________________________________________________
_ THE NEXT DAY, March 22, at six o'clock in the morning, preparations for
departure began. The last gleams of twilight were melting into night.
The cold was brisk. The constellations were glittering with
startling intensity. The wonderful Southern Cross, polar star
of the Antarctic regions, twinkled at its zenith.
The thermometer marked -12 degrees centigrade, and a fresh breeze
left a sharp nip in the air. Ice floes were increasing over
the open water. The sea was starting to congeal everywhere.
Numerous blackish patches were spreading over its surface,
announcing the imminent formation of fresh ice. Obviously this
southernmost basin froze over during its six-month winter and became
utterly inaccessible. What happened to the whales during this period?
No doubt they went beneath the Ice Bank to find more feasible seas.
As for seals and walruses, they were accustomed to living
in the harshest climates and stayed on in these icy waterways.
These animals know by instinct how to gouge holes in the ice fields
and keep them continually open; they go to these holes to breathe.
Once the birds have migrated northward to escape the cold,
these marine mammals remain as sole lords of the polar continent.
Meanwhile the ballast tanks filled with water and the Nautilus
sank slowly. At a depth of 1,000 feet, it stopped. Its propeller churned
the waves and it headed due north at a speed of fifteen miles per hour.
Near the afternoon it was already cruising under the immense frozen
carapace of the Ice Bank.
As a precaution, the panels in the lounge stayed closed,
because the Nautilus's hull could run afoul of some submerged block
of ice. So I spent the day putting my notes into final form.
My mind was completely wrapped up in my memories of the pole.
We had reached that inaccessible spot without facing exhaustion
or danger, as if our seagoing passenger carriage had glided there on
railroad tracks. And now we had actually started our return journey.
Did it still have comparable surprises in store for me? I felt sure
it did, so inexhaustible is this series of underwater wonders!
As it was, in the five and a half months since fate had brought us
on board, we had cleared 14,000 leagues, and over this track longer
than the earth's equator, so many fascinating or frightening incidents
had beguiled our voyage: that hunting trip in the Crespo forests,
our running aground in the Torres Strait, the coral cemetery,
the pearl fisheries of Ceylon, the Arabic tunnel, the fires of Santorini,
those millions in the Bay of Vigo, Atlantis, the South Pole! During the
night all these memories crossed over from one dream to the next,
not giving my brain a moment's rest.
At three o'clock in the morning, I was awakened by a violent collision.
I sat up in bed, listening in the darkness, and then was suddenly
hurled into the middle of my stateroom. Apparently the Nautilus
had gone aground, then heeled over sharply.
Leaning against the walls, I dragged myself down the gangways
to the lounge, whose ceiling lights were on. The furniture had been
knocked over. Fortunately the glass cases were solidly secured
at the base and had stood fast. Since we were no longer vertical,
the starboard pictures were glued to the tapestries, while those
to port had their lower edges hanging a foot away from the wall.
So the Nautilus was lying on its starboard side, completely
stationary to boot.
In its interior I heard the sound of footsteps and muffled voices.
But Captain Nemo didn't appear. Just as I was about to leave
the lounge, Ned Land and Conseil entered.
"What happened?" I instantly said to them.
"I came to ask master that," Conseil replied.
"Damnation!" the Canadian exclaimed. "I know full well what happened!
The Nautilus has gone aground, and judging from the way it's listing,
I don't think it'll pull through like that first time in
the Torres Strait."
"But," I asked, "are we at least back on the surface of the sea?"
"We have no idea," Conseil replied.
"It's easy to find out," I answered.
I consulted the pressure gauge. Much to my surprise, it indicated
a depth of 360 meters.
"What's the meaning of this?" I exclaimed.
"We must confer with Captain Nemo," Conseil said.
"But where do we find him?" Ned Land asked.
"Follow me," I told my two companions.
We left the lounge. Nobody in the library. Nobody by the central
companionway or the crew's quarters. I assumed that Captain Nemo
was stationed in the pilothouse. Best to wait. The three of us
returned to the lounge.
I'll skip over the Canadian's complaints. He had good grounds
for an outburst. I didn't answer him back, letting him blow off
all the steam he wanted.
We had been left to ourselves for twenty minutes, trying to detect
the tiniest noises inside the Nautilus, when Captain Nemo entered.
He didn't seem to see us. His facial features, usually so emotionless,
revealed a certain uneasiness. He studied the compass and pressure
gauge in silence, then went and put his finger on the world map
at a spot in the sector depicting the southernmost seas.
