by Jules Verne
‘But’, said I, ‘this contrivance must contain some sort of machinery for moving from place to place, as well as a crew to operate it?’
‘It has to,’ replied the Canadian; ‘but all the same, I’ve been on this floating island for three hours, and it hasn’t given a single sign of life.’
‘The boat hasn’t moved?’*
‘No, Dr Aronnax; it’s been rocked by the waves, but it hasn’t budged.’
‘We know for a fact that it can travel very fast. Now it needs an engine to produce this velocity, and an engineer to operate the engine, therefore I can conclude that we are saved.’
‘H’m,’ voiced Ned dubiously.
Just then, and as if to prove my point, a disturbance came from the stern of the strange vessel, evidently screw-driven, and it began to move. We scarcely had time to seize hold of the top part, nearly a metre out of the water.* Luckily the speed was not very great.
‘As long as it goes over the waves, we’re all right,’ murmured Ned Land. ‘But if it decides to dive, I wouldn’t give two dollars for my hide!’
The Canadian might have made a still lower assessment. In any case we now needed to communicate with whatever beings were within the flanks of the machine. I searched on its surface for an opening: a hatch, or manhole to use a more technical term; but the lines of rivets solidly fixed along the joints of the iron plates were secure and regular.
Also the moon disappeared, leaving us in utter darkness. We would be forced to wait for daybreak to find a way of getting inside the submarine vessel.
Our survival thus depended on the caprice of the mysterious helmsmen piloting the machine: if they decided to dive, we were lost. But if they didn’t, I was confident of being able to make contact with them. And indeed, if they didn’t manufacture their air themselves, they had to come up to the surface sometimes to replenish their supply of breathable molecules. Hence the need for an aperture to open up the interior of the boat to fresh air.
We had given up all hope of being rescued by Captain Farragut. We were being carried westwards; I estimated that we were going at the relatively moderate speed of 12 knots. The screw beat the waves with mathematical regularity, but sometimes emerged and sent phosphorescent jets of water to a great height.
At about 4 a.m. the speed increased. We found it quite difficult to cope with the giddy pace, since the waves whipped into us. Fortunately Ned Land found a large ring set in the upper part of the iron back, and we managed to hold firmly on to it.
The long night finally came to an end. My imperfect memory cannot bring back all the impressions I felt. But one small point comes to mind. During some of the lulls in the wind and the waves, I fancied I could vaguely hear some sort of elusive harmony produced by distant chords. What then was the nature of this submarine navigation which the whole world was seeking in vain to understand? What kind of beings lived in this strange vessel? How did they move at such a prodigious rate?
Daylight appeared. The morning mist wrapped us in its folds, but was then torn asunder. I was about to make a careful survey of the hull, whose upper part formed a kind of horizontal platform, when I realized that it was slowly sinking.
‘Hey! What the hell!’ cried Ned, loudly stamping on the hull. ‘Open up, I say, you pirates!’
But it was difficult to produce a sound while the screw was beating vigorously. Fortunately the sinking stopped.
Suddenly from inside the boat the sound came of bars being pushed back. A plate was raised; a man appeared, uttered a strange cry, and immediately vanished.
A few seconds later, eight strong fellows with expressionless faces silently came out and pulled us into their formidable machine.
8
Mobilis in Mobili*
This action, so roughly executed, was carried out with lightning speed. My companions and I had no time to look around. I do not know what Ned and Conseil felt as they entered the floating prison, but for my part I must confess that a brief shudder chilled me to the bone. Who were we dealing with? Doubtless pirates of a new sort, using the seas for their own ends.
Scarcely was the small hatch closed than I was in complete darkness. Coming in from the daylight so suddenly, my eyes were blinded. I felt my bare feet on the rungs of an iron ladder. Land and Conseil, tightly held, followed. At the foot of the ladder a door opened, and immediately shut behind us with a loud clang.
We were alone. Where, I could not say — scarcely even imagine. Everything was black, but of such an absolute blackness that even after several minutes my eyes had not seen any of those uncertain scintillations that linger on, even on the darkest nights.
