________________________________________________
_ NOW WE BEGIN the second part of this voyage under the seas.
The first ended in that moving scene at the coral cemetery,
which left a profound impression on my mind. And so Captain Nemo
would live out his life entirely in the heart of this immense sea,
and even his grave lay ready in its impenetrable depths.
There the last sleep of the Nautilus's occupants, friends bound together
in death as in life, would be disturbed by no monster of the deep!
"No man either!" the captain had added.
Always that same fierce, implacable defiance of human society!
As for me, I was no longer content with the hypotheses
that satisfied Conseil. That fine lad persisted in seeing
the Nautilus's commander as merely one of those unappreciated
scientists who repay humanity's indifference with contempt.
For Conseil, the captain was still a misunderstood genius who,
tired of the world's deceptions, had been driven to take refuge in this
inaccessible environment where he was free to follow his instincts.
But to my mind, this hypothesis explained only one side of Captain Nemo.
In fact, the mystery of that last afternoon when we were locked in
prison and put to sleep, the captain's violent precaution of snatching
from my grasp a spyglass poised to scour the horizon, and the fatal
wound given that man during some unexplained collision suffered
by the Nautilus, all led me down a plain trail. No! Captain Nemo
wasn't content simply to avoid humanity! His fearsome submersible
served not only his quest for freedom, but also, perhaps, it was
used in lord-knows-what schemes of dreadful revenge.
Right now, nothing is clear to me, I still glimpse only glimmers
in the dark, and I must limit my pen, as it were, to taking
dictation from events.
But nothing binds us to Captain Nemo. He believes that escaping from
the Nautilus is impossible. We are not even constrained by our word
of honor. No promises fetter us. We're simply captives, prisoners
masquerading 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 making
off with the Nautilus's secrets, so generously unveiled for us by
Captain 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 underwater
tour of the world, whose first stages have been so magnificent.
I want to observe the full series of these wonders gathered under
the 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 near
to populated shores, and if some chance for salvation becomes
available to us, it would be sheer cruelty to sacrifice my
companions 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 take
the 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't
understand French, because I made several remarks in a loud voice
that were bound to provoke him to some involuntary show of interest
had 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 first
underwater excursion--came up to clean the glass panes of the beacon.
I then examined the fittings of this mechanism, whose power was
increased a hundredfold by biconvex lenses that were designed
like those in a lighthouse and kept its rays productively focused.
This electric lamp was so constructed as to yield its maximum
illuminating power. In essence, its light was generated in a vacuum,
insuring both its steadiness and intensity. Such a vacuum also reduced
wear on the graphite points between which the luminous arc expanded.
This was an important savings for Captain Nemo, who couldn't
easily renew them. But under these conditions, wear and tear
were 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 plains
with an area of 550,000,000 hectares, whose waters are so transparent
it makes you dizzy to lean over their surface. There the Nautilus
generally drifted at a depth between 100 and 200 meters.
It behaved in this way for some days. To anyone without my grand
passion for the sea, these hours would surely have seemed long
and monotonous; but my daily strolls on the platform where I was
revived by the life-giving ocean air, the sights in the rich waters
beyond the lounge windows, the books to be read in the library,
and the composition of my memoirs, took up all my time and left me
without 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 to
worry about catching colds. Besides, the ship had a good stock of
the madrepore Dendrophylia, known in Provence by the name sea fennel,
and a poultice made from the dissolved flesh of its polyps will
furnish 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 cooked
in a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of water game.
Among the great wind riders--carried over long distances from every
shore 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 braying
of an ass. The Totipalmes (fully webbed) family was represented
by swift frigate birds, nimbly catching fish at the surface,
and by numerous tropic birds of the genus Phaeton, among others
the red-tailed tropic bird, the size of a pigeon, its white plumage
shaded with pink tints that contrasted with its dark-hued wings.
The Nautilus's nets hauled up several types of sea turtle from
the hawksbill genus with arching backs whose scales are highly prized.
Diving easily, these reptiles can remain a good while underwater
by closing the fleshy valves located at the external openings of their
nasal passages. When they were captured, some hawksbills were still
asleep inside their carapaces, a refuge from other marine animals.
The flesh of these turtles was nothing memorable, but their eggs
made an excellent feast.
As for fish, they always filled us with wonderment when, staring through
the 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 sea
of the East Indies, and that part of the ocean washing the coasts
of equinoctial America. Like turtles, armadillos, sea urchins,
and crustaceans, these fish are protected by armor plate that's
neither chalky nor stony but actual bone. Sometimes this armor takes
the 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 large
protuberances along the back; trunkfish sprinkled with white spots on
the 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 flesh
and big conical humps.
From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrieve
certain fish from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas:
southern puffers with red backs and white chests distinguished by
three 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 look
like a pin cushion bristling with needles; seahorses common to
every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts and highly distended
pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable them, if not to fly,
at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped paddlefish whose
tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish with long jaws,
excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and gleaming with
the 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 current
like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on which nature
has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow mackerel
with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered with mud,
which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers are thought
to 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 Lacépède's system of classification,
belonging to his second subclass of bony fish (characterized by gill
covers and a bronchial membrane), I noted some scorpionfish whose
heads 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 subgenus
gave 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 that
bizarre fish aptly nicknamed "toadfish," whose big head is sometimes
gouged with deep cavities, sometimes swollen with protuberances;
bristling with stings and strewn with nodules, it sports hideously
irregular 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 250
leagues in twenty-four hours, hence 540 miles at twenty-two miles
per hour. If, during our trip, we were able to identify these different
varieties of fish, it's because they were attracted by our electric
light and tried to follow alongside; but most of them were outdistanced
by our speed and soon fell behind; temporarily, however, a few
managed 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 Nautilus
cruised along a short distance off the shore of this desert island.
