Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

by Jules Verne

  We’re simply captives, prisoners masquerading under the name ‘guests’ for the sake of everyday courtesy. Even so, Ned Land hasn’t given up all hope of recovering his freedom.

  He’s more determined than ever. He’s sure to take advantage of the first chance that comes his way. No doubt I will do likewise. And yet I will feel some regret at making off with the Nautilus’s secrets, so generously unveiled for us by Captain Nemo. Because, ultimately, should we detest or admire this man? Is he the persecutor or the persecuted? And in all honesty, before I leave him forever, I want to finish this underwater tour of the world, whose first stages have been so magnificent. I want to observe the full series of these wonders gathered under the seas of our globe. I want to see what no man has seen yet, even if I must pay for this insatiable curiosity with my life. What are my discoveries to date? Nothing, relatively speaking—since so far we’ve covered only six-thousand leagues across the Pacific.

  Nevertheless, I’m well aware that the Nautilus is drawing near to populated shores, and if some chance for salvation becomes available to us, it would be sheer cruelty to sacrifice my companions to my passion for the unknown, and I have no desire to live without Ned. I must go with them, perhaps even guide them. But will this opportunity ever arise? The human being, robbed of his free will, craves such an opportunity, but the scientist, forever inquisitive, dreads it.

  That day, January 21, 1868, the chief officer went at noon to take the sun’s altitude. I climbed onto the platform, lit a cigar, and watched him at work. It seemed obvious to me that this man didn’t understand French, because I made several remarks in a loud voice that were bound to provoke him to some involuntary show of interest had he understood them, but he remained mute and emotionless.

  While he took his sights with his sextant, one of the Nautilus’s sailors—that muscular man who had gone with us to Crespo Island during our first underwater excursion—came up to clean the glass panes of the beacon. I then examined the fittings of this mechanism, whose power was increased a hundredfold by biconvex lenses that were designed like those in a lighthouse and kept its rays productively focused. This electric lamp was so constructed as to yield its maximum illuminating power. In essence, its light was generated in a vacuum, insuring both its steadiness and intensity. Such a vacuum also reduced wear on the graphite points between which the luminous arc expanded. This was an important savings for Captain Nemo, who couldn’t easily renew them. But under these conditions, wear and tear were almost nonexistent.

  When the Nautilus was ready to resume its underwater travels, I went below again to the lounge. The hatches closed once more, and our course was set due west.

  We then ploughed the waves of the Indian Ocean, vast liquid plains with an area of five-hundred and firty million hectares, whose waters are so transparent it makes you dizzy to lean over their surface. There the Nautilus generally drifted at a depth between one-hundred and two-hundred metres. It behaved in this way for some days. To anyone without my grand passion for the sea, these hours would surely have seemed long and monotonous, but my daily strolls on the platform where I was revived by the life-giving ocean air, the sights in the rich waters beyond the lounge windows, the books to be read in the library, and the composition of my memoirs, took up all my time and left me without a moment of weariness or boredom.

  All in all, we enjoyed a highly satisfactory state of health. The diet on board agreed with us perfectly, and for my part, I could easily have gone without those changes of pace that Ned Land, in a spirit of protest, kept taxing his ingenuity to supply us. What’s more, in this constant temperature we didn’t even have to worry about catching colds. Besides, the ship had a good stock of the madrepore Dendrophylia, known in Provence by the name sea fennel, and a poultice made from the dissolved flesh of its polyps will furnish an excellent cough medicine.

  For some days we saw a large number of aquatic birds with webbed feet, known as gulls or sea mews. Some were skilfully slain, and when cooked in a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of water game.

  The Nautilus’s nets hauled up several types of sea turtle from the hawksbill genus with arching backs whose scales are highly prized. Diving easily, these reptiles can remain a good while underwater by closing the fleshy valves located at the external openings of their nasal passages. When they were captured, some hawksbills were still asleep inside their carapaces, a refuge from other marine animals. The flesh of these turtles was nothing memorable, but their eggs made an excellent feast.

