Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

by Jules Verne

  The nets, which had stayed in our wake for several hours, were hauled on board. I estimated that they held more than one-thousand pounds of fish. It was a fine catch but not surprising. Because of them, we were never lacking in provisions of the highest quality.

  Over the ensuing days and weeks, Captain Nemo was very frugal with his visits. I saw him only at rare intervals. His chief officer regularly fixed the positions I found reported on the chart, and in such a way that I could exactly plot the Nautilus’s course.

  Conseil and Land spent the long hours with me. Conseil had told our friend about the wonders of our undersea stroll, and the Canadian was sorry he hadn’t gone along. But I hoped an opportunity would arise for a visit to the forests of Oceania.

  Almost every day the panels in the lounge were open for some hours, and our eyes never tired of probing the mysteries of the underwater world.

  One day, as Conseil and I stood at the glass and exclaimed at the wonders we saw, Ned came up behind me. He put his arms around my waist, pulling me back against him so that I could feel the hardenss of his lust. He cupped my groin in one strong hand.

  “I love to hear you talk,” he whispered in my ear. “Keep going.”

  I was embarrassed to have this intimacy in front of Conseil. “Conseil is here.”

  “Conseil doesn’t mind.”

  “Mr Land is right,” Conseil said. “I will continue to study the fish.”

  “But anybody could walk in at any time.”

  Ned laughed heartily in my ear. He continued to caress me with his hand, and despite my embarrassment, my body responded readily to his touch.

  I was mortified. I looked to Conseil, ready to beg his apology, but my faithful servant smiled conspiritorially at me. “The fish will wait. I will happily stand outside the door to ensure that master’s pleasure is not interrupted.”

  I can say without reserve that it is impossible for a man to die from embarrassment, for surely if it were possible, I would have done so at that moment.

  Once the door had closed behind the lad, Ned Land and I were alone. My lover immediately began to unfasten my trousers. “See?” he said in my ear. “Nothing to worry about. “Now—” He pushed my trousers down off my hips, leaving them bunched about my thighs. He reached around me to grip my erection. “Tell me what you see.”

  I leant back against him, closing my eyes to enjoy the pleasure of his touch, but as I did, his other hand came down hard on my flank.

  I gasped. My eyes popped open.

  “Have I not said how I love to hear you talk about your science and your fish?” He kissed my neck and my ear. Still, his calloused fist moved on me. “Try again, Professor. Tell me what you see.”

  In all of my times studying the wonders of nature, I’d never tried to do it while a man stroked my cock, or nibbled my ear, or pushed his hardened manhood against my backside.

  It was wonderfully distracting, but I did as my lover ordered.

  I looked through the observation pane at the sea.

  “Dolphinfish,” I panted.

  “Tell me more.”

  “There,” I said, trying weakly to point. “With azure fins, gold tails, and flesh that’s unrivalled in the entire world.”

  “Much like yours,” he said, kissing me again. “Go on.”

  “Wrasse from the genus Hologymnosus. They are nearly denuded of scales but exquisite in flavour—”

  “Also like you.”

  “Knifejaws with bony beaks, yellowish albacore that are as tasty as bonito. All of them fish worth classifying in the ship’s pantry.”

  “You’re doing so well, Professor. Shall I reward you?”

  Should I say yes? For I wanted that reward desperately. But often these questions of his were designed to tease me. Which was better, the anticipation or the achievement? In the end, I could not decide. I only whimpered in reply.

  “I think I will reward you,” he said. “But we’re not done yet.”

  I waited, not daring to close my eyes, still staring into the depth of the sea while he stroked me. I heard the wet smack of his lips. Then his fingers penetrated me. He had moistened them in his mouth, and they slid easily into me.

  I gasped. I arched my back. I closed my eyes.

  “What do you see, Professor?”

  It was a question, but it was an order too. His fingers moved in me, his hand moved on me. The ecstasy of it was exquisite, but I was not allowed to lose myself in it yet. I opened my eyes. I made myself see.

