Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Seas

by Jules Verne

With the map in front of my eyes, I looked for the Gulf of Mannar. I found it on the 9th parallel, on the north-west coast of Ceylon. It was formed by a strip of land stretching out from the little island of Mannar. To reach the bay, we needed to work our way up the western coast of Ceylon.

  ‘Dr Aronnax,’ Captain Nemo continued, ‘pearls are fished in the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean and in the seas of China and Japan, of South America, of the Gulf of Panama, and of the Gulf of California; but it is Ceylon that has the best catches. We are undoubtedly arriving a little early. The fishermen only assemble in the Gulf of Mannar in the month of March, when their three hundred boats work for thirty days on the lucrative exploitation of the sea’s treasures. Each boat has ten oarsmen and ten divers. The divers work in two groups, which work alternately, going down to a depth of 12 metres by means of a heavy stone held between their feet and connected to the boat by a rope.’

  ‘So this primitive method is still in use?’

  ‘It is,’ said Captain Nemo, ‘although the fisheries belong to the hardest-working people in the world, the British, to whom they were given by the Treaty of Amiens in 1802.’*

  ‘It seems to me nevertheless that the diving suit, as you employ it, would be very useful in such an operation.’

  ‘Indeed, since the poor divers cannot remain underwater for long. The Briton Percival,* in his journey to Ceylon, speaks of a “Kaffir” who spent five minutes without coming back up. But this appears hardly credible to me. I know that some divers can stay as much as 57 seconds and very good ones, 87;* however, these are rare, and when these unfortunates come back on board, their noses and ears are dripping water tinted with blood. I believe that on average the divers can manage thirty seconds, during which they rush to cram into a little net all the pearl oysters they can tear off; but generally these divers do not live to a ripe old age: their sight diminishes; ulcerations break out on their eyes; sores form on their bodies; and often they have strokes at the bottom of the sea.’

  ‘Yes, a sad profession which serves only to satisfy a few caprices. But tell me, captain, how many oysters can a boat collect in a day?’

  ‘About forty to fifty thousand. It is even said that the British government carried out diving on its own account in 1814, and that its divers brought back seventy-six million oysters in twenty days’ work.’

  ‘Are these divers at least paid enough?’

  ‘Scarcely. In Panama they earn only a dollar a week. Most of them just get one sol per pearl-bearing oyster, and how many they bring back with none inside!’

  ‘A sol for the poor who make their masters rich! It’s odious.’

  ‘So, doctor, you and your companions will visit Mannar Bank, and if by chance some early diver is already there, we will see him at work.’

  ‘Agreed, captain.’

  ‘Incidentally, Dr Aronnax, you’re not afraid of sharks?’

  ‘Sharks!’ I exclaimed.

  The question appeared senseless, or worse.

  ‘Well?’ said Captain Nemo.

  ‘I must admit, captain, that I am not yet familiar with this sort of fish.’

  ‘We are, and with time you will get used to them. Besides, we will be armed, and as we follow our route perhaps we can bag a few. It’s interesting work. So, Dr Aronnax, until tomorrow, first thing.’

  Having said that in a casual tone, Captain Nemo left the salon.

  If you are invited to hunt bears in the mountains of Switzerland, you would say: ‘Fine! Tomorrow we are going bear hunting.’ If you are invited to hunt lions on the plains of the Atlas Mountains or tigers in the jungles of India, you would say: ‘Oh, apparently we are going to try and bag a few tigers or lions!’ But if you were invited to go hunting sharks in their natural element, you would perhaps request a few moments for reflection before accepting.

  As for me, I passed a hand over my forehead, where a few drops of cold sweat were standing out.

  ‘Let’s reflect with due caution,’ I said to myself. ‘Hunting for otters in the underwater forests as we did at Crespo Island is all right. But running around the ocean floor, when you are more or less certain to bump into sharks, is another kettle of fish! I know full well that in certain places, the Andaman Isles for example, the dark-skinned natives do not think twice about attacking sharks, dagger in one hand and noose in the other. But I also know that many of those who face the dreadful beasts don’t come back alive! In any case I’m not a native, and even if I were, I do believe that some slight hesitation on my part would not be out of place.’