  As for fish, they always filled us with wonderment when, staring through the open panels, we could unveil the secrets of their aquatic lives. I noted several species I hadn’t previously been able to observe.

  From January 21 to the 23rd, the Nautilus travelled at the rate of two-hundred and fifty thousand, two-hundred and fifty leagues in twenty-four hours, hence five-hundred and forty miles at twenty-two miles per hour. If, during our trip, we were able to identify these different varieties of fish, it’s because they were attracted by our electric light and tried to follow alongside, but most of them were outdistanced by our speed and soon fell behind—

  temporarily, however, a few managed to keep pace in the Nautilus’s waters.

  On the morning of the 24th, in latitude 12 degrees 5’ south and longitude 94 degrees 33’, we raised Keeling Island, a madreporic upheaving planted with magnificent coconut trees, which had been visited by Mr Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus cruised along a short distance off the shore of this desert island. Our dragnets brought up many specimens of polyps and echinoderms plus some unusual shells from the branch Mollusca. Captain Nemo’s treasures were enhanced by some valuable exhibits from the delphinula snail species, to which I joined some pointed star coral, a sort of parasitic polypary that often attaches itself to seashells.

  Soon Keeling Island disappeared below the horizon, and our course was set to the northwest, towards the tip of the Indian peninsula.

  “Civilisation,” Ned Land told me that day. “Much better than those Papuan Islands where we ran into more savages than venison. On this Indian shore, Professor, there are roads and railways, English, French, and Hindu villages. We wouldn’t go five miles without bumping into a fellow countryman. Come on now, isn’t it time for our sudden departure from Captain Nemo?”

  “No, no, Ned,” I replied in a very firm tone. “Let’s ride it out, as you seafaring fellows say. The Nautilus is approaching populated areas. It’s going back towards Europe, let it take us there. After we arrive in home waters, we can do as we see fit. Besides, I don’t imagine Captain Nemo will let us go hunting on the coasts of Malabar or Coromandel as he did in the forests of New Guinea.”

  “Well, sir, can’t we manage without his permission?”

  I didn’t answer the Canadian. I wanted no arguments with my lover. Deep down, I was determined to fully exploit the good fortune that had put me on board the Nautilus.

  After leaving Keeling Island, our pace got generally slower. It also got more unpredictable, often taking us to great depths. Several times we used our slanting fins, which internal levers could set at an oblique angle to our waterline. Thus we went as deep as two or three kilometres down but without ever verifying the lowest depths of this sea near India, which soundings of thirteen-thousand metres have been unable to reach. As for the temperature in these lower strata, the thermometer always and invariably indicated 4

  degrees centigrade. I merely observed that in the upper layers, the water was always colder over shallows than in the open sea.

  On January 25, the ocean being completely deserted, the Nautilus spent the day on the surface, churning the waves with its powerful propeller and making them spurt to great heights. Under these conditions, who wouldn’t have mistaken it for a gigantic cetacean? I spent three-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the sea. Nothing on the horizon, except near four o’clock in the afternoon a long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack. Its masting was visible for an instan
t, but it couldn’t have seen the Nautilus because we were lying too low in the water. I imagine that steamboat belonged to the Peninsular & Oriental line, which provides service from the island of Ceylon to Sidney, also calling at King George Sound and Melbourne.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon, just before that brief twilight that links day with night in tropical zones, Conseil and I marvelled at an unusual sight.

  It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients, is a sign of good luck.

  Now, it was a school of argonauts then voyaging on the surface of the ocean. We could count several hundred of them. They belonged to that species of argonaut covered with protuberances and exclusive to the seas near India.

  These graceful molluscs were swimming backward by means of their locomotive tubes, sucking water into these tubes and then expelling it. Six of their eight tentacles were long, thin, and floated on the water, while the other two were rounded into palms and spread to the wind like light sails. I could see perfectly their undulating, spiral-shaped shells, which Cuvier aptly compared to an elegant cockleboat. It’s an actual boat indeed. It transports the animal that secretes it without the animal sticking to it.