  “I see an immense school of squid, unusual molluscs that are near neighbours of the cuttlefish.”

  “Good, Professor.”

  “French fishermen give them the name ‘cuckoldfish’, and they belong to the class Cephalopoda, family Dibranchiata, consisting of themselves together with cuttlefish and argonauts.”

  I had to stop. I was panting, barely able to speak. Ned let go of my cock long enough to smack my flank. His fingers continued to work within me, taunting me. Ravishing me.

  “Don’t stop,” he whispered as he again took hold of my erection. He bit the lobe of my ear so hard it raised tears in my eyes and goose pimples upon my flesh. I fought to keep from losing control. “Speak.”

  “Cuckoldfish,” I stammered. “Class Cephalopoda, family Dibranchiata.” I was repeating myself, but I could barely think. I struggled to find more words to please him. “The naturalists of antiquity made a special study of them, and these animals furnished many ribald figures of speech for soapbox orators in the Greek marketplace, as well as excellent dishes for the tables of rich citizens, if we’re to believe Athenæus.”

  “Who?”

  “A Greek physician predating Galen.”

  “God, I do love to hear you speak.”

  But I could speak no more. His hands were too insistent. His body so strong, pushing against me from me behind. I wanted desperately to come. I fought it, closing my eyes, biting my lip. I hoped the pain would distract me, but it only fuelled my desire.

  “What do you see?” he hissed in my ear.

  I forced my eyes to open. I looked to the pane, but I could see nothing. I could not focus beyond the reflective glass. Desire made me weak.

  His fist tightened on my cock, making me gasp. “What do do you see?” he asked again.

  Nothing. I could see nothing in the ocean’s depths.

  But then I did see. Not beyond the pane, though. With light inside the chamber and darkness beyond, the glass served as a mirror. My eyes could no longer focus on what was outside, but there, in the reflective surface of the glass, I saw what was within. Me, held captive in his arms. Him, his piercing gaze meeting mine in the glass.

  “I see you,” I gasped.

  Not the answer he’d expected, I could see, but it pleased him just the same. I saw it in the slow smile that spread across his face.

  “You’re a marvel, Professor,” he said. “The most perfect man I’ve ever known.”

  And with that, he moved his hand. He shifted his position a fraction of an inch, and he pushed suddenly with blinding pressure on that glorious spot deep inside me.

  White hot exaltation blotted out my vision and roared in my ears. I came hard, nearly screaming as I did, pumping into his tight fist as he worked that joyous centre of my being inside my ass. I pumped again, crying out, and then again, emptying myself. Losing myself.

  Not ever wanting to come back.

  It felt like ages before I could open my eyes. Ned was holding me up. I struggled to regain my feet. When I had them, I leant forward against the pane of glass, marvelling at its coolness on my fevered skin. I shivered, still barely able to stand. Ned pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to wipe my seed from my flesh, then from his fingers. Still, I fought to breathe normally. I turned my head against the glass to see him, not in reflection this time, but in truth. He smiled at me as he shifted his trousers over the bulge they couldn’t quite hide.

  “Might want to do up those trousers, Professor,” he said. “You never kn
ow who might come barging in.”

  At that moment, I wasn’t sure I cared.

  * * * *

  The Nautilus’s general heading was southeast, and it stayed at a depth between one-hundred and one-hundred and fifty metres. When I arrived on the platform that morning, I saw the Island of Hawaii two miles to leeward, the largest of the seven islands making up this group. I could clearly distinguish the tilled soil on its outskirts, the various mountain chains running parallel with its coastline, and its volcanoes, crowned by Mauna Kea, whose elevation is five-thousand metres above sea level. Among other specimens from these waterways, our nets brought up some peacock-tailed flabellarian coral, polyps flattened into stylish shapes and unique to this part of the ocean.

  The Nautilus kept to its southeasterly heading. On December 1 it cut the equator at longitude 142 degrees, and on the 4th of the same month, after a quick crossing marked by no incident, we raised the Marquesas Islands. Three miles off, in latitude 8 degrees 57’ south and longitude 139 degrees 32’ west, I spotted Martin Point on Nuku Hiva, chief member of this island group that belongs to France. I could make out only its wooded mountains on the horizon, because Captain Nemo hated to hug shore.

