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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Chapter 40. FROM CAPE HORN TO THE AMAZON
How I got onto the platform, I have no idea.
Maybe the Canadian had carried me there.
But I breathed, I breathed in the life-giving sea air.
My two companions were getting drunk with the fresh air.
The other unhappy men had been so long without food that they couldn't safely eat even the simplest food given to them.
We, on the other hand, had no reason to hold back.
We could draw this air freely into our lungs.
And it was the breeze, the breeze alone, that filled us with this deep pleasure.
"Ah!" said Conseil.
"How delightful this oxygen is! Master needn't fear to breathe it. There's enough for everybody."
Ned Land didn't speak, but he opened his jaws wide enough to frighten a shark.
Our strength soon returned, When I looked around me, I saw we were alone on the platform.
The foreign seamen in the Nautilus were content with the air that circulated inside.
None of them had come to drink in the open air.
The first words I spoke were words of thanks and gratitude to my two companions.
Ned and Conseil had kept me alive during the last hours of this long suffering.
All my gratitude couldn't repay such devotion.
"My friends," I said, "we're bound to each other forever, and I owe you an endless debt."
"Which I'll take advantage of," said the Canadian.
"What do you mean?" said Conseil.
"I mean that I'll take you with me when I leave this terrible Nautilus."
"Well," said Conseil, "after all this, are we going the right way?"
"Yes," I replied, "because we're going the way of the sun, and here the sun is in the north."
"No doubt," said Ned Land.
"But it remains to be seen whether he'll bring the ship into the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean, that's, into busy or empty seas."
I couldn't answer that question, staring at the sea and map in silence.
I feared that Captain Nemo would rather take us to the vast ocean that touches the coasts of Asia and America at the same time.
He'd thus complete the tour around the underwater world and return to those waters where the Nautilus could sail freely.
We should, before long, settle this important point.
The Nautilus went at a rapid pace.
The polar circle was soon passed, and the course was set for Cape Horn.
We were off the American point on March 31st at seven o'clock in the evening.
Then all our past suffering was forgotten.
The memory of that imprisonment in the ice was erased from our minds.
We only thought of the future, Captain Nemo didn't appear again either in the drawing-room or on the platform.
The point shown each day on the map, marked by the lieutenant, showed me the exact direction of the Nautilus.
Now, on that evening, it was clear, to my great satisfaction, that we were going back to the North by the Atlantic.
The next day, April 1st, when the Nautilus rose to the surface some minutes before noon, we sighted land to the west.
It was Tierra del Fuego, which the first explorers named that way because they saw so much smoke rising from the natives' huts.
The coast seemed low to me, but in the distance rose high mountains.
I even thought I saw Mount Sarmiento, which rises 2,070 yards above the level of the sea, with a very pointed top.
According to whether it's misty or clear, it's a sign of fine or wet weather.
At this moment the peak was clearly defined against the sky.
The Nautilus, diving again under the water, approached the coast, which was only a few miles away.
From the glass windows in the drawing-room, I saw long seaweeds and giant fuci and varech.
The open polar sea has many such examples, with their sharp polished threads.
They measured about 300 yards in length, real cables, thicker than one's thumb.
Having great strength, they're often used as ropes for ships.
Another weed known as kelp, with leaves four feet long, buried in the coral concretions, hung at the bottom.
It served as nest and food for thousands of crustaceans and molluscs, crabs, and cuttlefish.
There seals and otters had wonderful meals, eating the flesh of fish with sea vegetables, according to the English fashion.
Over this rich and fertile ground the Nautilus passed with great speed.
Towards evening it approached the Falkland group, whose rough tops I recognized the following day.
The depth of the sea was moderate.
On the shores our nets brought in seaweed, especially a fucus whose roots held excellent mussels.
Geese and ducks fell by dozens on the platform and soon took their places in the pantry on board.
When the last heights of the Falklands had disappeared from the horizon, the Nautilus sank to between twenty and twenty-five yards and followed the American coast.
Captain Nemo didn't show himself, Until April 3rd we didn't leave the shores of Patagonia, sometimes under the ocean, sometimes at the surface.
The Nautilus passed beyond the large estuary formed by the Plata and was, on April 4th, fifty-six miles off Uruguay.
Its direction was northwards, and it followed the long curves of the coast of South America.
We had then made 1,600 miles since our departure in the seas of Japan.
About eleven o'clock in the morning the Tropic of Capricorn was crossed on the thirty-seventh meridian.
And we passed Cape Frio standing out to sea.
Captain Nemo, to Ned Land's great displeasure, didn't like the neighborhood of the inhabited coasts of Brazil.
So we went at a dizzying speed.
Not a fish, not a bird of the fastest kind could follow us, and the natural wonders of these seas escaped all observation.
This speed was kept up for several days.
On the evening of April 9th we sighted the most easterly point of South America that forms Cape San Roque.
But the Nautilus turned and sought the lowest depth of a submarine valley between this Cape and Sierra Leone on the African coast.
This valley splits at the parallel of the Antilles and ends at the north by the enormous depression of 9,000 yards.
There the ocean basin forms, as far as the Lesser Antilles, a cliff three and a half miles high.
And at the parallel of the Cape Verde Islands, another wall not less considerable encloses all the sunken continent of the Atlantic.
The bottom of this huge valley is dotted with some mountains that give these submarine places a beautiful look.
I speak, moreover, from the handwritten charts in the Nautilus library, clearly made by Captain Nemo after his personal observations.
