CHAPTER 20

The Torres Strait

DURING THE NIGHT of December 27-28, the Nautilus left the waterways of

Vanikoro behind with extraordinary speed. Its heading was

southwesterly, and in three days it had cleared the 750 leagues that

separated La Pérouse’s islands from the southeastern tip of Papua.

On January 1, 1868, bright and early, Conseil joined me on the

platform.

“Will master,” the gallant lad said to me, “allow me to wish him a

happy new year?”

“Good heavens, Conseil, it’s just like old times in my office at the

Botanical Gardens in Paris! I accept your kind wishes and I thank you

for them. Only, I’d like to know what you mean by a ‘happy year’ under

the circumstances in which we’re placed. Is it a year that will bring

our imprisonment to an end, or a year that will see this strange

voyage continue?”

“Ye gods,” Conseil replied, “I hardly know what to tell master. We’re

certainly seeing some unusual things, and for two months we’ve had no

time for boredom. The latest wonder is always the most astonishing,

and if this progression keeps up, I can’t imagine what its climax will

be. In my opinion, we’ll never again have such an opportunity.”

“Never, Conseil.”

“Besides, Mr. Nemo really lives up to his Latin name, since he

couldn’t be less in the way if he didn’t exist.”

“True enough, Conseil.”

“Therefore, with all due respect to master, I think a ‘happy year’

would be a year that lets us see everything—”

“Everything, Conseil? No year could be that long. But what does Ned

Land think about all this?”

“Ned Land’s thoughts are exactly the opposite of mine,” Conseil

replied. “He has a practical mind and a demanding stomach. He’s tired

of staring at fish and eating them day in and day out. This shortage

of wine, bread, and meat isn’t suitable for an upstanding Anglo-Saxon,

a man accustomed to beefsteak and unfazed by regular doses of brandy

or gin!”

“For my part, Conseil, that doesn’t bother me in the least, and I’ve

adjusted very nicely to the diet on board.”

“So have I,” Conseil replied. “Accordingly, I think as much about

staying as Mr. Land about making his escape. Thus, if this new year

isn’t a happy one for me, it will be for him, and vice versa. No

matter what happens, one of us will be pleased. So, in conclusion, I

wish master to have whatever his heart desires.”

“Thank you, Conseil. Only I must ask you to postpone the question of

new year’s gifts, and temporarily accept a hearty handshake in their

place. That’s all I have on me.”

“Master has never been more generous,” Conseil replied.

And with that, the gallant lad went away.

By January 2 we had fared 11,340 miles, hence 5,250 leagues, from our

starting point in the seas of Japan. Before the Nautilus’s spur there

stretched the dangerous waterways of the Coral Sea, off the northeast

coast of Australia. Our boat cruised along a few miles away from that

daunting shoal where Captain Cook’s ships wellnigh miscarried on June

10, 1770. The craft that Cook was aboard charged into some coral rock,

and if his vessel didn’t go down, it was thanks to the circumstance

that a piece of coral broke off in the collision and plugged the very

hole it had made in the hull.

I would have been deeply interested in visiting this long, 360-league

reef, against which the ever-surging sea broke with the fearsome

intensity of thunderclaps. But just then the Nautilus’s slanting fins

took us to great depths, and I could see nothing of those high coral

walls. I had to rest content with the various specimens of fish

brought up by our nets. Among others I noted some long-finned

albacore, a species in the genus Scomber, as big as tuna, bluish on

the flanks, and streaked with crosswise stripes that disappear when

the animal dies. These fish followed us in schools and supplied our

table with very dainty flesh. We also caught a large number of

yellow-green gilthead, half a decimeter long and tasting like dorado,

plus some flying gurnards, authentic underwater swallows that, on dark

nights, alternately streak air and water with their phosphorescent

glimmers. Among mollusks and zoophytes, I found in our trawl’s meshes

various species of alcyonarian coral, sea urchins, hammer shells,

spurred-star shells, wentletrap snails, horn shells, glass snails. The

local flora was represented by fine floating algae: sea tangle, and

kelp from the genus Macrocystis, saturated with the mucilage their

pores perspire, from which I selected a wonderful Nemastoma

geliniaroidea, classifying it with the natural curiosities in the

museum.