  After leaving these delightful islands to the protection of the French flag, the Nautilus covered about two-thousand miles from December 4 to the 11th. Its navigating was marked by an encounter with more of the remarkable specimens I’d named to Ned that day in the midst of my pleasure. It was during the night of December 9-10 that the Nautilus encountered this army of distinctly nocturnal molluscs. They numbered in the millions. They were migrating from the temperate zones towards zones still warmer, following the itineraries of herring and sardines. We stared at them through our thick glass windows. They swam backward with tremendous speed, moving by means of their locomotive tubes, chasing fish and molluscs, eating the little ones, eaten by the big ones, and tossing in indescribable confusion the ten feet that nature has rooted in their heads like a hairpiece of pneumatic snakes. Despite its speed, the Nautilus navigated for several hours in the midst of this school of animals, and its nets brought up an incalculable number, among which I recognised all nine species that Professor Orbigny has classified as native to the Pacific Ocean.

  During this crossing, the sea continually lavished us with the most marvellous sights.

  Its variety was infinite. It changed its setting and decor for the mere pleasure of our eyes, and we were called upon not simply to contemplate the works of our Creator in the midst of the liquid element, but also to probe the ocean’s most daunting mysteries.

  Also during the crossing, Ned and I grew closer. Although technically he still shared a cabin with Conseil, he spent nearly every night in my bed. And although the pleasure we found in each other’s bodies was significant, the pleasure we found merely in each other’s company was more profound. Here, held prisoner in the secret world beneath the sea, we had nothing to hide. There was nobody to condemn us for our desires. We made love without reservation, sometimes rough, sometimes gentle. Always, we woke in each other’s arms.

  What we had together had long passed beyond the realm of mere friendship and beyond what could be defined by the passion we shared. I loved him, and though I dared not say it, I felt sure he could sense it in my trembling breath and my quiet moans. I was confident too that he loved me back. There was a joyous possessiveness about the way he kissed me and the way he held me when my legs were around his waist and he was deep inside me. There was a gentleness in him, even when he had me pinned face down to my bed and my ass was smarting from his blows.

  I had no desire to ever let him go. I sensed though that he was not as content in our imprisonment aboard the Nautilus as I.

  For his part, Conseil remained my friend and confidante, apparently unfazed by mine and Ned’s affair.

  During the day of December 11, I was busy reading in the main lounge. Ned Land and Conseil were observing the luminous waters through the gaping panels. The Nautilus was motionless. Its ballast tanks full, it was sitting at a depth of one-thousand metres in a comparatively unpopulated region of the ocean where only larger fish put in occasional appearances.

  Just then I was studying a delightful book by Jean Macé, The Servants of the Stomach, and savouring its ingenious teachings, when Conseil interrupted my reading.

  “Would master kindly come here for an instant?” he said to me in an odd voice.

  “What is it, Conseil?”

  “It’s something that master should see.”

  I stood up, went, leaned on my elbows before the window, and I saw it.

  In the broad electric daylight, an enormous black mass, quite motionless, hung suspended in the midst of the waters. I observed it carefully, trying to find out the nature of this gigantic cetacean. Then a sudden thought crossed my mind.

  “A ship.” I exclaimed.

  “Yes,” the Canadian replied, “a disabled craft that’s sinking straight down.”

