________________________________________________
_ DURING THE DAY of January 29, the island of Ceylon disappeared
below the horizon, and at a speed of twenty miles per hour,
the Nautilus glided into the labyrinthine channels that separate
the Maldive and Laccadive Islands. It likewise hugged Kiltan Island,
a shore of madreporic origin discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1499 and
one of nineteen chief islands in the island group of the Laccadives,
located between latitude 10 degrees and 14 degrees 30' north, and between
longitude 50 degrees 72' and 69 degrees east.
By then we had fared 16,220 miles, or 7,500 leagues, from our starting
point in the seas of Japan.
The next day, January 30, when the Nautilus rose to the surface
of the ocean, there was no more land in sight. Setting its course
to the north-northwest, the ship headed toward the Gulf of Oman,
carved out between Arabia and the Indian peninsula and providing
access to the Persian Gulf.
This was obviously a blind alley with no possible outlet.
So where was Captain Nemo taking us? I was unable to say.
Which didn't satisfy the Canadian, who that day asked me where
we were going.
"We're going, Mr. Ned, where the captain's fancy takes us."
"His fancy," the Canadian replied, "won't take us very far.
The Persian Gulf has no outlet, and if we enter those waters,
it won't be long before we return in our tracks."
"All right, we'll return, Mr. Land, and after the Persian Gulf,
if the Nautilus wants to visit the Red Sea, the Strait of Bab el
Mandeb is still there to let us in!"
"I don't have to tell you, sir," Ned Land replied, "that the Red Sea
is just as landlocked as the gulf, since the Isthmus of Suez hasn't
been cut all the way through yet; and even if it was, a boat
as secretive as ours wouldn't risk a canal intersected with locks.
So the Red Sea won't be our way back to Europe either."
"But I didn't say we'd return to Europe."
"What do you figure, then?"
"I figure that after visiting these unusual waterways of Arabia
and Egypt, the Nautilus will go back down to the Indian Ocean,
perhaps through Mozambique Channel, perhaps off the Mascarene Islands,
and then make for the Cape of Good Hope."
"And once we're at the Cape of Good Hope?" the Canadian asked
with typical persistence.
"Well then, we'll enter that Atlantic Ocean with which we
aren't yet familiar. What's wrong, Ned my friend?
Are you tired of this voyage under the seas? Are you bored
with the constantly changing sight of these underwater wonders?
Speaking for myself, I'll be extremely distressed to see the end
of a voyage so few men will ever have a chance to make."
"But don't you realize, Professor Aronnax," the Canadian replied,
"that soon we'll have been imprisoned for three whole months
aboard this Nautilus?"
"No, Ned, I didn't realize it, I don't want to realize it, and I
don't keep track of every day and every hour."
"But when will it be over?"
"In its appointed time. Meanwhile there's nothing we can do about it,
and our discussions are futile. My gallant Ned, if you come and tell me,
'A chance to escape is available to us,' then I'll discuss it with you.
But that isn't the case, and in all honesty, I don't think Captain Nemo
ever ventures into European seas."
This short dialogue reveals that in my mania for the Nautilus, I was
turning into the spitting image of its commander.
As for Ned Land, he ended our talk in his best speechifying style:
"That's all fine and dandy. But in my humble opinion, a life
in jail is a life without joy."
For four days until February 3, the Nautilus inspected the Gulf of Oman
at various speeds and depths. It seemed to be traveling at random,
as if hesitating over which course to follow, but it never crossed
the Tropic of Cancer.
After leaving this gulf we raised Muscat for an instant,
the most important town in the country of Oman. I marveled at its
strange appearance in the midst of the black rocks surrounding it,
against which the white of its houses and forts stood out sharply.
I spotted the rounded domes of its mosques, the elegant tips
of its minarets, and its fresh, leafy terraces. But it was only
a fleeting vision, and the Nautilus soon sank beneath the dark
waves of these waterways.
Then our ship went along at a distance of six miles from the Arabic
coasts of Mahra and Hadhramaut, their undulating lines of mountains
relieved by a few ancient ruins. On February 5 we finally put
into the Gulf of Aden, a genuine funnel stuck into the neck of Bab
el Mandeb and bottling these Indian waters in the Red Sea.
On February 6 the Nautilus cruised in sight of the city of Aden,
perched on a promontory connected to the continent by a narrow isthmus,
a sort of inaccessible Gibraltar whose fortifications the English
rebuilt after capturing it in 1839. I glimpsed the octagonal
minarets of this town, which used to be one of the wealthiest,
busiest commercial centers along this coast, as the Arab historian
Idrisi tells it.