For two days the empty and deep waters were visited by means of the sloping planes.
The Nautilus was equipped with long diagonal sides that carried it to all heights.
On April 11th it rose suddenly, Land appeared at the mouth of the Amazon River.
This huge estuary has an opening so large that it freshens the sea water for several leagues.
The equator was crossed, Twenty miles to the west were the Guianas, a French territory, where we could have found an easy refuge.
But a strong wind was blowing, and the furious waves wouldn't have allowed a single boat to face them.
Ned Land understood that, no doubt, because he didn't say a word about it.
For my part, I made no mention of his plans to escape, because I wouldn't urge him to make an attempt that must surely fail.
I made the time pass pleasantly with interesting studies.
On April 11 and 12 the Nautilus stayed on the surface, and nets brought in a rich catch of zoophytes, fish, and reptiles.
Some zoophytes had been fished up by the chain of the nets.
They were for the most part beautiful phyctallines, belonging to the actinidian family.
Among other species was the phyctalis protexta, unique to that part of the ocean, with a little cylindrical trunk.
It was decorated with vertical lines, speckled with red dots, and crowned by a wonderful blossoming of tentacles.
The molluscs included some I had already seen.
There were turritellas and olive porphyras with regular crossing lines.
Red spots stood out clearly against the flesh.
Odd pteroceras looked like petrified scorpions, there were also transparent hyaleas, argonauts, and cuttlefish.
These were excellent eating, Certain squid species had been classed among flying fish by ancient naturalists.
They serve mainly as bait for cod fishing.
I now had an opportunity to study several species of fish on these shores.
Among the cartilaginous ones, there were petromyzons-pricka.
These were a sort of eel, fifteen inches long.
They had a greenish head and violet fins.
Their back was grey-blue, and their belly was brown.
The belly was silvered and sown with bright spots.
The pupil of the eye was circled with gold.
This curious animal had been drawn to the sea by the current of the Amazon, because they live in fresh water.
There were also tuberculated streaks with pointed snouts and a long loose tail.
They were armed with a long jagged sting.
Little sharks, a yard long, had grey and whitish skin.
They had several rows of teeth bent back, these are generally known as pantouffles.
Vespertilios are a kind of red isosceles triangle, half a yard long.
Pectorals are attached by fleshy extensions that make them look like bats.
Their horny appendage near the nostrils has given them the name of sea-unicorns.
Lastly, there were balistae, the curassavian with brilliant gold spots and the capriscus of clear violet with shifting pigeon's-throat shades.
I end this list, which is somewhat dry perhaps, but very exact, with a series of bony fish that I saw in passing.
They belonged to the apteronotes, Their snout is white as snow, and the body a beautiful black.
It's marked with a very long loose fleshy strip.
Odontognathes are armed with spikes.
Sardines nine inches long shine with a bright silver light.
There's a species of mackerel with two anal fins.
Centronotes of a blackish tint are fished for with torches.
Long fish, two yards in length, have fat flesh, white and firm.
When fresh they taste like eel, when dry, like smoked salmon, and golden-tailed spares have extremely delicate flesh.
Labres are half red, scaled only at the dorsal and anal bases. Chrysoptera mix gold and silver like ruby and topaz.
Their phosphorescence shows them in the water. Orange spares with long tongues, maigres with gold tails, dark thorn-tails, and Surinam anableps.
Despite this "et cetera," I mustn't forget to mention fish that Conseil will long remember, and for good reason.
One net pulled up a flat ray which, with its tail cut off, formed a perfect disc weighing twenty ounces.
It was white underneath, red above, with large round spots of dark blue circled with black, very shiny skin, ending in a two-lobed fin.
Laid on the platform, it struggled, shook to turn itself, and one last effort nearly sent it into the sea.
But Conseil, not wanting to let the fish go, rushed to it, and before I could stop him, had grabbed it with both hands.
In a moment he was knocked over, his legs in the air, and half his body paralyzed, crying,
"Oh! Master, master! Help me!"
It was the first time the poor boy had spoken to me so familiarly.
The Canadian and I picked him up and rubbed his tight arms until he became conscious.
The unfortunate Conseil had attacked a cramp-fish of the most dangerous kind, the cumana.
This odd animal strikes fish at several yards' distance in a medium conductor like water.
Its electric organ is very powerful, and its two main surfaces measure no less than twenty-seven square feet.
The next day, April 12th, the Nautilus approached the Dutch coast, near the mouth of the Maroni.
There several groups of sea-cows gathered together.
They were manatees, which, like the dugong and the stellera, belong to the sirenian order.
These beautiful animals, peaceful and harmless, from eighteen to twenty-one feet in length, weigh at least sixteen hundredweight.
I told Ned Land and Conseil that provident nature had given an important role to these mammals.
Indeed, they, like the seals, are designed to graze on the underwater meadows and thus destroy the buildup of weed that blocks the tropical rivers.
"And do you know,"
I added, "what has been the result since men have almost completely destroyed this useful race?"
"That the rotten weeds have poisoned the air, and the poisoned air causes the yellow fever that destroys these beautiful countries."
"Huge plants multiply under the hot seas, and the evil spreads from the Rio de la Plata to Florida."
"If we're to believe Toussenel, this plague is nothing compared to seas cleaned of whales and seals."
"Then, infested with octopuses, jellyfish, and cuttlefish, they'd become huge centers of infection."
"Their waves wouldn't have 'these vast stomachs that God had charged to clean the surface of the seas."