CHAPTER 3

A Pearl Worth Ten Million

NIGHT FELL. I went to bed. I slept pretty poorly. Man-eaters played a

major role in my dreams. And I found it more or less appropriate that

the French word for shark, requin, has its linguistic roots in the

word requiem.

The next day at four o’clock in the morning, I was awakened by the

steward whom Captain Nemo had placed expressly at my service. I got up

quickly, dressed, and went into the lounge.

Captain Nemo was waiting for me.

“Professor Aronnax,” he said to me, “are you ready to start?”

“I’m ready.”

“Kindly follow me.”

“What about my companions, captain?”

“They’ve been alerted and are waiting for us.”

“Aren’t we going to put on our diving suits?” I asked.

“Not yet. I haven’t let the Nautilus pull too near the coast, and

we’re fairly well out from the Mannar oysterbank. But I have the skiff

ready, and it will take us to the exact spot where we’ll disembark,

which will save us a pretty long trek. It’s carrying our diving

equipment, and we’ll suit up just before we begin our underwater

exploring.”

Captain Nemo took me to the central companionway whose steps led to

the platform. Ned and Conseil were there, enraptured with the

“pleasure trip” getting under way. Oars in position, five of the

Nautilus’s sailors were waiting for us aboard the skiff, which was

moored alongside. The night was still dark. Layers of clouds cloaked

the sky and left only a few stars in view. My eyes flew to the side

where land lay, but I saw only a blurred line covering three-quarters

of the horizon from southwest to northwest. Going up Ceylon’s west

coast during the night, the Nautilus lay west of the bay, or rather

that gulf formed by the mainland and Mannar Island. Under these dark

waters there stretched the bank of shellfish, an inexhaustible field

of pearls more than twenty miles long.

Captain Nemo, Conseil, Ned Land, and I found seats in the stern of the

skiff. The longboat’s coxswain took the tiller; his four companions

leaned into their oars; the moorings were cast off and we pulled

clear.

The skiff headed southward. The oarsmen took their time. I watched

their strokes vigorously catch the water, and they always waited ten

seconds before rowing again, following the practice used in most

navies. While the longboat coasted, drops of liquid flicked from the

oars and hit the dark troughs of the waves, pitter-pattering like

splashes of molten lead. Coming from well out, a mild swell made the

skiff roll gently, and a few cresting billows lapped at its bow.

We were silent. What was Captain Nemo thinking? Perhaps that this

approaching shore was too close for comfort, contrary to the

Canadian’s views in which it still seemed too far away. As for

Conseil, he had come along out of simple curiosity.

Near 5:30 the first glimmers of light on the horizon defined the upper

lines of the coast with greater distinctness. Fairly flat to the east,

it swelled a little toward the south. Five miles still separated it

from us, and its beach merged with the misty waters. Between us and

the shore, the sea was deserted. Not a boat, not a diver. Profound

solitude reigned over this gathering place of pearl fishermen. As

Captain Nemo had commented, we were arriving in these waterways a

month too soon.

At six o’clock the day broke suddenly, with that speed unique to

tropical regions, which experience no real dawn or dusk. The sun’s

rays pierced the cloud curtain gathered on the easterly horizon, and

the radiant orb rose swiftly.

I could clearly see the shore, which featured a few sparse trees here

and there.

The skiff advanced toward Mannar Island, which curved to the

south. Captain Nemo stood up from his thwart and studied the sea.

At his signal the anchor was lowered, but its chain barely ran because

the bottom lay no more than a meter down, and this locality was one of

the shallowest spots near the bank of shellfish. Instantly the skiff

wheeled around under the ebb tide’s outbound thrust.

“Here we are, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo then said. “You observe

this confined bay? A month from now in this very place, the numerous

fishing boats of the harvesters will gather, and these are the waters

their divers will ransack so daringly. This bay is felicitously laid

out for their type of fishing. It’s sheltered from the strongest

winds, and the sea is never very turbulent here, highly favorable

conditions for diving work. Now let’s put on our underwater suits, and

we’ll begin our stroll.”