I was convinced that when Captain Nemo reached this point,
he would back out again; but I was mistaken, and much to my surprise,
he did nothing of the sort.
The next day, February 7, we entered the Strait of Bab el Mandeb,
whose name means "Gate of Tears" in the Arabic language.
Twenty miles wide, it's only fifty-two kilometers long,
and with the Nautilus launched at full speed, clearing it was
the work of barely an hour. But I didn't see a thing, not even
Perim Island where the British government built fortifications
to strengthen Aden's position. There were many English and French
steamers plowing this narrow passageway, liners going from Suez
to Bombay, Calcutta, Melbourne, Réunion Island, and Mauritius; far too
much traffic for the Nautilus to make an appearance on the surface.
So it wisely stayed in midwater.
Finally, at noon, we were plowing the waves of the Red Sea.
The Red Sea: that great lake so famous in biblical traditions,
seldom replenished by rains, fed by no important rivers,
continually drained by a high rate of evaporation, its water level
dropping a meter and a half every year! If it were fully landlocked
like a lake, this odd gulf might dry up completely; on this score
it's inferior to its neighbors, the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea,
whose levels lower only to the point where their evaporation exactly
equals the amounts of water they take to their hearts.
This Red Sea is 2,600 kilometers long with an average width of 240.
In the days of the
Ptolemies and the Roman emperors, it was a great commercial
artery for the world, and when its isthmus has been cut through,
it will completely regain that bygone importance that the Suez
railways have already brought back in part.
I would not even attempt to understand the whim that induced
Captain Nemo to take us into this gulf. But I wholeheartedly
approved of the Nautilus's entering it. It adopted a medium pace,
sometimes staying on the surface, sometimes diving to avoid some ship,
and so I could observe both the inside and topside of this
highly unusual sea.
On February 8, as early as the first hours of daylight,
Mocha appeared before us: a town now in ruins, whose walls
would collapse at the mere sound of a cannon, and which shelters
a few leafy date trees here and there. This once-important city
used to contain six public marketplaces plus twenty-six mosques,
and its walls, protected by fourteen forts, fashioned a three-kilometer
girdle around it.
Then the Nautilus drew near the beaches of Africa, where the sea is
considerably deeper. There, through the open panels and in a midwater
of crystal clarity, our ship enabled us to study wonderful bushes
of shining coral and huge chunks of rock wrapped in splendid green
furs of algae and fucus. What an indescribable sight, and what
a variety of settings and scenery where these reefs and volcanic
islands leveled off by the Libyan coast! But soon the Nautilus hugged
the eastern shore where these tree forms appeared in all their glory.
This was off the coast of Tihama, and there such zoophyte displays
not only flourished below sea level but they also fashioned
picturesque networks that unreeled as high as ten fathoms above it;
the latter were more whimsical but less colorful than the former,
which kept their bloom thanks to the moist vitality of the waters.
How many delightful hours I spent in this way at the lounge window!
How many new specimens of underwater flora and fauna I
marveled at beneath the light of our electric beacon!
Mushroom-shaped fungus coral, some slate-colored sea anemone including
the species Thalassianthus aster among others, organ-pipe coral
arranged like flutes and just begging for a puff from the god Pan,
shells unique to this sea that dwell in madreporic cavities
and whose bases are twisted into squat spirals, and finally
a thousand samples of a polypary I hadn't observed until then:
the common sponge.
First division in the polyp group, the class Spongiaria has been
created by scientists precisely for this unusual exhibit whose
usefulness is beyond dispute. The sponge is definitely not a plant,
as some naturalists still believe, but an animal of the lowest order,
a polypary inferior even to coral. Its animal nature isn't in doubt,
and we can't accept even the views of the ancients, who regarded
it as halfway between plant and animal. But I must say that
naturalists are not in agreement on the structural mode of sponges.
For some it's a polypary, and for others, such as Professor Milne-Edwards,
it's a single, solitary individual.
The class Spongiaria contains about 300 species that are encountered
in a large number of seas and even in certain streams, where they've
been given the name freshwater sponges. But their waters of choice are
the Red Sea and the Mediterranean near the Greek Islands or the coast
of Syria. These waters witness the reproduction and growth of soft,
delicate bath sponges whose prices run as high as 150 francs apiece:
the yellow sponge from Syria, the horn sponge from Barbary, etc.
But since I had no hope of studying these zoophytes in the seaports
of the Levant, from which we were separated by the insuperable Isthmus
of Suez, I had to be content with observing them in the waters
of the Red Sea.
