on Nuku Hiva, chief member of this island group
that belongs to France. I could make out only its wooded mountains
on the horizon, because Captain Nemo hated to hug shore.
There our nets brought up some fine fish samples: dolphinfish with
azure fins, gold tails, and flesh that's unrivaled in the entire world,
wrasse from the genus Hologymnosus that were nearly denuded
of scales but exquisite in flavor, knifejaws with bony beaks,
yellowish albacore that were as tasty as bonito, all fish worth
classifying in the ship's pantry.
After leaving these delightful islands to the protection of the French
flag, the Nautilus covered about 2,000 miles from December 4 to the 11th.
Its navigating was marked by an encounter with an immense school
of squid, unusual mollusks that are near neighbors of the cuttlefish.
French fishermen give them the name "cuckoldfish," and they
belong to the class Cephalopoda, family Dibranchiata,
consisting of themselves together with cuttlefish and argonauts.
The naturalists of antiquity made a special study of them,
and these animals furnished many ribald figures of speech for soapbox
orators in the Greek marketplace, as well as excellent dishes
for the tables of rich citizens, if we're to believe Athenaeus,
a Greek physician predating Galen.
It was during the night of December 9-10 that the Nautilus encountered
this army of distinctly nocturnal mollusks. They numbered in
the millions. They were migrating from the temperate zones toward
zones still warmer, following the itineraries of herring and sardines.
We stared at them through our thick glass windows: they swam backward
with tremendous speed, moving by means of their locomotive tubes,
chasing fish and mollusks, eating the little ones, eaten by the big ones,
and tossing in indescribable confusion the ten feet that nature
has rooted in their heads like a hairpiece of pneumatic snakes.
Despite its speed, the Nautilus navigated for several hours
in the midst of this school of animals, and its nets brought up
an incalculable number, among which I recognized all nine species
that Professor Orbigny has classified as native to the Pacific Ocean.
During this crossing, the sea continually lavished us
with the most marvelous sights. Its variety was infinite.
It changed its setting and decor for the mere pleasure of our eyes,
and we were called upon not simply to contemplate the works of our
Creator in the midst of the liquid element, but also to probe
the ocean's most daunting mysteries.
During the day of December 11, I was busy reading in the main lounge.
Ned Land and Conseil were observing the luminous waters
through the gaping panels. The Nautilus was motionless.
Its ballast tanks full, it was sitting at a depth of 1,000 meters
in a comparatively unpopulated region of the ocean where only larger
fish put in occasional appearances.
Just then I was studying a delightful book by Jean Macé, The Servants
of the Stomach, and savoring its ingenious teachings, when Conseil
interrupted my reading.
"Would master kindly come here for an instant?" he said to me
in an odd voice.
"What is it, Conseil?"
"It's something that master should see."
I stood up, went, leaned on my elbows before the window, and I saw it.
In the broad electric daylight, an enormous black mass, quite motionless,
hung suspended in the midst of the waters. I observed it carefully,
trying to find out the nature of this gigantic cetacean.
Then a sudden thought crossed my mind.
"A ship!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," the Canadian replied, "a disabled craft that's
sinking straight down!"
Ned Land was not mistaken. We were in the presence of a ship whose
severed shrouds still hung from their clasps. Its hull looked in
good condition, and it must have gone under only a few hours before.
The stumps of three masts, chopped off two feet above the deck,
indicated a flooding ship that had been forced to sacrifice its masting.
But it had heeled sideways, filling completely, and it was listing
to port even yet. A sorry sight, this carcass lost under the waves,
but sorrier still was the sight on its deck, where, lashed with ropes
to prevent their being washed overboard, some human corpses still lay!
I counted four of them--four men, one still standing at the helm--
then a woman, halfway out of a skylight on the afterdeck,
holding a child in her arms. This woman was young.
Under the brilliant lighting of the Nautilus's rays, I could
make out her features, which the water hadn't yet decomposed.
With a supreme effort, she had lifted her child above her head,
and the poor little creature's arms were still twined around its
mother's neck! The postures of the four seamen seemed ghastly to me,
twisted from convulsive movements, as if making a last effort
to break loose from the ropes that bound them to their ship.
And the helmsman, standing alone, calmer, his face smooth and serious,
his grizzled hair plastered to his brow, his hands clutching the wheel,
seemed even yet to be guiding his wrecked three-master through
the ocean depths!
What a scene! We stood dumbstruck, hearts pounding, before this
shipwreck caught in the act, as if it had been photographed in its
final moments, so to speak! And already I could see enormous sharks
moving in, eyes ablaze, drawn by the lure of human flesh!
Meanwhile, turning, the Nautilus made a circle around the sinking ship,
and for an instant I could read the board on its stern:
The Florida
Sunderland, England _