________________________________________________
_ THE NAUTILUS resumed its unruffled southbound heading.
It went along the 50th meridian with considerable speed.
Would it go to the pole? I didn't think so, because every previous
attempt to reach this spot on the globe had failed. Besides, the season
was already quite advanced, since March 13 on Antarctic shores
corresponds with September 13 in the northernmost regions,
which marks the beginning of the equinoctial period.
On March 14 at latitude 55 degrees, I spotted floating ice,
plain pale bits of rubble twenty to twenty-five feet long,
which formed reefs over which the sea burst into foam. The Nautilus
stayed on the surface of the ocean. Having fished in the Arctic seas,
Ned Land was already familiar with the sight of icebergs.
Conseil and I were marveling at them for the first time.
In the sky toward the southern horizon, there stretched a dazzling
white band. English whalers have given this the name "ice blink."
No matter how heavy the clouds may be, they can't obscure
this phenomenon. It announces the presence of a pack, or shoal, of ice.
Indeed, larger blocks of ice soon appeared, their brilliance varying
at the whim of the mists. Some of these masses displayed green veins,
as if scrawled with undulating lines of copper sulfate. Others looked
like enormous amethysts, letting the light penetrate their insides.
The latter reflected the sun's rays from the thousand facets of
their crystals. The former, tinted with a bright limestone sheen,
would have supplied enough building material to make a whole marble town.
The farther down south we went, the more these floating islands grew
in numbers and prominence. Polar birds nested on them by the thousands.
These were petrels, cape pigeons, or puffins, and their calls
were deafening. Mistaking the Nautilus for the corpse of a whale,
some of them alighted on it and prodded its resonant sheet iron
with pecks of their beaks.
During this navigating in the midst of the ice, Captain Nemo
often stayed on the platform. He observed these deserted
waterways carefully. I saw his calm eyes sometimes perk up.
In these polar seas forbidden to man, did he feel right at home,
the lord of these unreachable regions? Perhaps. But he didn't say.
He stood still, reviving only when his pilot's instincts took over.
Then, steering his Nautilus with consummate dexterity, he skillfully
dodged the masses of ice, some of which measured several miles
in length, their heights varying from seventy to eighty meters.
Often the horizon seemed completely closed off. Abreast of latitude
60 degrees, every passageway had disappeared. Searching with care,
Captain Nemo soon found a narrow opening into which he brazenly slipped,
well aware, however, that it would close behind him.
Guided by his skillful hands, the Nautilus passed by all these different
masses of ice, which are classified by size and shape with a precision
that enraptured Conseil: "icebergs," or mountains; "ice fields,"
or smooth, limitless tracts; "drift ice," or floating floes;
"packs," or broken tracts, called "patches" when they're circular
and "streams" when they form long strips.
The temperature was fairly low. Exposed to the outside air,
the thermometer marked -2 degrees to
-3 degrees centigrade. But we were warmly dressed in furs,
for which seals and aquatic bears had paid the price. Evenly heated
by all its electric equipment, the Nautilus's interior defied
the most intense cold. Moreover, to find a bearable temperature,
the ship had only to sink just a few meters beneath the waves.
Two months earlier we would have enjoyed perpetual daylight in
this latitude; but night already fell for three or four hours, and later
it would cast six months of shadow over these circumpolar regions.
On March 15 we passed beyond the latitude of the South Shetland and
South Orkney Islands. The captain told me that many tribes of seals
used to inhabit these shores; but English and American whalers,
in a frenzy of destruction, slaughtered all the adults,
including pregnant females, and where life and activity once existed,
those fishermen left behind only silence and death.
Going along the 55th meridian, the Nautilus cut the Antarctic Circle
on March 16 near eight o'clock in the morning. Ice completely
surrounded us and closed off the horizon. Nevertheless, Captain Nemo
went from passageway to passageway, always proceeding south.
"But where's he going?" I asked.
"Straight ahead," Conseil replied. "Ultimately, when he can't go
any farther, he'll stop."
"I wouldn't bet on it!" I replied.
And in all honesty, I confess that this venturesome excursion
was far from displeasing to me. I can't express the intensity
of my amazement at the beauties of these new regions.