Ned Land was furious at such treatment and gave free vent to his indignation.
‘What the devil!’ he cried. ‘Even the New Caledonians are more hospitable than these people. All we need now is for them to be cannibals.* I wouldn’t be at all surprised; but I will not be eaten without protest!’
‘Calm down, Ned, my friend, calm down,’ Conseil said quietly. ‘Don’t get carried away too soon. We’re not in the frying pan yet.’
‘Frying pan no,’ riposted Land, ‘but we are in the oven. At any rate it’s as dark. Luckily I’ve still got my Bowie-knife1 on me, and I can see well enough to use it. The first of these bandits that lays a finger on me . . .’
‘Don’t get angry, Ned,’ I said, ‘and don’t make our position worse by pointless violence. Maybe they can hear us.* Let’s try instead to find out where we are.’
I advanced with arms outstretched. At five paces I reached a wall of riveted iron plates. Turning round, I bumped into a wooden table, surrounded by a few stools. The floor of this prison was covered with a thick matting of New Zealand flax that deadened the sound of our feet. The bare walls didn’t seem to have any doors or windows. Conseil, who had been working his way round the opposite way, bumped into me, and we came back to the middle of the cabin, which seemed to be about 20 feet by 10. Even Ned, tall as he was, could not find out how high the ceiling was.
The situation did not change for half an hour, but then our eyes were abruptly exposed to a cruelly bright light. Our prison was now filled with a luminous element of such brilliance that at first I could not bear it. From its whiteness and intensity I recognized the electric light which had produced the magnificent phosphorescence around the submarine vessel. After being forced to close my eyes, I opened them again and realized that the light came from a ground-glass half-globe in the ceiling of the chamber.
‘At last we can see,’ cried Ned Land, standing on the defensive, Bowie-knife in hand.
‘Yes,’ I replied, and risked an antithesis: ‘although the situation is no less obscure.’
‘If monsieur will only be patient,’ said the impassive Conseil.
The sudden illumination of the cabin gave us the opportunity to examine it minutely. It contained nothing but the table and five stools. The door was invisible but clearly hermetically sealed, for no sound reached our ears. Everything seemed dead on board the vessel. I had no idea whether it was still moving over the surface of the ocean or plunging into the depths.
All the same, the lamp had not been lit without reason. I therefore hoped that the crew of the vessel would soon put in an appearance. When you wish to put people away for ever you do not illuminate their dungeon.
I was not mistaken; the sound came of bolts being released, the door opened, and two men came in.
One was rather short but with strong muscles; he had broad shoulders, robust arms and legs, a good head, thick black hair, a vigorous moustache, and alert piercing eyes: his whole body was stamped with that southern vivacity which distinguishes the people of Provence. Diderot* has correctly maintained that man’s gestures are metaphoric, and this diminutive man was living proof. One had the impression that his talking would be full of prosopopoeia, metonymy, and hypallage.* But I was never in a position to discover whether this was the case, since he always spoke in my presence in an odd and utterly incomprehensible language.
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p; The second stranger deserves a more detailed description. A pupil of Gratiolet or Engel would have read his physiognomy like a book.* I instantly recognized his dominant feature: self-confidence, for his head rose nobly from the curve of his shoulders and his dark eyes looked at you with a cool assurance. He was calm, since his skin, more pale than ruddy, indicated composure in the blood. Energy he possessed, as shown by the quick contraction of his eyebrow muscles. And courage also, since his deep breathing betrayed great vitality and expansiveness.
In line with the observations of the physiognomists, I should also say that this man was proud, that his steadfast, self-possessed look seemed to reflect lofty views, and that all this and the harmony of expression in the movements of his face and body revealed an indisputable openheartedness.
I felt ‘involuntarily’ reassured in his presence, which augured well for our interview.
