________________________________________________
_ IN THE AFTERMATH of this storm, we were thrown back to the east.
Away went any hope of
escaping to the landing places of New York or the St. Lawrence.
In despair, poor Ned went into seclusion like Captain Nemo. Conseil and
I no longer left each other.
As I said, the Nautilus veered to the east. To be more accurate,
I should have said to the northeast. Sometimes on the surface
of the waves, sometimes beneath them, the ship wandered for days
amid these mists so feared by navigators. These are caused
chiefly by melting ice, which keeps the air extremely damp.
How many ships have perished in these waterways as they
tried to get directions from the hazy lights on the coast!
How many casualties have been caused by these opaque mists!
How many collisions have occurred with these reefs,
where the breaking surf is covered by the noise of the wind!
How many vessels have rammed each other, despite their running lights,
despite the warnings given by their bosun's pipes and alarm bells!
So the floor of this sea had the appearance of a battlefield where every
ship defeated by the ocean still lay, some already old and encrusted,
others newer and reflecting our beacon light on their ironwork
and copper undersides. Among these vessels, how many went down with
all hands, with their crews and hosts of immigrants, at these trouble
spots so prominent in the statistics: Cape Race, St. Paul Island,
the Strait of Belle Isle, the St. Lawrence estuary!
And in only a few years, how many victims have been furnished to
the obituary notices by the Royal Mail, Inman, and Montreal lines;
by vessels named the Solway, the Isis, the Paramatta, the Hungarian,
the Canadian, the Anglo-Saxon, the Humboldt, and the United States,
all run aground; by the Arctic and the Lyonnais, sunk in collisions;
by the President, the Pacific, and the City of Glasgow,
lost for reasons unknown; in the midst of their gloomy rubble,
the Nautilus navigated as if passing the dead in review!
By May 15 we were off the southern tip of the Grand Banks
of Newfoundland. These banks are the result of marine sedimentation,
an extensive accumulation of organic waste brought either from
the equator by the Gulf Stream's current, or from the North Pole
by the countercurrent of cold water that skirts the American coast.
Here, too, erratically drifting chunks collect from the ice breakup.
Here a huge boneyard forms from fish, mollusks, and zoophytes dying
over it by the billions.
The sea is of no great depth at the Grand Banks. A few hundred
fathoms at best. But to the south there is a deep, suddenly occurring
depression, a 3,000-meter pit. Here the Gulf Stream widens.
Its waters come to full bloom. It loses its speed and temperature,
but it turns into a sea.
Among the fish that the Nautilus startled on its way, I'll mention
a one-meter lumpfish, blackish on top with orange on the belly
and rare among its brethren in that it practices monogamy,
a good-sized eelpout, a type of emerald moray whose flavor is excellent,
wolffish with big eyes in a head somewhat resembling a canine's,
viviparous blennies whose eggs hatch inside their bodies like those
of snakes, bloated gobio (or black gudgeon) measuring two decimeters,
grenadiers with long tails and gleaming with a silvery glow,
speedy fish venturing far from their High Arctic seas.
Our nets also hauled in a bold, daring, vigorous, and muscular
fish armed with prickles on its head and stings on its fins,
a real scorpion measuring two to three meters, the ruthless enemy
of cod, blennies, and salmon; it was the bullhead of the northerly seas,
a fish with red fins and a brown body covered with nodules.
The Nautilus's fishermen had some trouble getting a grip on
this animal, which, thanks to the formation of its gill covers,
can protect its respiratory organs from any parching contact
with the air and can live out of water for a good while.
And I'll mention--for the record--some little banded blennies that
follow ships into the northernmost seas, sharp-snouted carp exclusive
to the north Atlantic, scorpionfish, and lastly the gadoid family,
chiefly the cod species, which I detected in their waters of choice
over these inexhaustible Grand Banks.
Because Newfoundland is simply an underwater peak, you could
call these cod mountain fish. While the Nautilus was clearing
a path through their tight ranks, Conseil couldn't refrain from
making this comment:
"Mercy, look at these cod!" he said. "Why, I thought cod were flat,
like dab or sole!"
"Innocent boy!" I exclaimed. "Cod are flat only at the
grocery store, where they're cut open and spread out on display.
But in the water they're like mullet, spindle-shaped and perfectly
built for speed."
"I can easily believe master," Conseil replied. "But what crowds
of them! What swarms!"
"Bah! My friend, there'd be many more without their enemies,
scorpionfish and human beings! Do you know how many eggs have been
counted in a single female?"
"I'll go all out," Conseil replied. "500,000."
"11,000,000, my friend."
"11,000,000! I refuse to accept that until I count them myself."
"So count them, Conseil. But it would be less work to believe me.
