CHAPTER 10

The Underwater Coalfields

THE NEXT DAY, February 20, I overslept. I was so exhausted from the

night before, I didn’t get up until eleven o’clock. I dressed

quickly. I hurried to find out the Nautilus’s heading. The instruments

indicated that it was running southward at a speed of twenty miles per

hour and a depth of 100 meters.

Conseil entered. I described our nocturnal excursion to him, and since

the panels were open, he could still catch a glimpse of this submerged

continent.

In fact, the Nautilus was skimming only ten meters over the soil of

these Atlantis plains. The ship scudded along like an air balloon

borne by the wind over some prairie on land; but it would be more

accurate to say that we sat in the lounge as if we were riding in a

coach on an express train. As for the foregrounds passing before our

eyes, they were fantastically carved rocks, forests of trees that had

crossed over from the vegetable kingdom into the mineral kingdom,

their motionless silhouettes sprawling beneath the waves. There also

were stony masses buried beneath carpets of axidia and sea anemone,

bristling with long, vertical water plants, then strangely contoured

blocks of lava that testified to all the fury of those plutonic

developments.

While this bizarre scenery was glittering under our electric beams, I

told Conseil the story of the Atlanteans, who had inspired the old

French scientist Jean Bailly to write so many entertaining—albeit

utterly fictitious—pages.* I told the lad about the wars of these

heroic people. I discussed the question of Atlantis with the fervor of

a man who no longer had any doubts. But Conseil was so distracted he

barely heard me, and his lack of interest in any commentary on this

historical topic was soon explained.

*Bailly believed that Atlantis was located at the North Pole! Ed.

In essence, numerous fish had caught his eye, and when fish pass by,

Conseil vanishes into his world of classifying and leaves real life

behind. In which case I could only tag along and resume our

ichthyological research.

Even so, these Atlantic fish were not noticeably different from those

we had observed earlier. There were rays of gigantic size, five meters

long and with muscles so powerful they could leap above the waves,

sharks of various species including a fifteen-foot glaucous shark with

sharp triangular teeth and so transparent it was almost invisible amid

the waters, brown lantern sharks, prism-shaped humantin sharks armored

with protuberant hides, sturgeons resembling their relatives in the

Mediterranean, trumpet-snouted pipefish a foot and a half long,

yellowish brown with small gray fins and no teeth or tongue, unreeling

like slim, supple snakes.

Among bony fish, Conseil noticed some blackish marlin three meters

long with a sharp sword jutting from the upper jaw, bright-colored

weevers known in Aristotle’s day as sea dragons and whose dorsal

stingers make them quite dangerous to pick up, then dolphinfish with

brown backs striped in blue and edged in gold, handsome dorados,

moonlike opahs that look like azure disks but which the sun’s rays

turn into spots of silver, finally eight-meter swordfish from the

genus Xiphias, swimming in schools, sporting yellowish sickle-shaped

fins and six-foot broadswords, stalwart animals, plant eaters rather

than fish eaters, obeying the tiniest signals from their females like

henpecked husbands.

But while observing these different specimens of marine fauna, I

didn’t stop examining the long plains of Atlantis. Sometimes an

unpredictable irregularity in the seafloor would force the Nautilus to

slow down, and then it would glide into the narrow channels between

the hills with a cetacean’s dexterity. If the labyrinth became

hopelessly tangled, the submersible would rise above it like an

airship, and after clearing the obstacle, it would resume its speedy

course just a few meters above the ocean floor. It was an enjoyable

and impressive way of navigating that did indeed recall the maneuvers

of an airship ride, with the major difference that the Nautilus

faithfully obeyed the hands of its helmsman.