The ice struck superb poses. Here, its general effect suggested
an oriental town with countless minarets and mosques. There, a city
in ruins, flung to the ground by convulsions in the earth.
These views were varied continuously by the sun's oblique rays,
or were completely swallowed up by gray mists in the middle of blizzards.
Then explosions, cave-ins, and great iceberg somersaults would occur
all around us, altering the scenery like the changing landscape
in a diorama.
If the Nautilus was submerged during these losses of balance, we heard
the resulting noises spread under the waters with frightful intensity,
and the collapse of these masses created daunting eddies down
to the ocean's lower strata. The Nautilus then rolled and pitched
like a ship left to the fury of the elements.
Often, no longer seeing any way out, I thought we were imprisoned
for good, but Captain Nemo, guided by his instincts, discovered new
passageways from the tiniest indications. He was never wrong
when he observed slender threads of bluish water streaking through
these ice fields. Accordingly, I was sure that he had already
risked his Nautilus in the midst of the Antarctic seas.
However, during the day of March 16, these tracts of ice completely
barred our path. It wasn't the Ice Bank as yet, just huge ice
fields cemented together by the cold. This obstacle couldn't stop
Captain Nemo, and he launched his ship against the ice fields
with hideous violence. The Nautilus went into these brittle
masses like a wedge, splitting them with dreadful cracklings.
It was an old-fashioned battering ram propelled with infinite power.
Hurled aloft, ice rubble fell back around us like hail.
Through brute force alone, the submersible carved out a channel
for itself. Carried away by its momentum, the ship sometimes mounted
on top of these tracts of ice and crushed them with its weight,
or at other times, when cooped up beneath the ice fields, it split
them with simple pitching movements, creating wide punctures.
Violent squalls assaulted us during the daytime. Thanks to certain
heavy mists, we couldn't see from one end of the platform to the other.
The wind shifted abruptly to every point on the compass.
The snow was piling up in such packed layers, it had to be chipped
loose with blows from picks. Even in a temperature of merely -5
degrees centigrade, every outside part of the Nautilus was covered
with ice. A ship's rigging would have been unusable, because all
its tackle would have jammed in the grooves of the pulleys.
Only a craft without sails, driven by an electric motor that needed
no coal, could face such high latitudes.
Under these conditions the barometer generally stayed quite low.
It fell as far as 73.5 centimeters. Our compass indications
no longer offered any guarantees. The deranged needles would
mark contradictory directions as we approached the southern
magnetic pole, which doesn't coincide with the South Pole proper.
In fact, according to the astronomer Hansteen, this magnetic pole is
located fairly close to latitude 70 degrees and longitude 130 degrees,
or abiding by the observations of Louis-Isidore Duperrey, in longitude
135 degrees and latitude 70 degrees 30'. Hence we had to transport
compasses to different parts of the ship, take many readings,
and strike an average. Often we could chart our course only by guesswork,
a less than satisfactory method in the midst of these winding
passageways whose landmarks change continuously.
At last on March 18, after twenty futile assaults, the Nautilus
was decisively held in check. No longer was it an ice stream,
patch, or field--it was an endless, immovable barrier formed by ice
mountains fused to each other.
"The Ice Bank!" the Canadian told me.
For Ned Land, as well as for every navigator before us, I knew
that this was the great insurmountable obstacle. When the sun
appeared for an instant near noon, Captain Nemo took a reasonably
accurate sight that gave our position as longitude 51 degrees 30'
and latitude 67 degrees 39' south. This was a position already
well along in these Antarctic regions.
As for the liquid surface of the sea, there was no longer
any semblance of it before our eyes. Before the Nautilus's
spur there lay vast broken plains, a tangle of confused chunks
with all the helter-skelter unpredictability typical of a river's
surface a short while before its ice breakup; but in this case
the proportions were gigantic. Here and there stood sharp peaks,
lean spires that rose as high as 200 feet; farther off, a succession
of steeply cut cliffs sporting a grayish tint, huge mirrors
that reflected the sparse rays of a sun half drowned in mist.
Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this desolate natural setting,
a silence barely broken by the flapping wings of petrels or puffins.