I hesitated to interrupt him. But some moments later, when he turned
to me, I threw back at him a phrase he had used in the Torres Strait:
"An incident, captain?"
"No, sir," he replied, "this time an accident."
"Serious?"
"Perhaps."
"Is there any immediate danger?"
"No."
"The Nautilus has run aground?"
"Yes."
"And this accident came about . . . ?"
"Through nature's unpredictability not man's incapacity.
No errors were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can't
prevent a loss of balance from taking its toll. One may defy
human laws, but no one can withstand the laws of nature."
Captain Nemo had picked an odd time to philosophize. All in all,
this reply told me nothing.
"May I learn, sir," I asked him, "what caused this accident?"
"An enormous block of ice, an entire mountain, has toppled over,"
he answered me. "When an iceberg is eroded at the base by warmer
waters or by repeated collisions, its center of gravity rises.
Then it somersaults, it turns completely upside down.
That's what happened here. When it overturned, one of these
blocks hit the Nautilus as it was cruising under the waters.
Sliding under our hull, this block then raised us with irresistible power,
lifting us into less congested strata where we now lie on our side."
"But can't we float the Nautilus clear by emptying its ballast tanks,
to regain our balance?"
"That, sir, is being done right now. You can hear the pumps working.
Look at the needle on the pressure gauge. It indicates that the Nautilus
is rising, but this block of ice is rising with us, and until some
obstacle halts its upward movement, our position won't change."
Indeed, the Nautilus kept the same heel to starboard.
No doubt it would straighten up once the block came to a halt.
But before that happened, who knew if we might not hit the underbelly
of the Ice Bank and be hideously squeezed between two frozen surfaces?
I mused on all the consequences of this situation. Captain Nemo
didn't stop studying the pressure gauge. Since the toppling
of this iceberg, the Nautilus had risen about 150 feet, but it
still stayed at the same angle to the perpendicular.
Suddenly a slight movement could be felt over the hull.
Obviously the Nautilus was straightening a bit. Objects hanging
in the lounge were visibly returning to their normal positions.
The walls were approaching the vertical. Nobody said a word.
Hearts pounding, we could see and feel the ship righting itself.
The floor was becoming horizontal beneath our feet.
Ten minutes went by.
"Finally, we're upright!" I exclaimed.
"Yes," Captain Nemo said, heading to the lounge door.
"But will we float off?" I asked him.
"Certainly," he replied, "since the ballast tanks aren't yet empty,
and when they are, the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea."
The captain went out, and soon I saw that at his orders, the Nautilus
had halted its upward movement. In fact, it soon would have hit
the underbelly of the Ice Bank, but it had stopped in time and was
floating in midwater.
"That was a close call!" Conseil then said.
"Yes. We could have been crushed between these masses of ice,
or at least imprisoned between them. And then, with no way to renew
our air supply. . . . Yes, that was a close call!"
"If it's over with!" Ned Land muttered.
I was unwilling to get into a pointless argument with the Canadian
and didn't reply. Moreover, the panels opened just then,
and the outside light burst through the uncovered windows.
We were fully afloat, as I have said; but on both sides of the Nautilus,
about ten meters away, there rose dazzling walls of ice.
There also were walls above and below. Above, because the
Ice Bank's underbelly spread over us like an immense ceiling.
Below, because the somersaulting block, shifting little by little,
had found points of purchase on both side walls and had gotten
jammed between them. The Nautilus was imprisoned in a genuine
tunnel of ice about twenty meters wide and filled with quiet water.
So the ship could easily exit by going either ahead or astern,
sinking a few hundred meters deeper, and then taking an open
passageway beneath the Ice Bank.
The ceiling lights were off, yet the lounge was still brightly lit.
This was due to the reflecting power of the walls of ice,
which threw the beams of our beacon right back at us. Words cannot
describe the effects produced by our galvanic rays on these huge,
whimsically sculpted blocks, whose every angle, ridge, and facet gave
off a different glow depending on the nature of the veins running
inside the ice. It was a dazzling mine of gems, in particular
sapphires and emeralds, whose jets of blue and green crisscrossed.
Here and there, opaline hues of infinite subtlety raced among sparks
of light that were like so many fiery diamonds, their brilliance
more than any eye could stand. The power of our beacon was increased
a hundredfold, like a lamp shining through the biconvex lenses
of a world-class lighthouse.
