Chapter 9

The next morning, February 19, I beheld the Canadian entering my stateroom. I was expecting this visit.

“Well, sir?” he said to me.

“Well, Ned, the fates were against us yesterday.”

“Yes! That damned captain stopped just as we were going to escape from his boat.”

“Yes, Ned, he had business with his bank.”

“His bank?”

“By which I mean this ocean, where his wealth is safer than in any national treasury.”

I then related the evening’s incidents to the Canadian, secretly hoping he would come around to the idea of not deserting the captain.

“Anyhow,” he said, “my first harpoon missed, that’s all! We’ll succeed the next time, and as soon as this evening.”

“What’s the Nautilus’s heading?” I asked.

“I’ve no idea,” Ned replied.

“All right, at noon we’ll find out what our position is!”

I went into the lounge. The Nautilus’s course was south-southwest. We were turning our backs on Europe.

Near 11:30 the Nautilus rose to the surface of the ocean. I leaped onto the platform. Ned Land was already there.

No more shore in sight. Furious, Ned tried to see through the mists on the horizon. He still hoped that behind all that fog there lay shores.

Near eleven o’clock in the evening, I received a most unexpected visit from Captain Nemo. He asked me very graciously if I felt exhausted from our vigil the night before. I said no.

“Then, Professor Aronnax, I propose an unusual excursion. Would you like to see these depths on a dark night?”

“Very much.”

“I warn you, this will be an exhausting stroll. We’ll need to walk long hours and scale a mountain.”

“Everything you say, captain, just increases my curiosity. I’m ready to go with you.”

“Then come along, professor, and we’ll go put on our diving suits.”

Arriving at the wardrobe, I saw that neither my companions nor any crewmen would be coming with us on this excursion.

In a few moments we had put on our equipment. Air tanks were placed on our backs, but the electric lamps were not in readiness. I commented on this to the captain.

“They’ll be useless to us,” he replied.

I thought I hadn’t heard him right, but I couldn’t repeat my comment because the captain’s head had already disappeared into its metal covering.

Midnight was approaching. The waters were profoundly dark, but Captain Nemo pointed to a reddish spot in the distance, a sort of wide glow shimmering about two miles from the Nautilus. What this fire was, what substances fed it, I couldn’t say.

Side by side, Captain Nemo and I walked directly toward this conspicuous flame. Our progress was slow, because our feet kept sinking into a kind of slimy mud mixed with seaweed and assorted flat stones.

After half an hour of walking, the seafloor grew rocky. My feet often slipped. But Captain Nemo kept walking. I followed him boldly. 100 feet above our heads stood the mountain peak. We arrived at a preliminary plateau where many surprises were waiting for me. Picturesque ruins took shape, betraying the hand of man, not our Creator. They were huge stacks of stones in which you could distinguish the indistinct forms of palaces and temples.

Where was I, where had Captain Nemo’s fancies taken me? I wanted to ask him. I stopped him. I seized his arm. But he shook his head, pointed to the mountain’s topmost peak, and seemed to tell me:

“Come on! Come with me! Come higher!”

I followed him with my last burst of energy.

There the mountain crowned the receding bottom of this part of the Atlantic. My eyes scanned the distance and took in a vast area lit by intense flashes of light. In essence, this mountain was a volcano. A wide crater vomited torrents of lava. This volcano was an immense torch that lit up the lower plains all the way to the horizon.

This underwater crater spewed lava, but not flames. Flames need oxygen from the air and are unable to spread underwater.

In fact, there beneath my eyes was a town in ruins, demolished, overwhelmed, laid low, its roofs caved in, its temples pulled down, its arches dislocated, its columns stretching over the earth; in these ruins you could still detect the solid proportions of some architecture.

Where was I? I had to find out at all cost, I wanted to speak.

But Captain Nemo came over and stopped me with a gesture. Then, picking up a piece of chalky stone, he advanced to a black basaltic rock and scrawled this one word: ATLANTIS.

Atlantis, that ancient land of by the historians; Plato’s Atlantis; the continent whose very existence has been denied by philosophers and scientists, who entered its disappearance in the ledger of myths and folk tales! So this was the submerged region that had existed outside Europe and Asia, home of those powerful Atlantean people!

We stayed in this place an entire hour, contemplating its vast plains in the lava’s glow. Then the captain’s hand signaled me to follow him.

I could see the Nautilus’s beacon twinkling like a star. The captain walked straight toward it, and soon we were back on board.

Chapter 10

The Nautilus didn’t change direction. We had to set aside any hope of returning to European seas. Where was Captain Nemo taking us? I was afraid to guess.

No unique incidents distinguished our voyage. I saw little of the captain. He was at work. In the library I often found books he had left open, especially books on natural history. Sometimes I heard melancholy sounds reverberating from the organ, which he played very expressively.