On January 4, two days after crossing the Coral Sea, we raised the

coast of Papua. On this occasion Captain Nemo told me that he intended

to reach the Indian Ocean via the Torres Strait. This was the extent

of his remarks. Ned saw with pleasure that this course would bring us,

once again, closer to European seas.

The Torres Strait is regarded as no less dangerous for its bristling

reefs than for the savage inhabitants of its coasts. It separates

Queensland from the huge island of Papua, also called New Guinea.

Papua is 400 leagues long by 130 leagues wide, with a surface area of

40,000 geographic leagues. It’s located between latitude 0 degrees 19′

and 10 degrees 2′ south, and between longitude 128 degrees 23′ and 146

degrees 15′. At noon, while the chief officer was taking the sun’s

altitude, I spotted the summits of the Arfak Mountains, rising in

terraces and ending in sharp peaks.

Discovered in 1511 by the Portuguese Francisco Serrano, these shores

were successively visited by Don Jorge de Meneses in 1526, by Juan de

Grijalva in 1527, by the Spanish general Alvaro de Saavedra in 1528,

by Inigo Ortiz in 1545, by the Dutchman Schouten in 1616, by Nicolas

Sruick in 1753, by Tasman, Dampier, Fumel, Carteret, Edwards,

Bougainville, Cook, McClure, and Thomas Forrest, by Rear Admiral

d’Entrecasteaux in 1792, by Louis-Isidore Duperrey in 1823, and by

Captain Dumont d’Urville in 1827. “It’s the heartland of the blacks

who occupy all Malaysia,” Mr. de Rienzi has said; and I hadn’t the

foggiest inkling that sailors’ luck was about to bring me face to face

with these daunting Andaman aborigines.

So the Nautilus hove before the entrance to the world’s most dangerous

strait, a passageway that even the boldest navigators hesitated to

clear: the strait that Luis Vaez de Torres faced on returning from the

South Seas in Melanesia, the strait in which sloops of war under

Captain Dumont d’Urville ran aground in 1840 and nearly miscarried

with all hands. And even the Nautilus, rising superior to every danger

in the sea, was about to become intimate with its coral reefs.

The Torres Strait is about thirty-four leagues wide, but it’s

obstructed by an incalculable number of islands, islets, breakers, and

rocks that make it nearly impossible to navigate. Consequently,

Captain Nemo took every desired precaution in crossing it. Floating

flush with the water, the Nautilus moved ahead at a moderate

pace. Like a cetacean’s tail, its propeller churned the waves slowly.

Taking advantage of this situation, my two companions and I found

seats on the ever-deserted platform. In front of us stood the

pilothouse, and unless I’m extremely mistaken, Captain Nemo must have

been inside, steering his Nautilus himself.

Under my eyes I had the excellent charts of the Torres Strait that had

been surveyed and drawn up by the hydrographic engineer Vincendon

Dumoulin and Sublieutenant (now Admiral) Coupvent-Desbois, who were

part of Dumont d’Urville’s general staff during his final voyage to

circumnavigate the globe. These, along with the efforts of Captain

King, are the best charts for untangling the snarl of this narrow

passageway, and I consulted them with scrupulous care.

Around the Nautilus the sea was boiling furiously. A stream of waves,

bearing from southeast to northwest at a speed of two and a half miles

per hour, broke over heads of coral emerging here and there.

“That’s one rough sea!” Ned Land told me.

“Abominable indeed,” I replied, “and hardly suitable for a craft like

the Nautilus.”