I didn’t reply, and while staring at these suspicious waves, I began

to put on my heavy aquatic clothes, helped by the longboat’s

sailors. Captain Nemo and my two companions suited up as well. None of

the Nautilus’s men were to go with us on this new excursion.

Soon we were imprisoned up to the neck in india-rubber clothing, and

straps fastened the air devices onto our backs. As for the Ruhmkorff

device, it didn’t seem to be in the picture. Before inserting my head

into its copper capsule, I commented on this to the captain.

“Our lighting equipment would be useless to us,” the captain answered

me. “We won’t be going very deep, and the sun’s rays will be

sufficient to light our way. Besides, it’s unwise to carry electric

lanterns under these waves. Their brightness might unexpectedly

attract certain dangerous occupants of these waterways.”

As Captain Nemo pronounced these words, I turned to Conseil and Ned

Land. But my two friends had already encased their craniums in their

metal headgear, and they could neither hear nor reply.

I had one question left to address to Captain Nemo.

“What about our weapons?” I asked him. “Our rifles?”

“Rifles! What for? Don’t your mountaineers attack bears dagger in

hand? And isn’t steel surer than lead? Here’s a sturdy blade. Slip it

under your belt and let’s be off.”

I stared at my companions. They were armed in the same fashion, and

Ned Land was also brandishing an enormous harpoon he had stowed in the

skiff before leaving the Nautilus.

Then, following the captain’s example, I let myself be crowned with my

heavy copper sphere, and our air tanks immediately went into action.

An instant later, the longboat’s sailors helped us overboard one after

the other, and we set foot on level sand in a meter and a half of

water. Captain Nemo gave us a hand signal. We followed him down a

gentle slope and disappeared under the waves.

There the obsessive fears in my brain left me. I became surprisingly

calm again. The ease with which I could move increased my confidence,

and the many strange sights captivated my imagination.

The sun was already sending sufficient light under these waves. The

tiniest objects remained visible. After ten minutes of walking, we

were in five meters of water, and the terrain had become almost flat.

Like a covey of snipe over a marsh, there rose underfoot schools of

unusual fish from the genus Monopterus, whose members have no fin but

their tail. I recognized the Javanese eel, a genuine eight-decimeter

serpent with a bluish gray belly, which, without the gold lines over

its flanks, could easily be confused with the conger eel. From the

butterfish genus, whose oval bodies are very flat, I observed several

adorned in brilliant colors and sporting a dorsal fin like a sickle,

edible fish that, when dried and marinated, make an excellent dish

known by the name “karawade”; then some sea poachers, fish belonging

to the genus Aspidophoroides, whose bodies are covered with scaly

armor divided into eight lengthwise sections.

Meanwhile, as the sun got progressively higher, it lit up the watery

mass more and more. The seafloor changed little by little. Its

fine-grained sand was followed by a genuine causeway of smooth crags

covered by a carpet of mollusks and zoophytes. Among other specimens

in these two branches, I noted some windowpane oysters with thin

valves of unequal size, a type of ostracod unique to the Red Sea and

the Indian Ocean, then orange-hued lucina with circular shells,

awl-shaped auger shells, some of those Persian murex snails that

supply the Nautilus with such wonderful dye, spiky periwinkles fifteen

centimeters long that rose under the waves like hands ready to grab

you, turban snails with shells made of horn and bristling all over

with spines, lamp shells, edible duck clams that feed the Hindu

marketplace, subtly luminous jellyfish of the species Pelagia

panopyra, and finally some wonderful Oculina flabelliforma,

magnificent sea fans that fashion one of the most luxuriant tree forms

in this ocean.

In the midst of this moving vegetation, under arbors of water plants,

there raced legions of clumsy articulates, in particular some fanged

frog crabs whose carapaces form a slightly rounded triangle, robber

crabs exclusive to these waterways, and horrible parthenope crabs

whose appearance was repulsive to the eye. One animal no less hideous,

which I encountered several times, was the enormous crab that

Mr. Darwin observed, to which nature has given the instinct and

requisite strength to eat coconuts; it scrambles up trees on the beach

and sends the coconuts tumbling; they fracture in their fall and are

opened by its powerful pincers. Here, under these clear waves, this

crab raced around with matchless agility, while green turtles from the

species frequenting the Malabar coast moved sluggishly among the

crumbling rocks.

