Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (48 page)

I was going to open it, when a sigh from Captain Nemo nailed me to the spot. I knew that he was rising. I could even see him, for the light from the library came through to the saloon. He came toward me silently, with his arms crossed, gliding like a specter rather than walking. His breast was swelling with sobs; and I heard him murmur these words (the last which ever struck my ear):

“Almighty God! Enough! Enough!”

Was it a confession of remorse which thus escaped from this man’s conscience?

In desperation I rushed through the library, mounted the central staircase, and following the upper flight reached the boat. I crept through the opening, which had already admitted my two companions.

“Let us go! Let us go!” I exclaimed.

“Directly!” replied the Canadian.

The orifice in the plates of the
Nautilus
was first closed, and fastened down by means of a false key, with which Ned Land had provided himself; the opening in the boat was also closed. The Canadian began to loosen the bolts which still held us to the submarine boat.

Suddenly a noise within was heard. Voices were answering each other loudly. What was the matter? Had they discovered our flight? I felt Ned Land slipping a dagger into my hand.

“Yes,” I murmured, “we know how to die!”

The Canadian had stopped in his work. But one word many times repeated, a dreadful word, revealed the cause of the agitation spreading on board the
Nautilus.
It was not we the crew were looking after!

“The Maëlstrom! The Maëlstrom!” I exclaimed.

The Maëlstrom! Could a more dreadful word in a more dreadful situation have sounded in our ears! We were then upon the dangerous coast of Norway. Was the
Nautilus
being drawn into this gulf at the moment our boat was going to leave its sides? We knew that at the tide the pent-up waters between the islands of Ferroe and Lofoten rush with irresistible violence, forming a whirlpool from which no vessel ever escapes. From every point of the horizon enormous waves were meeting, forming a gulf justly called the “Navel of the Ocean,” whose power of attraction extends to a distance of twelve miles. There, not only vessels, but whales, are sacrificed, as well as white bears from the northern regions.

It is thither that the
Nautilus,
voluntarily or involuntarily, had been run by the captain.

It was describing a spiral, the circumference of which was lessening by degrees, and the boat, which was still fastened to its side, was carried along with giddy speed. I felt that sickly giddiness which arises from long-continued whirling round.

We were in dread. Our horror was at its height, circulation had stopped, all nervous influence was annihilated, and we were covered with cold sweat, like a sweat of agony! And what noise around our frail bark! What roarings repeated by the echo miles away! What an uproar was that of the waters broken on the sharp rocks at the bottom, where the hardest bodies are crushed, and trees worn away, “with all the fur rubbed off,” according to the Norwegian phrase!

What a situation to be in! We rocked frightfully. The
Nautilus
defended itself like a human being. Its steel muscles cracked. Sometimes it seemed to stand upright, and we with it!

“We must hold on,” said Ned, “and look after the bolts. We may still be saved if we stick to the
Nautilus——
”

He had not finished the words when we heard a crashing noise, the bolts gave way, and the boat, torn from its groove, was hurled like a stone from a sling into the midst of the whirlpool.

My head struck on a piece of iron, and with the violent shock I lost all consciousness.

THUS ENDS THE VOYAGE under the seas. What passed during that night—how the boat escaped from the eddies of the Maelstrom, how Ned Land, Conseil, and myself ever came out of the gulf—I cannot tell. But when I returned to consciousness, I was lying in a fisherman’s hut, on the Lofoten Isles. My two companions, safe and sound, were near me holding my hands. We embraced each other heartily.

At that moment we could not think of returning to France. The means of communication between the north of Norway and the south are rare, and I am therefore obliged to wait for the steamboat running monthly from Cape North.

And among the worthy people who have so kindly received us I revise my record of these adventures once more. Not a fact has been omitted, not a detail exaggerated. It is a faithful narrative of this incredible expedition in an element inaccessible to man, but to which Progress will one day open a road.

Shall I be believed? I do not know. And it matters little, after all. What I now affirm is, that I have a right to speak of these seas, under which, in less than ten months, I have crossed 20,000 leagues in that submarine tour of the world which has revealed so many wonders.

But what has become of the
Nautilus?
Did it resist the pressure of the Maelstrom? Does Captain Nemo still live?
^ci
And does he still follow under the ocean those frightful retaliations? Or did he stop after that last hecatomb?

Will the waves one day carry to him this manuscript containing the history of his life? Shall I ever know the name of this man? Will the missing vessel tell us by its nationality that of Captain Nemo?

I hope so. And I also hope that his powerful vessel has conquered the sea at its most terrible gulf, and that the
Nautilus
has survived where so many other vessels have been lost! If it be so, if Captain Nero still inhabits the ocean, his adopted country, may hatred be appeased in that savage heart! May the contemplation of so many wonders extinguish forever the spirit of vengeance! May the judge disappear, and the philosopher continue the peaceful exploration of the sea! If his destiny be strange, it is also sublime. Have I not understood it myself? Have I not lived ten months of this unnatural life? And to the question asked by Ecclesiastes
^cj
3,000 years ago, “That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?” two men alone of all now living have the right to give an answer:

1
(p. 5)
“an enormous thing,” ... infinitely larger and more rapid in its movements than a whale:
Verne did not fabricate this idea. Sea monsters large enough to be mistaken for an island had been reported as early as the mid-eighteenth century. In
A Natural History of Norway
(1752), Danish theologian Erik Pontoppidan claimed the existence of an animal as large as a floating island with tentacles strong enough to pull a ship to the bottom of the sea; he called the kraken “the largest and most surprising of all the animal creation.” These rumors were made credible by such discoveries as the washed-up corpse of a giant squid with 60-foot tentacles, found in the South Pacific in 1887 (Grann, “A Reporter at Large: The Squid Hunter”; see “For Further Reading”).