  So there I was, dreaming of sharks, in a reverie of vast jaws, armed with multiple rows of teeth and capable of cutting a man in two. I already felt the pain around my middle section. Also, I could not digest the casual way in which the captain had made the deplorable invitation! Would one not have put it that way if we were going to track some inoffensive fox through the woods?

  ‘Well!’ I thought. ‘Conseil will never want to come, and that will let me off going with the captain.’

  As for Ned, I must admit that I did not feel as confident of his judgement. Dangers, however great, always held an attraction for his aggressive nature.

  I started reading Sirr’s book again, but was turning the pages automatically.* Between the lines I could see jaws that gaped frighteningly.

  Just then Conseil and the Canadian came in, with peaceful, even happy demeanours. They did not know what was waiting for them.

  ‘You know what, sir?’ Ned Land said to me. ‘Your Captain Nemo — cursed be his name! — has just made a very nice suggestion.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘you know . . .’

  ‘If monsieur pleases,’ said Conseil, ‘the captain of the Nautilus has invited us to visit the magnificent pearl fisheries of Ceylon tomorrow in monsieur’s company. He did it in highly cordial terms, and behaved like a thorough gentleman.’

  ‘He didn’t say anything else?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ replied the Canadian. ‘Except that he had spoken to you about this little excursion.’

  ‘Just so, and did he give you any details about . . .’

  ‘None. You’ll be coming with us, I suppose?’

  ‘Me . . .? I imagine so. I can see that you’re looking forward to it, Master Land.’

  ‘Yes’ it sounds interesting, very interesting.’

  ‘Dangerous, perhaps!’ I added in an appealing tone.

  ‘Dangerous?’ replied Land. ‘A mere excursion to an oyster bed?’

  Captain Nemo had clearly not judged it useful to intimate the idea of sharks to my companions. As for me, I was looking at them with unfocused eyes, as if they were already missing a limb or two. Should I warn them? Undoubtedly, but I didn’t know how to go about it.

  ‘Monsieur,’ Conseil said, ‘would monsieur like to give us some details of pearl fishing?’

  ‘About the work itself, or the incidents . . .’

  ‘The fishing,’ replied the Canadian. ‘Before venturing on to territory, it’s useful to have some information about it.’

  ‘Well, be seated, my friends, and I’ll tell you everything that the Briton Sirr has just told me.’

  Ned and Conseil sat on the settee, and the Canadian started by asking:

  ‘Sir, what is a pearl?’

  ‘My good Ned, for the poet the pearl is a tear from the sea; for the East Asians it is a solidified dewdrop; for ladies it is a jewel of elongated form, of a hyalin lustre, made of mother-of-pearl, that they wear on their finger, ear, or neck; for the chemist it is a mixture of lime, phosphate, and carbonate with a little gelatine; and finally, for the naturalist it is merely an unhealthy secretion in certain bivalves by the organ that produces mother-of-pearl.’

  ‘Branch of molluscs, class of acephalics, order of testaceans.’

  ‘Precisely, Professor Conseil. Now amongst these testaceans, pearls are produced by the earshell, iris, turban, Tridacna, and marine pinna, in a word by all those that secrete mother-of-pearl, the blue, bluish, violet, or white substance
lining their valves.’

  ‘Mussels as well?’ asked the Canadian.

  ‘Yes, the mussels of certain rivers in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Saxony, Bohemia, and France.’

  ‘Well, we’ll pay attention to them in future,’ Ned replied.

  ‘But’, I continued, ‘the mollusc which secretes pearls par excellence is the pearl-bearing oyster, the Meleagrina margaritifera, that precious shellfish. The pearl is merely a mother-of-pearl accretion that takes on a globular shape. Either it adheres to the shell of the oyster, or it encrusts itself in the creature’s folds. On the valves, the pearl is firmly attached; on the flesh, it floats free. But its core is always a small hard body, either a sterile ovule or a grain of sand, around which the mother-of-pearl is deposited over several years in thin concentric layers.’

  ‘Can several pearls be found in a single oyster?’ asked Conseil.

  ‘Yes, my good fellow, there are certain pearl oysters that are a true jewel-case. An oyster has even been cited, although I permit myself to doubt this, which contained no less than 150 sharks.’

