Chapter 4

During the day of January 29, the island of Ceylon disappeared below the horizon. The next day, January 30, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the ocean, there was no more land in sight. The ship headed toward the Persian Gulf.

This was obviously a blind alley with no possible outlet. So where was Captain Nemo taking us? I was unable to say. Which didn’t satisfy the Canadian, who that day asked me where we were going.

“We’re going, Mr. Ned, where the captain’s fancy takes us.”

“His fancy,” the Canadian replied, “won’t take us very far. The Persian Gulf has no outlet, and if we enter those waters, it won’t be long before we return in our tracks. The Red Sea won’t be our way back to Europe.”

“But I didn’t say we’d return to Europe.”

“But don’t you realize, Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied, “that soon we’ll have been imprisoned for three whole months aboard this Nautilus?”

“No, Ned, I didn’t realize it, I don’t want to realize it, and I don’t keep track of every day and every hour.”

“But when will it be over?”

“In its time. Meanwhile there’s nothing we can do about it, and our discussions are futile. My gallant Ned, if you come and tell me, ‘A chance to escape is available to us,’ then I’ll discuss it with you. But that isn’t the case, and in all honesty, I don’t think Captain Nemo ever ventures into European seas.”

I was convinced that when Captain Nemo reached this Gulf, he would back out again; but I was mistaken, and much to my surprise, he did nothing of the sort.

The Red Sea, that great lake so famous in biblical traditions! 2,600 kilometers long with an average width of 240. How many delightful hours I spent looking at it through the lounge window! How many new specimens of underwater flora and fauna I marveled at beneath the light of our electric beacon!

On February 9 the Nautilus cruised in the widest part of the Red Sea. At noon that day Captain Nemo climbed onto the platform, where I happened to be. As soon as he saw me, he came over, graciously offered me a cigar, and said to me:

“Well, professor, are you pleased with this Red Sea? Have you seen enough of its hidden wonders, its fish, its gardens of sponges and forests of coral?”

“Yes, Captain Nemo,” I replied, “and the Nautilus is wonderfully suited to this whole survey. Ah, it’s a clever boat!”

“Yes, sir, clever, daring, and invulnerable!”

“Indeed,” I said, “this sea is mentioned as one of the worst, and in the days of the ancients, if I’m not mistaken, it had an abominable reputation.”

“Thoroughly abominable, Professor Aronnax. The Greek and Latin historians claim that it is a sea subject to fearful hurricanes, and ‘with nothing good to offer,’ either on its surface or in its depths.”

“But,” I answered, “those historians didn’t navigate aboard the Nautilus.”

“Indeed,” the captain replied with a smile. “Who knows whether we’ll see a second Nautilus within the next 100 years! Progress is slow, Professor Aronnax.”

“It’s true,” I replied. “Your ship is a century ahead of its time, perhaps several centuries. It would be most unfortunate if such a secret were to die with its inventor!”

Captain Nemo did not reply. After some minutes of silence he spoke again:

“We were discussing,” he said, “the views of ancient historians on the dangers of navigating this Red Sea?”

“True,” I replied. “But weren’t their fears exaggerated?”

“Yes and no, Professor Aronnax,” answered Captain Nemo. “To a modern ship conditions are no longer hazardous. Those early navigators venturing didn’t have necessary instruments, they went in the midst of currents they barely knew. Under such conditions, shipwrecks had to be numerous.”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Unfortunately,” he went on, “I can’t take you through the Suez Canal, but the day after tomorrow we’re in the Mediterranean.”

“In the Mediterranean!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, professor. Does that amaze you?”

“What amazes me is thinking we’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”

“Oh really? But what is it that startles you?”

“The thought of how fast the Nautilus will need to go, if it’s to circle around Africa, and lie in the open Mediterranean by the day after tomorrow.”

“And who says it will circle Africa, professor?”

“But unless the Nautilus navigates on dry land …”

“Or under it, Professor Aronnax.”

“Under it?”

“Surely,” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “Under that land.”

“What! There’s a passageway?”

“Yes, an underground passageway that I’ve named the Arabian Tunnel. It starts below Suez.”

“And it’s by luck that you discovered this passageway?” I asked, more and more startled.

“Luck plus logic, professor, and logic even more than luck.”

“Captain, I can’t believe my ears.”

“Oh, sir! Not only does this passageway exist, but I’ve taken advantage of it on several occasions.”

“Is it indiscreet to ask how you discovered this tunnel?”

“Sir,” the captain answered me, “there can be no secrets between men who will never leave each other.”

I ignored this innuendo and waited for Captain Nemo’s explanation.

“Professor,” he told me, “the simple logic of the naturalist led me to discover this passageway, and I alone am familiar with it. I’d noted that in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean there exist a number of absolutely identical species of fish. So I thought: there is a connection between the two seas. I searched for it with my Nautilus, I discovered it, I ventured into it!”

Chapter 5

The same day, I reported to Conseil and Ned Land that part of the conversation. When I told them we would be lying in Mediterranean waters within two days, Conseil clapped his hands, but the Canadian shrugged his shoulders.