Our dragnets brought up many specimens of polyps and echinoderms
plus some unusual shells from the branch Mollusca. Captain Nemo's
treasures were enhanced by some valuable exhibits from the delphinula
snail species, to which I joined some pointed star coral, a sort
of parasitic polypary that often attaches itself to seashells.
Soon Keeling Island disappeared below the horizon, and our course
was set to the northwest, toward the tip of the Indian peninsula.
"Civilization!" Ned Land told me that day. "Much better than
those 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 miles
without bumping into a fellow countryman. Come on now, isn't it
time 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 approaching
populated 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 hunting
on the coasts of Malabar or Coromandel as he did in the forests
of 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 me
on 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 could
set at an oblique angle to our waterline. Thus we went as deep
as two or three kilometers down but without ever verifying the lowest
depths of this sea near India, which soundings of 13,000 meters have
been 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 always
colder over shallows than in the open sea.
On January 25, the ocean being completely deserted, the Nautilus spent
the day on the surface, churning the waves with its powerful propeller
and making them spurt to great heights. Under these conditions,
who wouldn't have mistaken it for a gigantic cetacean? I spent
three-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the sea.
Nothing on the horizon, except near four o'clock in the afternoon
a long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack.
Its masting was visible for an instant, but it couldn't have
seen 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 twilight
that links day with night in tropical zones, Conseil and I marveled
at an unusual sight.
It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients,
is a sign of good luck. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppian
studied its habits and lavished on its behalf all the scientific poetry
of Greece and Italy. They called it "nautilus" and "pompilius."
But modern science has not endorsed these designations, and this
mollusk is now known by the name argonaut.
Anyone consulting Conseil would soon learn from the gallant lad
that the branch Mollusca is divided into five classes; that the first
class 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 distinguished
by their number of gills; that the family Dibranchiata includes
three genera, the argonaut, the squid, and the cuttlefish, and that
the family Tetrabranchiata contains only one genus, the nautilus.
After this catalog, if some recalcitrant listener confuses
the argonaut, which is acetabuliferous (in other words, a bearer
of 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 surface
of the ocean. We could count several hundred of them.
They belonged to that species of argonaut covered with protuberances
and exclusive to the seas near India.
These graceful mollusks were swimming backward by means of their
locomotive tubes, sucking water into these tubes and then expelling it.
Six of their eight tentacles were long, thin, and floated
on the water, while the other two were rounded into palms
and spread to the wind like light sails. I could see perfectly
their undulating, spiral-shaped shells, which Cuvier aptly
compared to an elegant cockleboat. It's an actual boat indeed.
It transports the animal that secretes it without the animal
sticking 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 why
he should have christened his ship the Argonaut."
For about an hour the Nautilus cruised in the midst of this school
of 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 center
of gravity, and the whole flotilla disappeared under the waves.
It was instantaneous, and no squadron of ships ever maneuvered
with 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 meridian
and 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 them
extremely dangerous. There were Port Jackson sharks with a brown back,
a whitish belly, and eleven rows of teeth, bigeye sharks with necks
marked 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 a
violence less than comforting. By this point Ned Land had lost
all self-control. He wanted to rise to the surface of the waves
and harpoon the monsters, especially certain smooth-hound sharks whose
mouths were paved with teeth arranged like a mosaic, and some big
five-meter tiger sharks that insisted on personally provoking him.
But the Nautilus soon picked up speed and easily left astern
the fastest of these man-eaters.
On January 27, at the entrance to the huge Bay of Bengal,
we repeatedly encountered a gruesome sight: human corpses floating
on the surface of the waves! Carried by the Ganges to the high seas,
these were deceased Indian villagers who hadn't been fully devoured
by vultures, the only morticians in these parts. But there was no
shortage of sharks to assist them with their undertaking chores.
Near seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus lay
half 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 barely
two 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-black
in comparison with the whiteness of these waters.
Conseil couldn't believe his eyes, and he questioned me about
the causes of this odd phenomenon. Luckily I was in a position
to answer him.
"That's called a milk sea," I told him, "a vast expanse of white waves
often 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 due
to the presence of myriads of tiny creatures called infusoria,
a sort of diminutive glowworm that's colorless and gelatinous
in appearance, as thick as a strand of hair, and no longer than
one-fifth of a millimeter. Some of these tiny creatures stick
together over an area of several leagues."
"Several leagues!" Conseil exclaimed.
"Yes, my boy, and don't even try to compute the number of
these infusoria. You won't pull it off, because if I'm not mistaken,
certain navigators have cruised through milk seas for more
than forty miles."
I'm not sure that Conseil heeded my recommendation, because he seemed
to be deep in thought, no doubt trying to calculate how many
one-fifths of a millimeter are found in forty square miles.
As for me, I continued to observe this phenomenon. For several
hours the Nautilus's spur sliced through these whitish waves,
and I watched it glide noiselessly over this soapy water, as if it
were cruising through those foaming eddies that a bay's currents
and countercurrents sometimes leave between each other.
Near midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual hue, but behind us
all the way to the horizon, the skies kept mirroring the whiteness
of those waves and for a good while seemed imbued with the hazy
glow of an aurora borealis. _
Read next: SECOND PART: Chapter 2. A New Proposition from Captain Nemo
Read previous: FIRST PART: Chapter 24. The Coral Realm
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