Part Two.: Chapter 1: The Indian Ocean

by Jules Verne

　　We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea.The first ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which leftsuch a deep impression on my mind. Thus, in the midst of this great sea,Captain Nemo's life was passing, even to his grave, which he hadprepared in one of its deepest abysses. There, not one of the ocean'smonsters could trouble the last sleep of the crew of the Nautilus,of those friends riveted to each other in death as in life."Nor any man, either," had added the Captain. Still the same fierce,implacable defiance towards human society!

　　I could no longer content myself with the theory which satisfied Conseil.

　　That worthy fellow persisted in seeing in the Commander ofthe Nautilus one of those unknown servants who return mankindcontempt for indifference. For him, he was a misunderstoodgenius who, tired of earth's deceptions, had taken refuge in thisinaccessible medium, where he might follow his instincts freely.To my mind, this explains but one side of Captain Nemo's character.Indeed, the mystery of that last night during which we had beenchained in prison, the sleep, and the precaution so violentlytaken by the Captain of snatching from my eyes the glass Ihad raised to sweep the horizon, the mortal wound of the man,due to an unaccountable shock of the Nautilus, all put me on anew track. No; Captain Nemo was not satisfied with shunning man.His formidable apparatus not only suited his instinct of freedom,but perhaps also the design of some terrible retaliation.

　　At this moment nothing is clear to me; I catch but a glimpseof light amidst all the darkness, and I must confine myselfto writing as events shall dictate.

　　That day, the 24th of January, 1868, at noon, the second officer came to takethe altitude of the sun. I mounted the platform, lit a cigar, and watchedthe operation. It seemed to me that the man did not understand French;for several times I made remarks in a loud voice, which must have drawnfrom him some involuntary sign of attention, if he had understood them;but he remained undisturbed and dumb.

　　As he was taking observations with the sextant, one of thesailors of the Nautilus (the strong man who had accompaniedus on our first submarine excursion to the Island of Crespo)came to clean the glasses of the lantern. I examined the fittingsof the apparatus, the strength of which was increased a hundredfoldby lenticular rings, placed similar to those in a lighthouse,and which projected their brilliance in a horizontal plane.The electric lamp was combined in such a way as to giveits most powerful light. Indeed, it was produced in vacuo,which insured both its steadiness and its intensity.This vacuum economised the graphite points between whichthe luminous arc was developed--an important point of economyfor Captain Nemo, who could not easily have replaced them;and under these conditions their waste was imperceptible.When the Nautilus was ready to continue its submarine journey,I went down to the saloon. The panel was closed, and the coursemarked direct west.

　　We were furrowing the waters of the Indian Ocean, a vast liquid plain,with a surface of 1,200,000,000 of acres, and whose waters are so clearand transparent that any one leaning over them would turn giddy.The Nautilus usually floated between fifty and a hundred fathoms deep.We went on so for some days. To anyone but myself, who had a greatlove for the sea, the hours would have seemed long and monotonous;but the daily walks on the platform, when I steeped myself in the revivingair of the ocean, the sight of the rich waters through the windowsof the saloon, the books in the library, the compiling of my memoirs,took up all my time, and left me not a moment of ennui or weariness.

　　For some days we saw a great number of aquatic birds, sea-mews or gulls.Some were cleverly killed and, prepared in a certain way, made very acceptablewater-game. Amongst large-winged birds, carried a long distance from all landsand resting upon the waves from the fatigue of their flight, I saw somemagnificent albatrosses, uttering discordant cries like the braying of an ass,and birds belonging to the family of the long-wings.

　　As to the fish, they always provoked our admiration when we surprisedthe secrets of their aquatic life through the open panels.I saw many kinds which I never before had a chance of observing.

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　　From the 21st to the 23rd of January the Nautilus went atthe rate of two hundred and fifty leagues in twenty-four hours,being five hundred and forty miles, or twenty-two miles an hour.If we recognised so many different varieties of fish, it was because,attracted by the electric light, they tried to follow us;the greater part, however, were soon distanced by our speed,though some kept their place in the waters of the Nautilus for a time.The morning of the 24th, in 12@ 5' S. lat., and 94@ 33'long., we observed Keeling Island, a coral formation,planted with magnificent cocos, and which had been visited byMr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus skirted the shoresof this desert island for a little distance. Its nets broughtup numerous specimens of polypi and curious shells of mollusca.{one sentence stripped here}

　　Soon Keeling Island disappeared from the horizon, and our course was directedto the north-west in the direction of the Indian Peninsula.

