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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Chapter 24. THE INDIAN OCEAN
We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea.
The first part ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery, which left such a deep impression on my mind.
So Captain Nemo's life passed on this great sea, even to his grave, which he had prepared in one of its deepest places.
There, none of the ocean's monsters could trouble the last sleep of the Nautilus's crew, those friends joined in death as in life.
"Nor any man, either," the Captain had added.
Still the same fierce, unforgiving anger towards human society!
I could no longer be satisfied with the idea that satisfied Conseil.
That good fellow still saw in the Commander of the Nautilus one of those unknown scientists who return mankind's contempt with indifference.
He was a misunderstood genius who, tired of the world's deceptions, had taken refuge in this unreachable place to follow his instincts.
To my mind, this explains only one side of Captain Nemo's character.
The mystery of that last night troubled me.
We had been locked in prison, and I had fallen asleep.
The Captain carefully snatched the glass from my eyes as I looked at the horizon.
The man's deadly wound came from an unexplained shock of the Nautilus.
All of this put me on a new path.
No, Captain Nemo wasn't satisfied with avoiding people.
His powerful machine not only suited his need for freedom, but perhaps also the plan of some terrible revenge.
At this moment nothing is clear to me.
I catch only a little light in all the darkness, and I must limit myself to writing as events happen.
That day, the 24th of January, 1868, at noon, the second officer came to take the height of the sun.
I went up onto the platform, lit a cigar, and watched the operation.
It seemed to me that the man didn't understand French.
Several times I made remarks in a loud voice, which would have made him show some sign of attention if he had understood them.
But he stayed still and silent, paying no attention to my remarks.
The strong sailor from the Nautilus came to clean the lantern glasses.
He had been with us on our first underwater trip to the Island of Crespo.
I examined the parts of the machine, whose power was increased a hundred times by lenticular rings placed like those in a lighthouse.
These rings sent their light out in a flat line.
The electric lamp was made in such a way as to give its strongest light.
It was produced in a vacuum, which gave it both steadiness and strength.
This vacuum saved the graphite points between which the bright arc was made.
This was an important saving for Captain Nemo, who couldn't easily replace them.
Under these conditions, their waste was unnoticeable.
When the Nautilus was ready to continue its underwater journey, I went down to the saloon.
The panel was closed, and the course was set directly west.
We were moving through the waters of the Indian Ocean.
It was a huge flat area of water, with a surface of 1,200,000,000 acres.
The waters were so clear that anyone leaning over them would become dizzy.
The Nautilus usually floated between fifty and a hundred fathoms deep.
We went on like this for some days.
To anyone but me, who had a great love for the sea, the hours would have seemed long and boring.
The daily walks on the platform filled me with fresh ocean air.
I also enjoyed the sight of the rich waters through the saloon windows.
The books in the library and my note writing took up all my time.
I never felt a moment of boredom or tiredness.
For some days we saw a great number of water birds, sea-mews or gulls.
Some were cleverly killed and, prepared in a certain way, made very good water-game.
Among the large-winged birds, I saw some beautiful albatrosses.
They made ugly cries like the sound of a donkey.
I also saw birds from the family of the long-wings.
They were carried from all lands and rested on the waves from tiredness.
As for the fish, they always made us admire them when we saw the secrets of their underwater life through the open panels.
I saw many kinds that I had never had a chance to see before.
I'll mention mainly the ostracions that are special to the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and that part which washes the coast of tropical America.
These fish, like the tortoise, the armadillo, the sea-hedgehog, and the Crustacea, are protected by a shell that isn't chalky or stony, but real bone.
In some it takes the form of a solid triangle, in others of a solid square.
Among the triangular ones I saw some an inch and a half long, with good meat and a delicious taste.
They're brown at the tail and yellow at the fins.
And I recommend bringing them into fresh water, to which a certain number of sea-fish easily get used.
I'd also mention square ostracions, having on the back four large bumps.
Some are covered with white spots on the lower part of the body, and can be tamed like birds.
There are trigons with spikes formed by the lengthening of their bony shell, and which, from their strange grunts, are called "sea-pigs."
Also dromedaries with large humps in the shape of a cone, whose meat is very tough and leathery.
I now borrow from the daily notes of Master Conseil.
"Certain fish of the genus petrodon special to those seas, with red backs and white chests, which are known by three rows of long lines".
And some electrical fish, seven inches long, decorated in the brightest colours.
Then, as examples of other kinds, some ovoides, looking like an egg of a dark brown colour, marked with white bands, and without tails.
Diodons, real sea-porcupines, covered with spikes, and able to swell in such a way as to look like cushions full of darts.
Hippocampi, common to every ocean, were present in great numbers.
Pegasi with long snouts, whose chest fins are wing-shaped, allow them, if not to fly, at least to leap into the air.
Pigeon spatulae, with tails covered with many rings of shell.
Macrognathi with long jaws, an excellent fish, nine inches long, and bright with very pleasant colours, Pale-coloured calliomores, with rough heads.
And plenty of chaetodons, with long and tube-shaped mouths, which kill insects by shooting them, as from an air-gun, with a single drop of water.
These we may call the flycatchers of the seas.
Lacepede classified the eighty-ninth group of fish.
It belongs to the second lower class of bony fish.
This group has opercules and bronchial membranes.
I noticed the scorpaena, whose head is covered with spikes.
It has only one back fin, these creatures are covered, or not, with little shells, depending on the sub-class they belong to.
The second sub-class gives us examples of didactyles fourteen or fifteen inches long, with yellow rays, and heads of a most strange appearance.
The first sub-class gives several examples of a strange-looking fish.
It's rightly called a 'sea-frog.' This fish has a large head, sometimes pierced with holes or swollen with bumps.