  Ned Land was not mistaken. We were in the presence of a ship whose severed shrouds still hung from their clasps. Its hull looked in good condition, and it must have gone under only a few hours before. The stumps of three masts, chopped off two feet above the deck, indicated a flooding ship that had been forced to sacrifice its masting. But it had heeled sideways, filling completely, and it was listing to port even yet. A sorry sight, this carcass lost under the waves, but sorrier still was the sight on its deck, where, lashed with ropes to prevent their being washed overboard, some human corpses still lay. I counted four of them—four men, one still standing at the helm—then a woman, halfway out of a skylight on the afterdeck, holding a child in her arms. This woman was young. Under the brilliant lighting of the Nautilus’s rays, I could make out her features, which the water hadn’t yet decomposed. With a supreme effort, she had lifted her child above her head, and the poor little creature’s arms were still twined around its mother’s neck. The postures of the four seamen seemed ghastly to me, twisted from convulsive movements, as if making a last effort to break loose from the ropes that bound them to their ship. And the helmsman, standing alone, calmer, his face smooth and serious, his grizzled hair plastered to his brow, his hands clutching the wheel, seemed even yet to be guiding his wrecked three-master through the ocean depths.

  What a scene. We stood dumbstruck, hearts pounding, before this shipwreck caught in the act, as if it had been photographed in its final moments, so to speak. And already I could see enormous sharks moving in, eyes ablaze, drawn by the lure of human flesh.

  Meanwhile, turning, the Nautilus made a circle around the sinking ship, and for an instant I could read the board on its stern:

  The Florida

  Sunderland, England

  Chapter Nineteen

  Vanikoro

  This dreadful sight was the first of a whole series of maritime catastrophes that the Nautilus would encounter on its run. When it plied more heavily travelled seas, we often saw wrecked hulls rotting in midwater, and farther down, cannons, shells, anchors, chains, and a thousand other iron objects rusting away.

  Meanwhile, continuously swept along by the Nautilus, where we lived in near isolation, we raised the Tuamotu Islands on December 11, that old “dangerous group”

  associated with the French global navigator Commander Bougainville. It stretches from Ducie Island to Lazareff Island over an area of 500 leagues from the east–southeast to the west–northwest, between latitude 13° 30’ and 23° 50’ south, and between longitude 125° 30’

  and 151° 30’ west. This island group covers a surface area of 370 square leagues, and it’s made up of some sixty subgroups, among which we noted the Gambier group, which is a French protectorate. These islands are coral formations. Thanks to the work of polyps, a slow but steady upheaval will someday connect these islands to each other. Later on, this new island will be fused to its neighbouring island groups, and a fifth continent will stretch from New Zealand and New Caledonia as far as the Marquesas Islands.

  The
day I expounded this theory to Captain Nemo, he answered me coldly.

  “The earth doesn’t need new continents, but new men!”

  Sailors’ luck led the Nautilus straight to Reao Island, one of the most unusual in this group, which was discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell aboard the Minerva. So I was able to study the madreporic process that has created the islands in this ocean.

  Madrepores, which one must guard against confusing with precious coral, clothe their tissue in a limestone crust, and their variations in structure have led my famous mentor Professor Milne–Edwards to classify them into five divisions. The tiny microscopic animals that secrete this polypary live by the billions in the depths of their cells. Their limestone deposits build up into rocks, reefs, islets, islands. In some places, they form atolls, a circular ring surrounding a lagoon or small inner lake that gaps place in contact with the sea.

  Elsewhere, they take the shape of barrier reefs, such as those that exist along the coasts of New Caledonia and several of the Tuamotu Islands. In still other localities, such as Réunion Island and the island of Mauritius, they build fringing reefs, high, straight walls next to which the ocean’s depth is considerable.

  While cruising along only a few cable lengths from the underpinning of Reao Island, I marvelled at the gigantic piece of work accomplished by these microscopic laborers. These walls were the express achievements of madrepores known by the names fire coral, finger coral, star coral, and stony coral. These polyps grow exclusively in the agitated strata at the surface of the sea, and so it’s in the upper reaches that they begin these substructures, which sink little by little together with the secreted rubble binding them. This, at least, is the theory of Mr. Charles Darwin, who thus explains the formation of atolls—a theory superior, in my view, to the one that says these madreporic edifices sit on the summits of mountains or volcanoes submerged a few feet below sea level.

  I could observe these strange walls quite closely. Our sounding lines indicated that they dropped perpendicularly for more than three-hundred meters, and our electric beams made the bright limestone positively sparkle.