“That damned captain,” the Canadian went on, “must really be sure of

his course, because if these clumps of coral so much as brush us,

they’ll rip our hull into a thousand pieces!”

The situation was indeed dangerous, but as if by magic, the Nautilus

seemed to glide right down the middle of these rampaging reefs. It

didn’t follow the exact course of the Zealous and the new Astrolabe,

which had proved so ill-fated for Captain Dumont d’Urville. It went

more to the north, hugged the Murray Islands, and returned to the

southwest near Cumberland Passage. I thought it was about to charge

wholeheartedly into this opening, but it went up to the northwest,

through a large number of little-known islands and islets, and steered

toward Tound Island and the Bad Channel.

I was already wondering if Captain Nemo, rash to the point of sheer

insanity, wanted his ship to tackle the narrows where Dumont

d’Urville’s two sloops of war had gone aground, when he changed

direction a second time and cut straight to the west, heading toward

Gueboroa Island.

By then it was three o’clock in the afternoon. The current was

slacking off, it was almost full tide. The Nautilus drew near this

island, which I can see to this day with its remarkable fringe of

screw pines. We hugged it from less than two miles out.

A sudden jolt threw me down. The Nautilus had just struck a reef, and

it remained motionless, listing slightly to port.

When I stood up, I saw Captain Nemo and his chief officer on the

platform. They were examining the ship’s circumstances, exchanging a

few words in their incomprehensible dialect.

Here is what those circumstances entailed. Two miles to starboard lay

Gueboroa Island, its coastline curving north to west like an immense

arm. To the south and east, heads of coral were already on display,

left uncovered by the ebbing waters. We had run aground at full tide

and in one of those seas whose tides are moderate, an inconvenient

state of affairs for floating the Nautilus off. However, the ship

hadn’t suffered in any way, so solidly joined was its hull. But

although it could neither sink nor split open, it was in serious

danger of being permanently attached to these reefs, and that would

have been the finish of Captain Nemo’s submersible.

I was mulling this over when the captain approached, cool and calm,

forever in control of himself, looking neither alarmed nor annoyed.

“An accident?” I said to him.

“No, an incident,” he answered me.

“But an incident,” I replied, “that may oblige you to become a

resident again of these shores you avoid!”

Captain Nemo gave me an odd look and gestured no. Which told me pretty

clearly that nothing would ever force him to set foot on a land mass

again. Then he said:

“No, Professor Aronnax, the Nautilus isn’t consigned to perdition. It

will still carry you through the midst of the ocean’s wonders. Our

voyage is just beginning, and I’ve no desire to deprive myself so soon

of the pleasure of your company.”

“Even so, Captain Nemo,” I went on, ignoring his ironic turn of

phrase, “the Nautilus has run aground at a moment when the sea is

full. Now then, the tides aren’t strong in the Pacific, and if you

can’t unballast the Nautilus, which seems impossible to me, I don’t

see how it will float off.”

“You’re right, professor, the Pacific tides aren’t strong,” Captain

Nemo replied. “But in the Torres Strait, one still finds a

meter-and-a-half difference in level between high and low seas. Today

is January 4, and in five days the moon will be full. Now then, I’ll

be quite astonished if that good-natured satellite doesn’t

sufficiently raise these masses of water and do me a favor for which

I’ll be forever grateful.”

This said, Captain Nemo went below again to the Nautilus’s interior,

followed by his chief officer. As for our craft, it no longer stirred,

staying as motionless as if these coral polyps had already walled it

in with their indestructible cement.

“Well, sir?” Ned Land said to me, coming up after the captain’s

departure.

“Well, Ned my friend, we’ll serenely wait for the tide on the 9th,

because it seems the moon will have the good nature to float us away!”

“As simple as that?”

“As simple as that.”

“So our captain isn’t going to drop his anchors, put his engines on

the chains, and do anything to haul us off?”

“Since the tide will be sufficient,” Conseil replied simply.

