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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Chapter 32. A VANISHED CONTINENT
The next morning, the 19th of February, I saw the Canadian enter my room.
I expected this visit, he looked very disappointed.
"Well, sir?" he said.
"Well, Ned, fortune was against us yesterday."
"Yes, that Captain had to stop exactly at the hour we planned to leave his ship."
"Yes, Ned, he had business at his bankers."
"His bankers!"
"Or rather his banking-house. By that I mean the ocean, where his riches are safer than in the chests of the State."
I then told the Canadian about the events of the night before.
I hoped to bring him back to the idea of not leaving the Captain.
But my story only made Ned express strongly his regret that he hadn't been able to walk the battlefield of Vigo alone.
"However," he said, "all isn't over. It's just a lost chance. Another time we must succeed. And tonight, if necessary."
"In what direction is the Nautilus going?" I asked.
"I don't know," Ned replied.
"Well, at noon we'll see the point."
The Canadian went back to Conseil, As soon as I was dressed, I went into the saloon.
The compass wasn't reassuring, the Nautilus's course was south-southwest.
We were turning our backs on Europe.
I waited with some impatience until the ship's position was marked on the chart.
At about half past eleven, the reservoirs were emptied, and our vessel rose to the surface of the ocean.
I rushed towards the platform, Ned Land had gotten there before me.
No more land in sight, Nothing but an immense sea.
Some sails on the horizon, probably those going to San Roque to find favourable winds for going around the Cape of Good Hope.
The weather was cloudy, a gale was getting ready.
Ned raved and tried to see through the cloudy horizon.
He still hoped that behind all that fog lay the land he wanted so badly.
At noon, the sun showed itself for a moment.
The second officer used this brightness to take its height.
Then, the sea became rougher, we went down, and the panel closed.
An hour later, I looked at the chart and saw the Nautilus's position marked at 1617' longitude and 3322' latitude.
It was 150 leagues from the nearest coast.
There was no way to escape, I'll leave you to imagine the Canadian's anger when I told him about our situation.
For myself, I wasn't particularly sorry, I felt lighter, as if a weight had been lifted from me.
I was able to return, with some calmness, to my usual work.
That night, around eleven o'clock, I received a very unexpected visit from Captain Nemo.
He asked me very kindly if I felt tired from my watch the night before, I said no.
"Then, M. Aronnax, I propose a curious trip."
"You propose, Captain?"
"You've only visited the underwater depths by daylight, under the brightness of the sun. Would you like to see them in the darkness of the night?"
"Very willingly."
"I warn you, the way will be tiring. We'll have far to walk, and we must climb a mountain. The roads aren't well kept."
"What you say, Captain, only makes me more curious. I'm ready to follow you."
"Come then, sir. We'll put on our diving suits."
When we arrived at the dressing room, I saw that neither my companions nor any of the crew would follow us on this trip.
Captain Nemo hadn't even suggested that I bring Ned or Conseil.
In a few moments, we had put on our diving suits.
They placed on our backs the reservoirs, filled with air.
But no electric lamps were prepared, I pointed this out to the Captain.
"They'll be useless," he replied.
I thought I hadn't heard correctly, but I couldn't repeat my question.
The Captain's head had already disappeared into its metal case.
I finished getting dressed, I felt them put an iron-tipped stick into my hand.
A few minutes later, after going through the usual process, we set foot on the bottom of the Atlantic at a depth of 150 fathoms.
It was nearly midnight, the waters were deeply dark.
But Captain Nemo pointed out in the distance a reddish spot, a sort of large light shining brightly about two miles from the Nautilus.
What this fire was, what fed it, why and how it lit up the liquid mass, I couldn't say.
In any case, it did light our way, vaguely, it's true.
But I soon got used to the strange darkness.
And I understood, under these conditions, the uselessness of the Ruhmkorff device.
As we walked, I heard a kind of pattering above my head.
The noise grew stronger, sometimes becoming a steady shower.
I soon understood the cause, it was rain falling hard and hitting the surface of the waves.
Instinctively, the thought flashed through my mind that I'd get wet!
By the water! In the middle of the water!
I couldn't help laughing at the strange idea.
But in the thick diving suit, you no longer feel the water.
You only seem to be in an atmosphere a bit denser than the air on land, Nothing more.
After half an hour's walk, the ground became stony.
Jellyfish, tiny crustaceans, and sea pens lit it slightly with their glowing light.
I caught a glimpse of pieces of stone covered with millions of tiny animals and masses of seaweed.
