Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea
men rose; then, approaching the grave, they knelt again, and all
extended their hands in sign of a last adieu. Then the funeral
procession returned to the _Nautilus_, passing under the arches of the
forest, in the midst of thickets, along the coral bushes, and still on
the ascent. At last the light of the ship appeared, and its luminous
track guided us to the _Nautilus_. At one o’clock we had returned.
As soon as I had changed my clothes I went up on to the platform, and,
a prey to conflicting emotions, I sat down near the binnacle. Captain
Nemo joined me. I rose and said to him:
“So, as I said he would, this man died in the night?”
“Yes, M. Aronnax.”
“And he rests now, near his companions, in the coral cemetery?”
“Yes, forgotten by all else, but not by us. We dug the grave, and the
polypi undertake to seal our dead for eternity.” And, burying his face
quickly in his hands, he tried in vain to suppress a sob. Then he
added: “Our peaceful cemetery is there, some hundred feet below the
surface of the waves.”
“Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of the reach of
sharks.”
“Yes, sir, of sharks and men,” gravely replied the Captain.
PART TWO
CHAPTER I
THE INDIAN OCEAN
We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea. The first
ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which left such a
deep impression on my mind. Thus, in the midst of this great sea,
Captain Nemo’s life was passing, even to his grave, which he had
prepared in one of its deepest abysses. There, not one of the ocean’s
monsters could trouble the last sleep of the crew of the _Nautilus_, of
those friends riveted to each other in death as in life. “Nor any man,
either,” had added the Captain. Still the same fierce, implacable
defiance towards human society!
I could no longer content myself with the theory which satisfied
Conseil.
That worthy fellow persisted in seeing in the Commander of the
_Nautilus_ one of those unknown _savants_ who return mankind contempt
for indifference. For him, he was a misunderstood genius who, tired of
earth’s deceptions, had taken refuge in this inaccessible medium, where
he might follow his instincts freely. To my mind, this explains but one
side of Captain Nemo’s character. Indeed, the mystery of that last
night during which we had been chained in prison, the sleep, and the
precaution so violently taken by the Captain of snatching from my eyes
the glass I had raised to sweep the horizon, the mortal wound of the
man, due to an unaccountable shock of the _Nautilus_, all put me on a
new track. No; Captain Nemo was not satisfied with shunning man. His
formidable apparatus not only suited his instinct of freedom, but
perhaps also the design of some terrible retaliation.
At this moment nothing is clear to me; I catch but a glimpse of light
amidst all the darkness, and I must confine myself to writing as events
shall dictate.
That day, the 24th of January, 1868, at noon, the second officer came
to take the altitude of the sun. I mounted the platform, lit a cigar,
and watched the operation. It seemed to me that the man did not
understand French; for several times I made remarks in a loud voice,
which must have drawn from him some involuntary sign of attention, if
he had understood them; but he remained undisturbed and dumb.
As he was taking observations with the sextant, one of the sailors of
the _Nautilus_ (the strong man who had accompanied us on our first
submarine excursion to the Island of Crespo) came to clean the glasses
of the lantern. I examined the fittings of the apparatus, the strength
of which was increased a hundredfold by lenticular rings, placed
similar to those in a lighthouse, and which projected their brilliance
in a horizontal plane. The electric lamp was combined in such a way as
to give its most powerful light. Indeed, it was produced in vacuo,
which insured both its steadiness and its intensity. This vacuum
economised the graphite points between which the luminous arc was
developed—an important point of economy for Captain Nemo, who could not
easily have replaced them; and under these conditions their waste was
imperceptible. When the _Nautilus_ was ready to continue its submarine
journey, I went down to the saloon. The panel was closed, and the
course marked direct west.
We were furrowing the waters of the Indian Ocean, a vast liquid plain,
with a surface of 1,200,000,000 of acres, and whose waters are so clear
and transparent that any one leaning over them would turn giddy. The
_Nautilus_ usually floated between fifty and a hundred fathoms deep. We
went on so for some days. To any one but myself, who had a great love
for the sea, the hours would have seemed long and monotonous; but the
daily walks on the platform, when I steeped myself in the reviving air
of the ocean, the sight of the rich waters through the windows of the
saloon, the books in the library, the compiling of my memoirs, took up
all my time, and left me not a moment of ennui or weariness.
For some days we saw a great number of aquatic birds, sea-mews or
gulls. Some were cleverly killed and, prepared in a certain way, made
very acceptable water-game. Amongst large-winged birds, carried a long
distance from all lands and resting upon the waves from the fatigue of
their flight, I saw some magnificent albatrosses, uttering discordant
cries like the braying of an ass, and birds belonging to the family of
the long-wings.
As to the fish, they always provoked our admiration when we surprised
the secrets of their aquatic life through the open panels. I saw many
kinds which I never before had a chance of observing.
