‘I have no other objection to make,’ I answered. ‘I will only ask you one thing, captain. How do you light your road at the bottom of the ocean?’
‘With the Ruhmkorff apparatus, M. Aronnax. It is composed of a Bunsen pile, which I work with sodium. A wire is introduced, which collects the electricity produced, and directs it towards a particularly-made lantern. In this lantern is a spiral glass which contains a small quantity of carbonic gas. When the apparatus is at work the gas becomes luminous, and gives out a white and continuous light. Thus provided, I breathe and see.’
‘But, Captain Nemo, what sort of a gun do you use?’
‘It is not a gun for powder, but an air-gun. How could I manufacture gunpowder on board without either saltpetre, sulphur, or charcoal?’
‘Besides,’ I added, ‘to fire under water in a medium 855 times denser than air, very considerable resistance would have to be conquered.’
‘That would be no difficulty. There exist certain Felton guns, furnished with a system of closing, which can be fired under these conditions. But, I repeat, having no powder, I use air under great pressure, which the pumps of the Nautilus furnish.’
‘But this air must be rapidly consumed.’
‘Well, have I not my Rouquayrol reservoir, which can furnish me with what I need? Besides, you will see for yourself, M. Aronnax, that during these submarine shooting excursions you do not use much air or bullets.’
‘But it seems to me that in the half-light, and amidst a liquid so much more dense than the atmosphere, bodies cannot be projected far, and are not easily mortal.’
‘Sir, with these guns every shot is mortal, and as soon as the animal is touched, however slightly, it falls.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they are not ordinary bullets. We use little glass percussion-caps, of which I have a considerable provision. These glass caps, covered with steel, and weighted with a leaden bottom, are little Leyden bottles, in which electricity is forced to a high tension. At the slightest shock they go off, and the animal, however powerful, falls dead. These caps are not larger than the No. 4, and the charge of an ordinary gun could contain ten.’
‘I will argue no longer,’ I replied, rising from the table. ‘The only thing left me is to take my gun. Where you go I will follow.’
Captain Nemo then led me aft of the Nautilus, and I called my two companions, who followed me immediately. Then we came to a kind of cell, situated near the engine-room, in which we put on our walking dress.
CHAPTER 16 At the Bottom of the Sea (#ulink_20017139-7b9b-5c8a-ab23-00f113920c83)
This cell was the arsenal and wardrobe of the Nautilus. A dozen diving apparatus, hung from the wall, awaited our use.
Ned Land, seeing them, manifested evident repugnance to put one on.
‘But, my worthy Ned,’ I said, ‘the forests of Crespo Island are only submarine forests!’
The disappointed harpooner saw his dreams of fresh meat fade away.
‘And you, M. Aronnax, are you going to put one on?’
‘I must, Master Ned.’
‘You can do as you please, sir,’ replied the harpooner, shrugging his shoulders, ‘but as for me, unless I am forced, I will never get into one.’
‘No one will force you,’ said Captain Nemo.
‘Does Conseil mean to risk it?’ said Ned.
‘I shall follow monsieur wherever he goes,’ answered Conseil.
Two of the ship’s crew came to help us on the call of the captain, and we donned the heavy and impervious clothes made of seamless india-rubber, and constructed expressly to resist considerable pressure. They looked like a suit of armour, both supple and resisting, and formed trousers and coat; the trousers were finished off with thick boots, furnished with heavy leaden soles. The texture of the coat was held together by bands of copper, which crossed the chest, protecting it from the pressure of the water, and leaving the lungs free to act; the sleeves ended in the form of supple gloves, which in no way restrained the movements of the hands.
Captain Nemo and one of his companions – a sort of Hercules, who must have been of prodigious strength – Conseil, and myself, were soon enveloped in these dresses. There was nothing left but to put our heads into the metallic globes. But before proceeding with this operation I asked the captain’s permission to examine the guns we were to take.
One of the crew gave me a simple gun, the butt end of which, made of steel and hollowed in the interior, was rather large; it served as a reservoir for compressed air, which a valve, worked by a spring, allowed to escape into a metal tube. A box of projectiles, fixed in a groove in the thickness of the butt end, contained about twenty electric bullets, which, by means of a spring, were forced into the barrel of the gun. As soon as one shot was fired another was ready.
‘Captain Nemo,’ said I, ‘this arm is perfect and easily managed; all I ask now is to try it. But how shall we gain the bottom of the sea?’
‘At this moment, professor, the Nautilus is stranded in five fathoms of water, and we have only to start.’
‘But how shall we get out?’
‘You will soon see.’
Captain Nemo put on his helmet. Conseil and I did the same, not without hearing an ironical ‘Good sport’ from the Canadian. The upper part of our coat was terminated by a copper collar, upon which the metal helmet was screwed. As soon as it was in position the apparatus on our backs began to act, and, for my part, I could breathe with ease.
I found when I was ready, lamp and all, that I could not move a step. But this was foreseen. I felt myself pushed along a little room contiguous to the wardrobe-room. My companions, tugged along in the same way, followed me. I heard a door, furnished with obturators, close behind us, and we were wrapped in profound darkness.