During this part of our voyage, we navigated on the surface of the waves for entire days. The sea was nearly deserted.

Where was the Nautilus going? To the pole? That was insanity.

The Canadian had said nothing more to me about his escape plans. He had become less sociable, almost sullen. I could feel the anger building in him.

That day, March 14, he and Conseil found me in my stateroom. I asked them the purpose of their visit.

“To put a simple question to you, sir,” the Canadian answered me.

“Go on, Ned.”

“How many men do you think are on board the Nautilus?”

“I’m unable to say, my friend. If I truly understand the captain’s way of life, his Nautilus isn’t simply a ship. It’s meant to be a refuge for people like its commander, people who have severed all ties with the shore.”

“Perhaps,” Conseil said, “but in a nutshell, the Nautilus can hold only a certain number of men, so couldn’t master estimate their maximum?”

“How, Conseil?”

“By calculating it. Master is familiar with the ship’s capacity, hence the amount of air it contains; on the other hand, master knows how much air each man consumes in the act of breathing, and he can compare this data with the fact that the Nautilus must rise to the surface every twenty-four hours …”

Conseil didn’t finish his sentence, but I could easily see what he was driving at.

“I understand,” I said. “But such calculations can give only a very uncertain figure.”

“No problem,” the Canadian went on insistently.

“The air contained in the Nautilus would be exactly enough for 625 men over twenty-four hours.”

“625!” Ned repeated.

“It is too many for three men!” Conseil muttered. “But Captain Nemo can’t go south forever! He’ll surely have to stop, if only at the Ice Bank, and he’ll return to the seas of civilization! Then it will be time to resume Ned Land’s plans.”

To be sure, the monotony of life on board must have seemed unbearable to the Canadian, who was accustomed to freedom and activity.

“But Ned my friend,” Conseil said, “why not ask Captain Nemo for permission to hunt …”

Before Conseil could finish his sentence, Ned Land ran to look for the captain. A few moments later, the two of them appeared.

“There are southern whales here,” Captain Nemo said.

“Well, sir,” the Canadian asked, “couldn’t I hunt them, just so I don’t forget my old harpooning trade?”

“Hunt them? What for?” Captain Nemo replied. “Simply to destroy them? We have no use for whale oil on this ship. It would be killing for the sake of killing. I don’t allow such murderous pastimes. These whales, Mr. Land, are decent, harmless creatures. So leave these poor cetaceans alone. They have quite enough natural enemies, such as sperm whales, swordfish, and sawfish.”

Ned Land whistled a song between his teeth, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and turned his back on us. From that day on, I noted that Ned Land’s attitudes toward Captain Nemo grew worse and worse.

Chapter 11

The Nautilus 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. But who knows …

On March 14 at latitude 55 degrees, I saw 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.

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, did he feel right at home, the lord of these unreachable regions? Perhaps. But he didn’t say. He stood still.

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.”

At last on March 18, after twenty futile assaults, the Nautilus stopped. It had to halt among tracts of ice.

“Sir,” Ned Land told me that day, “if your captain goes any farther…”

“Yes?”

“He’ll be a superman.”

“Why, Ned?”

“Because nobody can go through ice. Your captain’s a powerful man, but he isn’t more powerful than nature!”

I went to the captain. He was glad to see me:

“Well, professor! What do you think?”

“I think we’re trapped, captain.”

“Trapped! What do you mean?”

“I mean we can’t go forward, backward, or sideways.”

“So, Professor Aronnax, you think the Nautilus won’t be able to float clear?”

“Only with the greatest difficulty, captain.”

“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, looking at the captain.

“Yes, sir, it will go to the pole.”

“To the pole!” I exclaimed.

“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 knew that! But to overcome all the obstacles around the South Pole—even more unattainable than the North Pole—wasn’t this an absolutely insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a madman?

I asked Captain Nemo if he had already discovered this pole.

“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 believe you! Let’s forge ahead! There are no obstacles for us! Let’s shatter this ice! Or let’s fly over it!”

“Over it, professor?” Captain Nemo replied serenely. “No, not over it, but under it.”

“Under it!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, 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.”

“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 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!”

Captain Nemo was right. But he didn’t waste an instant. At his signal, the chief officer appeared. The two men began to talk in their incomprehensible language.

The Nautilus’s powerful pumps forced air down into the tanks and stored it under high pressure. 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 Nautilus sank deeper still. It reached a depth of 800 meters. Now in open water, the ship took a direct course to the pole.

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.

We kept rising on a diagonal, going along the shiny surface. Mile after mile ice was growing thinner. Finally, at six o’clock, the lounge door opened. Captain Nemo appeared.

“Open sea!” he told me.