By this point everything was frozen, even sound.
So the Nautilus had to halt in its venturesome course among these
tracts of ice.
"Sir," Ned Land told me that day, "if your captain goes any farther . . ."
"Yes?"
"He'll be a superman."
"How so, Ned?"
"Because nobody can clear the Ice Bank. Your captain's a
powerful man, but damnation, he isn't more powerful than nature.
If she draws a boundary line, there you stop, like it or not!"
"Correct, Ned Land, but I still want to know what's behind this
Ice Bank! Behold my greatest source of irritation--a wall!"
"Master is right," Conseil said. "Walls were invented simply
to frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned."
"Fine!" the Canadian put in. "But we already know what's behind
this Ice Bank."
"What?" I asked.
"Ice, ice, and more ice."
"You may be sure of that, Ned," I answered, "but I'm not.
That's why I want to see for myself."
"Well, professor," the Canadian replied, "you can just drop that idea!
You've made it to the Ice Bank, which is already far enough,
but you won't get any farther, neither your Captain Nemo or
his Nautilus. And whether he wants to or not, we'll head north again,
in other words, to the land of sensible people."
I had to agree that Ned Land was right, and until ships are built
to navigate over tracts of ice, they'll have to stop at the Ice Bank.
Indeed, despite its efforts, despite the powerful methods it
used to split this ice, the Nautilus was reduced to immobility.
Ordinarily, when someone can't go any farther, he still has
the option of returning in his tracks. But here it was just
as impossible to turn back as to go forward, because every
passageway had closed behind us, and if our submersible remained
even slightly stationary, it would be frozen in without delay.
Which is exactly what happened near two o'clock in the afternoon,
and fresh ice kept forming over the ship's sides with astonishing speed.
I had to admit that Captain Nemo's leadership had been most injudicious.
Just then I was on the platform. Observing the situation for some while,
the captain said to me:
"Well, professor! What think you?"
"I think we're trapped, captain."
"Trapped! What do you mean?"
"I mean we can't go forward, backward, or sideways.
I think that's the standard definition of 'trapped,' at least
in the civilized world."
"So, Professor Aronnax, you think the Nautilus won't be able
to float clear?"
"Only with the greatest difficulty, captain, since the season
is already too advanced for you to depend on an ice breakup."
"Oh, professor," Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone,
"you never change! You see only impediments and obstacles!
I promise you, not only will the Nautilus float clear, it will
go farther still!"
"Farther south?" I asked, gaping at the captain.
"Yes, sir, it will go to the pole."
"To the pole!" I exclaimed, unable to keep back a movement of disbelief.
"Yes," the captain replied coolly, "the Antarctic pole,
that unknown spot crossed by every meridian on the globe.
As you know, I do whatever I like with my Nautilus."
Yes, I did know that! I knew this man was daring to the point
of being foolhardy. But to overcome all the obstacles around
the South Pole--even more unattainable than the North Pole,
which still hadn't been reached by the boldest navigators--
wasn't this an absolutely insane undertaking, one that could occur
only in the brain of a madman?
It then dawned on me to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered
this pole, which no human being had ever trod underfoot.
"No, sir," he answered me, "but we'll discover it together.
Where others have failed, I'll succeed. Never before has my
Nautilus cruised so far into these southernmost seas, but I repeat:
it will go farther still."
"I'd like to believe you, captain," I went on in a tone of some sarcasm.
"Oh I do believe you! Let's forge ahead! There are no obstacles for us!
Let's shatter this Ice Bank! Let's blow it up, and if it still resists,
let's put wings on the Nautilus and fly over it!"
"Over it, professor?" Captain Nemo replied serenely.
"No, not over it, but under it."
"Under it!" I exclaimed.
A sudden insight into Captain Nemo's plans had just flashed through
my mind. I understood. The marvelous talents of his Nautilus
would be put to work once again in this superhuman undertaking!
"I can see we're starting to understand each other, professor,"
Captain Nemo told me with a half smile. "You already glimpse
the potential--myself, I'd say the success--of this attempt.