So I called Conseil to my side, while at an average depth of eight
to nine meters, the Nautilus slowly skimmed every beautiful rock
on the easterly coast.
There sponges grew in every shape, globular, stalklike,
leaflike, fingerlike. With reasonable accuracy, they lived up to
their nicknames of basket sponges, chalice sponges, distaff sponges,
elkhorn sponges, lion's paws, peacock's tails, and Neptune's gloves--
designations bestowed on them by fishermen, more poetically inclined
than scientists. A gelatinous, semifluid substance coated the fibrous
tissue of these sponges, and from this tissue there escaped a steady
trickle of water that, after carrying sustenance to each cell,
was being expelled by a contracting movement. This jellylike substance
disappears when the polyp dies, emitting ammonia as it rots.
Finally nothing remains but the fibers, either gelatinous or made
of horn, that constitute your household sponge, which takes on
a russet hue and is used for various tasks depending on its degree
of elasticity, permeability, or resistance to saturation.
These polyparies were sticking to rocks, shells of mollusks, and even
the stalks of water plants. They adorned the smallest crevices,
some sprawling, others standing or hanging like coral outgrowths.
I told Conseil that sponges are fished up in two ways, either by dragnet
or by hand. The latter method calls for the services of a diver,
but it's preferable because it spares the polypary's tissue,
leaving it with a much higher market value.
Other zoophytes swarming near the sponges consisted chiefly of a very
elegant species of jellyfish; mollusks were represented by varieties
of squid that, according to Professor Orbigny, are unique to the Red Sea;
and reptiles by virgata turtles belonging to the genus Chelonia,
which furnished our table with a dainty but wholesome dish.
As for fish, they were numerous and often remarkable. Here are
the ones that the Nautilus's nets most frequently hauled on board:
rays, including spotted rays that were oval in shape and brick
red in color, their bodies strewn with erratic blue speckles and
identifiable by their jagged double stings, silver-backed skates,
common stingrays with stippled tails, butterfly rays that looked
like huge two-meter cloaks flapping at middepth, toothless guitarfish
that were a type of cartilaginous fish closer to the shark,
trunkfish known as dromedaries that were one and a half feet long
and had humps ending in backward-curving stings, serpentine moray
eels with silver tails and bluish backs plus brown pectorals trimmed
in gray piping, a species of butterfish called the fiatola decked
out in thin gold stripes and the three colors of the French flag,
Montague blennies four decimeters long, superb jacks handsomely
embellished by seven black crosswise streaks with blue and yellow
fins plus gold and silver scales, snooks, standard mullet with
yellow heads, parrotfish, wrasse, triggerfish, gobies, etc., plus
a thousand other fish common to the oceans we had already crossed.
On February 9 the Nautilus cruised in the widest part of the Red Sea,
measuring 190 miles straight across from Suakin on the west coast
to Qunfidha on the east coast.
At noon that day after our position fix, Captain Nemo climbed onto
the platform, where I happened to be. I vowed not to let him go
below again without at least sounding him out on his future plans.
As soon as he saw me, he came over, graciously offered me a cigar,
and said to me:
"Well, professor, are you pleased with this Red Sea? Have you seen
enough of its hidden wonders, its fish and zoophytes, its gardens
of sponges and forests of coral? Have you glimpsed the towns built
on its shores?"
"Yes, Captain Nemo," I replied, "and the Nautilus is wonderfully
suited to this whole survey. Ah, it's a clever boat!"
"Yes, sir, clever, daring, and invulnerable! It fears neither
the Red Sea's dreadful storms nor its currents and reefs."
"Indeed," I said, "this sea is mentioned as one of the worst,
and in the days of the ancients, if I'm not mistaken, it had
an abominable reputation."
"Thoroughly abominable, Professor Aronnax. The Greek and Latin
historians can find nothing to say in its favor, and the Greek
geographer Strabo adds that it's especially rough during
the rainy season and the period of summer prevailing winds.
The Arab Idrisi, referring to it by the name Gulf of Colzoum,
relates that ships perished in large numbers on its sandbanks
and that no one risked navigating it by night. This, he claims,
is a sea subject to fearful hurricanes, strewn with inhospitable islands,
and 'with nothing good to offer,' either on its surface or in
its depths. As a matter of fact, the same views can also be found
in Arrian, Agatharchides, and Artemidorus."
"One can easily see," I answered, "that those historians didn't
navigate aboard the Nautilus."
"Indeed," the captain replied with a smile, "and in this respect,
the moderns aren't much farther along than the ancients.
It took many centuries to discover the mechanical power of steam!
