Chapter 15

How I got onto the platform I’m unable to say. Perhaps the Canadian transferred me there. But I could breathe, I could inhale the life-giving sea air. It was the breeze, the breeze itself!

“Ahhh!” Conseil was putting in. “What fine oxygen! Let master have no fears about breathing. There’s enough for everyone.”

Our strength returned promptly, and when I looked around, I saw that we were alone on the platform. No crewmen. Not even Captain Nemo. Those strange seamen on the Nautilus were content with the oxygen circulating inside. Not one of them had come up to enjoy the open air.

The first words I pronounced were words of appreciation and gratitude to my two companions. Ned and Conseil had kept me alive during the final hours.

“Oh, professor,” Ned Land answered me, “don’t mention it! It was a question of simple arithmetic. Your life is worth more than ours. So we had to save it.”

“No, Ned,” I replied, “it isn’t worth more. Nobody could be better than a kind and generous man like yourself!”

“All right, all right!” the Canadian repeated in embarrassment.

“And you, my gallant Conseil, you suffered a great deal.”

“Not too much, to be candid with master.”

“My friends,” I replied, “we’re bound to each other forever, and I’m deeply indebted to you—”

“Yes,” Ned Land said. “You can repay your debt by coming with me when I leave this infernal Nautilus.”

“By the way,” Conseil said, “are we going in a favorable direction?”

“Yes,” I replied, “because we’re going in the direction of the sun, and here the sun is due north.”

The next day, April 1, when the Nautilus rose to the surface of the waves a few minutes before noon, we raised land to the west. It was the Land of Fire, a name given it by early navigators after they saw numerous curls of smoke rising from the natives’ huts.

On April 11 we cut the Equator.

Chapter 16

For some days the Nautilus kept veering away from the American coast. On April 16 we raised Guadalupe from a distance of about thirty miles. For one instant I could see their lofty peaks.

For six months we had been prisoners aboard the Nautilus. We had fared 17,000 leagues, and as Ned Land said, there was no end in sight. So he made me a proposition. We were to ask Captain Nemo this question straight out: did the captain mean to keep us on board his vessel permanently?

This measure was distasteful to me. To my mind it would lead nowhere. We could hope for nothing from the Nautilus’s commander but could depend only on ourselves. Besides, for some time now the captain had been gloomier, more withdrawn, less sociable. He seemed to be avoiding me. I encountered him only at rare intervals. He used to explain the underwater wonders to me; now he left me to my research and no longer entered the lounge.

What changes had come over him? From what cause? I had no reason to blame myself. Was our presence on board perhaps a burden to him? Even so, I cherished no hopes that the man would set us free.

So I begged Ned to let me think about it before taking action. If this measure proved fruitless, it could arouse the captain’s suspicions, make our circumstances even more arduous, and jeopardize the Canadian’s plans. We had never felt better, neither Ned, Conseil, nor I. The nutritious food, life-giving air, regular routine. But we ourselves hadn’t severed all ties with humanity. For my part, I didn’t want my new and unusual research to be buried with my bones.

On May 8, Ned Land told me:

“Sir,” he told me that day, “Your Nemo’s veering away from shore and heading up north. But believe me, I don’t want to go with him to the North Pole.”

“What can we do, Ned, since it isn’t feasible to escape right now?”

“I am coming back to my idea. We’ve got to talk to the captain. When we were in your own country’s seas, you didn’t say a word. Now that we’re in mine, I intend to speak up. Honestly, sir, I’d rather jump overboard! I can’t stay here any longer! I’m suffocating!”

The Canadian was obviously at the end of his patience. His vigorous nature couldn’t adapt to this protracted imprisonment. His facial appearance was changing by the day. His moods grew gloomier and gloomier. Nearly seven months had gone by without our having any news from shore.

“Well, sir?” Ned Land went on, seeing that I hadn’t replied.

“Well, Ned, you want me to ask Captain Nemo what he intends to do with us?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Even though he has already made that clear?”

“Yes. I want it settled once and for all. Speak just for me, strictly on my behalf, if you want.”

“But I rarely encounter him. He positively avoids me. Anyway, I’ll confer with him, Ned.”

“When?” the Canadian asked insistently.

“When I encounter him.”

“Professor Aronnax, would you like me to go find him myself?”

“No, let me do it. Tomorrow—”

“Today,” Ned Land said.

“So be it. I’ll see him today,” I answered the Canadian, who, if he took action himself, would certainly have ruined everything.

I was left to myself. I went to Captain Nemo’s quarters. I knocked on his door. I received no reply. I knocked again, then tried the knob. The door opened.

I entered. The captain was there. He was bending over his worktable and hadn’t heard me. I drew closer. He looked up sharply, with a frowning brow, and said in a pretty stern tone:

“Oh, it’s you! What do you want?”

“To speak with you, captain.”

“But I’m busy, sir, I’m at work. I give you the freedom to enjoy your privacy, can’t I have the same for myself?”

“Sir,” I said coolly, “I need to speak with you on a matter that simply can’t wait.”

“Whatever could that be, sir?” he replied sarcastically. “Have you made some discovery that has escaped me? Has the sea yielded up new secrets to you?”

Before I could reply, he showed me a manuscript open on the table and told me in a more serious tone:

“Here, Professor Aronnax, is a manuscript written in several languages. It contains a summary of my research under the sea, and it won’t perish with me. Signed with my name, complete with my life story, this manuscript will be enclosed in a small, unsinkable contrivance. The last surviving man on the Nautilus will throw this contrivance into the sea, and it will go wherever the waves carry it.”

His name! His life story written by himself! So the secret of his existence might someday be unveiled?