My feet often slipped on this sticky carpet of seaweed.
Without my iron-tipped stick, I'd have fallen more than once.
When I turned around, I could still see the whitish lantern of the Nautilus starting to fade in the distance.
But the rosy light that guided us grew stronger and lit up the horizon.
The presence of this fire underwater puzzled me greatly.
Was I going towards a natural phenomenon still unknown to the scientists on land?
Or even, for this thought crossed my mind, did the hand of man have something to do with this fire?
Had he himself made this strange flame that shone beneath the sea?
Was I going to meet, in these depths, companions and friends of Captain Nemo, whom he was going to visit?
People who, like him, lived this strange life?
Would I find down there a whole colony of exiles who, tired of the miseries of this earth, had found independence in the deep ocean?
All these foolish and unreasonable ideas followed me.
My mind was overexcited by the constant wonders before my eyes.
I wouldn't have been surprised to meet an underwater town at the bottom of the sea, Captain Nemo dreamed of such towns.
Our path grew lighter and lighter, the white glow came in rays from the top of a mountain about 800 feet high.
But what I saw was simply a reflection, made brighter by the clearness of the water.
The source of this unexplainable light was a fire on the other side of the mountain.
In the middle of this stony maze that cut across the bottom of the Atlantic, Captain Nemo walked without hesitation.
He knew this dark road, he had probably travelled it many times and couldn't get lost.
I followed him with steady confidence, he seemed to me like a spirit of the sea.
And as he walked before me, I couldn't help admiring his height, which was outlined in black against the bright horizon.
It was one in the morning when we arrived at the first slopes of the mountain.
But to reach them, we had to go through the difficult paths of a huge forest.
Yes, a forest of dead trees, without leaves, without sap.
Trees turned to stone by the action of the water.
Here and there, giant pine trees rose above them.
It was like a coal mine still standing, held by roots to the broken ground.
Its branches, like fine black paper cutouts, showed clearly against the watery ceiling.
Imagine a forest in the Hartz mountains hanging on the sides of a mountain, but a forest that had been swallowed up.
The paths were covered with seaweed and algae.
Between them crawled a whole world of crustaceans.
I walked, climbing over rocks, stepping over fallen trunks, breaking the sea vines that hung from one tree to another.
I frightened the fish, which flew from branch to branch.
Pushing forward, I felt no tiredness, I followed my guide, who never got tired.
What a sight! How can I express it?
How can I describe the look of those woods and rocks in this medium?
Their lower parts were dark and wild.
The upper parts were coloured with red tints by that light, which the reflecting power of the water doubled.
We climbed rocks that fell away behind us with giant leaps and the low roar of an avalanche.
To the right and left ran long, dark galleries where sight was lost.
Here, wide clearings opened up, as if the hand of man had made them.
And I sometimes asked myself if some inhabitant of these underwater regions wouldn't suddenly appear before me.
But Captain Nemo kept climbing, I couldn't stay behind.
I followed bravely, My stick helped me a lot.
A wrong step would have been dangerous on the narrow paths that sloped down to the sides of the gorges.
But I walked with a steady step, without feeling dizzy.
Now I jumped over a crack, whose depth would have made me hesitate if it had been among the glaciers on land.
Now I stepped onto the unsteady trunk of a tree thrown across from one hole to another.
I didn't look under my feet, I only had eyes to admire the wild sights of this region.
There, huge rocks, leaning on their regularly cut bases, seemed to defy all laws of balance.
From between their stony knees, trees sprang up, like a jet under heavy pressure.
They held up others, which held them up.
Natural towers, large cliffs cut straight down like a curtain, leaned at an angle that the laws of gravity would never have allowed on land.
Two hours after leaving the Nautilus, we had crossed the line of trees.
A hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain.
It cast a shadow on the bright light of the opposite slope.
Some petrified bushes ran fantastically here and there.
Fish got up under our feet like birds in long grass.
The huge rocks were split with deep cracks, deep caves, and bottomless holes.
At the bottom of these holes, I could hear large creatures moving.
My blood ran cold when I saw enormous antennae blocking my path, or some frightening claw closing with a noise in the shadow of a cave.
Millions of bright spots shone in the middle of the darkness.
They were the eyes of giant crustaceans hiding in their holes.
Giant lobsters stood up like soldiers with spears, moving their claws with the clicking sound of pincers.
Titanic crabs, pointed like a gun on its carriage.