Maneuvers that aren't feasible for an ordinary ship are easy for
the Nautilus. If a continent emerges at the pole, we'll stop at
that continent. But on the other hand, if open sea washes the pole,
we'll go to that very place!"
"Right," I said, carried away by the captain's logic.
"Even though the surface of the sea has solidified into ice,
its lower strata are still open, thanks to that divine justice that puts
the maximum density of salt water one degree above its freezing point.
And if I'm not mistaken, the submerged part of this Ice Bank is
in a four-to-one ratio to its emerging part."
"Very nearly, professor. For each foot of iceberg above the sea,
there are three more below. Now then, since these ice mountains don't
exceed a height of 100 meters, they sink only to a depth of 300 meters.
And what are 300 meters to the Nautilus?"
"A mere nothing, sir."
"We could even go to greater depths and find that temperature layer
common to all ocean water, and there we'd brave with impunity
the -30 degrees or -40 degrees cold on the surface."
"True, sir, very true," I replied with growing excitement.
"Our sole difficulty," Captain Nemo went on, "lies in our staying
submerged for several days without renewing our air supply."
"That's all?" I answered. "The Nautilus has huge air tanks;
we'll fill them up and they'll supply all the oxygen we need."
"Good thinking, Professor Aronnax," the captain replied with a smile.
"But since I don't want to be accused of foolhardiness, I'm giving
you all my objections in advance."
"You have more?"
"Just one. If a sea exists at the South Pole, it's possible
this sea may be completely frozen over, so we couldn't come up
to the surface!"
"My dear sir, have you forgotten that the Nautilus is armed
with a fearsome spur? Couldn't it be launched diagonally against
those tracts of ice, which would break open from the impact?"
"Ah, professor, you're full of ideas today!"
"Besides, captain," I added with still greater enthusiasm,
"why wouldn't we find open sea at the South Pole just as at
the North Pole? The cold-temperature poles and the geographical
poles don't coincide in either the northern or southern hemispheres,
and until proof to the contrary, we can assume these two spots
on the earth feature either a continent or an ice-free ocean."
"I think as you do, Professor Aronnax," Captain Nemo replied.
"I'll only point out that after raising so many objections against
my plan, you're now crushing me under arguments in its favor."
Captain Nemo was right. I was outdoing him in daring!
It was I who was sweeping him to the pole. I was leading
the way, I was out in front . . . but no, you silly fool!
Captain Nemo already knew the pros and cons of this question,
and it amused him to see you flying off into impossible fantasies!
Nevertheless, he didn't waste an instant. At his signal,
the chief officer appeared. The two men held a quick exchange
in their incomprehensible language, and either the chief officer
had been alerted previously or he found the plan feasible,
because he showed no surprise.
But as unemotional as he was, he couldn't have been more impeccably
emotionless than Conseil when I told the fine lad our intention
of pushing on to the South Pole. He greeted my announcement with
the usual "As master wishes," and I had to be content with that.
As for Ned Land, no human shoulders ever executed a higher shrug
than the pair belonging to our Canadian.
"Honestly, sir," he told me. "You and your Captain Nemo, I
pity you both!"
"But we will go to the pole, Mr. Land."
"Maybe, but you won't come back!"
And Ned Land reentered his cabin, "to keep from doing
something desperate," he said as he left me.
Meanwhile preparations for this daring attempt were getting under way.
The Nautilus's powerful pumps forced air down into the tanks
and stored it under high pressure. Near four o'clock Captain Nemo
informed me that the platform hatches were about to be closed.
I took a last look at the dense Ice Bank we were going to conquer.
The weather was fair, the skies reasonably clear, the cold quite brisk,
namely -12 degrees centigrade; but after the wind had lulled,
this temperature didn't seem too unbearable.
Equipped with picks, some ten men climbed onto the Nautilus's
sides and cracked loose the ice around the ship's lower plating,
which was soon set free. This operation was swiftly executed
because the fresh ice was still thin. We all reentered the interior.
The main ballast tanks were filled with the water that hadn't yet
congealed at our line of flotation. The Nautilus submerged without delay.
I took a seat in the lounge with Conseil. Through the open
window we stared at the lower strata of this southernmost ocean.