Who knows whether we'll see a second Nautilus within the next 100 years!
Progress is slow, Professor Aronnax."
"It's true," I replied. "Your ship is a century ahead of its time,
perhaps several centuries. It would be most unfortunate if such
a secret were to die with its inventor!"
Captain Nemo did not reply. After some minutes of silence:
"We were discussing," he said, "the views of ancient historians
on the dangers of navigating this Red Sea?"
"True," I replied. "But weren't their fears exaggerated?"
"Yes and no, Professor Aronnax," answered Captain Nemo,
who seemed to know "his Red Sea" by heart. "To a modern ship,
well rigged, solidly constructed, and in control of its course
thanks to obedient steam, some conditions are no longer hazardous
that offered all sorts of dangers to the vessels of the ancients.
Picture those early navigators venturing forth in sailboats
built from planks lashed together with palm-tree ropes,
caulked with powdered resin, and coated with dogfish grease.
They didn't even have instruments for taking their bearings,
they went by guesswork in the midst of currents they barely knew.
Under such conditions, shipwrecks had to be numerous.
But nowadays steamers providing service between Suez and the South Seas
have nothing to fear from the fury of this gulf, despite the contrary
winds of its monsoons. Their captains and passengers no longer
prepare for departure with sacrifices to placate the gods,
and after returning, they don't traipse in wreaths and gold ribbons
to say thanks at the local temple."
"Agreed," I said. "And steam seems to have killed off all gratitude
in seamen's hearts. But since you seem to have made a special study
of this sea, captain, can you tell me how it got its name?"
"Many explanations exist on the subject, Professor Aronnax. Would you
like to hear the views of one chronicler in the 14th century?"
"Gladly."
"This fanciful fellow claims the sea was given its name after
the crossing of the Israelites, when the Pharaoh perished in those
waves that came together again at Moses' command:
To mark that miraculous sequel, the sea turned a red without equal.
Thus no other course would do but to name it for its hue."
"An artistic explanation, Captain Nemo," I replied, "but I'm unable
to rest content with it. So I'll ask you for your own personal views."
"Here they come. To my thinking, Professor Aronnax, this 'Red Sea'
designation must be regarded as a translation of the Hebrew word
'Edrom,' and if the ancients gave it that name, it was because of
the unique color of its waters."
"Until now, however, I've seen only clear waves, without any unique hue."
"Surely, but as we move ahead to the far end of this gulf,
you'll note its odd appearance. I recall seeing the bay of El Tur
completely red, like a lake of blood."
"And you attribute this color to the presence of microscopic algae?"
"Yes. It's a purplish, mucilaginous substance produced by those tiny
buds known by the name trichodesmia, 40,000 of which are needed
to occupy the space of one square millimeter. Perhaps you'll
encounter them when we reach El Tur."
"Hence, Captain Nemo, this isn't the first time you've gone through
the Red Sea aboard the Nautilus?"
"No, sir."
"Then, since you've already mentioned the crossing of the Israelites
and the catastrophe that befell the Egyptians, I would ask if you've ever
discovered any traces under the waters of that great historic event?"
"No, professor, and for an excellent reason."
"What's that?"
"It's because that same locality where Moses crossed with all his people
is now so clogged with sand, camels can barely get their legs wet.
You can understand that my Nautilus wouldn't have enough
water for itself."
"And that locality is . . . ?" I asked.
"That locality lies a little above Suez in a sound that used to form
a deep estuary when the Red Sea stretched as far as the Bitter Lakes.
Now, whether or not their crossing was literally miraculous,
the Israelites did cross there in returning to the Promised Land,
and the Pharaoh's army did perish at precisely that locality.
So I think that excavating those sands would bring to light a great
many weapons and tools of Egyptian origin."
"Obviously," I replied. "And for the sake of archaeology, let's hope
that sooner or later such excavations do take place, once new towns
are settled on the isthmus after the Suez Canal has been cut through--
a canal, by the way, of little use to a ship such as the Nautilus!"
"Surely, but of great use to the world at large," Captain Nemo said.
"The ancients well understood the usefulness to commerce of connecting
the Red Sea with the Mediterranean, but they never dreamed of cutting
a canal between the two, and instead they picked the Nile as their link.
If we can trust tradition, it was probably Egypt's King Sesostris
who started digging the canal needed to join the Nile with
the Red Sea. What's certain is that in 615 B.C. King Necho II
was hard at work on a canal that was fed by Nile water and ran
through the Egyptian plains opposite Arabia. This canal could
be traveled in four days, and it was so wide, two triple-tiered
galleys could pass through it abreast. Its construction was
continued by Darius the Great, son of Hystaspes, and probably
completed by King Ptolemy II. Strabo saw it used for shipping;
but the weakness of its slope between its starting point, near Bubastis,
and the Red Sea left it navigable only a few months out of the year.