Besides, Frenchmen, Englishmen, Americans, Danes, and Norwegians catch
these cod by the thousands. They're eaten in prodigious quantities,
and without the astonishing fertility of these fish, the seas
would soon be depopulated of them. Accordingly, in England and
America alone, 5,000 ships manned by 75,000 seamen go after cod.
Each ship brings back an average catch of 4,400 fish, making 22,000,000.
Off the coast of Norway, the total is the same."
"Fine," Conseil replied, "I'll take master's word for it.
I won't count them."
"Count what?"
"Those 11,000,000 eggs. But I'll make one comment."
"What's that?"
"If all their eggs hatched, just four codfish could feed
England, America, and Norway."
As we skimmed the depths of the Grand Banks, I could see perfectly
those long fishing lines, each armed with 200 hooks, that every
boat dangled by the dozens. The lower end of each line dragged
the bottom by means of a small grappling iron, and at the surface
it was secured to the buoy-rope of a cork float. The Nautilus had
to maneuver shrewdly in the midst of this underwater spiderweb.
But the ship didn't stay long in these heavily traveled waterways.
It went up to about latitude 42 degrees. This brought it
abreast of St. John's in Newfoundland and Heart's Content,
where the Atlantic Cable reaches its end point.
Instead of continuing north, the Nautilus took an easterly heading,
as if to go along this plateau on which the telegraph cable rests,
where multiple soundings have given the contours of the terrain
with the utmost accuracy.
It was on May 17, about 500 miles from Heart's Content and 2,800
meters down, that I spotted this cable lying on the seafloor.
Conseil, whom I hadn't alerted, mistook it at first for a gigantic
sea snake and was gearing up to classify it in his best manner.
But I enlightened the fine lad and let him down gently by giving
him various details on the laying of this cable.
The first cable was put down during the years 1857-1858;
but after transmitting about 400 telegrams, it went dead.
In 1863 engineers built a new cable that measured 3,400 kilometers,
weighed 4,500 metric tons, and was shipped aboard the Great Eastern.
This attempt also failed.
Now then, on May 25 while submerged to a depth of 3,836 meters,
the Nautilus lay in precisely the locality where this second
cable suffered the rupture that ruined the undertaking.
It happened 638 miles from the coast of Ireland. At around two
o'clock in the afternoon, all contact with Europe broke off.
The electricians on board decided to cut the cable before fishing it up,
and by eleven o'clock that evening they had retrieved the damaged part.
They repaired the joint and its splice; then the cable was resubmerged.
But a few days later it snapped again and couldn't be recovered
from the ocean depths.
These Americans refused to give up. The daring Cyrus Field,
who had risked his whole fortune to promote this undertaking,
called for a new bond issue. It sold out immediately. Another cable
was put down under better conditions. Its sheaves of conducting wire
were insulated within a gutta-percha covering, which was protected
by a padding of textile material enclosed in a metal sheath.
The Great Eastern put back to sea on July 13, 1866.
The operation proceeded apace. Yet there was one hitch.
As they gradually unrolled this third cable, the electricians observed
on several occasions that someone had recently driven nails into it,
trying to damage its core. Captain Anderson, his officers,
and the engineers put their heads together, then posted a warning that if
the culprit were detected, he would be thrown overboard without a trial.
After that, these villainous attempts were not repeated.
By July 23 the Great Eastern was lying no farther than 800
kilometers from Newfoundland when it received telegraphed news from
Ireland of an armistice signed between Prussia and Austria after
the Battle of Sadova. Through the mists on the 27th, it sighted
the port of Heart's Content. The undertaking had ended happily,
and in its first dispatch, young America addressed old Europe with
these wise words so rarely understood: "Glory to God in the highest,
and peace on earth to men of good will."
I didn't expect to find this electric cable in mint condition,
as it looked on leaving its place of manufacture. The long snake
was covered with seashell rubble and bristling with foraminifera;
a crust of caked gravel protected it from any mollusks that might
bore into it. It rested serenely, sheltered from the sea's motions,
under a pressure favorable to the transmission of that electric
spark that goes from America to Europe in 32/100 of a second.
This cable will no doubt last indefinitely because, as observers note,
its gutta-percha casing is improved by a stay in salt water.
Besides, on this well-chosen plateau, the cable never lies at
depths that could cause a break. The Nautilus followed it to its
lowest reaches, located 4,431 meters down, and even there it rested
without any stress or strain. Then we returned to the locality
where the 1863 accident had taken place.
There the ocean floor formed a valley 120 kilometers wide,
into which you could fit Mt. Blanc without its summit poking above
the surface of the waves. This valley is closed off to the east
by a sheer wall 2,000 meters high. We arrived there on May 28,
and the Nautilus lay no farther than 150 kilometers from Ireland.
Would Captain Nemo head up north and beach us on the British Isles?