This individual might have been thirty-five or fifty, I couldn’t tell. He was tall; he had a broad forehead, straight nose, well-defined mouth, and magnificent teeth; his hands were long, thin, and eminently ‘psychic’, to use the word from palmistry:* that is, apt for a noble and passionate being. This man was certainly the most admirable specimen I had ever met. One particular detail: his eyes, set far apart, could capture nearly a quarter of the horizon.* This faculty — as I later realized — was accompanied by eyesight superior even to Land’s. When this strange personage was looking intently at something, his brow knitted and his large eyelids closed round his pupils so as to limit his field of vision — and he did look. What a gaze! How he magnified distant objects, and how he penetrated your very soul! How he could pierce the liquid depths,* so obscure to our eyes, and how he could read to the bottom of the seas!
The two strangers wore sea-otter-fur caps, sealskin sea-boots, and clothes of a strange material that sat loosely, allowing them great freedom of movement.
The taller of the two — evidently the chief on board — studied us with great concentration but without a word. Then turning to his companion, he conversed with him in a tongue I could not understand. The language was ringing, harmonious, supple, with the vowels seeming to receive highly varied stresses.
The other replied with a movement of his head, adding two or three totally unintelligible words. Then he appeared to be questioning me personally with his regard.
I replied, in good French, that I did not know his language; but he did not appear to understand, and the situation became somewhat embarrassing.
‘Monsieur should try to relate our story,’ said Conseil. ‘Perhaps the gentlemen would comprehend a few words.’
I then began the story of our adventures, distinctly pronouncing all the syllables and not omitting a single detail. I announced our names and positions: I properly presented Dr Aronnax, Conseil his manservant, and Master Ned, harpooner.
The individual with calm and gentle eyes listened quietly, even politely, with remarkable concentration. But his expression showed no sign he understood my story. When I had finished, he said not a word.
There still remained the resort of using English. Perhaps we would be able to make ourselves understood in that almost universal language. I knew some, and some German as well: enough to read fluently, but not to speak accurately. Here, however, we needed to be very clear.
‘Go on,’ I said to the harpooner; ‘it’s your turn, Master Land. Draw from your bag the best English ever spoken by an Anglo-Saxon, unlawfully keeping us prisoners and try to be more successful than I was.’
Ned needed no prompting, and repeated my tale. I followed fairly well, for the contents were similar, if the form was different. The Canadian, carried away by his character, spoke with great passion. He complained bitterly about being imprisoned, infringing natural law, asked what law was used to detain him in this way, invoked habeas corpus,* threatened to take to court those unlawfully incarcerating us, waved his arms, gesticulated, exclaimed, and finally, in a most expressive pantomime, communicated clearly that we were dying of hunger.
This was true as a matter of fact, although we had more or less forgotten.
To his tremendous surprise, the harpooner did not appear to be more intelligible than I had been. Not a muscle moved on our visitors’ faces. It was evident that they knew neither the language of Arago nor that of Faraday.* I was very perplexed, having exhausted our philological resources to no avail; and did not know what to do next, when Conseil intervened:
‘If monsieur will permit, I will tell the story in German.’
‘What, you know German!’
‘Like a Fleming,’* he replied, ‘if monsieur has no objection.’
‘None at all — quite the contrary. Go ahead, my lad.’
And Conseil calmly recounted our various adventures for the third time. But notwithstanding the narrator’s excellent accent and elegantly turned phrases, German was no more successful than before.
At last, and as a final resort, I summoned everything I could from my early studies, and ventured to relate our adventures in Latin. Cicero* would have blocked his ears at such dog Latin, but I did make it through to the end. With the same result, however.
Our last attempt having utterly failed, the two strangers exchanged a few words in their incomprehensible idiom and then withdrew, not even giving us one of those reassuring signs understood in every country in the world. The door closed behind them again.
‘It’s a disgrace!’ cried Ned Land as he exploded for the twentieth time. ‘Why, we spoke to those crooks in French, English, German, and Latin, and neither had the courtesy to reply!’
‘Calm yourself, Ned,’ I said to the fiery harpooner; ‘getting angry will not help.’