The terrain consisted mostly of thick slime mixed with petrified

branches, but it changed little by little near four o’clock in the

afternoon; it grew rockier and seemed to be strewn with pudding stones

and a basaltic gravel called “tuff,” together with bits of lava and

sulfurous obsidian. I expected these long plains to change into

mountain regions, and in fact, as the Nautilus was executing certain

turns, I noticed that the southerly horizon was blocked by a high wall

that seemed to close off every exit. Its summit obviously poked above

the level of the ocean. It had to be a continent or at least an

island, either one of the Canaries or one of the Cape Verde

Islands. Our bearings hadn’t been marked on the chart—perhaps

deliberately—and I had no idea what our position was. In any case this

wall seemed to signal the end of Atlantis, of which, all in all, we

had crossed only a small part.

Nightfall didn’t interrupt my observations. I was left to

myself. Conseil had repaired to his cabin. The Nautilus slowed down,

hovering above the muddled masses on the seafloor, sometimes grazing

them as if wanting to come to rest, sometimes rising unpredictably to

the surface of the waves. Then I glimpsed a few bright constellations

through the crystal waters, specifically five or six of those zodiacal

stars trailing from the tail end of Orion.

I would have stayed longer at my window, marveling at these beauties

of sea and sky, but the panels closed. Just then the Nautilus had

arrived at the perpendicular face of that high wall. How the ship

would maneuver I hadn’t a guess. I repaired to my stateroom. The

Nautilus did not stir. I fell asleep with the firm intention of waking

up in just a few hours.

But it was eight o’clock the next day when I returned to the lounge. I

stared at the pressure gauge. It told me that the Nautilus was afloat

on the surface of the ocean. Furthermore, I heard the sound of

footsteps on the platform. Yet there were no rolling movements to

indicate the presence of waves undulating above me.

I climbed as far as the hatch. It was open. But instead of the broad

daylight I was expecting, I found that I was surrounded by total

darkness. Where were we? Had I been mistaken? Was it still night? No!

Not one star was twinkling, and nighttime is never so utterly black.

I wasn’t sure what to think, when a voice said to me:

“Is that you, professor?”

“Ah, Captain Nemo!” I replied. “Where are we?”

“Underground, professor.”

“Underground!” I exclaimed. “And the Nautilus is still floating?”

“It always floats.”

“But I don’t understand!”

“Wait a little while. Our beacon is about to go on, and if you want

some light on the subject, you’ll be satisfied.”

I set foot on the platform and waited. The darkness was so profound I

couldn’t see even Captain Nemo. However, looking at the zenith

directly overhead, I thought I caught sight of a feeble glimmer, a

sort of twilight filtering through a circular hole. Just then the

beacon suddenly went on, and its intense brightness made that hazy

light vanish.

This stream of electricity dazzled my eyes, and after momentarily

shutting them, I looked around. The Nautilus was stationary. It was

floating next to an embankment shaped like a wharf. As for the water

now buoying the ship, it was a lake completely encircled by an inner

wall about two miles in diameter, hence six miles around. Its level—as

indicated by the pressure gauge—would be the same as the outside

level, because some connection had to exist between this lake and the

sea. Slanting inward over their base, these high walls converged to

form a vault shaped like an immense upside-down funnel that measured

500 or 600 meters in height. At its summit there gaped the circular

opening through which I had detected that faint glimmer, obviously

daylight.

Before more carefully examining the interior features of this enormous

cavern, and before deciding if it was the work of nature or humankind,

I went over to Captain Nemo.

“Where are we?” I said.

“In the very heart of an extinct volcano,” the captain answered me, “a

volcano whose interior was invaded by the sea after some convulsion in

the earth. While you were sleeping, professor, the Nautilus entered

this lagoon through a natural channel that opens ten meters below the

surface of the ocean. This is our home port, secure, convenient,

secret, and sheltered against winds from any direction! Along the

coasts of your continents or islands, show me any offshore mooring

that can equal this safe refuge for withstanding the fury of

hurricanes.”

“Indeed,” I replied, “here you’re in perfect safety, Captain Nemo. Who

could reach you in the heart of a volcano? But don’t I see an opening

at its summit?”