“An underwater tunnel!” he exclaimed. “A connection between two seas! Who ever heard of such thing!”

“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “had you ever heard of the Nautilus? No, yet here it is! There are many things that you’ve never heard of.”

“We’ll soon see!” Ned Land answered, shaking his head. “After all, I’d like nothing better than to believe in your captain’s passageway.”

At 9:15 when our boat returned to the surface, I climbed onto the platform. I was quite impatient to see Captain Nemo’s tunnel, and wanted to breathe the fresh night air.

I turned and discovered the captain.

“It won’t be long,” he said. “before we reach the entrance to the tunnel.”

“It can’t be very easy to enter it.”

“No, sir. And now if you’ll kindly go below, Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus is about to sink beneath the waves, and it will only return to the surface after we’ve cleared the Arabian Tunnel.”

I followed Captain Nemo. The hatch closed, and the Nautilus sank some ten meters down.

Just as I was about to go to my stateroom, the captain stopped me.

“Professor,” he said to me, “would you like to go with me to the wheelhouse?”

“I was afraid to ask,” I replied.

“Come along, then.”

Captain Nemo led me to the central companionway. In midstair he opened a door, went along the upper gangways, and arrived at the wheelhouse, which stands at one end of the platform.

It was a cabin measuring six feet square. In the center stood an upright wheel. Set in the cabin’s walls were four deadlights, windows that enabled the man to see in every direction.

The cabin was dark; but my eyes soon grew accustomed to its darkness and I saw a muscular man whose hands rested on the pegs of the wheel.

“Now,” Captain Nemo said, “let’s look for our passageway.”

The captain pressed a metal button and at once the propeller slowed down significantly. At 10:15 Captain Nemo himself took the helm. Dark and deep, a wide gallery opened ahead of us. Strange rumblings were audible along our sides. It was the water of the Red Sea, hurled toward the Mediterranean by the tunnel’s slope. The Nautilus went with the torrent, as swift as an arrow.

At 10:35 Captain Nemo left the steering wheel and turned to me:

“The Mediterranean,” he told me.

Chapter 6

At sunrise the next morning, February 12, the Nautilus rose to the surface of the waves.

I rushed onto the platform. Near seven o’clock Ned and Conseil joined me.

“Well, Mr. Naturalist,” the Canadian asked in a gently mocking tone, “and how about that Mediterranean?”

“We’re floating on its surface, Ned my friend.”

“What!” Conseil put in. “Last night …?”

“Yes, last night.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” the Canadian replied.

“And you’re in the wrong, Mr. Land,” I went on. “That coastline is the coast of Egypt.”

“Nonsense, sir,” answered the stubborn Canadian.

“But if master says so,” Conseil told him, “then so be it.”

“What’s more, Ned,” I said, “Captain Nemo himself steered the Nautilus through that narrow passageway.”

“You hear, Ned?” Conseil said.

The Canadian looked carefully.

“Correct,” he said. “You’re right, professor, and your captain’s a superman. We’re in the Mediterranean. Fine. So now let’s have a chat about our business, if you please, but in such a way that nobody overhears.”

“Now, Ned,” I said. “What have you to tell us?”

“What I’ve got to tell you is very simple,” the Canadian replied. “We’re in Europe, and I say we should leave this Nautilus.”

I confess that such discussions with the Canadian always baffled me. I didn’t want to restrict my companions’ freedom in any way, and yet I had no desire to leave Captain Nemo. Thanks to him and his submersible, I was finishing my undersea research by the day, and I was rewriting my book on the great ocean depths. Would I ever again have such an opportunity to observe the ocean’s wonders? Absolutely not!

“Ned my friend,” I said, “answer me honestly. Are you bored with this ship? Are you sorry that fate has cast you into Captain Nemo’s hands?”

The Canadian paused for a short while before replying. Then, crossing his arms:

“Honestly,” he said, “I’m not sorry about this voyage under the seas. I’ll be glad to have done it, but in order to have done it, it has to finish. That’s my feeling.”

“It will finish, Ned.”

“Where and when?”

“Where? I don’t know. When? I can’t say. Or, rather, I suppose it will be over when these seas have nothing more to teach us. Everything that begins in this world must inevitably come to an end.”

“I think as master does,” Conseil replied, “and it’s extremely possible that after crossing every sea on the globe, Captain Nemo will leave us somewhere.”

“Leave us somewhere?” the Canadian exclaimed. “You mean drive us out!”

“Let’s not exaggerate, Mr. Land,” I went on. “We have nothing to fear from the captain.”

“But what do you expect?” the Canadian asked.

“That we’ll encounter advantageous conditions for escaping.”

“God!” Ned Land said. “And where, Mr. Naturalist?”

“Perhaps here, perhaps in China. You know how quickly the Nautilus moves. It crosses oceans like swallows cross the air or express trains continents.”

