Читать книгу Voyage Beneath the Waves - Jules Rengade - Страница 6

CHAPTER TWO

AT SEA

When Nicaise had taken his place in the boat beside Marcel, Trinitus went inside in his turn, carefully sealed the porthole and put his hand on the lever that served to direct the electric current into the mechanisms of the ship.

“No one will miss the land?” he asked.

“No, no—let’s go,” replied Nicaise and Marcel, simultaneously.

“Well, may God preserve us!” exclaimed Trinitus.

There was a slight shock; the lamp fixed in the ceiling of the cabin suddenly projected a bright light, and the Éclair shot across the surface of the waves with the rapidity of a shooting star traversing the sky.

“We’re flying like a swallow!” said Nicaise.

“Not yet,” Trinitus replied, “but we’ll travel much faster under water. I’m trying to reach the middle of the Channel. There are two sand-banks to avoid: the Varne Bank, where the Dutch three-master Maria Jacoba ran aground a few years ago; and the Colbart Bank, which is no less dangerous.…”

“How will you navigate?” asked Marcel.

“By means of the lighthouse on Cap Gris-Nez, which I can see through the window,” the scientist replied.

“I can see it too,” said Nicaise, “and I think that we ought to be level with the Colbart Bank now.”

“That’s my opinion…let’s go a little bit further.…”

“There—now!”

“We’re there. Pay attention.…”

“One moment!” said Marcel, hastening to the window that looked out upon France.

The boat stopped, and the three voyagers turned their gazes toward the gray and misty ribbon that limited the southern horizon.

“This is it!” murmured Marcel, sighing.

Trinitus’ eyes filled with tears. Nicaise felt, to his surprise, that his heart was beating faster.

“What is it?” he said. “I’ve almost drowned twenty times over; I’ve been frozen fishing for cod off the coast of Iceland; I’ve fought polar bears without ever flinching, and now I go weak! Come on, come on—let’s light a pipe and get on with it!”

No matter how much effort he made to master his emotion, however, the old mariner allowed a tear to leak from his eye when Trinitus shook his hand and said to him: “I’m hopeful, Nicaise, that our wishes will be granted. We’ll find my dear Thérèse and my beloved Alice! I have a feeling that tells me so. If anything bad were going to happen to us, the sky would not have that purity—a good augury, which inspires me and revives my courage!”

The sky was, indeed, displayed in all its splendor that evening. Not one cloud could be seen; the moon and stars had never shone more brightly. The sea, ordinarily choppy off the Pas-de-Calais, was calm and tranquil; it had doubtless come to an understanding with the sky. Only a few soft and tender waves swayed the boat very slightly at intervals, and their crests could be seen breaking in the distance, emitting a pale phosphorescent light.

A cool breeze was running through the atmosphere.

Two great dark spaces opened to the west and the east. On one side was the entrance to the Channel, on the other that of the North Sea. On the English and French coasts, the lighthouses projected the brilliant beams of their occulting lights a long way out to sea. They could make out quite clearly, on one side, the lights of Dover and Folkestone, and on the other, those of Calais and Cap Gris-Nez.

The upper hemisphere of Trinitus’ boat emerged from the middle of the waves, and the bright light illuminating the interior escaped through the portholes in long silvery beams, which vacillated softly on the ridges of the waves.

Having darted one last glance at the coast that they might never seen again, the three voyagers decided to go down to the bottom of the sea. Trinitus put his hand on a ring fixed to the wall and pulled it vigorously toward him. The pallets that were supporting them on the surface of the water assumed a vertical stance and the boat sank softly into the abyss.

The sea allowed her to plunge into its depths. It swallowed her up beneath its waves, and closed insouciantly over her.

As the ship went down, the scientist’s eyes followed the ascension of a thin column of liquid in a vertical tube placed in the floor of the cabin.

