CHAPTER 1

The Indian Ocean

NOW WE BEGIN the second part of this voyage under the seas. The first

ended in that moving scene at the coral cemetery, which left a

profound impression on my mind. And so Captain Nemo would live out his

life entirely in the heart of this immense sea, and even his grave lay

ready in its impenetrable depths. There the last sleep of the

Nautilus’s occupants, friends bound together in death as in life,

would be disturbed by no monster of the deep! “No man either!” the

captain had added.

Always that same fierce, implacable defiance of human society!

As for me, I was no longer content with the hypotheses that satisfied

Conseil. That fine lad persisted in seeing the Nautilus’s commander as

merely one of those unappreciated scientists who repay humanity’s

indifference with contempt. For Conseil, the captain was still a

misunderstood genius who, tired of the world’s deceptions, had been

driven to take refuge in this inaccessible environment where he was

free to follow his instincts. But to my mind, this hypothesis

explained only one side of Captain Nemo.

In fact, the mystery of that last afternoon when we were locked in

prison and put to sleep, the captain’s violent precaution of snatching

from my grasp a spyglass poised to scour the horizon, and the fatal

wound given that man during some unexplained collision suffered by the

Nautilus, all led me down a plain trail. No! Captain Nemo wasn’t

content simply to avoid humanity! His fearsome submersible served not

only his quest for freedom, but also, perhaps, it was used in

lord-knows-what schemes of dreadful revenge.

Right now, nothing is clear to me, I still glimpse only glimmers in

the dark, and I must limit my pen, as it were, to taking dictation

from events.

But nothing binds us to Captain Nemo. He believes that escaping from

the Nautilus is impossible. We are not even constrained by our word of

honor. No promises fetter us. 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 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

6,000 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. 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 plowed the waves of the Indian Ocean, vast liquid plains with

an area of 550,000,000 hectares, whose waters are so transparent it

makes you dizzy to lean over their surface. There the Nautilus

generally drifted at a depth between 100 and 200 meters. 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 skillfully slain, and when

cooked in a certain fashion, they make a very acceptable platter of

water game. Among the great wind riders—carried over long distances

from every shore and resting on the waves from their exhausting

flights—I spotted some magnificent albatross, birds belonging to the

Longipennes (long-winged) family, whose discordant calls sound like

the braying of an ass. The Totipalmes (fully webbed) family was

represented by swift frigate birds, nimbly catching fish at the

surface, and by numerous tropic birds of the genus Phaeton, among

others the red-tailed tropic bird, the size of a pigeon, its white

plumage shaded with pink tints that contrasted with its dark-hued

wings.

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.

I’ll mention chiefly some trunkfish unique to the Red Sea, the sea of

the East Indies, and that part of the ocean washing the coasts of

equinoctial America. Like turtles, armadillos, sea urchins, and

crustaceans, these fish are protected by armor plate that’s neither

chalky nor stony but actual bone. Sometimes this armor takes the shape

of a solid triangle, sometimes that of a solid quadrangle. Among the

triangular type, I noticed some half a decimeter long, with brown

tails, yellow fins, and wholesome, exquisitely tasty flesh; I even

recommend that they be acclimatized to fresh water, a change,

incidentally, that a number of saltwater fish can make with ease. I’ll

also mention some quadrangular trunkfish topped by four large

protuberances along the back; trunkfish sprinkled with white spots on

the underside of the body, which make good house pets like certain

birds; boxfish armed with stings formed by extensions of their bony

crusts, and whose odd grunting has earned them the nickname “sea

pigs”; then some trunkfish known as dromedaries, with tough, leathery

flesh and big conical humps.

From the daily notes kept by Mr. Conseil, I also retrieve certain fish

from the genus Tetradon unique to these seas: southern puffers with

red backs and white chests distinguished by three lengthwise rows of

filaments, and jugfish, seven inches long, decked out in the brightest

colors. Then, as specimens of other genera, blowfish resembling a dark

brown egg, furrowed with white bands, and lacking tails; globefish,

genuine porcupines of the sea, armed with stings and able to inflate

themselves until they look like a pin cushion bristling with needles;

seahorses common to every ocean; flying dragonfish with long snouts

and highly distended pectoral fins shaped like wings, which enable

them, if not to fly, at least to spring into the air; spatula-shaped

paddlefish whose tails are covered with many scaly rings; snipefish

with long jaws, excellent animals twenty-five centimeters long and

gleaming with the most cheerful colors; bluish gray dragonets with

wrinkled heads; myriads of leaping blennies with black stripes and

long pectoral fins, gliding over the surface of the water with

prodigious speed; delicious sailfish that can hoist their fins in a

favorable current like so many unfurled sails; splendid nurseryfish on

which nature has lavished yellow, azure, silver, and gold; yellow

mackerel with wings made of filaments; bullheads forever spattered

with mud, which make distinct hissing sounds; sea robins whose livers

are thought to be poisonous; ladyfish that can flutter their eyelids;

finally, archerfish with long, tubular snouts, real oceangoing

flycatchers, armed with a rifle unforeseen by either Remington or

Chassepot: it slays insects by shooting them with a simple drop of

water.

From the eighty-ninth fish genus in Lacépède’s system of

classification, belonging to his second subclass of bony fish

(characterized by gill covers and a bronchial membrane), I noted some

scorpionfish whose heads are adorned with stings and which have only

one dorsal fin; these animals are covered with small scales, or have

none at all, depending on the subgenus to which they belong. The

second subgenus gave us some Didactylus specimens three to four

decimeters long, streaked with yellow, their heads having a

phantasmagoric appearance. As for the first subgenus, it furnished

several specimens of that bizarre fish aptly nicknamed “toadfish,”

whose big head is sometimes gouged with deep cavities, sometimes

swollen with protuberances; bristling with stings and strewn with

nodules, it sports hideously irregular horns; its body and tail are

adorned with callosities; its stings can inflict dangerous injuries;

it’s repulsive and horrible.

From January 21 to the 23rd, the Nautilus traveled at the rate of 250

leagues in twenty-four hours, hence 540 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, toward the tip of the Indian peninsula.

“Civilization!” 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 toward 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. 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

kilometers down but without ever verifying the lowest depths of this

sea near India, which soundings of 13,000 meters 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 instant, 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 Sydney, 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 marveled at an

unusual sight.

It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients,

is a sign of good luck. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppian

studied its habits and lavished on its behalf all the scientific

poetry of Greece and Italy. They called it “nautilus” and “pompilius.”

But modern science has not endorsed these designations, and this

mollusk is now known by the name argonaut.

Anyone consulting Conseil would soon learn from the gallant lad that

the branch Mollusca is divided into five classes; that the first class

features the Cephalopoda (whose members are sometimes naked, sometimes

covered with a shell), which consists of two families, the

Dibranchiata and the Tetrabranchiata, which are distinguished by their

number of gills; that the family Dibranchiata includes three genera,

the argonaut, the squid, and the cuttlefish, and that the family

Tetrabranchiata contains only one genus, the nautilus. After this

catalog, if some recalcitrant listener confuses the argonaut, which is

acetabuliferous (in other words, a bearer of suction tubes), with the

nautilus, which is tentaculiferous (a bearer of tentacles), it will be

simply unforgivable.

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 mollusks 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

mollusks. 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 center of

gravity, and the whole flotilla disappeared under the waves. It was

instantaneous, and no squadron of ships ever maneuvered 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 reentered 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-meter 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 lactified. 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 colorless and gelatinous in appearance, as

thick as a strand of hair, and no longer than one-fifth of a

millimeter. 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 millimeter 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.