And frightening-looking octopuses, weaving their tentacles together like a living nest of snakes.
We had now arrived on the first platform, where other surprises waited for me.
Before us lay some beautiful ruins, they showed the hand of man, not the hand of the Creator.
There were huge piles of stone, Among them, I could see the vague and shadowy forms of castles and temples.
They were covered with a world of blooming tiny animals.
Instead of ivy, seaweed and algae threw a thick plant blanket over them.
But what part of the world was this, which had been swallowed by disasters?
Who had placed those rocks and stones like the ancient stone circles of prehistoric times?
Where was I? Where had Captain Nemo's fancy taken me?
I wanted to ask him, but I couldn't.
I stopped him, I grabbed his arm.
But he shook his head, he pointed to the highest point of the mountain, he seemed to say,
"Come, come along. Come higher!"
I followed, In a few minutes, I had climbed to the top.
From there, for a circle of ten yards, I could see the whole mass of rock.
I looked down the side we had just climbed.
The mountain didn't rise more than seven or eight hundred feet above the level of the plain.
But on the opposite side, it rose twice that height above the depths of this part of the Atlantic.
My eyes looked far over a large space lit by a violent light.
In fact, the mountain was a volcano.
Fifty feet above the peak, in the middle of a rain of stones and ash, a large crater was throwing out rivers of lava.
They fell in a waterfall of fire into the middle of the liquid mass.
From this position, the volcano lit the lower plain like an enormous torch, even to the far limits of the horizon.
I said that the underwater crater threw up lava, but no flames.
Flames need the oxygen of the air to burn.
They can't develop underwater, but streams of lava, which have the power of heat within themselves, can reach a white heat.
They fight strongly against the water and turn it to steam when they touch it.
Fast currents carrying all these gases and rivers of lava slid to the bottom of the mountain.
It was like an eruption of Vesuvius on another Terra del Greco.
There, under my eyes, ruined and destroyed, lay a town.
Its roofs were open to the sky.
Its temples had fallen, its arches were broken.
Its columns lay on the ground, From them, you could still see the heavy style of Tuscan architecture.
Further on, some remains of a giant aqueduct.
Here, the high base of an Acropolis, with the floating outline of a Parthenon.
There, traces of a dock, as if an ancient port had touched the ocean's edge and vanished with its merchant and war galleys
Further on again, long lines of sunken walls and wide, empty streets.
A perfect Pompeii, escaped under the waters.
That was the sight that Captain Nemo brought before my eyes!
Where was I? Where was I? I had to know, no matter the cost.
I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me with a gesture.
He picked up a piece of chalk.
He walked to a rock of black basalt, and he wrote one word,
ATLANTIS, the buried continent, its ruins glowing under the lava's light.
What a flash of light went through my mind!
Atlantis! The Atlantis of Plato, that continent denied by Origen and Humboldt, who placed its disappearance among the legendary tales.
I had it there now before my eyes.
It carried on it the clear proof of its disaster.
The region that had been swallowed was beyond Europe, Asia, and Libya.
Beyond the pillars of Hercules, there, those powerful people, the Atlantides, had lived.
The first wars of the ancient Greeks were fought against them.
So, led by the strangest destiny, I was walking on the mountains of this continent.
I was touching with my hand those ruins a thousand generations old, from the same time as the geological ages.
I was walking on the very spot where the first people had walked.
While I tried to fix every detail of this great scene in my mind, Captain Nemo stayed still.
He was like stone, in silent wonder, leaning on a mossy rock.
Was he dreaming of those generations long gone?
Was he asking them the secret of human destiny?
Was it here that this strange man came to lose himself in historical memories and live again this ancient life?
He who wanted no modern life? What wouldn't I have given to know his thoughts, to share them, to understand them!
We stayed for an hour at this place.
We looked at the wide plains under the brightness of the lava, which was sometimes wonderfully strong.
Fast tremors ran along the mountain, caused by bubbles inside.
Deep noises, clearly carried through the liquid medium, echoed with great power.
At this moment, the moon appeared through the mass of waters and threw its pale rays on the buried continent.
It was only a gleam, but what an indescribable effect!
The Captain rose, he cast one last look on the immense plain.
Then he told me to follow him.
We went down the mountain quickly, the lava's glow guiding our hurried, careful descent.
Once we had passed the mineral forest, I saw the lantern of the Nautilus shining like a star.
The Captain walked straight to it, we got on board as the first rays of light whitened the surface of the ocean.