Near seven o’clock we finally surveyed the bank of shellfish, where

pearl oysters reproduce by the millions. These valuable mollusks stick

to rocks, where they’re strongly attached by a mass of brown filaments

that forbids their moving about. In this respect oysters are inferior

even to mussels, to whom nature has not denied all talent for

locomotion.

The shellfish Meleagrina, that womb for pearls whose valves are nearly

equal in size, has the shape of a round shell with thick walls and a

very rough exterior. Some of these shells were furrowed with flaky,

greenish bands that radiated down from the top. These were the young

oysters. The others had rugged black surfaces, measured up to fifteen

centimeters in width, and were ten or more years old.

Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw

that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since nature’s creative

powers are greater than man’s destructive instincts. True to those

instincts, Ned Land greedily stuffed the finest of these mollusks into

a net he carried at his side.

But we couldn’t stop. We had to follow the captain, who headed down

trails seemingly known only to himself. The seafloor rose noticeably,

and when I lifted my arms, sometimes they would pass above the surface

of the sea. Then the level of the oysterbank would lower

unpredictably. Often we went around tall, pointed rocks rising like

pyramids. In their dark crevices huge crustaceans, aiming their long

legs like heavy artillery, watched us with unblinking eyes, while

underfoot there crept millipedes, bloodworms, aricia worms, and

annelid worms, whose antennas and tubular tentacles were incredibly

long.

Just then a huge cave opened up in our path, hollowed from a

picturesque pile of rocks whose smooth heights were completely hung

with underwater flora. At first this cave looked pitch-black to

me. Inside, the sun’s rays seemed to diminish by degrees. Their hazy

transparency was nothing more than drowned light.

Captain Nemo went in. We followed him. My eyes soon grew accustomed to

this comparative gloom. I distinguished the unpredictably contoured

springings of a vault, supported by natural pillars firmly based on a

granite foundation, like the weighty columns of Tuscan

architecture. Why had our incomprehensible guide taken us into the

depths of this underwater crypt? I would soon find out.

After going down a fairly steep slope, our feet trod the floor of a

sort of circular pit. There Captain Nemo stopped, and his hand

indicated an object that I hadn’t yet noticed.

It was an oyster of extraordinary dimensions, a titanic giant clam, a

holy-water font that could have held a whole lake, a basin more than

two meters wide, hence even bigger than the one adorning the

Nautilus’s lounge.

I approached this phenomenal mollusk. Its mass of filaments attached

it to a table of granite, and there it grew by itself in the midst of

the cave’s calm waters. I estimated the weight of this giant clam at

300 kilograms. Hence such an oyster held fifteen kilos of meat, and

you’d need the stomach of King Gargantua to eat a couple dozen.

Captain Nemo was obviously familiar with this bivalve’s

existence. This wasn’t the first time he’d paid it a visit, and I

thought his sole reason for leading us to this locality was to show us

a natural curiosity. I was mistaken. Captain Nemo had an explicit

personal interest in checking on the current condition of this giant

clam.

The mollusk’s two valves were partly open. The captain approached and

stuck his dagger vertically between the shells to discourage any ideas

about closing; then with his hands he raised the fringed,

membrane-filled tunic that made up the animal’s mantle.

There, between its leaflike folds, I saw a loose pearl as big as a

coconut. Its globular shape, perfect clarity, and wonderful orient

made it a jewel of incalculable value. Carried away by curiosity, I

stretched out my hand to take it, weigh it, fondle it! But the captain

stopped me, signaled no, removed his dagger in one swift motion, and

let the two valves snap shut.

I then understood Captain Nemo’s intent. By leaving the pearl buried

beneath the giant clam’s mantle, he allowed it to grow

imperceptibly. With each passing year the mollusk’s secretions added

new concentric layers. The captain alone was familiar with the cave

where this wonderful fruit of nature was “ripening”; he alone reared

it, so to speak, in order to transfer it one day to his dearly beloved

museum. Perhaps, following the examples of oyster farmers in China and

India, he had even predetermined the creation of this pearl by

sticking under the mollusk’s folds some piece of glass or metal that

was gradually covered with mother-of-pearl. In any case, comparing

this pearl to others I already knew about, and to those shimmering in

the captain’s collection, I estimated that it was worth at least

10,000,000 francs. It was a superb natural curiosity rather than a

luxurious piece of jewelry, because I don’t know of any female ear

that could handle it.