“That’s our manometer,” he said. “The lower extremity of this graduated tube opens into the sea. The further we descend, the greater the pressure exerted on us will be. I’ve calculated that for every twenty meters of depth, the column of liquid in the manometer will rise one degree. We’ll soon be at forty-five meters; we’ll be able to maintain ourselves there.”

“Very good!” said Nicaise. “I believe that we’ll get by without any encumbrance—and without crushing anyone!”

Trinitus pushed the mechanism that he had pulled back toward the wall, forcefully. Almost instantaneously, the boat ceased sinking and moved off horizontally, with an extreme rapidity.

At that moment, the Panthère, which was operating a service between Boulogne and London via the Thames, was going through the narrowest part of the Channel. The passengers grouped on the deck saw a strange light fleeing beneath them. A naturalist affirmed that it was produced by medusas, gelatinous mollusks phosphorescent by night, and everyone believed him.

It was Trinitus’ boat!

Meanwhile, the ship had scarcely got under way when its skillful pilot was already occupied in organizing the interior duty roster, and giving his companions their share of the work.

Marcel, having youth and intelligence in his favor, became the scientist’s assistant. He was charged with supervising the manufacture of artificial air, maintaining the piles and coils, and looking after the precision instruments and weapons of every kind.

Nicaise had nothing to envy Molière’s famous Maître Jacques.2 He was occupied with the fishing tackle, the food, the cooking and the emergency apparatus, as well as the general order of the boat.

Trinitus, the captain and pilot, reserved the direction of the Éclair for himself—and, indeed, he alone was capable of fulfilling that role.

Meanwehile, the boat was traveling at top speed. The emotion that had saddened the voyagers slightly at the moment of departure disappeared slowly; they felt their joyful enthusiasm and all their hopes revive.

Marcel never ceased dreaming about Alice, glimpsing a corner of paradise in the future. Nicaise, proud of his appointment as cook, tried to remember various recipes for seamen’s court-bouillons, and hummed the tune of “Marlbrough s’en vat-t-en guerre” gaily. It was his favorite song.

As for Trinitus, after he had assigned everyone his duties, he went to his desk, checked the time on his chronometer, and on the first page of a notebook opened in front of him, he wrote:

THE ÉCLAIR

Submarine Boat

Departed Calais for the Coral Sea midnight, 3 August 1864

Then, at the bottom of the page, he added:

Journal of Captain Trinitus.

As he finished writing, however, an extremely violent shock made the boat shake. The Éclair recoiled abruptly, and the three surprised men were hurled on to the floor.

Nicaise only had the strength to utter an oath.

Marcel, alarmed, exclaimed: “We’re doomed!”

Stupefied, 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 into the large tarred canvas bag that he had fitted to his apparatus, and buried them with three or four dozen oysters.

“Let’s go back!” aid Trinitus. “It’s time to go.”

“What a pity,” Marcel replied. “Can’t we travel like this, in our apparatus, without shutting ourselves away in the cabin?”

“What an idea!” said Trinitus.

“It seems to me,” Marcel continued, “that nothing would be simpler. It would be sufficient to fit a kind of swing under the boat, on which one could sit, while the Éclair traveled at top speed.…”

“That’s true—we’d have a better view of the country,” added Nicaise.

“Well, my lads, we’ll see about that,” Trinitus replied. “As regards breakfast, though, it’s still necessary to go back into the cabin—we can talk about Marcel’s project while eating our oysters!”

Immediately, the three voyagers hoisted themselves up to the ship, and Nicaise, laden with the booty, went in first. Trinitus carefully reclosed the opening of the cylinder; the cook went to his oven in order to prepare the crab and the sea-urchin, and Marcel visited the apparatus for manufacturing air.

The boat, which had only sustained insignificant damage as a result of the collision, set off again with frightful speed, and the captain recorded the first incident that had occurred in his journal.

The breakfast was excellent, and Marcel’s proposal, after mature reflection, was accepted unanimously. It was decided that three seats on a plank would be suspended beneath the vessel, in the fashion of a swing, and that each passenger would be armed with a long barbed harpoon for self-defense.