  “The argonaut is free to leave its shell,” I told Conseil, “but it never does.”

  “Not unlike Captain Nemo,” Conseil replied sagely. “Which is why he should have christened his ship the Argonaut.”

  For about an hour the Nautilus cruised in the midst of this school of molluscs. Then, lord knows why, they were gripped with a sudden fear. As if at a signal, every sail was abruptly lowered—arms folded, bodies contracted, shells turned over by changing their centre of gravity, and the whole flotilla disappeared under the waves. It was instantaneous, and no squadron of ships ever manoeuvered with greater togetherness.

  Just then night fell suddenly, and the waves barely surged in the breeze, spreading placidly around the Nautilus’s side plates.

  The next day, January 26, we cut the equator on the 82nd meridian and we re-entered the northern hemisphere.

  During that day a fearsome school of sharks provided us with an escort. Dreadful animals that teem in these seas and make them extremely dangerous. There were Port Jackson sharks with a brown back, a whitish belly, and eleven rows of teeth, bigeye sharks with necks marked by a large black spot encircled in white and resembling an eye, and Isabella sharks whose rounded snouts were strewn with dark speckles. Often these powerful animals rushed at the lounge window with a violence less than comforting. By this point Ned Land had lost all self-control. He wanted to rise to the surface of the waves and harpoon the monsters, especially certain smooth-hound sharks whose mouths were paved with teeth arranged like a mosaic, and some big five-metre tiger sharks that insisted on personally provoking him. But the Nautilus soon picked up speed and easily left astern the fastest of these man-eaters.

  On January 27, at the entrance to the huge Bay of Bengal, we repeatedly encountered a gruesome sight—human corpses floating on the surface of the waves. Carried by the Ganges to the high seas, these were deceased Indian villagers who hadn’t been fully devoured by vultures, the only morticians in these parts. But there was no shortage of sharks to assist them with their undertaking chores.

  Near seven o’clock in the evening, the Nautilus lay half submerged, navigating in the midst of milky white waves. As far as the eye could see, the ocean seemed lactic. Was it an effect of the moon’s rays? No, because the new moon was barely two days old and was still lost below the horizon in the sun’s rays. The entire sky, although lit up by stellar radiation, seemed pitch-black in comparison with the whiteness of these waters.

  Conseil couldn’t believe his eyes, and he questioned me about the causes of this odd phenomenon. Luckily I was in a position to answer him.

  “That’s called a milk sea,” I told him, “a vast expanse of white waves often seen along the coasts of Amboina and in these waterways.”

  “But,” Conseil asked, “could master tell me the cause of this effect, because I presume this water hasn’t really changed into milk.”

  “No, my boy, and this whiteness that amazes you is merely due to the presence of myriads of tiny creatures called infusoria, a sort of diminutive glowworm that’s colourless and gelatinous in appearance, as thick as a strand of hair, and no longer than one-fifth of a millimetre. Some of these tiny creatures stick together over an area of several leagues.”

  “Several leagues,” Conseil exclaimed.

  “Yes, my boy, and don’t even try to compute the number of these infusoria. You won’t pull it off, because if I’m not mistaken, certain navigators have cruised through milk seas for more than forty miles.”

  I’m not sure that Conseil heeded my recommendation, because he seemed to be deep in thought, no doubt trying to calculate how many one-fifths of a millimetre are found in forty square miles. As for me, I continued to observe this phenomenon. For several hours the Nautilus’s spur sliced through these whitish waves, and I watched it glide noiselessly over this soapy water, as if it were cruising through those foaming eddies that a bay’s currents and countercurrents sometimes leave between each other.

  Near midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual hue, but behind us all the way to the horizon, the skies kept mirroring the whiteness of those waves and for a good while seemed imbued with the hazy glow of an aurora borealis.