This canal served commerce until the century of Rome's Antonine emperors;
it was then abandoned and covered with sand, subsequently reinstated
by Arabia's Caliph Omar I, and finally filled in for good in 761
or 762 A.D. by Caliph Al-Mansur, in an effort to prevent supplies
from reaching Mohammed ibn Abdullah, who had rebelled against him.
During his Egyptian campaign, your General Napoleon Bonaparte
discovered traces of this old canal in the Suez desert, and when
the tide caught him by surprise, he wellnigh perished just a few
hours before rejoining his regiment at Hadjaroth, the very place
where Moses had pitched camp 3,300 years before him."
"Well, captain, what the ancients hesitated to undertake, Mr. de
Lesseps is now finishing up; his joining of these two seas will
shorten the route from Cadiz to the East Indies by 9,000 kilometers,
and he'll soon change Africa into an immense island."
"Yes, Professor Aronnax, and you have every right to be proud of your
fellow countryman. Such a man brings a nation more honor than the
greatest commanders! Like so many others, he began with difficulties
and setbacks, but he triumphed because he has the volunteer spirit.
And it's sad to think that this deed, which should have been an
international deed, which would have insured that any administration
went down in history, will succeed only through the efforts of one man.
So all hail to Mr. de Lesseps!"
"Yes, all hail to that great French citizen," I replied,
quite startled by how emphatically Captain Nemo had just spoken.
"Unfortunately," he went on, "I can't take you through that Suez Canal,
but the day after tomorrow, you'll be able to see the long jetties
of Port Said when we're in the Mediterranean."
"In the Mediterranean!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, professor. Does that amaze you?"
"What amazes me is thinking we'll be there the day after tomorrow."
"Oh really?"
"Yes, captain, although since I've been aboard your vessel,
I should have formed the habit of not being amazed by anything!"
"But what is it that startles you?"
"The thought of how hideously fast the Nautilus will need to go,
if it's to double the Cape of Good Hope, circle around Africa,
and lie in the open Mediterranean by the day after tomorrow."
"And who says it will circle Africa, professor? What's this talk
about doubling the Cape of Good Hope?"
"But unless the Nautilus navigates on dry land and crosses
over the isthmus--"
"Or under it, Professor Aronnax."
"Under it?"
"Surely," Captain Nemo replied serenely. "Under that tongue of land,
nature long ago made what man today is making on its surface."
"What! There's a passageway?"
"Yes, an underground passageway that I've named the Arabian Tunnel.
It starts below Suez and leads to the Bay of Pelusium."
"But isn't that isthmus only composed of quicksand?"
"To a certain depth. But at merely fifty meters, one encounters
a firm foundation of rock."
"And it's by luck that you discovered this passageway?"
I asked, more and more startled.
"Luck plus logic, professor, and logic even more than luck."
"Captain, I hear you, but I can't believe my ears."
"Oh, sir! The old saying still holds good: Aures habent et non
audient!* Not only does this passageway exist, but I've taken
advantage of it on several occasions. Without it, I wouldn't
have ventured today into such a blind alley as the Red Sea."
*Latin: "They have ears but hear not." Ed.
"Is it indiscreet to ask how you discovered this tunnel?"
"Sir," the captain answered me, "there can be no secrets between men
who will never leave each other."
I ignored this innuendo and waited for Captain Nemo's explanation.
"Professor," he told me, "the simple logic of the naturalist led
me to discover this passageway, and I alone am familiar with it.
I'd noted that in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean there exist
a number of absolutely identical species of fish: eels, butterfish,
greenfish, bass, jewelfish, flying fish. Certain of this fact,
I wondered if there weren't a connection between the two seas.
If there were, its underground current had to go from the Red Sea
to the Mediterranean simply because of their difference in level.
So I caught a large number of fish in the vicinity of Suez. I slipped
copper rings around their tails and tossed them back into the sea.
A few months later off the coast of Syria, I recaptured a few
specimens of my fish, adorned with their telltale rings.
So this proved to me that some connection existed between the two seas.
I searched for it with my Nautilus, I discovered it, I ventured into it;
and soon, professor, you also will have cleared my Arabic tunnel!" _
Read next: SECOND PART: Chapter 5. Arabian Tunnel
Read previous: SECOND PART: Chapter 3. A Pearl Worth Ten Million
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