Our visit to this opulent giant clam came to an end. Captain Nemo left

the cave, and we climbed back up the bank of shellfish in the midst of

these clear waters not yet disturbed by divers at work.

We walked by ourselves, genuine loiterers stopping or straying as our

fancies dictated. For my part, I was no longer worried about those

dangers my imagination had so ridiculously exaggerated. The shallows

drew noticeably closer to the surface of the sea, and soon, walking in

only a meter of water, my head passed well above the level of the

ocean. Conseil rejoined me, and gluing his huge copper capsule to

mine, his eyes gave me a friendly greeting. But this lofty plateau

measured only a few fathoms, and soon we reentered Our Element. I

think I’ve now earned the right to dub it that.

Ten minutes later, Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. I thought he’d

called a halt so that we could turn and start back. No. With a gesture

he ordered us to crouch beside him at the foot of a wide crevice. His

hand motioned toward a spot within the liquid mass, and I looked

carefully.

Five meters away a shadow appeared and dropped to the seafloor. The

alarming idea of sharks crossed my mind. But I was mistaken, and once

again we didn’t have to deal with monsters of the deep.

It was a man, a living man, a black Indian fisherman, a poor devil who

no doubt had come to gather what he could before harvest time. I saw

the bottom of his dinghy, moored a few feet above his head. He would

dive and go back up in quick succession. A stone cut in the shape of a

sugar loaf, which he gripped between his feet while a rope connected

it to his boat, served to lower him more quickly to the ocean

floor. This was the extent of his equipment. Arriving on the seafloor

at a depth of about five meters, he fell to his knees and stuffed his

sack with shellfish gathered at random. Then he went back up, emptied

his sack, pulled up his stone, and started all over again, the whole

process lasting only thirty seconds.

This diver didn’t see us. A shadow cast by our crag hid us from his

view. And besides, how could this poor Indian ever have guessed that

human beings, creatures like himself, were near him under the waters,

eavesdropping on his movements, not missing a single detail of his

fishing!

So he went up and down several times. He gathered only about ten

shellfish per dive, because he had to tear them from the banks where

each clung with its tough mass of filaments. And how many of these

oysters for which he risked his life would have no pearl in them!

I observed him with great care. His movements were systematically

executed, and for half an hour no danger seemed to threaten him. So I

had gotten used to the sight of this fascinating fishing when all at

once, just as the Indian was kneeling on the seafloor, I saw him make

a frightened gesture, stand, and gather himself to spring back to the

surface of the waves.

I understood his fear. A gigantic shadow appeared above the poor

diver. It was a shark of huge size, moving in diagonally, eyes ablaze,

jaws wide open!

I was speechless with horror, unable to make a single movement.

With one vigorous stroke of its fins, the voracious animal shot toward

the Indian, who jumped aside and avoided the shark’s bite but not the

thrashing of its tail, because that tail struck him across the chest

and stretched him out on the seafloor.

This scene lasted barely a few seconds. The shark returned, rolled

over on its back, and was getting ready to cut the Indian in half,

when Captain Nemo, who was stationed beside me, suddenly stood

up. Then he strode right toward the monster, dagger in hand, ready to

fight it at close quarters.

Just as it was about to snap up the poor fisherman, the man-eater saw

its new adversary, repositioned itself on its belly, and headed

swiftly toward him.

I can see Captain Nemo’s bearing to this day. Bracing himself, he

waited for the fearsome man-eater with wonderful composure, and when

the latter rushed at him, the captain leaped aside with prodigious

quickness, avoided a collision, and sank his dagger into its

belly. But that wasn’t the end of the story. A dreadful battle was

joined.

The shark bellowed, so to speak. Blood was pouring into the waves from

its wounds. The sea was dyed red, and through this opaque liquid I

could see nothing else.

