four beams of light, as bright and dazzling as that of the sun, sprang from the four corners of the room. Marcel and his uncle, inundated by the glare, stepped back to the doorway, and uttered a double exclamation of surprise and admiration.
An enormous machine in shiny copper, as voluminous as a railway carriage, occupied the center of the room, which it partly filled. It was shaped like an immense egg, slightly flattened underneath and at the sides. Four large portholes made of extremely thick sheets of glass were integrated into its walls. As many large pallets, similar to fins, emerged from its flanks, and beneath the rudder set at the rear, the unparalleled boat was fitted with a helical propeller.
Marcel and Nicaise, their hands pressed together and their mouths open, gazed at the monstrosity.
Trinitus, proud of the astonishment into which they had been plunged, opened one of the portholes and climbed up on the footplate that had just been lowered therefrom.
“This is our carriage,” he said. “Come and look inside.”
The three men went into the machine and descended on to a horizontal floor set about forty centimeters below the widest diameter.
The interior side-walls, made of sheet metal coated with gutta-percha, extended like a dome overhead. A multitude of rings, buttons, knobs, each connected to some ingenious mechanism, protruded at various heights. Trinitus pointed them out to the two visitors.
“The whole secret of its control is there,” he told them. Then, indicating the floor, he added: “The engine producing the motive force of the boat is beneath our feet. It consists of enormous electric piles, furnishing a considerable quantity of electricity: large coils, a hundred times more powerful than Ruhmkorff’s. With the aid of the handle you can see over there, we can control them at our ease. By pressing the button alongside, we can light the electric lamp suspended overhead. By lifting up the trap-door that opens in the middle of the floor we can descend into the sea as easily as by means of a diving-bell, without a single drop of water getting into the ship. You’ll see that later.
“At present, take note of that iron rod protruding from the interior extremity of the vessel. It goes through the wall and projects a spike about three meters long outside. It’s an intelligent prow. When it strikes an obstacle, it recoils slightly, presses on a small spring, and the electricity immediately acts in a contrary direction; the ship retreats abruptly, in order to escape the danger. There’s no possibility of an accident. The windows, as you can see, are arranged in such a fashion that one can see what’s happening on all sides, and even above the boat.
“The hull, which is extremely solid, caused me a great deal of difficulty. It’s more than twenty meters thick, and yet it’s very light. Lined with copper externally, it’s formed of a primary envelope of oak, a layer of rubber ten centimeters thick, a second envelope of oak and a plate of metal covered in gutta-percha.
“This, my dear Marcel, is the whole of what I have to offer you.…”
The dazzled young man could have believed that he was in the power of an enchanter. The extraordinary machine seemed to him to be the work of a supernatural being. “Doctor,” he exclaimed, “Do with me as you will; I’m ready to follow you to the ends of the earth!”
Nicaise, however, who had learned to respect the dangers and caprices of the sea in his childhood, was not as easily enthused as his nephew by Trinitus’ “fish-boat.” A host of objections was crowding his skull, making him dread that the scientist’s dream was incapable of realization.
So, when the latter had concluded his explanations, the old mariner, shaking his head, said to him with assurance: “If I didn’t know you, Monsieur Trinitus, I’d think that the Devil had something to do with your machine—but I don’t believe that it will ever take you where you want to go.”
“Why is that, if you please, Master Nicaise?” the scientist asked.
“Because your boat is no bigger than a pill, and the tempest will swallow it whole.”
“Even the most violent tempest only agitates the sea to a feeble depth. It will rumble over our heads, but will never stir the layers of water through which we’re traveling.”
“Good idea—but is it only to be sheltered from tempests that you’ve devised this submarine boat?”
“Certainly not; it’s also in order not to have to worry about the wind, the tides, mists and fogs. I’ve constructed it with the thought that it might enable me to accomplish a strange voyage of which I’ve always dreamed.…”
“Really?” said Marcel.
“Yes. I wanted, with this boat, to reach and traverse the North Pole, passing under the ice.…”
“My God!” cried Nicaise. “You’re not afraid of anything! But merciful Heaven, when you’re at the bottom of the sea, enclosed in this calabash, how the devil will you get back up to the surface again?”
“Nicaise, my friend, have you never watched a fish swim? It has various ways of inclining and moving its fins, which permit it to move forwards or backwards, to maintain itself in equilibrium, to rise or descend—in brief, to move in every direction. Now, the pallets of my boat are nothing but fins. The nervous fluid that moves the organs of the fish is the electric fluid that makes my pallets function as I wish. What more do you want?”
“If you say so! But that’s not all. On what will you live in your prison?”
“On the food that we’ll take with us. It’s very nutritious in low doses, such as compressed beef, the meat extract prepared by the chemist Liebig,1 broth in tablet form, and so on.”
“And where will you get drinkable water?”
“We’ll restock sometimes; in addition, we’ll distill sea water, of which we’ll have plenty.”
“Yes, perhaps, but I’m still unconvinced. How will you breathe? You’ll run out of air very quickly.”
“My dear Nicaise, that problem was resolved a long time ago. We’ll manufacture air.…”
“Get away! Is that possible?”
“It’s child’s play. Air is made up of two gases, oxygen and nitrogen. They both penetrate the lungs together when we breathe, but only the oxygen in absorbed. The nitrogen comes out again as it went in; in consequence, the same quantity can serve indefinitely. It’s inexhaustible. Thus, we have only to attend to the manufacture of oxygen, and we have a hundred methods at our disposal. We could ourselves to decomposing potassium chlorate by means of heat; however, as we’d need to expend ten pounds of that salt per day, I thought that we ought also to have recourse to the decomposition of water by electricity. The oxygen obtained by that method will permit us to save three or four pounds of potassium chlorate per day, which isn’t to be disdained from the viewpoint of the loading of the boat.
“Furthermore, the decomposition of water by the pile will give us another very precious gas, because it can be burned to produce heat—that’s hydrogen. We’ll collect it separately and make use of it for heating and cooking. That’s it, as regards the manufacture of gases, but it’s not just a matter of creating them continuously; it’s also necessary to give some thought to their destruction.
“In our atmosphere, thus composed,