No. Much to my surprise, he went back down south and returned
to European seas. As we swung around the Emerald Isle, I spotted
Cape Clear for an instant, plus the lighthouse on Fastnet Rock
that guides all those thousands of ships setting out from
Glasgow or Liverpool.
An important question then popped into my head. Would the Nautilus
dare to tackle the English Channel? Ned Land (who promptly
reappeared after we hugged shore) never stopped questioning me.
What could I answer him? Captain Nemo remained invisible.
After giving the Canadian a glimpse of American shores, was he about
to show me the coast of France?
But the Nautilus kept gravitating southward. On May 30, in sight
of Land's End, it passed between the lowermost tip of England
and the Scilly Islands, which it left behind to starboard.
If it was going to enter the English Channel, it clearly needed
to head east. It did not.
All day long on May 31, the Nautilus swept around the sea
in a series of circles that had me deeply puzzled. It seemed
to be searching for a locality that it had some trouble finding.
At noon Captain Nemo himself came to take our bearings.
He didn't address a word to me. He looked gloomier than ever.
What was filling him with such sadness? Was it our proximity to
these European shores? Was he reliving his memories of that country
he had left behind? If so, what did he feel? Remorse or regret?
For a good while these thoughts occupied my mind, and I had a hunch
that fate would soon give away the captain's secrets.
The next day, June 1, the Nautilus kept to the same tack.
It was obviously trying to locate some precise spot in the ocean.
Just as on the day before, Captain Nemo came to take the altitude
of the sun. The sea was smooth, the skies clear. Eight miles
to the east, a big steamship was visible on the horizon line.
No flag was flapping from the gaff of its fore-and-aft sail,
and I couldn't tell its nationality.
A few minutes before the sun passed its zenith, Captain Nemo
raised his sextant and took his sights with the utmost precision.
The absolute calm of the waves facilitated this operation.
The Nautilus lay motionless, neither rolling nor pitching.
I was on the platform just then. After determining our position,
the captain pronounced only these words:
"It's right here!"
He went down the hatch. Had he seen that vessel change course
and seemingly head toward us? I'm unable to say.
I returned to the lounge. The hatch closed, and I heard water hissing
in the ballast tanks. The Nautilus began to sink on a vertical line,
because its propeller was in check and no longer furnished
any forward motion.
Some minutes later it stopped at a depth of 833 meters and came
to rest on the seafloor.
The ceiling lights in the lounge then went out, the panels opened,
and through the windows I saw, for a half-mile radius, the sea
brightly lit by the beacon's rays.
I looked to port and saw nothing but the immenseness of
these tranquil waters.
To starboard, a prominent bulge on the sea bottom caught my attention.
You would have thought it was some ruin enshrouded in a crust
of whitened seashells, as if under a mantle of snow.
Carefully examining this mass, I could identify the swollen outlines
of a ship shorn of its masts, which must have sunk bow first.
This casualty certainly dated from some far-off time.
To be so caked with the limestone of these waters, this wreckage
must have spent many a year on the ocean floor.
What ship was this? Why had the Nautilus come to visit its grave?
Was it something other than a maritime accident that had dragged
this craft under the waters?
I wasn't sure what to think, but next to me I heard Captain Nemo's
voice slowly say:
"Originally this ship was christened the Marseillais. It carried
seventy-four cannons and was launched in 1762. On August 13,
1778, commanded by La Poype-Vertrieux, it fought valiantly
against the Preston. On July 4, 1779, as a member of the squadron
under Admiral d'Estaing, it assisted in the capture of the island
of Grenada. On September 5, 1781, under the Count de Grasse,
it took part in the Battle of Chesapeake Bay. In 1794 the new Republic
of France changed the name of this ship. On April 16 of that same year,
it joined the squadron at Brest under Rear Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse,
who was entrusted with escorting a convoy of wheat coming from
America under the command of Admiral Van Stabel. In this second
year of the French Revolutionary Calendar, on the 11th and 12th
days in the Month of Pasture, this squadron fought an encounter
with English vessels. Sir, today is June 1, 1868, or the 13th
day in the Month of Pasture. Seventy-four years ago to the day,
at this very spot in latitude 47 degrees 24' and longitude 17 degrees
28', this ship sank after a heroic battle; its three masts gone,
water in its hold, a third of its crew out of action, it preferred
to go to the bottom with its 356 seamen rather than surrender;
and with its flag nailed up on the afterdeck, it disappeared beneath
the waves to shouts of 'Long live the Republic!'"
"This is the Avenger!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, sir! The Avenger! A splendid name!" Captain Nemo murmured,
crossing his arms. _
Read next: SECOND PART: Chapter 21. A Mass Execution
Read previous: SECOND PART: Chapter 19. The Gulf Stream
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