  ‘A hundred and fifty sharks!’ exclaimed Ned.

  ‘Did I say sharks!’ I said quickly. ‘I mean 150 pearls. Sharks would make no sense.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Conseil. ‘But will monsieur now tell us how the pearls are extracted?’

  ‘There are several methods. When the pearls adhere to the valves, the fishermen sometimes tear them off with pliers. But more frequently, the pearl oysters are laid out on mats of esparto grass spread across the shore. They die in the open air, and after ten days are at the appropriate level of decay. They are plunged into vast tanks of sea water, and opened and washed. This is the beginning of the two stages of the gutters’ work. First they separate the pieces of mother-of-pearl, known in the trade as “true silver”, “bastard white”, or “bastard black”, and pack them in boxes of 125 to 150 kilograms. Then they remove the parenchyma from the oyster and boil and sieve it, so as to separate out even the smallest pearls.’

  ‘Does the price of pearls vary according to their size?’ asked Conseil.

  ‘Not only their size, but also their shape, their “water”, or colour, and their “orient”, or iridescent and variegated lustre which lends such charm to their appearance. The finest pearls form separately in the tissue of the mollusc; called virgin pearls or paragons, they are white, often opaque, but sometimes of an opaline transparency, and most commonly spherical or piriform. When spherical they are made into bracelets; piriform, drop-earrings and are sold individually, being the most precious. The other pearls adhere to the oyster’s shell and, being less regular, are sold by weight. Lastly, the small pearls known as seed pearls are classified as low grade; they are also sold by weight and serve in particular for embroidery on church vestments.’

  ‘But this work of separating the pearls according to size must be long and tedious?’ asked the Canadian.

  ‘No, my friend. The work is carried out by means of eleven sieves or colanders containing variable numbers of holes. The pearls that remain in the colanders containing twenty to twenty-four holes are of the first order. Those caught by the sieves with a hundred to eight hundred holes are of the second order. Sieves with nine hundred to a thousand holes produce the seed pearls.’

  ‘Ingenious,’ said Conseil, ‘and now I understand how the grading is carried out. But can monsieur tell us how much the work on the pearl-oyster beds brings in?’

  ‘According to Sirr’s book,’ I replied, ‘the pearl fisheries of Ceylon are leased for the sum of three million sharks per year.’

  ‘Francs!’ said Conseil.

  ‘Yes, francs. Three million francs, but apparently these pearl fisheries no longer bring in what they used to. The same holds true of the American ones, which produced four million francs in the reign of Charles V of France* but at present, only two-thirds of that. In sum, the total turnover from pearls can be evaluated at nine million francs.’

  ‘But’, asked Conseil, ‘are some pearls not celebrated for having been sold at a very high price?’

  ‘Yes, my good fellow. It is said that Caesar gave Servilia a pearl estimated to be worth about 120,000 francs of our money.’*

  ‘I have even heard it told’, said the Canadian, ‘of a certain lady in ancient times who drank pearls in vinegar.’

  ‘Cleopatra,’ said Conseil.

  ‘I bet it tasted bad.’

  ‘Awful, Ned, my friend,’ replied Conseil; ‘but at one-and-a-half million francs, a small glass of vinegar is highly priced.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t marry that lady,’ said the Canadian, moving his arm in a disturbing way.

  ‘Ned Land, the husband of Cleopatra!’* exclaimed Conseil.

  ‘But I needed to get married, Conseil,’ the Canadian replied seriously, ‘and it wasn’t my fault if it didn’t actually work out. I even bought a necklace of pearls for Kat Tender, my fiancée, who then married somebody else. Well, that necklace only cost me a dollar and a half, and yet — Dr Aronnax should believe me — the pearls in it would have been caught by the colander with twenty holes.’

  ‘My good Ned,’ I said with a laugh, ‘those were artificial pearls, mere globules of glass coated on the inside with essence of orient.’

  ‘Oh, that essence of orient’, replied the Canadian, ‘must cost a great deal.’

  ‘Almost nothing! It is merely the silvery substance from the scales of a fish called bleak, collected underwater and preserved in ammonia. It has no value.’

  ‘Perhaps that’s why Kat Tender married someone else,’ philosophically replied Master Land.

