CHAPTER 8

“Mobilis in Mobili”

THIS BRUTALLY EXECUTED capture was carried out with lightning

speed. My companions and I had no time to collect ourselves. I don’t

know how they felt about being shoved inside this aquatic prison, but

as for me, I was shivering all over. With whom were we dealing? Surely

with some new breed of pirates, exploiting the sea after their own

fashion.

The narrow hatch had barely closed over me when I was surrounded by

profound darkness. Saturated with the outside light, my eyes couldn’t

make out a thing. I felt my naked feet clinging to the steps of an

iron ladder. Forcibly seized, Ned Land and Conseil were behind me. At

the foot of the ladder, a door opened and instantly closed behind us

with a loud clang.

We were alone. Where? I couldn’t say, could barely even imagine. All

was darkness, but such utter darkness that after several minutes, my

eyes were still unable to catch a single one of those hazy gleams that

drift through even the blackest nights.

Meanwhile, furious at these goings on, Ned Land gave free rein to his

indignation.

“Damnation!” he exclaimed. “These people are about as hospitable as

the savages of New Caledonia! All that’s lacking is for them to be

cannibals! I wouldn’t be surprised if they were, but believe you me,

they won’t eat me without my kicking up a protest!”

“Calm yourself, Ned my friend,” Conseil replied serenely. “Don’t flare

up so quickly! We aren’t in a kettle yet!”

“In a kettle, no,” the Canadian shot back, “but in an oven for

sure. It’s dark enough for one. Luckily my Bowie knife hasn’t left me,

and I can still see well enough to put it to use.* The first one of

these bandits who lays a hand on me—”

*Author’s Note: A Bowie knife is a wide-bladed dagger that Americans

are forever carrying around.

“Don’t be so irritable, Ned,” I then told the harpooner, “and don’t

ruin things for us with pointless violence. Who knows whether they

might be listening to us? Instead, let’s try to find out where we

are!”

I started moving, groping my way. After five steps I encountered an

iron wall made of riveted boilerplate. Then, turning around, I bumped

into a wooden table next to which several stools had been set. The

floor of this prison lay hidden beneath thick, hempen matting that

deadened the sound of footsteps. Its naked walls didn’t reveal any

trace of a door or window. Going around the opposite way, Conseil met

up with me, and we returned to the middle of this cabin, which had to

be twenty feet long by ten wide. As for its height, not even Ned Land,

with his great stature, was able to determine it.

Half an hour had already gone by without our situation changing, when

our eyes were suddenly spirited from utter darkness into blinding

light. Our prison lit up all at once; in other words, it filled with

luminescent matter so intense that at first I couldn’t stand the

brightness of it. From its glare and whiteness, I recognized the

electric glow that had played around this underwater boat like some

magnificent phosphorescent phenomenon. After involuntarily closing my

eyes, I reopened them and saw that this luminous force came from a

frosted half globe curving out of the cabin’s ceiling.

“Finally! It’s light enough to see!” Ned Land exclaimed, knife in

hand, staying on the defensive.

“Yes,” I replied, then ventured the opposite view. “But as for our

situation, we’re still in the dark.”

“Master must learn patience,” said the emotionless Conseil.

This sudden illumination of our cabin enabled me to examine its

tiniest details. It contained only a table and five stools. Its

invisible door must have been hermetically sealed. Not a sound reached

our ears. Everything seemed dead inside this boat. Was it in motion,

or stationary on the surface of the ocean, or sinking into the depths?

I couldn’t tell.

But this luminous globe hadn’t been turned on without good

reason. Consequently, I hoped that some crewmen would soon make an

appearance. If you want to consign people to oblivion, you don’t light

up their dungeons.

I was not mistaken. Unlocking noises became audible, a door opened,

and two men appeared.

One was short and stocky, powerfully muscled, broad shouldered, robust

of limbs, the head squat, the hair black and luxuriant, the mustache

heavy, the eyes bright and penetrating, and his whole personality

stamped with that southern-blooded zest that, in France, typifies the

people of Provence. The philosopher Diderot has very aptly claimed

that a man’s bearing is the clue to his character, and this stocky

little man was certainly a living proof of this claim. You could sense

that his everyday conversation must have been packed with such vivid

figures of speech as personification, symbolism, and misplaced

modifiers. But I was never in a position to verify this because,

around me, he used only an odd and utterly incomprehensible dialect.

The second stranger deserves a more detailed description. A disciple

of such character-judging anatomists as Gratiolet or Engel could have

read this man’s features like an open book. Without hesitation, I

identified his dominant qualities—self-confidence, since his head

reared like a nobleman’s above the arc formed by the lines of his

shoulders, and his black eyes gazed with icy assurance; calmness,

since his skin, pale rather than ruddy, indicated tranquility of

blood; energy, shown by the swiftly knitting muscles of his brow; and

finally courage, since his deep breathing denoted tremendous reserves

of vitality.