The thermometer rose again. The needle on the pressure gauge
swerved over its dial.
About 300 meters down, just as Captain Nemo had predicted,
we cruised beneath the undulating surface of the Ice Bank. But the
Nautilus sank deeper still. It reached a depth of 800 meters.
At the surface this water gave a temperature of -12 degrees centigrade,
but now it gave no more than -10 degrees. Two degrees had already
been gained. Thanks to its heating equipment, the Nautilus's
temperature, needless to say, stayed at a much higher degree.
Every maneuver was accomplished with extraordinary precision.
"With all due respect to master," Conseil told me, "we'll pass it by."
"I fully expect to!" I replied in a tone of deep conviction.
Now in open water, the Nautilus took a direct course to the pole
without veering from the 52nd meridian. From 67 degrees 30'
to 90 degrees, twenty-two and a half degrees of latitude were
left to cross, in other words, slightly more than 500 leagues.
The Nautilus adopted an average speed of twenty-six miles per hour,
the speed of an express train. If it kept up this pace, forty hours
would do it for reaching the pole.
For part of the night, the novelty of our circumstances kept Conseil
and me at the lounge window. The sea was lit by our beacon's
electric rays. But the depths were deserted. Fish didn't linger
in these imprisoned waters. Here they found merely a passageway
for going from the Antarctic Ocean to open sea at the pole.
Our progress was swift. You could feel it in the vibrations
of the long steel hull.
Near two o'clock in the morning, I went to snatch a few hours of sleep.
Conseil did likewise. I didn't encounter Captain Nemo while going
down the gangways. I assumed that he was keeping to the pilothouse.
The next day, March 19, at five o'clock in the morning, I was back
at my post in the lounge. The electric log indicated that the
Nautilus had reduced speed. By then it was rising to the surface,
but cautiously, while slowly emptying its ballast tanks.
My heart was pounding. Would we emerge into the open and find
the polar air again?
No. A jolt told me that the Nautilus had bumped the underbelly
of the Ice Bank, still quite thick to judge from the hollowness
of the accompanying noise. Indeed, we had "struck bottom,"
to use nautical terminology, but in the opposite direction
and at a depth of 3,000 feet. That gave us 4,000 feet
of ice overhead, of which 1,000 feet emerged above water.
So the Ice Bank was higher here than we had found it on the outskirts.
A circumstance less than encouraging.
Several times that day, the Nautilus repeated the same experiment and
always it bumped against this surface that formed a ceiling above it.
At certain moments the ship encountered ice at a depth of 900 meters,
denoting a thickness of 1,200 meters, of which 300 meters rose above
the level of the ocean. This height had tripled since the moment
the Nautilus had dived beneath the waves.
I meticulously noted these different depths, obtaining the underwater
profile of this upside-down mountain chain that stretched
beneath the sea.
By evening there was still no improvement in our situation.
The ice stayed between 400 and 500 meters deep. It was obviously
shrinking, but what a barrier still lay between us and the surface
of the ocean!
By then it was eight o'clock. The air inside the Nautilus should have
been renewed four hours earlier, following daily practice on board.
But I didn't suffer very much, although Captain Nemo hadn't yet
made demands on the supplementary oxygen in his air tanks.
That night my sleep was fitful. Hope and fear besieged me by turns.
I got up several times. The Nautilus continued groping.
Near three o'clock in the morning, I observed that we encountered
the Ice Bank's underbelly at a depth of only fifty meters.
So only 150 feet separated us from the surface of the water.
Little by little the Ice Bank was turning into an ice field again.
The mountains were changing back into plains.
My eyes didn't leave the pressure gauge. We kept rising on a diagonal,
going along this shiny surface that sparkled beneath our electric rays.
Above and below, the Ice Bank was subsiding in long gradients.
Mile after mile it was growing thinner.
Finally, at six o'clock in the morning on that memorable day of March 19,
the lounge door opened. Captain Nemo appeared.
"Open sea!" he told me. _
Read next: SECOND PART: Chapter 14. The South Pole
Read previous: SECOND PART: Chapter 12. Sperm Whales and Baleen Whales
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