The Indian Ocean

: PART TWO

We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea. The first

ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which left such a

deep impression on my mind. Thus, in the midst of this great sea,

Captain Nemo's life was passing, even to his grave, which he had

prepared in one of its deepest abysses. There, not one of the ocean's

monsters could trouble the last sleep of the crew of the Nautilus, of

those fri nds riveted to each other in death as in life. "Nor any man,

either," had added the Captain. Still the same fierce, implacable

defiance towards human society!



I could no longer content myself with the theory which satisfied

Conseil.



That worthy fellow persisted in seeing in the Commander of the Nautilus

one of those unknown servants who return mankind contempt for

indifference. For him, he was a misunderstood genius who, tired of

earth's deceptions, had taken refuge in this inaccessible medium, where

he might follow his instincts freely. To my mind, this explains but

one side of Captain Nemo's character. Indeed, the mystery of that last

night during which we had been chained in prison, the sleep, and the

precaution so violently taken by the Captain of snatching from my eyes

the glass I had raised to sweep the horizon, the mortal wound of the

man, due to an unaccountable shock of the Nautilus, all put me on a new

track. No; Captain Nemo was not satisfied with shunning man. His

formidable apparatus not only suited his instinct of freedom, but

perhaps also the design of some terrible retaliation.



At this moment nothing is clear to me; I catch but a glimpse of light

amidst all the darkness, and I must confine myself to writing as events

shall dictate.



That day, the 24th of January, 1868, at noon, the second officer came

to take the altitude of the sun. I mounted the platform, lit a cigar,

and watched the operation. It seemed to me that the man did not

understand French; for several times I made remarks in a loud voice,

which must have drawn from him some involuntary sign of attention, if

he had understood them; but he remained undisturbed and dumb.



As he was taking observations with the sextant, one of the sailors of

the Nautilus (the strong man who had accompanied us on our first

submarine excursion to the Island of Crespo) came to clean the glasses

of the lantern. I examined the fittings of the apparatus, the strength

of which was increased a hundredfold by lenticular rings, placed

similar to those in a lighthouse, and which projected their brilliance

in a horizontal plane. The electric lamp was combined in such a way as

to give its most powerful light. Indeed, it was produced in vacuo,

which insured both its steadiness and its intensity. This vacuum

economised the graphite points between which the luminous arc was

developed--an important point of economy for Captain Nemo, who could

not easily have replaced them; and under these conditions their waste

was imperceptible. When the Nautilus was ready to continue its

submarine journey, I went down to the saloon. The panel was closed,

and the course marked direct west.



We were furrowing the waters of the Indian Ocean, a vast liquid plain,

with a surface of 1,200,000,000 of acres, and whose waters are so clear

and transparent that any one leaning over them would turn giddy. The

Nautilus usually floated between fifty and a hundred fathoms deep. We

went on so for some days. To anyone but myself, who had a great love

for the sea, the hours would have seemed long and monotonous; but the

daily walks on the platform, when I steeped myself in the reviving air

of the ocean, the sight of the rich waters through the windows of the

saloon, the books in the library, the compiling of my memoirs, took up

all my time, and left me not a moment of ennui or weariness.



For some days we saw a great number of aquatic birds, sea-mews or

gulls. Some were cleverly killed and, prepared in a certain way, made

very acceptable water-game. Amongst large-winged birds, carried a long

distance from all lands and resting upon the waves from the fatigue of

their flight, I saw some magnificent albatrosses, uttering discordant

cries like the braying of an ass, and birds belonging to the family of

the long-wings.



As to the fish, they always provoked our admiration when we surprised

the secrets of their aquatic life through the open panels. I saw many

kinds which I never before had a chance of observing.