I might add that this was a man of great pride, that his calm, firm

gaze seemed to reflect thinking on an elevated plane, and that the

harmony of his facial expressions and bodily movements resulted in an

overall effect of unquestionable candor—according to the findings of

physiognomists, those analysts of facial character.

I felt “involuntarily reassured” in his presence, and this boded well

for our interview.

Whether this individual was thirty-five or fifty years of age, I could

not precisely state. He was tall, his forehead broad, his nose

straight, his mouth clearly etched, his teeth magnificent, his hands

refined, tapered, and to use a word from palmistry, highly “psychic,”

in other words, worthy of serving a lofty and passionate spirit. This

man was certainly the most wonderful physical specimen I had ever

encountered. One unusual detail: his eyes were spaced a little far

from each other and could instantly take in nearly a quarter of the

horizon. This ability—as I later verified—was strengthened by a range

of vision even greater than Ned Land’s. When this stranger focused his

gaze on an object, his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy

eyelids closed around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision,

and he looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking

into the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could

pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the

deepest seas . . . !

Wearing caps made of sea-otter fur, and shod in sealskin fishing

boots, these two strangers were dressed in clothing made from some

unique fabric that flattered the figure and allowed great freedom of

movement.

The taller of the two—apparently the leader on board—examined us with

the greatest care but without pronouncing a word. Then, turning to his

companion, he conversed with him in a language I didn’t recognize. It

was a sonorous, harmonious, flexible dialect whose vowels seemed to

undergo a highly varied accentuation.

The other replied with a shake of the head and added two or three

utterly incomprehensible words. Then he seemed to question me directly

with a long stare.

I replied in clear French that I wasn’t familiar with his language;

but he didn’t seem to understand me, and the situation grew rather

baffling.

“Still, master should tell our story,” Conseil said to me. “Perhaps

these gentlemen will grasp a few words of it!”

I tried again, telling the tale of our adventures, clearly

articulating my every syllable, and not leaving out a single detail. I

stated our names and titles; then, in order, I introduced Professor

Aronnax, his manservant Conseil, and Mr. Ned Land, harpooner.

The man with calm, gentle eyes listened to me serenely, even

courteously, and paid remarkable attention. But nothing in his facial

expression indicated that he understood my story. When I finished, he

didn’t pronounce a single word.

One resource still left was to speak English. Perhaps they would be

familiar with this nearly universal language. But I only knew it, as I

did the German language, well enough to read it fluently, not well

enough to speak it correctly. Here, however, our overriding need was

to make ourselves understood.

“Come on, it’s your turn,” I told the harpooner. “Over to you,

Mr. Land. Pull out of your bag of tricks the best English ever spoken

by an Anglo-Saxon, and try for a more favorable result than mine.”

Ned needed no persuading and started our story all over again, most of

which I could follow. Its content was the same, but the form

differed. Carried away by his volatile temperament, the Canadian put

great animation into it. He complained vehemently about being

imprisoned in defiance of his civil rights, asked by virtue of which

law he was hereby detained, invoked writs of habeas corpus, threatened

to press charges against anyone holding him in illegal custody,

ranted, gesticulated, shouted, and finally conveyed by an expressive

gesture that we were dying of hunger.

This was perfectly true, but we had nearly forgotten the fact.

Much to his amazement, the harpooner seemed no more intelligible than

I had been. Our visitors didn’t bat an eye. Apparently they were

engineers who understood the languages of neither the French physicist

Arago nor the English physicist Faraday.

Thoroughly baffled after vainly exhausting our philological resources,

I no longer knew what tactic to pursue, when Conseil told me:

“If master will authorize me, I’ll tell the whole business in German.”

“What! You know German?” I exclaimed.

“Like most Flemish people, with all due respect to master.”

“On the contrary, my respect is due you. Go to it, my boy.”

And Conseil, in his serene voice, described for the third time the

various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our narrator’s fine

accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German language met with no

success.

Finally, as a last resort, I hauled out everything I could remember

from my early schooldays, and I tried to narrate our adventures in

Latin. Cicero would have plugged his ears and sent me to the scullery,

but somehow I managed to pull through. With the same negative result.

This last attempt ultimately misfiring, the two strangers exchanged a

few words in their incomprehensible language and withdrew, not even

favoring us with one of those encouraging gestures that are used in

every country in the world. The door closed again.

“This is outrageous!” Ned Land shouted, exploding for the twentieth

time. “I ask you! We speak French, English, German, and Latin to these

rogues, and neither of them has the decency to even answer back!”