“Captain,” I replied, “the fruits of your research must not be lost. But the methods you’re using are primitive. Who knows where the winds will take that contrivance, into whose hands it may fall? Can’t you find something better? Can’t you or one of your men—”

“Never, sir,” the captain said, swiftly interrupting me.

“But my companions and I would be willing to safeguard this manuscript, and if you give us back our freedom—”

“Your freedom!” Captain Nemo said, standing up.

“Yes, sir, and that’s the subject on which I wanted to confer with you. For seven months we’ve been aboard your vessel, and I ask you today, in the name of my companions as well as myself, if you intend to keep us here forever.”

“Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo said, “I’ll answer you today just as I did seven months ago: whoever boards the Nautilus must never leave it.”

“What you’re inflicting on us is outright slavery!”

“Call it anything you like.”

“But captain …”

The captain stared at me, crossing his arms.

“Professor Aronnax, you’re a man able to understand anything, even silence. I have nothing more to say to you. Let this first time you’ve come to discuss this subject also be the last, because a second time I won’t even listen.”

I withdrew. I reported this conversation to my two companions.

“Now we know,” Ned said, “that we can’t expect anything from this man. We’ll escape, no matter what the weather.”

But the skies became more and more threatening. There were conspicuous signs of a hurricane on the way. The atmosphere was turning white and milky.

The Nautilus descended. I thought it would find calm at fifteen meters down. No. The upper strata were too violently agitated. It needed to sink to fifty meters, searching for a resting place.

Chapter 18

In the aftermath of this storm, we were thrown back to the east. Away went any hope of escaping to the landing places of New York or the St. Lawrence. In despair, poor Ned went into seclusion like Captain Nemo. Conseil and I no longer left each other.

Sometimes on the surface of the waves, sometimes beneath them, the ship wandered for days amid these mists so feared by navigators. How many ships have perished in these waterways as they tried to get directions from the hazy lights on the coast! How many collisions have occurred with these reefs! How many vessels have rammed each other!

So the floor of this sea had the appearance of a battlefield where every ship defeated by the ocean still lay. Among these vessels, how many went down with their crews and hosts of immigrants!

By May 15 we were off the southern tip of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The sea is of no great depth at the Grand Banks. But to the south there is a deep, suddenly occurring depression, a 3,000-meter pit. Here the Gulf Stream loses its speed and temperature, but it turns into a sea.

But the ship didn’t stay long in these waterways. It went up to about latitude 42 degrees. Instead of continuing north, the Nautilus took an easterly heading.

It was on May 17, about 500 miles from Heart’s Content and 2,800 meters down, that I saw this cable lying on the seafloor. Conseil mistook it at first for a gigantic sea snake. But I enlightened him and gave him various details on the laying of this cable.

The first cable was put down during the years 1857-1858; but after transmitting about 400 telegrams, it went dead. In 1863 engineers built a new cable that measured 3,400 kilometers. This attempt also failed.

But Americans refused to give up. Another cable was put down under better conditions.

The long electric cable was covered with seashell rubble. This cable will no doubt last indefinitely because, as observers note, its casing is improved by a stay in salt water.

Would Captain Nemo head up north? No. Much to my surprise, he went back down south and returned to European seas.

An important question then popped into my head. Would the Nautilus dare to tackle the English Channel? Ned Land never stopped questioning me. What could I answer him? Captain Nemo remained invisible.

All day long on May 31, the Nautilus swept around the sea in a series of circles that had me deeply puzzled. At noon Captain Nemo himself appeared. He didn’t address a word to me. He looked gloomier than ever. What was filling him with such sadness? Was it our proximity to these European shores? Was he reliving his memories of that country he had left behind? If so, what did he feel? Remorse or regret?

The next day, June 1, the Nautilus was obviously trying to locate some precise spot in the ocean. The sea was smooth, the skies clear. Eight miles to the east, a big steamship was visible on the horizon line. It had no flag, and I couldn’t tell its nationality.

The ship lay motionless, neither rolling nor pitching. I was on the platform just then. After determining our position, the captain pronounced only these words:

“It’s right here!”

He went down the hatch. I returned to the lounge. The hatch closed, and I heard water hissing in the ballast tanks. The Nautilus began to sink on a vertical line. Some minutes later it stopped at a depth of 833 meters and came to rest on the seafloor.

The ceiling lights in the lounge then went out, the panels opened, and through the windows I saw the sea brightly lit by the beacon’s rays.

A prominent bulge on the sea bottom caught my attention. Carefully examining this mass, I could identify the swollen outlines of a ship. What ship was this? Why had the Nautilus come to visit its grave? Was it something other than a maritime accident that had dragged this ship under the waters?

I wasn’t sure what to think, but next to me I heard Captain Nemo’s voice slowly say:

“Originally this ship was named the Marseillais. It carried seventy-four cannons and was launched in 1762. In 1794 the new Republic of France changed the name of this ship. Seventy-four years ago, at this very spot in latitude 47 degrees 24’ and longitude 17 degrees 28’, this ship sank after a heroic battle. It preferred to go to the bottom with its 356 seamen rather than surrender; and it disappeared beneath the waves to shouts of ‘Long live the Republic!’”

“This is the Avenger!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, sir! The Avenger! A splendid name!” Captain Nemo murmured, crossing his arms.

The way he said this had a profound impact on my mind. Hands outstretched toward the sea, the captain contemplated the proud wreck with blazing eyes. More and more I could see a distinction between the man and the scientist. It was no ordinary misanthropy that kept Captain Nemo and his companions sequestered inside the Nautilus, but a hate so monstrous or so sublime that the passing years could never weaken it.

Did this hate also hunger for vengeance? Time would soon tell.