After some minutes I heard a loud whistling, and felt the cold mount from my feet to my chest. It was evident that they had filled the room in which we were with sea-water by means of a tap. A second door in the side of the Nautilus opened then. A faint light appeared. A moment after, our feet were treading the bottom of the sea.
And now, how could I retrace the impression made upon me by that walk under the sea? Words are powerless to describe such marvels. When the brush itself is powerless to depict the particular effects of the liquid element, how can the pen reproduce them?
Captain Nemo walked on in front, and his companion followed us some steps behind. Conseil and I remained near one another, as if any exchange of words had been possible through our metallic covering. I no longer felt the weight of my clothes, shoes, air-reservoir, nor of that thick globe in the midst of which my head shook like an almond in its shell.
The light which lighted up the ground at thirty feet below the surface of the ocean astonished me by its power. The solar rays easily pierced this watery mask and dissipated its colour. One easily distinguished objects 120 yards off. Beyond that the tints faded into fine gradations of ultra-marine, and became effaced in a vague obscurity. The water around me only appeared a sort of air, denser than the terrestrial atmosphere, but nearly as transparent. Above me I perceived the calm surface of the sea.
We were walking on fine even sand, not wrinkled, as it is on a flat shore which keeps the imprint of the billows. This dazzling carpet reflected the rays of the sun with surprising intensity. At that depth of thirty feet I saw as well as in open daylight!
For a quarter of an hour I trod on this shining sand, sown with the impalpable dust of tinted shells. The hull of the Nautilus, looking like a long rock, disappeared by degrees; but its lantern, when night came, would facilitate our return on board. I put back with my hands the liquid curtains which closed again behind me, and the print of my steps was soon effaced by the pressure of the water.
I soon came to some magnificent rocks, carpeted with splendid zoophytes, and I was at first struck by a special effect of this medium.
It was then 10 a.m. The rays of the sun struck the surface of the waves at an oblique angle, and at their contact with the light, composed by a refraction as through a prism, flowers, rocks, plants, and polypi were shaded at their edges by the seven solar colours; it was a grand feast for the eyes this complication of tints, a veritable kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue – in a word, all the palette of an enthusiastic colourist.
Before this splendid spectacle Conseil and I both stopped. Variegated isis, clusters of pure tuffed coral, prickly fungi and anemones adhering by their muscular disc, made perfect flower-beds, enamelled with porphitae, decked with their azure tentacles, sea-stars studding the sand, and warted asterophytons, like fine lace embroidered by the hands of Naüads, whose festoons waved in the gentle undulations caused by our walk. It was quite a grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant specimens of mulluscs which lay on the ground by thousands, the concentric combs, the hammerheads, the donaces, real bounding shells, the broques, the red helmets, the angel-winged strombes, the aphysies, and many other products of the inexhaustible ocean. But we were obliged to keep on walking, whilst above our heads shoals of physalia, letting their ultramarine tentacles float after them, medusae, with their rose-pink opaline parasols festooned with an azure border, sheltered us from the solar rays, and panophyrian pelegies, which, had it been dark, would have showered their phosphorescent gleams over our path.
All these wonders I saw in the space of a quarter of a mile. Soon the nature of the soil changed; to the sandy plains succeeded an extent, of slimy mud composed of equal parts of siliceous and calcareous shells. Then we travelled over meadows of seaweed so soft to the foot that they would rival the softest carpet made by man. And at the same time that verdure was spread under our feet, marine plants were growing on the surface of the ocean. I saw long ribbons of fucus floating, some globular and others tubulous; laurenciae and cladostephi, of most delicate foliage, and some rhodomeniae and palmatae resembling the fan of a cactus. I noticed that the green plants kept near the surface, whilst the red occupied a middle depth, leaving to the black or brown hydrophytes the care of forming gardens and flower-beds in the remote depths of the ocean. The family of seaweeds produces the largest and smallest vegetables of the globe.
We had left the Nautilus about an hour and a half. It was nearly twelve o’clock; I knew that by the perpendicularity of the sun’s rays, which were no longer refracted. The magical colours disappeared by degrees, and the emerald and sapphire tints died out. We marched along with a regular step which rang upon the ground with astonishing intensity; the slightest sound is transmitted with a speed to which the ear is not accustomed on the earth – in fact, water is a better conductor of sound than air in the ratio of four to one.
The ground gradually sloped downwards, and the light took a uniform tint. We are at a depth of more than a hundred yards, and bearing a pressure of ten atmospheres. But my diving apparatus was so small that I suffered nothing from this pressure. I merely felt a slight discomfort in my finger-joints, and even that soon disappeared. As to the fatigue that this walk in such unusual harness might be expected to produce, it was nothing. My movements, helped by the water, were made with surprising facility.
At this depth of three hundred feet I could still see the rays of the sun, but feebly. To their intense brilliancy had succeeded a reddish-twilight, middle term between day and night. Still we saw sufficiently to guide ourselves, and it was not yet necessary to light our lamps.
At that moment Captain Nemo stopped. He waited for me to come up to him, and with his finger pointed to some obscure masses which stood out of the shade at some little distance.
‘It is the forest of Crespo Island,’ I thought, and I was not mistaken.
CHAPTER 17 A Submarine Forest (#ulink_4760e65f-cd3f-5377-aea3-87c4c3b7d162)
