could, therefore, be clothed at a cheap rate, without help of either cotton-trees, sheep, or silkworms of the earth.
When I was dressed I went in to the saloon. It was deserted.
The whole day passed without my being honoured with a visit from Captain Nemo. The panels of the saloon were not opened. Perhaps they did not wish us to get tired of such beautiful things.
The direction of the Nautilus kept NNE., its speed at twelve miles, its depth between twenty-five and thirty fathoms.
The next day the same desertion, the same solitude. I did not see one of the ship’s crew. Ned and Conseil passed the greater part of the day with me. They were astonished at the absence of the captain. Was the singular man ill? Did he mean to alter his plans about us?
After all, as Conseil said, we enjoyed complete liberty; we were delicately and abundantly fed. Our host kept to the terms of his treaty. We could not complain, and, besides, the singularity of our destiny reserved us such great compensations that we had no right to accuse it.
That day I began the account of these adventures, which allowed me to relate them with the most scrupulous exactness, and, curious detail, I wrote it on paper made with marine zostera.
Early in the morning of November 11, the fresh air spread over the interior of the Nautilus told me that we were again on the surface to renew our supply of oxygen. I went to the central staircase and ascended it to the platform. It was 6 a.m. The weather was cloudy, the sea gray, but calm. There was scarcely any swell. I hoped to meet Captain Nemo there. Would he come? I only saw the helmsman in his glass cage. Seated on the upper portion of the hull, I drank in the sea-breeze with delight.
Little by little the clouds disappeared under the action of the sun’s rays. The clouds announced wind for all that day. But the wind was no concern to the Nautilus. I was admiring this joyful sunrise, so gay and reviving, when I heard some one coming up to the platform. I prepared to address Captain Nemo, but it was his mate – whom I had already seen during the captain’s first visit – who appeared. He did not seem to perceive my presence, and with his powerful glass he swept the horizon, after which he approached the stair-head and called out some words which I reproduce exactly, for every morning they were uttered under the same conditions. They were the following: –
‘Nautron respoc lorni virch.’
What those words meant I know not.
After pronouncing them the mate went below again, and I supposed that the Nautilus was going to continue her submarine course. I therefore followed the mate and regained my room.
Five days passed thus and altered nothing in our position. Each morning I ascended to the platform. The same sentence was pronounced by the same individual. Captain Nemo did not appear.
I had made up my mind that I was not going to see him again, when on the 16th of November, on entering my room with Ned Land and Conseil, I found a note directed to me upon the table.
I opened it. It was written in a bold, clear hand, of Gothic character, something like the German types. The note contained the following: –
‘To Professor Aronnax, on board the Nautilus.
‘Captain Nemo invites Professor Aronnax to a hunt tomorrow morning in the forest of the island of Crespo. He hopes nothing will prevent the professor joining it, and he will have much pleasure in seeing his companions also.’
‘A hunt!’ cried Ned.
‘And in the forests of Crespo Island,’ added Conseil.
‘Then that fellow does land sometimes,’ said Ned Land.
‘It looks like it,’ said I, reading the letter again.
‘Well, we must accept,’ replied the Canadian. ‘Once on land we can decide what to do. Besides, I shall not be sorry to eat some fresh meat.’
I consulted the planisphere as to the whereabouts of the island of Crespo, and in 32° 40’ north lat. and 167° 50’ west long. I found a small island, reconnoitred in 1801 by Captain Crespo, and marked in old Spanish maps as Rocca de la Plata, or ‘Silver Rock.’ We were then about 1800 miles from our starting-point, and the course of the Nautilus, a little changed, was bringing it back towards the south-east. I pointed out to my companions the little rock lost in the midst of the North Pacific.
‘If Captain Nemo does land sometimes,’ I said, ‘he at least chooses quite desert islands.’
Ned Land shrugged his shoulders without speaking, and he and Conseil left me. After supper, which was served by the mute and impassible steward, I went to bed, not without some anxiety.
The next day, when I awoke, I felt that the Nautilus was perfectly still. I dressed quickly and went to the saloon.
Captain Nemo was there waiting for me. He rose, bowed, and asked me if it was convenient for me to accompany him.
‘May I ask you, captain,’ I said, ‘how it is that, having broken all ties with earth, you possess forests in Crespo Island?’
‘Professor,’ answered the captain, ‘my forests are not terrestrial forests but submarine forests.’
‘Submarine!’ I exclaimed.
‘Yes, professor.’
‘And you offer to take me to them?’
‘Yes, and dry footed too.’
‘But how shall we hunt? – with a gun?’
‘Yes, with a gun.’
I thought the captain was gone mad, and the idea was expressed on my face, but he only invited me to follow him like a man resigned to anything. We entered the dining-room, where breakfast was laid.
‘M. Aronnax,’ said the captain, ‘will you share my breakfast without ceremony? We will talk as we eat. You will not find a restaurant in our walk, though you will a forest. Breakfast like a man who will probably dine late.’
I did honour to the meal. It was composed of different fish and slices of holithuria, excellent zoophytes, cooked with different sea-weeds. We drank clear water, and, following the captain’s example, I added a few drops of some fermented liquor, extracted by the Kamschatchan method from a sea-weed known under the name of Rhodomenia, palmata. Captain Nemo went on eating at first without saying a word. Then he said to me, –
‘When I invited you to hunt in my submarine forests, you thought I was mad. You judged me too lightly. You know as well as I do that man can live under water, providing he takes with him a provision of air to breathe. When submarine work has to be done, the workman, clad in an impervious dress, with his head in a metal helmet, receives air from above by means of pumps and regulators.’
‘Then it is a diving apparatus?’
‘Yes, but in one that enables him to get rid of the india-rubber tube attached to the pump. It is the apparatus, invented by two of your countrymen, but which I have brought to perfection for my own use, and which will allow you to risk yourself in the water without suffering. It is composed of a reservoir of thick iron plates, in which I store the air under a pressure of fifty atmospheres. This reservoir is fastened on to the back