“Yes, its crater, a crater formerly filled with lava, steam, and

flames, but which now lets in this life-giving air we’re breathing.”

“But which volcanic mountain is this?” I asked.

“It’s one of the many islets with which this sea is strewn. For ships

a mere reef, for us an immense cavern. I discovered it by chance, and

chance served me well.”

“But couldn’t someone enter through the mouth of its crater?”

“No more than I could exit through it. You can climb about 100 feet up

the inner base of this mountain, but then the walls overhang, they

lean too far in to be scaled.”

“I can see, captain, that nature is your obedient servant, any time or

any place. You’re safe on this lake, and nobody else can visit its

waters. But what’s the purpose of this refuge? The Nautilus doesn’t

need a harbor.”

“No, professor, but it needs electricity to run, batteries to generate

its electricity, sodium to feed its batteries, coal to make its

sodium, and coalfields from which to dig its coal. Now then, right at

this spot the sea covers entire forests that sank underwater in

prehistoric times; today, turned to stone, transformed into carbon

fuel, they offer me inexhaustible coal mines.”

“So, captain, your men practice the trade of miners here?”

“Precisely. These mines extend under the waves like the coalfields at

Newcastle. Here, dressed in diving suits, pick and mattock in hand, my

men go out and dig this carbon fuel for which I don’t need a single

mine on land. When I burn this combustible to produce sodium, the

smoke escaping from the mountain’s crater gives it the appearance of a

still-active volcano.”

“And will we see your companions at work?”

“No, at least not this time, because I’m eager to continue our

underwater tour of the world. Accordingly, I’ll rest content with

drawing on my reserve stock of sodium. We’ll stay here long enough to

load it on board, in other words, a single workday, then we’ll resume

our voyage. So, Professor Aronnax, if you’d like to explore this

cavern and circle its lagoon, seize the day.”

I thanked the captain and went to look for my two companions, who

hadn’t yet left their cabin. I invited them to follow me, not telling

them where we were.

They climbed onto the platform. Conseil, whom nothing could startle,

saw it as a perfectly natural thing to fall asleep under the waves and

wake up under a mountain. But Ned Land had no idea in his head other

than to see if this cavern offered some way out.

After breakfast near ten o’clock, we went down onto the embankment.

“So here we are, back on shore,” Conseil said.

“I’d hardly call this shore,” the Canadian replied. “And besides, we

aren’t on it but under it.”

A sandy beach unfolded before us, measuring 500 feet at its widest

point between the waters of the lake and the foot of the mountain’s

walls. Via this strand you could easily circle the lake. But the base

of these high walls consisted of broken soil over which there lay

picturesque piles of volcanic blocks and enormous pumice stones. All

these crumbling masses were covered with an enamel polished by the

action of underground fires, and they glistened under the stream of

electric light from our beacon. Stirred up by our footsteps, the

mica-rich dust on this beach flew into the air like a cloud of sparks.

The ground rose appreciably as it moved away from the sand flats by

the waves, and we soon arrived at some long, winding gradients,

genuinely steep paths that allowed us to climb little by little; but

we had to tread cautiously in the midst of pudding stones that weren’t

cemented together, and our feet kept skidding on glassy trachyte, made

of feldspar and quartz crystals.

The volcanic nature of this enormous pit was apparent all around us. I

ventured to comment on it to my companions.

“Can you picture,” I asked them, “what this funnel must have been like

when it was filled with boiling lava, and the level of that

incandescent liquid rose right to the mountain’s mouth, like cast iron

up the insides of a furnace?”

“I can picture it perfectly,” Conseil replied. “But will master tell

me why this huge smelter suspended operations, and how it is that an

oven was replaced by the tranquil waters of a lake?”