I shall notice chiefly ostracions peculiar to the Red Sea, the Indian
Ocean, and that part which washes the coast of tropical America. These
fishes, like the tortoise, the armadillo, the sea-hedgehog, and the
Crustacea, are protected by a breastplate which is neither chalky nor
stony, but real bone. In some it takes the form of a solid triangle, in
others of a solid quadrangle. Amongst the triangular I saw some an inch
and a half in length, with wholesome flesh and a delicious flavour;
they are brown at the tail, and yellow at the fins, and I recommend
their introduction into fresh water, to which a certain number of
sea-fish easily accustom themselves. I would also mention quadrangular
ostracions, having on the back four large tubercles; some dotted over
with white spots on the lower part of the body, and which may be tamed
like birds; trigons provided with spikes formed by the lengthening of
their bony shell, and which, from their strange gruntings, are called
“seapigs”; also dromedaries with large humps in the shape of a cone,
whose flesh is very tough and leathery.
I now borrow from the daily notes of Master Conseil. “Certain fish of
the genus petrodon peculiar to those seas, with red backs and white
chests, which are distinguished by three rows of longitudinal
filaments; and some electrical, seven inches long, decked in the
liveliest colours. Then, as specimens of other kinds, some ovoides,
resembling an egg of a dark brown colour, marked with white bands, and
without tails; diodons, real sea-porcupines, furnished with spikes, and
capable of swelling in such a way as to look like cushions bristling
with darts; hippocampi, common to every ocean; some pegasi with
lengthened snouts, which their pectoral fins, being much elongated and
formed in the shape of wings, allow, if not to fly, at least to shoot
into the air; pigeon spatulae, with tails covered with many rings of
shell; macrognathi with long jaws, an excellent fish, nine inches long,
and bright with most agreeable colours; pale-coloured calliomores, with
rugged heads; and plenty of chaetodons, with long and tubular muzzles,
which kill insects by shooting them, as from an air-gun, with a single
drop of water. These we may call the flycatchers of the seas.
“In the eighty-ninth genus of fishes, classed by Lacepede, belonging to
the second lower class of bony, characterised by opercules and
bronchial membranes, I remarked the scorpaena, the head of which is
furnished with spikes, and which has but one dorsal fin; these
creatures are covered, or not, with little shells, according to the
sub-class to which they belong. The second sub-class gives us specimens
of didactyles fourteen or fifteen inches in length, with yellow rays,
and heads of a most fantastic appearance. As to the first sub-class, it
gives several specimens of that singular looking fish appropriately
called a ‘seafrog,’ with large head, sometimes pierced with holes,
sometimes swollen with protuberances, bristling with spikes, and
covered with tubercles; it has irregular and hideous horns; its body
and tail are covered with callosities; its sting makes a dangerous
wound; it is both repugnant and horrible to look at.”
From the 21st to the 23rd of January the _Nautilus_ went at the rate of
two hundred and fifty leagues in twenty-four hours, being five hundred
and forty miles, or twenty-two miles an hour. If we recognised so many
different varieties of fish, it was because, attracted by the electric
light, they tried to follow us; the greater part, however, were soon
distanced by our speed, though some kept their place in the waters of
the _Nautilus_ for a time. The morning of the 24th, in 12° 5′ S. lat.,
and 94° 33′ long., we observed Keeling Island, a coral formation,
planted with magnificent cocos, and which had been visited by Mr.
Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The _Nautilus_ skirted the shores of this
desert island for a little distance. Its nets brought up numerous
specimens of polypi and curious shells of mollusca. Some precious
productions of the species of delphinulae enriched the treasures of
Captain Nemo, to which I added an astraea punctifera, a kind of
parasite polypus often found fixed to a shell.
Soon Keeling Island disappeared from the horizon, and our course was
directed to the north-west in the direction of the Indian Peninsula.
From Keeling Island our course was slower and more variable, often
taking us into great depths. Several times they made use of the
inclined planes, which certain internal levers placed obliquely to the
waterline. In that way we went about two miles, but without ever
obtaining the greatest depths of the Indian Sea, which soundings of
seven thousand fathoms have never reached. As to the temperature of the
lower strata, the thermometer invariably indicated 4° above zero. I
only observed that in the upper regions the water was always colder in
the high levels than at the surface of the sea.
On the 25th of January the ocean was entirely deserted; the _Nautilus_
passed the day on the surface, beating the waves with its powerful
screw and making them rebound to a great height. Who under such
circumstances would not have taken it for a gigantic cetacean? Three
parts of this day I spent on the platform. I watched the sea. Nothing
on the horizon, till about four o’clock a steamer running west on our
counter. Her masts were visible for an instant, but she could not see
the _Nautilus_, being too low in the water. I fancied this steamboat
belonged to the P. O. Company, which runs from Ceylon to Sydney,
touching at King George’s Point and Melbourne.
At five o’clock in the evening, before that fleeting twilight which
binds night to day in tropical zones, Conseil and I were astonished by
a curious spectacle.
It was a shoal of argonauts travelling along on the surface of the
ocean. We could count several hundreds. They belonged to the tubercle
kind which are peculiar to the Indian seas.
These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of their locomotive
tube, through which they propelled the water already drawn in. Of their