Trinitus did not make a sound.
Nothing alarming was manifest, however. The boat had stopped, but the damage did not appear to be considerable.
“I understand,” said Tirintus, getting up. “We’ve run into a projection of the sea-bed.”
“We need to check the hull for damage,” added Nicaise.
“I won’t deny that I was very scared,” said Marcel.
“You’re not used to it yet,” said Nicaise.
“The sea isn’t as deep here as I thought,” Trinitus went on, putting on a diving-suit. We’re only at forty-five meters, and throughout the Channel, soundings give at least fifty meters of depth. I can’t explain the accident.”
The scientist lifted a circular trap-door set in the middle of the floor, uncovering a metal disk about sixty centimeters in diameter. The disk was exactly fitted to a vertical cylinder that traversed the entire keel and terminated at the inferior face of the boat. Four stout tubes descended in parallel with it, but they were open at the top, and projected by about ten centimeters at the bottom, where there was a kind of fitment sealed by a tap.
Trinitus took advantage of the opportunity to inform his friends regarding the mechanism of that ingenious apparatus, and when they understood it in theory he showed them how it worked in practice.
By means of a little pulley fixed in the vault of the boat, he connected the metal disk to a counterweight, and the cylinder immediately opened, like that of a pump when the piston is withdrawn. Trinitus, dressed in his diving-suit, descended into the cylinder and the disk fell back slowly over his head to shut the scientist in, as if in a casket. But he pressed a little switch set in the wall of his narrow prison, causing a valve that closed the lower orifice of the cylinder to open beneath his feet, and slid into the sea.
The valve closed abruptly, after the metal disk had descended level with it, in order to prevent the water from getting in.
Meanwhile, Trinitus had grabbed a handle placed under the vessel for that express purpose, and while supporting himself thus with one hand, he fixed a long flexible hose at the other extremity, by means of which he could breathe through one of the stout tubes that projected out from beneath the ship. By turning the tap, he put himself in communication with the air contained in the cabin, and that played the role of diving-bell.
The respiratory hose of the apparatus was about thirty meters long, which permitted Trinitus to walk along the sea-bed to investigate the obstacle with which the Éclair had collided.
Even on the darkest nights, it is never pitch-dark under the sea. The phosphorescence of the water casts a vague light over submerged objects, and the majority of marine animals and plants are surrounded by a phosphoric aureole. Trinitus was therefore able to perceive in front of him a kind of enormous barrier coated with bizarre incrustations and strange vegetation, which projected a pale light over it. He approached it, thinking that he was looking at the mast of a ship, and uttered a cry of surprise.
Suddenly, Nicaise and Marcel heard an exclamation resonating in the cabin. “My friends! It’s the electric cable!”3
One can imagine the astonishment of the two men when they learned that the obstacles with which they had collided was none other than the enormous iron cable that is the sole link attaching us to England.
Curious to descend to the bottom of the sea, they promptly put on their apparatus. Marcel applied his lips to the orifice of the tube through which Trinitus was breathing, and shouted at the top of his voice: “Wait there! We’re coming!”
Ignorant of the simplest laws of physics, Marcel did not know that it was sufficient for him to speak in a normal voice for Trinitus to hear him; thus, in his impermeable prison, the scientist was stunned by the brutal exclamation that fell upon him so loudly. His ears were still ringing when his two companions, linked like him to the machine by respiratory tubes, appeared at his sides.
“What a strange place!” said Niciase.
“It’s magnificent!” said Marcel.
“Why,” the old mariner continued, “once can see here as if by gaslight. Is there moonlight under the sea?”
“No, Nicaise,” Trinitus replied. “It’s the objects surrounding us that are producing this strange light. You’re already lit up in the darkness like a box of matches.”
“So the gleam that’s illuminating us is the same one that sometimes shines on the waves at night?”
“Exactly. It’s caused by animalcules that I’ll show you under the microscope in a little while. They exist in such great numbers in the sea that there are more than a million of them in a single drop of water. They’re known as Noctiluca.…”
“Oh, my God, is it possible?” exclaimed Nicaise.
“It’s very curious,” Marcel added.
Although they were only a few meters from one another, it would have been impossible for them to talk to one another directly because of the glass helmets that were imprisoning them, but they were able to converse because their voices rose up through the respiratory tube of the speaker, resounded in the cabin and came back down the listeners’ neighboring tubes, quite clearly and without distortion.
Marcel had approached the electric cable and was contemplating the extravagant vegetation it bore with profound amazement. An incredible multitude of living things were fixed on the submerged cord—which, resting on submarine rocks at intervals, formed a kind of suspension bridge between them. The algae, zoophytes, mollusks and polyps attached to that frail point of support had no suspicion that human speech was running beneath their feet every day. Entangled with one another, they were grouped into enormous bouquets, transforming the cable into an enormous tufted garland barring the Ocean.
Undulating Laminaria that were reminiscent of gigantic gladioli were sparkling like flaming swords. Zonaria deployed their sumptuous foliage in fans, richer in brilliant gleams than a peacock’s tail; Fucus and Plocamia bore an infinite quantity of sea-shells, like gold and silver fruits striped with the most vivid colors, at the extremities of their stems. Beside a mass of phosphorescent sponges, sea-anemones blossomed; further away, Ophiura spread their bristling arms, like enormous millipedes, and Campanularia vibrated gently, like flowers attempting to detach themselves gradually from their stems.
That entire mysterious society dwelt in the most profound security. There were inexplicable creatures there whose exterior was plant-like and interior animal-like; and there were others that, like certain fabulous monsters, had flesh bodies supported by feet of stone.
Nicaise and Trinitus, having observed that the boat had been slightly dented by the violent impact it had received, finally joined Marcel in contemplating the picturesque flora of the electric cable.
Suddenly, Nicaise uttered a cry of joy. He had just bumped into a formless mass, and, on bending down to look at it, had found that he and his companions were walking over an oyster-bed.
“Pick them up!” he exclaimed. “Pick them up! Here’s our dinner!”
As strokes of good luck never happen in isolation, however, Nicaise while rummaging under rocks covered in the precious bivalves, was dexterous enough to grab hold of a spider-crab and a sea-urchin. He plunged them