“In all likelihood, Conseil, because some convulsion created an

opening below the surface of the ocean, the opening that serves as a

passageway for the Nautilus. Then the waters of the Atlantic rushed

inside the mountain. There ensued a dreadful struggle between the

elements of fire and water, a struggle ending in King Neptune’s

favor. But many centuries have passed since then, and this submerged

volcano has changed into a peaceful cavern.”

“That’s fine,” Ned Land answered. “I accept the explanation, but in

our personal interests, I’m sorry this opening the professor mentions

wasn’t made above sea level.”

“But Ned my friend,” Conseil answered, “if it weren’t an underwater

passageway, the Nautilus couldn’t enter it!”

“And I might add, Mr. Land,” I said, “that the waters wouldn’t have

rushed under the mountain, and the volcano would still be a

volcano. So you have nothing to be sorry about.”

Our climb continued. The gradients got steeper and narrower. Sometimes

they were cut across by deep pits that had to be cleared. Masses of

overhanging rock had to be gotten around. You slid on your knees, you

crept on your belly. But helped by the Canadian’s strength and

Conseil’s dexterity, we overcame every obstacle.

At an elevation of about thirty meters, the nature of the terrain

changed without becoming any easier. Pudding stones and trachyte gave

way to black basaltic rock: here, lying in slabs all swollen with

blisters; there, shaped like actual prisms and arranged into a series

of columns that supported the springings of this immense vault, a

wonderful sample of natural architecture. Then, among this basaltic

rock, there snaked long, hardened lava flows inlaid with veins of

bituminous coal and in places covered by wide carpets of sulfur. The

sunshine coming through the crater had grown stronger, shedding a hazy

light over all the volcanic waste forever buried in the heart of this

extinct mountain.

But when we had ascended to an elevation of about 250 feet, we were

stopped by insurmountable obstacles. The converging inside walls

changed into overhangs, and our climb into a circular stroll. At this

topmost level the vegetable kingdom began to challenge the mineral

kingdom. Shrubs, and even a few trees, emerged from crevices in the

walls. I recognized some spurges that let their caustic, purgative sap

trickle out. There were heliotropes, very remiss at living up to their

sun-worshipping reputations since no sunlight ever reached them; their

clusters of flowers drooped sadly, their colors and scents were

faded. Here and there chrysanthemums sprouted timidly at the feet of

aloes with long, sad, sickly leaves. But between these lava flows I

spotted little violets that still gave off a subtle fragrance, and I

confess that I inhaled it with delight. The soul of a flower is its

scent, and those splendid water plants, flowers of the sea, have no

souls!

We had arrived at the foot of a sturdy clump of dragon trees, which

were splitting the rocks with exertions of their muscular roots, when

Ned Land exclaimed:

“Oh, sir, a hive!”

“A hive?” I answered, with a gesture of utter disbelief.

“Yes, a hive,” the Canadian repeated, “with bees buzzing around!”

I went closer and was forced to recognize the obvious. At the mouth of

a hole cut in the trunk of a dragon tree, there swarmed thousands of

these ingenious insects so common to all the Canary Islands, where

their output is especially prized.

Naturally enough, the Canadian wanted to lay in a supply of honey, and

it would have been ill-mannered of me to say no. He mixed sulfur with

some dry leaves, set them on fire with a spark from his tinderbox, and

proceeded to smoke the bees out. Little by little the buzzing died

down and the disemboweled hive yielded several pounds of sweet

honey. Ned Land stuffed his haversack with it.

“When I’ve mixed this honey with our breadfruit batter,” he told us,

“I’ll be ready to serve you a delectable piece of cake.”

“But of course,” Conseil put in, “it will be gingerbread!”

“I’m all for gingerbread,” I said, “but let’s resume this fascinating

stroll.”

At certain turns in the trail we were going along, the lake appeared

in its full expanse. The ship’s beacon lit up that whole placid

surface, which experienced neither ripples nor undulations. The

Nautilus lay perfectly still. On its platform and on the embankment,

crewmen were bustling around, black shadows that stood out clearly in

the midst of the luminous air.