  Chapter Two

  A New Proposition from Captain Nemo

  On January 28, in latitude 9 degrees 4’ north, when the Nautilus returned at noon to the surface of the sea, it lay in sight of land some eight miles to the west. Right off, I observed a cluster of mountains about two-thousand feet high, whose shapes were very whimsically sculpted. After our position fix, I re-entered the lounge, and when our bearings were reported on the chart, I saw that we were off the island of Ceylon, that pearl dangling from the lower lobe of the Indian peninsula.

  I went looking in the library for a book about this island, one of the most fertile in the world.

  Just then Captain Nemo and his chief officer appeared.

  The captain glanced at the chart. Then, turning to me, “The island of Ceylon,” he said,

  “is famous for its pearl fisheries. Would you be interested, Professor Aronnax, in visiting one of those fisheries?”

  “Certainly, Captain.”

  “Fine. It’s easily done. Only, when we see the fisheries, we’ll see no fishermen. The annual harvest hasn’t yet begun. No matter. I’ll give orders to make for the Gulf of Mannar, and we’ll arrive there late tonight.”

  The captain said a few words to his chief officer who went out immediately. Soon the Nautilus re-entered its liquid element, and the pressure gauge indicated that it was staying at a depth of thirty feet.

  With the chart under my eyes, I looked for the Gulf of Mannar. I found it by the 9th parallel off the northwestern shores of Ceylon. It was formed by the long curve of little Mannar Island. To reach it we had to go all the way up Ceylon’s west coast.

  “Professor,” Captain Nemo then told me, “there are pearl fisheries in the Bay of Bengal, the seas of the East Indies, the seas of China and Japan, plus those seas south of the United States, the Gulf of Panama and the Gulf of California, but it’s off Ceylon that such fishing reaps its richest rewards. No doubt we’ll be arriving a little early. Fishermen gather in the Gulf of Mannar only during the month of March, and for thirty days some three-hundred boats concentrate on the lucrative harvest of these treasures from the sea. Each boat is manned by ten oarsmen and ten fishermen. The latter divide into two groups, dive in rotation, and descend to a depth of twelve metres with the help of a heavy stone clutched between their feet and attached by a rope to their boat.”

  “You mean,” I said, “that such primitive methods are still all that they use?”

  “All,” Captain Nemo answered me, “although these fisheries belong to the most industrialised people in the world, the English, to whom the Treaty of Amiens granted them in 1802.”

&
nbsp; “Yet it strikes me that diving suits like yours could perform yeoman service in such work.”

  “Yes, since those poor fishermen can’t stay long underwater. On his voyage to Ceylon, the Englishman Percival made much of a Kaffir who stayed under five minutes without coming up to the surface, but I find that hard to believe. I know that some divers can last up to fifty-seven seconds, and highly skilful ones to eighty-seven, but such men are rare, and when the poor fellows climb back on board, the water coming out of their noses and ears is tinted with blood. I believe the average time underwater that these fishermen can tolerate is thirty seconds, during which they hastily stuff their little nets with all the pearl oysters they can tear loose. But these fishermen generally don’t live to advanced age—their vision weakens, ulcers break out on their eyes, sores form on their bodies, and some are even stricken with apoplexy on the ocean floor.”

  “Yes,” I said, “it’s a sad occupation, and one that exists only to gratify the whims of fashion. But tell me, Captain, how many oysters can a boat fish up in a workday?”

  “About forty-thousand to fifty-thousand. It’s even said that in 1814, when the English government went fishing on its own behalf, its divers worked just twenty days and brought up seventy-six million oysters.”

  “At least,” I asked, “the fishermen are well paid, aren’t they?”

  “Hardly, Professor. In Panama they make just $1.00 per week. In most places they earn only a penny for each oyster that has a pearl, and they bring up so many that have none.”

  “Only one penny to those poor people who make their employers rich. That’s atrocious.”

  “On that note, Professor,” Captain Nemo told me, “you and your companions will visit the Mannar oysterbank, and if by chance some eager fisherman arrives early, well, we can watch him at work.”

  “That suits me, Captain.”

  “By the way, Professor Aronnax, you aren’t afraid of sharks, are you?”