The Canadian stared at Conseil, then he shrugged his shoulders. The

seaman in him was talking now.

“Sir,” he answered, “you can trust me when I say this hunk of iron

will never navigate again, on the seas or under them. It’s only fit to

be sold for its weight. So I think it’s time we gave Captain Nemo the

slip.”

“Ned my friend,” I replied, “unlike you, I haven’t given up on our

valiant Nautilus, and in four days we’ll know where we stand on these

Pacific tides. Besides, an escape attempt might be timely if we were

in sight of the coasts of England or Provence, but in the waterways of

Papua it’s another story. And we’ll always have that as a last resort

if the Nautilus doesn’t right itself, which I’d regard as a real

calamity.”

“But couldn’t we at least get the lay of the land?” Ned went

on. “Here’s an island. On this island there are trees. Under those

trees land animals loaded with cutlets and roast beef, which I’d be

happy to sink my teeth into.”

“In this instance our friend Ned is right,” Conseil said, “and I side

with his views. Couldn’t master persuade his friend Captain Nemo to

send the three of us ashore, if only so our feet don’t lose the knack

of treading on the solid parts of our planet?”

“I can ask him,” I replied, “but he’ll refuse.”

“Let master take the risk,” Conseil said, “and we’ll know where we

stand on the captain’s affability.”

Much to my surprise, Captain Nemo gave me the permission I asked for,

and he did so with grace and alacrity, not even exacting my promise to

return on board. But fleeing across the New Guinea territories would

be extremely dangerous, and I wouldn’t have advised Ned Land to try

it. Better to be prisoners aboard the Nautilus than to fall into the

hands of Papuan natives.

The skiff was put at our disposal for the next morning. I hardly

needed to ask whether Captain Nemo would be coming along. I likewise

assumed that no crewmen would be assigned to us, that Ned Land would

be in sole charge of piloting the longboat. Besides, the shore lay no

more than two miles off, and it would be child’s play for the Canadian

to guide that nimble skiff through those rows of reefs so ill-fated

for big ships.

The next day, January 5, after its deck paneling was opened, the skiff

was wrenched from its socket and launched to sea from the top of the

platform. Two men were sufficient for this operation. The oars were

inside the longboat and we had only to take our seats.

At eight o’clock, armed with rifles and axes, we pulled clear of the

Nautilus. The sea was fairly calm. A mild breeze blew from shore. In

place by the oars, Conseil and I rowed vigorously, and Ned steered us

into the narrow lanes between the breakers. The skiff handled easily

and sped swiftly.

Ned Land couldn’t conceal his glee. He was a prisoner escaping from

prison and never dreaming he would need to reenter it.

“Meat!” he kept repeating. “Now we’ll eat red meat! Actual game! A

real mess call, by thunder! I’m not saying fish aren’t good for you,

but we mustn’t overdo ’em, and a slice of fresh venison grilled over

live coals will be a nice change from our standard fare.”

“You glutton,” Conseil replied, “you’re making my mouth water!”

“It remains to be seen,” I said, “whether these forests do contain

game, and if the types of game aren’t of such size that they can hunt

the hunter.”

“Fine, Professor Aronnax!” replied the Canadian, whose teeth seemed to

be as honed as the edge of an ax. “But if there’s no other quadruped

on this island, I’ll eat tiger—tiger sirloin.”

“Our friend Ned grows disturbing,” Conseil replied.

“Whatever it is,” Ned Land went on, “any animal having four feet

without feathers, or two feet with feathers, will be greeted by my

very own one-gun salute.”

“Oh good!” I replied. “The reckless Mr. Land is at it again!”

“Don’t worry, Professor Aronnax, just keep rowing!” the Canadian

replied. “I only need twenty-five minutes to serve you one of my own

special creations.”

By 8:30 the Nautilus’s skiff had just run gently aground on a sandy

strand, after successfully clearing the ring of coral that surrounds

Gueboroa Island.