I shall notice chiefly ostracions peculiar to the Red Sea, the Indian

Ocean, and that part which washes the coast of tropical America. These

fishes, like the tortoise, the armadillo, the sea-hedgehog, and the

Crustacea, are protected by a breastplate which is neither chalky nor

stony, but real bone. In some it takes the form of a solid triangle, in

others of a solid quadrangle. Amongst the triangular I saw some an inch

and a half in length, with wholesome flesh and a delicious flavour;

they are brown at the tail, and yellow at the fins, and I recommend

their introduction into fresh water, to which a certain number of

sea-fish easily accustom themselves. I would also mention quadrangular

ostracions, having on the back four large tubercles; some dotted over

with white spots on the lower part of the body, and which may be tamed

like birds; trigons provided with spikes formed by the lengthening of

their bony shell, and which, from their strange gruntings, are called

"seapigs"; also dromedaries with large humps in the shape of a cone,

whose flesh is very tough and leathery.



I now borrow from the daily notes of Master Conseil. "Certain fish of

the genus petrodon peculiar to those seas, with red backs and white

chests, which are distinguished by three rows of longitudinal

filaments; and some electrical, seven inches long, decked in the

liveliest colours. Then, as specimens of other kinds, some ovoides,

resembling an egg of a dark brown colour, marked with white bands, and

without tails; diodons, real sea-porcupines, furnished with spikes, and

capable of swelling in such a way as to look like cushions bristling

with darts; hippocampi, common to every ocean; some pegasi with

lengthened snouts, which their pectoral fins, being much elongated and

formed in the shape of wings, allow, if not to fly, at least to shoot

into the air; pigeon spatulae, with tails covered with many rings of

shell; macrognathi with long jaws, an excellent fish, nine inches long,

and bright with most agreeable colours; pale-coloured calliomores, with

rugged heads; and plenty of chaetpdons, with long and tubular muzzles,

which kill insects by shooting them, as from an air-gun, with a single

drop of water. These we may call the flycatchers of the seas.



"In the eighty-ninth genus of fishes, classed by Lacepede, belonging to

the second lower class of bony, characterised by opercules and

bronchial membranes, I remarked the scorpaena, the head of which is

furnished with spikes, and which has but one dorsal fin; these

creatures are covered, or not, with little shells, according to the

sub-class to which they belong. The second sub-class gives us specimens

of didactyles fourteen or fifteen inches in length, with yellow rays,

and heads of a most fantastic appearance. As to the first sub-class, it

gives several specimens of that singular looking fish appropriately

called a 'seafrog,' with large head, sometimes pierced with holes,

sometimes swollen with protuberances, bristling with spikes, and

covered with tubercles; it has irregular and hideous horns; its body

and tail are covered with callosities; its sting makes a dangerous

wound; it is both repugnant and horrible to look at."



From the 21st to the 23rd of January the Nautilus went at the rate of

two hundred and fifty leagues in twenty-four hours, being five hundred

and forty miles, or twenty-two miles an hour. If we recognised so many

different varieties of fish, it was because, attracted by the electric

light, they tried to follow us; the greater part, however, were soon

distanced by our speed, though some kept their place in the waters of

the Nautilus for a time. The morning of the 24th, in 12 deg. 5' S.

lat., and 94 deg. 33' long., we observed Keeling Island, a coral

formation, planted with magnificent cocos, and which had been visited

by Mr. Darwin and Captain Fitzroy. The Nautilus skirted the shores of

this desert island for a little distance. Its nets brought up numerous

specimens of polypi and curious shells of mollusca. Some precious

productions of the species of delphinulae enriched the treasures of

Captain Nemo, to which I added an astraea punctifera, a kind of

parasite polypus often found fixed to a shell.



Soon Keeling Island disappeared from the horizon, and our course was

directed to the north-west in the direction of the Indian Peninsula.



From Keeling Island our course was slower and more variable, often

taking us into great depths. Several times they made use of the

inclined planes, which certain internal levers placed obliquely to the

waterline. In that way we went about two miles, but without ever

obtaining the greatest depths of the Indian Sea, which soundings of

seven thousand fathoms have never reached. As to the temperature of

the lower strata, the thermometer invariably indicated 4 deg. above

zero. I only observed that in the upper regions the water was always

colder in the high levels than at the surface of the sea.