  ‘But’, I said, ‘to come back to pearls of great value, I do not think that a king ever possessed one superior to Captain Nemo’s.’

  ‘This one?’ said Conseil, pointing to a magnificent jewel displayed in a case.

  ‘Yes, I believe I can assign it a value of two million . . .’

  ‘Francs!’ Conseil said quickly.

  ‘Yes, two million francs, and it undoubtedly cost the captain only the effort of picking it up.’

  ‘Hey!’ cried Ned Land. ‘Maybe we’ll find another one on our excursion tomorrow!’

  ‘Bah!’ said Conseil.

  ‘And why not?’

  ‘What would be the point of millions of francs on board the Nautilus?’

  ‘On board there would be none,’ said Ned, ‘but elsewhere . . .’

  ‘Oh, elsewhere!’ said Conseil, shaking his head.

  ‘In fact’, I said, ‘Master Land is right. If ever we bring a pearl worth several million back to Europe or America, it would lend both great authenticity and a great price to the story of our adventures.’

  ‘Right,’ said the Canadian.

  ‘But’, said Conseil, who always came back to the instructive side of things, ‘is pearl fishing dangerous?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘especially if you take certain precautions.’

  ‘What are the risks in that profession?’ said Land. ‘Swallowing a few mouthfuls of water!’

  ‘As you say, Ned. Incidentally,’ I said, trying to adopt Captain Nemo’s casual tone, ‘are you afraid of sharks, my good Ned?’

  ‘Me?’ said the Canadian. ‘As a professional harpooner, I’m paid to laugh at them.’

  ‘It is not a question of catching them with a swivel hook, hoisting them up on deck, cutting their tails off with axes, opening up their stomachs, tearing out their hearts, and throwing them back into the sea!’

  ‘Then, we’re . . .?’

  ‘Yes, precisely.’

  ‘In the water?’

  ‘In the water.’

  ‘What the hell, with a good harpoon! You know, sir, these sharks are poorly designed creatures. They have to turn on to their stomach to bite you, and during that time . . .’

  Ned Land had a way of saying the word bite that made cold shivers run down your spine.

  ‘Well, and you, Conseil, what do you think of these sharks?’

  ‘Me?’ said Cons
eil. ‘I will be frank with monsieur.’

  ‘Here we go,’ I thought.

  ‘If monsieur can face such sharks,’ said Conseil, ‘I do not see why his faithful manservant should not face them with him.’

  3

  A Pearl Worth Ten Million

  Night fell. I went to bed, and slept rather badly. Sharks played an important part in my dreams, and I found it both very appropriate and very inappropriate that etymology derives the French word for shark, requin, from the word requiem.*

  I was woken at four in the morning by the steward that Captain Nemo had put at my personal service. I got up quickly, dressed, and went into the salon.

  Captain Nemo was waiting.

  ‘Are you ready, Dr Aronnax?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Then please follow me.’

  ‘And my companions, captain?’

  ‘They have been informed, and are waiting for us.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we put on diving suits?’

  ‘Not yet. I haven’t brought the Nautilus too close to the shore, and we are still some distance from Mannar Bank; but I have prepared the dinghy to take us to the exact spot for the diving, which will save us a long journey. The diving equipment is in the dinghy, and we can put it on when we actually begin our submarine exploration.’

  Captain Nemo led the way to the central staircase leading up to the platform. There we found Ned and Conseil, delighted at the prospect of a ‘holiday outing’. Five sailors from the Nautilus, oars at the ready, were waiting, moored alongside.

  The night was still dark. Patches of cloud covered the sky, revealing only the occasional star. I looked towards the land, but could see only an uncertain line masking three-quarters of the horizon between the south-west and the north-west. Having worked its way up the western coast of Ceylon during the night, the Nautilus was now to the west of the bay, or rather of the gulf formed by Ceylon itself and Mannar Island. There, beneath the dark waters, lay the bank of pearl oysters, an inexhaustible source of pearls, over 20 miles in length.

  Captain Nemo, Conseil, Ned, and I took our places in the stern of the small boat. The coxswain took the tiller, his four companions leaned over the oars, the painter was cast away, and we pushed off.