Читать книгу 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea - Жюль Верн, Жуль Верн - Страница 19

The next day, the 9th of November, I awoke after a long sleep that had lasted twelve hours. Conseil came, as was his custom, to ask ‘how monsieur had passed the night,’ and to offer his services. He had left his friend the Canadian sleeping like a man who had never done anything else in his life.

I let the brave fellow chatter on in his own fashion, without troubling to answer him much. I was anxious about the absence of Captain Nemo during our spectacle of the evening before, and hoped to see him again that day.

I was soon clothed in my byssus garments. Their nature provoked many reflections from Conseil. I told him they were manufactured with the lustrous and silky filaments which fasten a sort of shell, very abundant on the shores of the Mediterranean, to the rocks. Formerly beautiful materials – stockings and gloves – were made from it, and they were both very soft and very warm. The crew of the Nautilus 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 by means of braces, like a soldier’s knapsack; its upper part forms a box, in which the air is kept by means of bellows, and which cannot escape except at its normal tension. Two india-rubber pipes leave this box and join a sort of tent, which imprisons the nose and mouth; one introduces fresh air, the other lets out foul, and the tongue closes either according to the needs of respiration. But I, who encounter great pressure at the bottom of the sea, am obliged to shut my head in a globe of copper, into which the two pipes open.’

‘Perfectly, Captain Nemo; but the air that you carry with you must soon be used up, for as soon as it only contains fifteen per cent, of oxygen, it is no longer fit to breathe.’

‘I have already told you, M. Aronnax, that the pumps of the Nautilus allow me to store up air under considerable pressure, and under these conditions the reservoir of the apparatus can furnish breathable air for nine or ten hours.’

‘I have no other objection to make,’ I answered. ‘I will only ask you one thing, captain. How do you light your road at the bottom of the ocean?’

‘With the Ruhmkorff apparatus, M. Aronnax. It is composed of a Bunsen pile, which I work with sodium. A wire is introduced, which collects the electricity produced, and directs it towards a particularly-made lantern. In this lantern is a spiral glass which contains a small quantity of carbonic gas. When the apparatus is at work the gas becomes luminous, and gives out a white and continuous light. Thus provided, I breathe and see.’

‘But, Captain Nemo, what sort of a gun do you use?’

‘It is not a gun for powder, but an air-gun. How could I manufacture gunpowder on board without either saltpetre, sulphur, or charcoal?’

‘Besides,’ I added, ‘to fire under water in a medium 855 times denser than air, very considerable resistance would have to be conquered.’

‘That would be no difficulty. There exist certain Felton guns, furnished with a system of closing, which can be fired under these conditions. But, I repeat, having no powder, I use air under great pressure, which the pumps of the Nautilus furnish.’

‘But this air must be rapidly consumed.’

‘Well, have I not my Rouquayrol reservoir, which can furnish me with what I need? Besides, you will see for yourself, M. Aronnax, that during these submarine shooting excursions you do not use much air or bullets.’

‘But it seems to me that in the half-light, and amidst a liquid so much more dense than the atmosphere, bodies cannot be projected far, and are not easily mortal.’

‘Sir, with these guns every shot is mortal, and as soon as the animal is touched, however slightly, it falls.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they are not ordinary bullets. We use little glass percussion-caps, of which I have a considerable provision. These glass caps, covered with steel, and weighted with a leaden bottom, are little Leyden bottles, in which electricity is forced to a high tension. At the slightest shock they go off, and the animal, however powerful, falls dead. These caps are not larger than the No. 4, and the charge of an ordinary gun could contain ten.’

‘I will argue no longer,’ I replied, rising from the table. ‘The only thing left me is to take my gun. Where you go I will follow.’

Captain Nemo then led me aft of the Nautilus, and I called my two companions, who followed me immediately. Then we came to a kind of cell, situated near the engine-room, in which we put on our walking dress.