On the 25th of January the ocean was entirely deserted; the Nautilus

passed the day on the surface, beating the waves with its powerful

screw and making them rebound to a great height. Who under such

circumstances would not have taken it for a gigantic cetacean? Three

parts of this day I spent on the platform. I watched the sea. Nothing

on the horizon, till about four o'clock a steamer running west on our

counter. Her masts were visible for an instant, but she could not see

the Nautilus, being too low in the water. I fancied this steamboat

belonged to the P.O. Company, which runs from Ceylon to Sydney,

touching at King George's Point and Melbourne.



At five o'clock in the evening, before that fleeting twilight which

binds night to day in tropical zones, Conseil and I were astonished by

a curious spectacle.



It was a shoal of argonauts travelling along on the surface of the

ocean. We could count several hundreds. They belonged to the tubercle

kind which are peculiar to the Indian seas.



These graceful molluscs moved backwards by means of their locomotive

tube, through which they propelled the water already drawn in. Of

their eight tentacles, six were elongated, and stretched out floating

on the water, whilst the other two, rolled up flat, were spread to the

wing like a light sail. I saw their spiral-shaped and fluted shells,

which Cuvier justly compares to an elegant skiff. A boat indeed! It

bears the creature which secretes it without its adhering to it.



For nearly an hour the Nautilus floated in the midst of this shoal of

molluscs. Then I know not what sudden fright they took. But as if at

a signal every sail was furled, the arms folded, the body drawn in, the

shells turned over, changing their centre of gravity, and the whole

fleet disappeared under the waves. Never did the ships of a squadron

manoeuvre with more unity.



At that moment night fell suddenly, and the reeds, scarcely raised by

the breeze, lay peaceably under the sides of the Nautilus.



The next day, 26th of January, we cut the equator at the eighty-second

meridian and entered the northern hemisphere. During the day a

formidable troop of sharks accompanied us, terrible creatures, which

multiply in these seas and make them very dangerous. They were

"cestracio philippi" sharks, with brown backs and whitish bellies,

armed with eleven rows of teeth--eyed sharks--their throat being marked

with a large black spot surrounded with white like an eye. There were

also some Isabella sharks, with rounded snouts marked with dark spots.

These powerful creatures often hurled themselves at the windows of the

saloon with such violence as to make us feel very insecure. At such

times Ned Land was no longer master of himself. He wanted to go to the

surface and harpoon the monsters, particularly certain smooth-hound

sharks, whose mouth is studded with teeth like a mosaic; and large

tiger-sharks nearly six yards long, the last named of which seemed to

excite him more particularly. But the Nautilus, accelerating her

speed, easily left the most rapid of them behind.



The 27th of January, at the entrance of the vast Bay of Bengal, we met

repeatedly a forbidding spectacle, dead bodies floating on the surface

of the water. They were the dead of the Indian villages, carried by

the Ganges to the level of the sea, and which the vultures, the only

undertakers of the country, had not been able to devour. But the

sharks did not fail to help them at their funeral work.



About seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus, half-immersed, was

sailing in a sea of milk. At first sight the ocean seemed lactified.

Was it the effect of the lunar rays? No; for the moon, scarcely two

days old, was still lying hidden under the horizon in the rays of the

sun. The whole sky, though lit by the sidereal rays, seemed black by

contrast with the whiteness of the waters.



Conseil could not believe his eyes, and questioned me as to the cause

of this strange phenomenon. Happily I was able to answer him.



"It is called a milk sea," I explained. "A large extent of white

wavelets often to be seen on the coasts of Amboyna, and in these parts

of the sea."



"But, sir," said Conseil, "can you tell me what causes such an effect?

for I suppose the water is not really turned into milk."



"No, my boy; and the whiteness which surprises you is caused only by

the presence of myriads of infusoria, a sort of luminous little worm,

gelatinous and without colour, of the thickness of a hair, and whose

length is not more than seven-thousandths of an inch. These insects

adhere to one another sometimes for several leagues."



"Several leagues!" exclaimed Conseil.



"Yes, my boy; and you need not try to compute the number of these

infusoria. You will not be able, for, if I am not mistaken, ships have

floated on these milk seas for more than forty miles."



Towards midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual colour; but behind

us, even to the limits of the horizon, the sky reflected the whitened

waves, and for a long time seemed impregnated with the vague

glimmerings of an aurora borealis.