"How beautiful!" Conseil exclaimed.
"Yes," I said, "it's a wonderful sight! Isn't it, Ned?"
"Oh damnation, yes!" Ned Land shot back. "It's superb!
I'm furious that I have to admit it. Nobody has ever seen the like.
But this sight could cost us dearly. And in all honesty, I think
we're looking at things God never intended for human eyes."
Ned was right. It was too beautiful. All at once a yell from
Conseil made me turn around.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Master must close his eyes! Master mustn't look!"
With that, Conseil clapped his hands over his eyes.
"But what's wrong, my boy?"
"I've been dazzled, struck blind!"
Involuntarily my eyes flew to the window, but I couldn't stand
the fire devouring it.
I realized what had happened. The Nautilus had just started off
at great speed. All the tranquil glimmers of the ice walls had then
changed into blazing streaks. The sparkles from these myriads of
diamonds were merging with each other. Swept along by its propeller,
the Nautilus was traveling through a sheath of flashing light.
Then the panels in the lounge closed. We kept our hands over our eyes,
which were utterly saturated with those concentric gleams that
swirl before the retina when sunlight strikes it too intensely.
It took some time to calm our troubled vision.
Finally we lowered our hands.
"Ye gods, I never would have believed it," Conseil said.
"And I still don't believe it!" the Canadian shot back.
"When we return to shore, jaded from all these natural wonders,"
Conseil added, "think how we'll look down on those pitiful land masses,
those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won't be good
enough for us!"
Such words from the lips of this emotionless Flemish boy showed
that our enthusiasm was near the boiling point. But the Canadian
didn't fail to throw his dram of cold water over us.
"The civilized world!" he said, shaking his head. "Don't worry,
Conseil my friend, we're never going back to that world!"
By this point it was five o'clock in the morning.
Just then there was a collision in the Nautilus's bow.
I realized that its spur had just bumped a block of ice.
It must have been a faulty maneuver because this underwater tunnel
was obstructed by such blocks and didn't make for easy navigating.
So I had assumed that Captain Nemo, in adjusting his course, would go
around each obstacle or would hug the walls and follow the windings
of the tunnel. In either case our forward motion wouldn't receive
an absolute check. Nevertheless, contrary to my expectations,
the Nautilus definitely began to move backward.
"We're going astern?" Conseil said.
"Yes," I replied. "Apparently the tunnel has no way out at this end."
"And so . . . ?"
"So," I said, "our maneuvers are quite simple. We'll return in our
tracks and go out the southern opening. That's all."
As I spoke, I tried to sound more confident than I really felt.
Meanwhile the Nautilus accelerated its backward movement, and running
with propeller in reverse, it swept us along at great speed.
"This'll mean a delay," Ned said.
"What are a few hours more or less, so long as we get out."
"Yes," Ned Land repeated, "so long as we get out!"
I strolled for a little while from the lounge into the library.
My companions kept their seats and didn't move. Soon I threw myself
down on a couch and picked up a book, which my eyes skimmed mechanically.
A quarter of an hour later, Conseil approached me, saying:
"Is it deeply fascinating, this volume master is reading?"
"Tremendously fascinating," I replied.
"I believe it. Master is reading his own book!"
"My own book?"
Indeed, my hands were holding my own work on the great ocean depths.
I hadn't even suspected. I closed the book and resumed my strolling.
Ned and Conseil stood up to leave.
"Stay here, my friends," I said, stopping them. "Let's stay together
until we're out of this blind alley."
"As master wishes," Conseil replied.
The hours passed. I often studied the instruments hanging on
the lounge wall. The pressure gauge indicated that the Nautilus
stayed at a constant depth of 300 meters, the compass that it kept
heading south, the log that it was traveling at a speed of twenty
miles per hour, an excessive speed in such a cramped area.
But Captain Nemo knew that by this point there was no such thing
as too fast, since minutes were now worth centuries.
At 8:25 a second collision took place. This time astern.
I grew pale. My companions came over. I clutched Conseil's hand.
Our eyes questioned each other, and more directly than if our thoughts
had been translated into words.
Just then the captain entered the lounge. I went to him.
"Our path is barred to the south?" I asked him.
"Yes, sir. When it overturned, that iceberg closed off every exit."
"We're boxed in?"
"Yes." _
Read next: SECOND PART: Chapter 16. Shortage of Air
Read previous: SECOND PART: Chapter 14. The South Pole
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