‘But don’t you realize,’ persisted our irascible companion, ‘that we may easily starve to death in this iron cage?’
‘Bah,’ said Conseil philosophically, ‘we can hold on for a long time yet.’
‘My friends,’ I said, ‘we must not despair. We have been in worse situations. Do me the favour of waiting a while before forming an opinion of the captain and crew of this vessel.’
‘My opinion’s already formed,’ countered Ned. ‘They’re rogues.’
‘All right, but from what country?’
‘From the land of rogues.’
‘My good Ned, that country is not yet clearly indicated on the world map; I must confess that the nationality of the two strangers is difficult to determine. That they are neither British nor French nor German is all we can say. I am inclined to think that the captain and his mate must have been born at the lower latitudes. There is a southern look about them; but their physical type does not allow me to decide whether they are Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, or Indians. As for their tongue, it is simply incomprehensible.’
‘That is the drawback of not knowing every language,’ commented Conseil, ‘and of not having a universal one.’
‘Which would not help us at all!’ said Ned Land. ‘Don’t you see that those men have a language of their own, invented to annoy anyone who asks for something to eat? If you open your mouth, move your jaws, and smack your lips and teeth, don’t they know what you mean in every country in the world, with room to spare? Wouldn’t it indicate “I am hungry; give me something to eat” in Quebec and the Tuamotus, in Paris and the antipodes?’
‘Oh?’ said Conseil. ‘There are some so stupid . . .’
The door opened as he was speaking. A steward1 entered. He brought us clothing:* jackets and sea trousers of a material I could not identify. I quickly put them on, my companions following suit.
During this time the steward — dumb, and perhaps deaf as well — laid three places at table.
‘This is significant’, said Conseil, ‘and even most promising!’
‘Bah!’ retorted the Canadian resentfully. ‘What the devil do you expect to be able to eat here: turtle liver, fillet of shark, dogfish steak?’
‘Wait and see,’ replied Conseil.
The dishes, with silver covers, we
re placed harmoniously on the cloth, as we took our places. Decidedly we were dealing with civilized beings; and had it not been for the electric light flooding over us, I might have thought we were seated at the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool or the Grand Hotel in Paris. I should mention the absence of wine and bread. The water was pure and fresh; but water it was, and so not to Ned’s taste. Amongst the dishes served I recognized various kinds of fish, delicately prepared; but I could not come to an opinion on some of the dishes, albeit excellent, since I could not say whether they belonged to the animal or vegetable kingdom. The table service was elegant, and in perfect taste. Every knife, fork, spoon, plate, and utensil was inscribed with a letter surmounted by a curved motto, of which the following is an exact facsimile:
Mobile in the mobile element!* The motto fitted the submarine vessel perfectly, provided that the Latin preposition ‘in’ was translated as ‘in’ rather than ‘on’. The N was no doubt the initial of the enigmatic individual who commanded the depths of the ocean.
Ned and Conseil did not waste time on such cogitation. They had begun to eat, and I quickly followed them. I felt in fact reassured as to our fate, for it seemed clear that our hosts did not want us to die of starvation.
Everything must have an end in this world, however, even the hunger of those who have not eaten for fifteen hours. Our appetite satisfied, the need for sleep began to make itself imperiously felt: a natural reaction after the interminable night in which we had wrestled with death.*
‘My goodness, I could do with a nap . . .’ said Conseil.
‘I’m off already,’ from Land.
My companions lay down on the matting, and were soon sound asleep.
For my part I yielded less easily to the urgent need for slumber. Too many thoughts crowded into my brain, too many unanswerable questions pressed upon me, too many impressions kept my eyes half open. Where were we? What strange force was carrying us away? I felt, or rather thought I felt, the machine sinking down to the furthest depths of the ocean. Fearful waking nightmares tormented me. I glimpsed a whole world of unknown creatures sheltering in mysterious refuges, with the submarine vessel as one of their congeners, living, moving, formidable like them. Then my brain settled down a little, my imagination dissolved into a vague somnolence, and I fell into a dull sleep.