Just then we went around the highest ridge of these rocky foothills

that supported the vault. Then I saw that bees weren’t the animal

kingdom’s only representatives inside this volcano. Here and in the

shadows, birds of prey soared and whirled, flying away from nests

perched on tips of rock. There were sparrow hawks with white bellies,

and screeching kestrels. With all the speed their stiltlike legs could

muster, fine fat bustards scampered over the slopes. I’ll let the

reader decide whether the Canadian’s appetite was aroused by the sight

of this tasty game, and whether he regretted having no rifle in his

hands. He tried to make stones do the work of bullets, and after

several fruitless attempts, he managed to wound one of these

magnificent bustards. To say he risked his life twenty times in order

to capture this bird is simply the unadulterated truth; but he fared

so well, the animal went into his sack to join the honeycombs.

By then we were forced to go back down to the beach because the ridge

had become impossible. Above us, the yawning crater looked like the

wide mouth of a well. From where we stood, the sky was pretty easy to

see, and I watched clouds race by, disheveled by the west wind,

letting tatters of mist trail over the mountain’s summit. Proof

positive that those clouds kept at a moderate altitude, because this

volcano didn’t rise more than 1,800 feet above the level of the ocean.

Half an hour after the Canadian’s latest exploits, we were back on the

inner beach. There the local flora was represented by a wide carpet of

samphire, a small umbelliferous plant that keeps quite nicely, which

also boasts the names glasswort, saxifrage, and sea fennel. Conseil

picked a couple bunches. As for the local fauna, it included thousands

of crustaceans of every type: lobsters, hermit crabs, prawns, mysid

shrimps, daddy longlegs, rock crabs, and a prodigious number of

seashells, such as cowries, murex snails, and limpets.

In this locality there gaped the mouth of a magnificent cave. My

companions and I took great pleasure in stretching out on its

fine-grained sand. Fire had polished the sparkling enamel of its inner

walls, sprinkled all over with mica-rich dust. Ned Land tapped these

walls and tried to probe their thickness. I couldn’t help smiling. Our

conversation then turned to his everlasting escape plans, and without

going too far, I felt I could offer him this hope: Captain Nemo had

gone down south only to replenish his sodium supplies. So I hoped he

would now hug the coasts of Europe and America, which would allow the

Canadian to try again with a greater chance of success.

We were stretched out in this delightful cave for an hour. Our

conversation, lively at the outset, then languished. A definite

drowsiness overcame us. Since I saw no good reason to resist the call

of sleep, I fell into a heavy doze. I dreamed—one doesn’t choose his

dreams—that my life had been reduced to the vegetating existence of a

simple mollusk. It seemed to me that this cave made up my

double-valved shell. . . .

Suddenly Conseil’s voice startled me awake.

“Get up! Get up!” shouted the fine lad.

“What is it?” I asked, in a sitting position.

“The water’s coming up to us!”

I got back on my feet. Like a torrent the sea was rushing into our

retreat, and since we definitely were not mollusks, we had to clear

out.

In a few seconds we were safe on top of the cave.

“What happened?” Conseil asked. “Some new phenomenon?”

“Not quite, my friends!” I replied. “It was the tide, merely the tide,

which wellnigh caught us by surprise just as it did Sir Walter Scott’s

hero! The ocean outside is rising, and by a perfectly natural law of

balance, the level of this lake is also rising. We’ve gotten off with

a mild dunking. Let’s go change clothes on the Nautilus.”

Three-quarters of an hour later, we had completed our circular stroll

and were back on board. Just then the crewmen finished loading the

sodium supplies, and the Nautilus could have departed immediately.

But Captain Nemo gave no orders. Would he wait for nightfall and exit

through his underwater passageway in secrecy? Perhaps.

Be that as it may, by the next day the Nautilus had left its home port

and was navigating well out from any shore, a few meters beneath the

waves of the Atlantic.