It's covered with spikes and lumps, it has irregular and ugly horns.
Its body and tail are covered with hard skin, its sting makes a dangerous wound.
"It's both disgusting and horrible to look at."
From the 21st to the 23rd of January the Nautilus went at the rate of two hundred and fifty leagues in twenty-four hours.
This is five hundred and forty miles, or twenty-two miles an hour.
If we saw so many different kinds of fish, it was because, attracted by the electric light, they tried to follow us.
Most of them, however, were soon left behind by our speed, though some kept their place in the waters of the Nautilus for a time.
We saw Keeling Island on the morning of the 24th.
It was at 125' south latitude and 9433' longitude.
This coral formation was planted with beautiful cocos.
Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy had visited it.
The Nautilus went along the shores of this empty island for a short distance.
Its nets brought up many examples of polypi and curious shells of mollusca.
Some valuable delphinulae were added to Captain Nemo's treasures.
I added an astraea punctifera, a parasite polypus often found fixed to a shell.
Soon Keeling Island disappeared from the horizon, and our course was directed to the north-west towards the Indian Peninsula.
From Keeling Island our course was slower and more changeable, often taking us into great depths.
Several times they used the inclined planes, which certain inside levers placed at an angle to the waterline.
Thus we went about two miles, never reaching the Indian Sea's greatest depths, which soundings of seven thousand fathoms did not reach.
As for the temperature of the lower layers, the thermometer always showed 4 above zero.
I only noticed that in the upper areas the water was always colder at the high levels than at the surface of the sea.
On the 25th of January the ocean was completely empty.
The Nautilus spent the day on the surface, beating the waves with its powerful screw and making them rise to a great height.
Who under such circumstances wouldn't have taken it for a huge whale?
I spent three parts of this day on the platform.
I watched the sea, Nothing on the horizon, until about four o'clock a steamer running west on our opposite side.
Its masts were visible for a moment, but it couldn't see the Nautilus, because it was too low in the water.
I thought this steamboat belonged to the P.
O, Company, which runs from Ceylon to Sydney, stopping at King George's Point and Melbourne.
At five o'clock in the evening, before that short twilight which joins night to day in tropical zones, Conseil.
I were surprised by a strange sight.
It was a group of argonauts travelling along on the surface of the ocean.
We could count several hundreds, they belonged to the tubercle kind which are special to the Indian seas.
These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of their locomotive tube, through which they pushed the water they had already taken in.
Of their eight tentacles, six were long and floated on the water, while the other two, rolled flat, acted like a light sail.
I saw their spiral-shaped and grooved shells, which Cuvier rightly compares to an elegant small boat.
A boat indeed! It carries the creature which produces it without it sticking to it.
For nearly an hour the Nautilus floated in the middle of this group of molluscs.
Then I don't know what sudden fear they took.
As if at a signal, every sail folded, the arms were pulled in, and the bodies drawn in.
The shells turned over, changed their centre of gravity, and the whole group disappeared under the waves.
Never did the ships of a group move with more unity.
At that moment night fell suddenly, and the reeds, hardly moved by the wind, lay peacefully under the sides of the Nautilus.
The next day, 26th of January, we crossed the equator at the eighty-second meridian and entered the northern half of the world.
During the day a large group of sharks came with us, terrible creatures, which increase in these seas and make them very dangerous.
They were "cestracio philippi" sharks, with brown backs and whitish bellies, armed with eleven rows of teeth.
They were eyed sharks, their throat being marked with a large black spot surrounded with white like an eye.
There were also some Isabella sharks, with round snouts marked with dark spots.
These powerful creatures often threw themselves at the windows of the saloon with such force that they made us feel very unsafe.
At such times Ned Land could no longer control himself.
Ned Land wanted to go to the surface and harpoon the monsters, especially certain smooth-hound sharks with mouths patterned with teeth.
He also wanted to attack large tiger-sharks nearly six yards long.
The last named seemed to excite him more than the others.
But the Nautilus, increasing its speed, easily left the fastest of them behind.
On 27th January, at the entrance of the Bay of Bengal, we repeatedly saw a terrible sight, dead bodies floating on the water.
They were the dead of the Indian villages, carried by the Ganges to the level of the sea.
The vultures, the only undertakers of the country, had not been able to eat them.
But the sharks didn't fail to help them at their funeral work.
About seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus, half in the water, was sailing in a sea of milk.
At first sight the ocean seemed turned to milk.
Was it the effect of the moon's rays?
No, the moon, hardly two days old, was still hidden under the horizon in the rays of the sun.
The whole sky, though lit by the starry rays, seemed black compared to the whiteness of the waters.
Conseil couldn't believe his eyes, and asked me about the cause of this strange event.
Luckily I was able to answer him.
"It's called a milk sea," I explained.
"A large area of white waves often seen on the coasts of Amboyna, and in these parts of the sea."
"But, sir," said Conseil, "can you tell me what causes such an effect? I suppose the water isn't really turned into milk."
"No, my boy."
"The whiteness that surprises you is caused by millions of infusoria."
"These are bright little worms, jelly-like and without colour."
"They're as thick as a hair and no longer than seven-thousandths of an inch."
"These insects stick to each other sometimes for several leagues."
"Several leagues!" exclaimed Conseil.
"Yes, my boy."
"And you don't need to try to count the number of these infusoria."
"You won't be able to, because, if I'm not mistaken, ships have floated on these milk seas for more than forty miles."
Towards midnight the sea suddenly returned to its usual colour.
But behind us, even to the edges of the horizon, the sky reflected the whitened waves.
For a long time it seemed filled with the weak glimmers of an aurora borealis.