That was not sufficient for Nicaise, however; he wanted to have a more formidable weapon against the large marine animals that would not fail to present themselves, and Trinitus was obliged to invent a kind of thunderbolt with which to kill them.

He devised a kind of iron arrow, which a long metallic chain would connect to the boat’s electrical apparatus. A small steel hammer, sustained by a spring, would serve to change the direction of the current and make a quantity of electricity large enough to kill an enormous shark instantly to pass into the arrow through the intermediary of the chain.

The apparatus was, moreover, easy to construct. Trinitus had the principal components in his stores, and in the Azores, where they would have to pause in order to repair the boat, they would obtain the luxury of a small thunderbolt in no time.

Nicaise and Marcel then started rooting through the storage-lockers and gathering together everything they might need. In the meantime, Trinitus drew up all the details of the thunderbolt as he imagined it, and calculated its effects theoretically, which awaiting an opportunity to take account of them in reality.

The entire morning was devoted to that important work, and during the rest of day, Trinitus, in accordance with his promise, told his companions the story of some of the bizarre creatures that they had seen on the sea-bed.

To begin with, he showed them, under the microscope, the animalcule that produces the phosphorescence of the waves. It was a tiny creature, triangular in form, bearing a slender fin at reach of its angles, formed of extremely delicate threads. On its globular back, a host of little spherical dots could be seen, distributed at random, which shone at times with a bright gleam. The phenomenon was produced most strikingly when Trinitus caressed the Noctiluca’s threads with the point of a needle, or teased the animal slightly.

Then the scientist introduced his companions to several extremely curious zoophytes that he had removed from the electric cable or collected on the nearby rocks. He showed them starfish with pink limbs; sponges and Thetis clad with their polyps, gray Pennatula that resembled silky and curly feathers; and Eleutheria, the numerous arms of which were each terminated by a flower.

What amused Marcel most, however, was a kind of Holothurian, Duvernoy’s Synapta, thus baptized by Monsieur de Quatrefages,4 who had first observed it in the little archipelago of Chausey abut thirty years before. Trinitus explained how the Synapta tolerated famine and abstinence philosophically. Its body, as transparent as crystal, contracts and segments with the greatest ease. In times of famine, when it is impossible to nourish its entire body, the Synapta does not hesitate to sacrifice itself in small portions as the necessity becomes apparent. It shrinks, strangling itself at the place where it wants to cut through itself, and gradually diminishes thus by a quarter, a half and three-quarters. Sometimes, alas, it only retains its head, and is very glad when it can find something to eat.

As the day went by, however, the Éclair continued traveling toward the Azores. When night fell and Trinitus calculated that the islands could not be far away, he took the boat up to the surface, which slowed its progress considerably but allowed the voyagers to interrogate the horizon through the windows.

The sea extended in all directions, seemingly infinite. Its high and rapid waves shook the boat forcefully, and after half an hour of continual shocks, Trinitus was on the point of deciding to go back down to calmer layers when Marcel saw an almost-imperceptible light shining on the horizon. It looked to him like a kind of gray needle outlined against the wan background of the sky, in which numerous stars were twinkling, and he thought he recognized the mast of a vessel.

Nicaise, whose sight was rather weak, could not make anything out, even with the aid of a powerful telescope, but Trinitus, on seeing the needle identified by Marcel uttered a cry of joy.

“Land! Land, my friends! It’s the volcanic peak of the Azores; we’ll have disembarked within the hour.”

2. Maître Jacques is Harpagon’s cook in L’Avare [The Miser] (1668)

3. The first telegraphic cable linking England and France was laid between Dover and Calais in 1850 by John Watkins Brett and his brother. It had to be replaced in 1851 with an armored version after a French fisherma cut the first one.

4. The zoologist Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau (1810-1892) had been a pupil of Georges Louis Duvernoy (1777-1855). His paper on the “Synapte de Duvernoy” was published in 1841.