“Calm down, Ned,” I told the seething harpooner. “Anger won’t get us

anywhere.”

“But professor,” our irascible companion went on, “can’t you see that

we could die of hunger in this iron cage?”

“Bah!” Conseil put in philosophically. “We can hold out a good while

yet!”

“My friends,” I said, “we mustn’t despair. We’ve gotten out of tighter

spots. So please do me the favor of waiting a bit before you form your

views on the commander and crew of this boat.”

“My views are fully formed,” Ned Land shot back. “They’re rogues!”

“Oh good! And from what country?”

“Roguedom!”

“My gallant Ned, as yet that country isn’t clearly marked on maps of

the world, but I admit that the nationality of these two strangers is

hard to make out! Neither English, French, nor German, that’s all we

can say. But I’m tempted to think that the commander and his chief

officer were born in the low latitudes. There must be southern blood

in them. But as to whether they’re Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, or East

Indians, their physical characteristics don’t give me enough to go

on. And as for their speech, it’s utterly incomprehensible.”

“That’s the nuisance in not knowing every language,” Conseil replied,

“or the drawback in not having one universal language!”

“Which would all go out the window!” Ned Land replied. “Don’t you see,

these people have a language all to themselves, a language they’ve

invented just to cause despair in decent people who ask for a little

dinner! Why, in every country on earth, when you open your mouth, snap

your jaws, smack your lips and teeth, isn’t that the world’s most

understandable message? From Quebec to the Tuamotu Islands, from Paris

to the Antipodes, doesn’t it mean: I’m hungry, give me a bite to eat!”

“Oh,” Conseil put in, “there are some people so unintelligent by

nature . . .”

As he was saying these words, the door opened. A steward entered.* He

brought us some clothes, jackets and sailor’s pants, made out of a

fabric whose nature I didn’t recognize. I hurried to change into them,

and my companions followed suit.

*Author’s Note: A steward is a waiter on board a steamer.

Meanwhile our silent steward, perhaps a deaf-mute, set the table and

laid three place settings.

“There’s something serious afoot,” Conseil said, “and it bodes well.”

“Bah!” replied the rancorous harpooner. “What the devil do you suppose

they eat around here? Turtle livers, loin of shark, dogfish steaks?”

“We’ll soon find out!” Conseil said.

Overlaid with silver dish covers, various platters had been neatly

positioned on the table cloth, and we sat down to eat. Assuredly, we

were dealing with civilized people, and if it hadn’t been for this

electric light flooding over us, I would have thought we were in the

dining room of the Hotel Adelphi in Liverpool, or the Grand Hotel in

Paris. However, I feel compelled to mention that bread and wine were

totally absent. The water was fresh and clear, but it was still

water—which wasn’t what Ned Land had in mind. Among the foods we were

served, I was able to identify various daintily dressed fish; but I

couldn’t make up my mind about certain otherwise excellent dishes, and

I couldn’t even tell whether their contents belonged to the vegetable

or the animal kingdom. As for the tableware, it was elegant and in

perfect taste. Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, and plate, bore on

its reverse a letter encircled by a Latin motto, and here is its exact

duplicate:

MOBILIS IN MOBILI

N

Moving within the moving element! It was a highly appropriate motto

for this underwater machine, so long as the preposition in is

translated as within and not upon. The letter N was no doubt the

initial of the name of that mystifying individual in command beneath

the seas!

Ned and Conseil had no time for such musings. They were wolfing down

their food, and without further ado I did the same. By now I felt

reassured about our fate, and it seemed obvious that our hosts didn’t

intend to let us die of starvation.

But all earthly things come to an end, all things must pass, even the

hunger of people who haven’t eaten for fifteen hours. Our appetites

appeased, we felt an urgent need for sleep. A natural reaction after

that interminable night of fighting for our lives.

“Ye gods, I’ll sleep soundly,” Conseil said.

“Me, I’m out like a light!” Ned Land replied.

My two companions lay down on the cabin’s carpeting and were soon deep

in slumber.

As for me, I gave in less readily to this intense need for sleep. Too

many thoughts had piled up in my mind, too many insoluble questions

had arisen, too many images were keeping my eyelids open! Where were

we? What strange power was carrying us along? I felt—or at least I

thought I did—the submersible sinking toward the sea’s lower

strata. Intense nightmares besieged me. In these mysterious marine

sanctuaries, I envisioned hosts of unknown animals, and this

underwater boat seemed to be a blood relation of theirs: living,

breathing, just as fearsome . . . ! Then my mind grew calmer, my

imagination melted into hazy drowsiness, and I soon fell into an

uneasy slumber.