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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Chapter 30. THE MEDITERRANEAN IN FORTY-EIGHT HOURS
The Mediterranean, the blue sea above all others, "the great sea"
Of the Hebrews, "the sea" of the Greeks, the "mare nostrum" of the Romans, bordered by orange trees, aloes, cacti, and sea pines.
It's filled with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rough mountains, and full of pure, clear air.
But it's constantly worked by fires under the ground.
It's a perfect battlefield where Neptune and Pluto still fight for control of the world!
It's on these shores and on these waters, says Michelet, that man is renewed in one of the most powerful climates on the globe.
But as beautiful as it was, I could only take a quick look at this sea, whose surface area is two million square yards.
Even Captain Nemo's knowledge was lost to me, because this puzzling man didn't appear once during our passage at full speed.
I estimated that the Nautilus traveled about six hundred leagues under the waves of the sea, and it did this in forty-eight hours.
Starting on the morning of February 16th from the shores of Greece, we crossed the Straits of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.
It was clear to me that this Mediterranean, enclosed in the middle of those countries which he wanted to avoid, was unpleasant for Captain Nemo.
Those waves and those winds brought back too many memories, if not too many regrets.
Here he no longer had that independence and that freedom of movement which he had in the open seas.
His Nautilus felt trapped between the close shores of Africa and Europe.
Our speed was now twenty-five miles an hour.
It's easy to understand that Ned Land, to his great disgust, had to give up his planned escape.
He couldn't launch the small boat while we were moving at twelve or thirteen yards every second.
To leave the Nautilus under such conditions would be as bad as jumping from a train going at full speed.
It was an unwise thing to do, to say the least.
Besides, our ship only came to the surface of the waves at night to renew its air supply.
It was steered entirely by the compass and the log.
I saw no more of the inside of this Mediterranean than a traveler on an express train sees of the landscape which flies before his eyes.
That's to say, I saw the distant horizon, but not the nearer objects which pass like a flash of lightning.
We were then passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunis.
In the narrow space between Cape Bon and the Straits of Messina, the bottom of the sea rose almost suddenly.
There was a perfect bank, on which there wasn't more than nine fathoms of water, while on either side the depth was ninety fathoms.
The Nautilus had to move very carefully so as not to hit this underwater barrier.
I showed Conseil, on the map of the Mediterranean, the spot where this reef was.
"But if you please, sir," said Conseil, "it's like a real isthmus joining Europe to Africa."
"Yes, my boy, it forms a perfect bar to the Straits of Lybia."
"And Smith's soundings have proved that in former times the continents between Cape Boco and Cape Furina were joined."
"I can well believe it," said Conseil.
"I'll add," I continued, "that a similar barrier exists between Gibraltar and Ceuta. In geological times, it formed the entire Mediterranean."
"What if some volcanic burst one day raises these two barriers above the waves?"
"It isn't likely, Conseil."
"Well, but allow me to finish, please, sir."
"If this phenomenon does happen, it'll be troublesome for M."
"Lesseps, who has taken so much trouble to cut through the isthmus."
"I agree with you."
"But I repeat, Conseil, this phenomenon will never happen."
"The violence of underground force is always getting weaker."
"Volcanoes, so plentiful in the first days of the world, are slowly going out."
"The internal heat is weakening."
"The temperature of the lower layers of the globe is lowered by a noticeable amount every century."
"This is bad for our globe, because its heat is its life."
"But the sun?"
"The sun isn't enough, Conseil. Can it give heat to a dead body?"
"Not that I know of."
"Well, my friend, this earth will one day be that cold corpse."
"It'll become uninhabitable and uninhabited like the moon, which has long since lost all its vital heat."
"In how many centuries?"
"In some hundreds of thousands of years, my boy."
"Then," said Conseil, "we'll have time to finish our journey. That's, if Ned Land doesn't interfere with it."
And Conseil, reassured, returned to studying the bank, which the Nautilus was passing at a moderate speed.
During the night of February 16th and 17th, we entered the second Mediterranean basin, its greatest depth was 1,450 fathoms.
The Nautilus, by the action of its screw, slid down the sloping surfaces and buried itself in the lowest depths of the sea.
On February 18th, about three o'clock in the morning, we were at the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar.
In that strait, there once existed two opposing currents, one above and one below.
There was an upper one, long since recognized, which carries the waters of the ocean into the basin of the Mediterranean.
And there was a lower counter-current, which reasoning has now shown to exist.
Indeed, the volume of water in the Mediterranean is constantly added to by the waves of the Atlantic and by rivers flowing into it.
This would raise the level of this sea every year, because its evaporation isn't enough to restore the balance.
Since this doesn't happen, we must accept the existence of an under-current.
This under-current empties the extra waters of the Mediterranean into the basin of the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar.
This is a fact, and it was this counter-current which the Nautilus used.
It moved quickly through the narrow pass.
For one moment I caught a glimpse of the beautiful ruins of the temple of Hercules.
They were buried in the ground, according to Pliny, along with the low island which supports it.
And a few minutes later, we were floating on the Atlantic.