Nothing else until the moment when, through a rift in the clouds, I

saw the daring captain clinging to one of the animal’s fins, fighting

the monster at close quarters, belaboring his enemy’s belly with stabs

of the dagger yet unable to deliver the deciding thrust, in other

words, a direct hit to the heart. In its struggles the man-eater

churned the watery mass so furiously, its eddies threatened to knock

me over.

I wanted to run to the captain’s rescue. But I was transfixed with

horror, unable to move.

I stared, wild-eyed. I saw the fight enter a new phase. The captain

fell to the seafloor, toppled by the enormous mass weighing him

down. Then the shark’s jaws opened astoundingly wide, like a pair of

industrial shears, and that would have been the finish of Captain Nemo

had not Ned Land, quick as thought, rushed forward with his harpoon

and driven its dreadful point into the shark’s underside.

The waves were saturated with masses of blood. The waters shook with

the movements of the man-eater, which thrashed about with

indescribable fury. Ned Land hadn’t missed his target. This was the

monster’s death rattle. Pierced to the heart, it was struggling with

dreadful spasms whose aftershocks knocked Conseil off his feet.

Meanwhile Ned Land pulled the captain clear. Uninjured, the latter

stood up, went right to the Indian, quickly cut the rope binding the

man to his stone, took the fellow in his arms, and with a vigorous

kick of the heel, rose to the surface of the sea.

The three of us followed him, and a few moments later, miraculously

safe, we reached the fisherman’s longboat.

Captain Nemo’s first concern was to revive this unfortunate man. I

wasn’t sure he would succeed. I hoped so, since the poor devil hadn’t

been under very long. But that stroke from the shark’s tail could have

been his deathblow.

Fortunately, after vigorous massaging by Conseil and the captain, I

saw the nearly drowned man regain consciousness little by little. He

opened his eyes. How startled he must have felt, how frightened even,

at seeing four huge, copper craniums leaning over him!

And above all, what must he have thought when Captain Nemo pulled a

bag of pearls from a pocket in his diving suit and placed it in the

fisherman’s hands? This magnificent benefaction from the Man of the

Waters to the poor Indian from Ceylon was accepted by the latter with

trembling hands. His bewildered eyes indicated that he didn’t know to

what superhuman creatures he owed both his life and his fortune.

At the captain’s signal we returned to the bank of shellfish, and

retracing our steps, we walked for half an hour until we encountered

the anchor connecting the seafloor with the Nautilus’s skiff.

Back on board, the sailors helped divest us of our heavy copper

carapaces.

Captain Nemo’s first words were spoken to the Canadian.

“Thank you, Mr. Land,” he told him.

“Tit for tat, captain,” Ned Land replied. “I owed it to you.”

The ghost of a smile glided across the captain’s lips, and that was

all.

“To the Nautilus,” he said.

The longboat flew over the waves. A few minutes later we encountered

the shark’s corpse again, floating.

From the black markings on the tips of its fins, I recognized the

dreadful Squalus melanopterus from the seas of the East Indies, a

variety in the species of sharks proper. It was more than twenty-five

feet long; its enormous mouth occupied a third of its body. It was an

adult, as could be seen from the six rows of teeth forming an

isosceles triangle in its upper jaw.

Conseil looked at it with purely scientific fascination, and I’m sure

he placed it, not without good reason, in the class of cartilaginous

fish, order Chondropterygia with fixed gills, family Selacia, genus

Squalus.

While I was contemplating this inert mass, suddenly a dozen of these

voracious melanoptera appeared around our longboat; but, paying no

attention to us, they pounced on the corpse and quarreled over every

scrap of it.

By 8:30 we were back on board the Nautilus.

There I fell to thinking about the incidents that marked our excursion

over the Mannar oysterbank. Two impressions inevitably stood out. One

concerned Captain Nemo’s matchless bravery, the other his devotion to

a human being, a representative of that race from which he had fled

beneath the seas. In spite of everything, this strange man hadn’t yet

succeeded in completely stifling his heart.

When I shared these impressions with him, he answered me in a tone

touched with emotion:

“That Indian, professor, lives in the land of the oppressed, and I am

to this day, and will be until my last breath, a native of that same

land!”