　　From Keeling Island our course was slower and more variable,often taking us into great depths. Several times they made useof the inclined planes, which certain internal levers placedobliquely to the waterline. In that way we went about two miles,but without ever obtaining the greatest depths of the Indian Sea,which soundings of seven thousand fathoms have never reached.As to the temperature of the lower strata, the thermometer invariablyindicated 4@ above zero. I only observed that in the upper regionsthe water was always colder in the high levels than at the surfaceof the sea.

　　On the 25th of January the ocean was entirely deserted; the Nautiluspassed the day on the surface, beating the waves with its powerfulscrew and making them rebound to a great height. Who under suchcircumstances would not have taken it for a gigantic cetacean?Three parts of this day I spent on the platform. I watched the sea.Nothing on the horizon, till about four o'clock a steamer runningwest on our counter. Her masts were visible for an instant,but she could not see the Nautilus, being too low in the water.I fancied this steamboat belonged to the P.O. Company, which runsfrom Ceylon to Sydney, touching at King George's Point and Melbourne.

　　At five o'clock in the evening, before that fleeting twilightwhich binds night to day in tropical zones, Conseil and Iwere astonished by a curious spectacle.

　　It was a shoal of argonauts travelling along on the surface of the ocean.We could count several hundreds. They belonged to the tubercle kindwhich are peculiar to the Indian seas.

　　These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of theirlocomotive tube, through which they propelled the water alreadydrawn in. Of their eight tentacles, six were elongated,and stretched out floating on the water, whilst the other two,rolled up flat, were spread to the wing like a light sail.I saw their spiral-shaped and fluted shells, which Cuvierjustly compares to an elegant skiff. A boat indeed!It bears the creature which secretes it without its adhering to it.

　　For nearly an hour the Nautilus floated in the midst of this shoalof molluscs. Then I know not what sudden fright they took.But as if at a signal every sail was furled, the arms folded,the body drawn in, the shells turned over, changing their centreof gravity, and the whole fleet disappeared under the waves.Never did the ships of a squadron manoeuvre with more unity.

　　At that moment night fell suddenly, and the reeds, scarcely raisedby the breeze, lay peaceably under the sides of the Nautilus.

　　The next day, 26th of January, we cut the equator at theeighty-second meridian and entered the northern hemisphere.During the day a formidable troop of sharks accompanied us,terrible creatures, which multiply in these seas and make themvery dangerous. They were "cestracio philippi" sharks, with brownbacks and whitish bellies, armed with eleven rows of teeth--eyed sharks--their throat being marked with a large blackspot surrounded with white like an eye. There were also someIsabella sharks, with rounded snouts marked with dark spots.These powerful creatures often hurled themselves at the windowsof the saloon with such violence as to make us feel very insecure.At such times Ned Land was no longer master of himself.He wanted to go to the surface and harpoon the monsters,particularly certain smooth-hound sharks, whose mouth is studded withteeth like a mosaic; and large tiger-sharks nearly six yards long,the last named of which seemed to excite him more particularly.But the Nautilus, accelerating her speed, easily left the most rapidof them behind.

　　The 27th of January, at the entrance of the vast Bay of Bengal,we met repeatedly a forbidding spectacle, dead bodies floating onthe surface of the water. They were the dead of the Indian villages,carried by the Ganges to the level of the sea, and which the vultures,the only undertakers of the country, had not been able to devour.But the sharks did not fail to help them at their funeral work.

　　About seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus, half-immersed, wassailing in a sea of milk. At first sight the ocean seemed lactified.Was it the effect of the lunar rays? No; for the moon, scarcely twodays old, was still lying hidden under the horizon in the rays of the sun.The whole sky, though lit by the sidereal rays, seemed black by contrastwith the whiteness of the waters.

　　Conseil could not believe his eyes, and questioned me as to the causeof this strange phenomenon. Happily I was able to answer him.

　　"It is called a milk sea," I explained. "A large extentof white wavelets often to be seen on the coasts of Amboyna,and in these parts of the sea."

　　"But, sir," said Conseil, "can you tell me what causes such an effect?for I suppose the water is not really turned into milk."

　　"No, my boy; and the whiteness which surprises you is caused only bythe presence of myriads of infusoria, a sort of luminous little worm,gelatinous and without colour, of the thickness of a hair,and whose length is not more than seven-thousandths of an inch.These insects adhere to one another sometimes for several leagues."

　　"Several leagues!" exclaimed Conseil.

　　"Yes, my boy; and you need not try to compute the number of these infusoria.You will not be able, for, if I am not mistaken, ships have floated on thesemilk seas for more than forty miles."

　　Towards midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual colour;but behind us, even to the limits of the horizon, the skyreflected the whitened waves, and for a long time seemedimpregnated with the vague glimmerings of an aurora borealis.