“Professor Aronnax,” the Canadian replied, “your arguments are useless. You talk: ‘We’ll be here, we’ll be there!’ Me, I’m talking about right now: we are here, and we must take advantage of it! Sir, let’s suppose that by some impossibility, Captain Nemo offered your freedom to you this very day. Would you accept?”

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“And what does our friend Conseil think?” Ned Land asked.

“Your friend Conseil,” the fine lad replied serenely, “has nothing to say. Like his master, like his comrade Ned, he’s a bachelor. Neither wife, parents, nor children are waiting for him back home. He thinks like master, he speaks like master. Only two persons face each other here: master on one side, Ned Land on the other.”

“Then, sir,” Ned Land said, “we’ll have this discussion between just the two of us. I’ve talked, you’ve listened. What’s your reply?”

“Ned my friend,” I said, “here’s my reply. I think the most ordinary good sense would forbid Captain Nemo to set us free. On the other hand, good sense decrees that we take advantage of our first opportunity to leave the Nautilus.”

“Fine, Professor Aronnax, that’s wisely said.”

“But one proviso,” I said, “just one. The opportunity must be real. Our first attempt to escape must succeed, because we won’t get a second chance, and Captain Nemo will never forgive us.”

“Well said,” the Canadian replied. “If an opportunity comes up, we have to grab it.”

“Agreed. And now, Ned, will you tell me what you mean by an opportunity?”

“A cloudy night and a short distance of some European coast.”

“And you’ll try to get away by swimming?”

“Yes, if we’re close enough to shore and the ship’s afloat on the surface. No, if the ship’s navigating under the waters.”

“And in that event?”

“In that event I’ll try to use the skiff. I know how to handle it.”

“Fine, Ned. Wait for such an opportunity, but don’t forget, one mistake will finish us.”

“I won’t forget, sir.”

“And now, Ned, would you like to know my thinking on your plan?”

“Gladly, Professor Aronnax.”

“Well then, I think—and I don’t mean ‘I hope’—that your opportunity won’t ever arise.”

“Why not?”

“Because Captain Nemo understands that we want to be free, and he’ll keep on his guard.”

“I’m of master’s opinion,” Conseil said.

“We’ll soon see,” Ned Land replied, shaking his head with a determined expression.

“And now, Ned Land,” I added, “not another word on any of this. The day you’re ready, alert us and we’re with you.”

That’s how we ended this conversation. And, I must say, events seemed to confirm my forecasts, much to the Canadian’s despair. Usually Captain Nemo stayed in midwater and far from any coast.

One day, in the midst of the waters, a man appeared, a diver carrying a little leather bag at his belt. It was no corpse lost in the waves. It was a living man, swimming vigorously, sometimes disappearing to breathe at the surface, then instantly diving again.

I told Captain Nemo:

“A man! We must rescue him at all cost!”

The captain didn’t reply but went to lean against the window. The man drew near, and gluing his face to the panel, he stared at us.

To my deep astonishment, Captain Nemo gave him a signal. The diver answered with his hand, immediately swam up to the surface of the sea, and didn’t reappear.

“Don’t worry,” the captain told me. “That’s Nicolas. He’s a famous diver! He lives in the sea more than on shore, going constantly from one island to another.”

“You know him, captain?”

“Why not, Professor Aronnax?”

This said, Captain Nemo went to a cabinet standing near the lounge’s left panel. Next to this cabinet I saw a chest bound with hoops of iron, its lid bearing a copper plaque that displayed the Nautilus’s monogram with its motto Mobilis in Mobili.

Just then, ignoring my presence, the captain opened this cabinet, a sort of safe that contained a large number of ingots.

They were gold ingots. And they represented an enormous sum of money. Where had this precious metal come from? What was the captain about to do with it?

I didn’t pronounce a word. Captain Nemo took out the ingots one by one and arranged them methodically inside the chest, filling it to the top. At which point I estimate that it held more than 1,000 kilograms of gold, in other words, close to 5,000,000 francs.

After securely fastening the chest, Captain Nemo wrote an address on its lid in characters that must have been modern Greek.

This done, the captain pressed a button. Four men appeared and, not without difficulty, pushed the chest out of the lounge.

Just then Captain Nemo turned to me:

“You were saying, professor?” he asked me.

“I wasn’t saying a thing, captain.”

“Then, sir, with your permission, I’ll bid you good evening.”

And with that, Captain Nemo left the lounge.

I reentered my stateroom, very puzzled, as you can imagine. I tried in vain to fall asleep. I kept searching for a relationship between the appearance of the diver and that chest filled with gold. Soon I sensed that the Nautilus was back on the surface of the water. Then I heard the sound of footsteps on the platform. I realized that the skiff was being detached and launched to sea. Then all sounds ceased.

Two hours later, the same noises were repeated. The longboat was readjusted into its socket, and the Nautilus plunged back beneath the waves.

So those millions had been delivered to their address. Who was the recipient of Captain Nemo’s gold?

The next day I related the night’s events to Conseil and the Canadian. My companions were as startled as I was.

“Where does he get those millions?” Ned Land asked.

To this no reply was possible.

The next day, February 16, the Nautilus left the Greek Islands behind.