2
(p. 6)
a distance of more than seven hundred nautical leagues:
In nineteenth-century France, a league equaled about 2.16 miles, so 700 nautical leagues would have been 1,512 miles, and 20,000 leagues would have equaled 43,200 miles. Today the league has been standardized to equal 3 nautical miles.

3
. (p. 7)
the white whale, the terrible “Moby Dick”:
The “title character” of American writer Herman Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick is a huge, ferocious white whale that is pursued by Ahab, the obsessed captain of the
Pequod.

4
. (p. 7)
Aristotle and Pliny ... who admitted the existence of these monsters:
In
History of Animals,
Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), known for his writings on logic and natural science, mentions the existence of huge sea serpents that pull oxen from the shore and devour them. Roman naturalist and scholar Pliny the Elder (A.D. 23-79) wrote in
Historia naturalis
(book 9) about a 700-pound sea monster with arms 30 feet long that haunted the coast of Spain.

5
. (p. 8)
Linnæus:
Swedish naturalist and botanist Carolus Linnaeus (also known as Carl von Linné, 1707-1778) established the binomial system of scientific classification, in which species of plants and animals are identified by a two-part Latin name that includes their genus and their species.

6
. (p. 8)
Hippolytus:
In Greek mythology, Hippolytus, son of the Greek king Theseus, rejects the advances of Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love. Seeking revenge, Aphrodite causes Hippolytus’ stepmother to fall in love with him, which leads Theseus to banish and curse him. As Hippolytus leaves the kingdom, his chariot is attacked by a sea monster, and his frightened horses drag him to his death.

7
. (p. 9)
the
Scotia,
of the Cunard Company’s line:
In 1863 the steamship
Scotia
set the record for the fastest journey between New York and Liverpool, England, when it made the trip in less than nine days. The
Scotia
was owned by Sir Samuel Cunard (1788-1865), British founder of the British and North American Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, known as the Cunard Line. Cunard was one of the first to use steam to power a fleet of ships.

8
(p. 14)
Commander Farragut:
Admiral David Glasgow Farragut (1801-1870) was a hero of the American Civil War who defeated the Confederates at New Orleans.

9
. (p. 15)
I no more thought of pursuing the unicorn than of attempting the passage of the North Sea:
In 1867 European traders and navigators were seeking to navigate the dangerous Northwest Passage, a northern passage to India that would have considerably shortened the trading route between the two continents. Many renowned naval explorers died in the attempt. The Northwest Passage was first successfully navigated by Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in 1906, just months after Verne’s death.

10
(p. 19)
hoisting the American colors ... whose thirty-nine stars:
In 1867 there were thirty-seven, not thirty-nine, stars on the American flag. New stars were added when new states joined the confederation of states collectively known as the United States of America.

11
(p. 20)
The frigate might have been called the Argus, for a hundred reasons:
The reference is to Argus, a creature in Greek mythology with 100 eyes; since he closed only a few of his eyes at a time while he slept, the goddess Hera used him as a watchman over Ios, the lover of her husband, Zeus. When Argus was killed, Hera placed his eyes in the tail of the peacock, her favorite bird.

12
(p. 21)
that old language of Rabelais, which is still in use in some Canadian provinces:
The Canadian-French dialect preserved an older syntax and vocabulary than the mainland French Aronnax would have spoken. François Rabelais (c.1490-1553) is known for his satirical novels, including
Pantagruel
and
Gargantua.

13
(p. 34)
We heaved the log, and calculated that the
Abraham Lincoln
was going at the rate of 18½ miles an hour:
The “log” was a piece of wood weighted with lead and attached to a ship by a line tied with knots at regular intervals. Seamen tossed the log from the ship and measured the speed at which the ship moved away from the log by counting the number of knots played out every 28 seconds. This method of measuring speed gave rise to the term “knot” (meaning 1 nautical mile per hour) in nautical terminology.

14
. (p. 36)
I am a good swimmer (though without pretending to rival Byron or Edgar Poe, who were masters of the art):
In 1810 English Romantic poet George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), known as Lord Byron, swam the Hellespont, or Dardanelles, the strait between Turkey and Europe. American gothic and mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was a strong influence on Verne, although he was not reported to be a great swimmer.

15
. (p. 45)
They evidently understood neither the language of Arago nor of Faraday:
That is, the strangers don’t understand either French or English. François Arago (1786-1853) was a French physicist and astronomer who demonstrated the wave nature of light; Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was an English chemist and physicist who discovered electromagnetic induction.

16
6. (p. 53)
I regarded him with fear mingled with interest, as, doubtless, Œdipus regarded the Sphinx:
In Greek mythology, the Sphinx, a horrible monster with the body of a winged lion and the head of a woman, waylaid and devoured travelers who couldn’t answer her riddle: What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? Oedipus, son of King Laius of Thebes, answered correctly that a human crawls on hands and knees as a child, walks erect as a man, and uses a cane in old age, thereby causing the Sphinx to kill herself. A version of this story is given by Greek tragic playwright Sophocles (c.496-406 B.C.) in
Oedipus Rex.

17
(p. 55) Nautilus: Captain Nemo’s ship is named after a species of shellfish found in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans that regulates its buoyancy with gas and liquid exchanges through tubes in its shell wall, enabling it to move up and down in the water column; and also after the
Nautilus,
the first submarine to be successfully operated (1801), invented by American engineer Robert Fulton. The first nuclear submarine, the USS
Nautilus,
was commissioned by the U.S. Navy during World War II; it was the first submarine to cross under the ice of the North Pole.

18
. (p. 56)
“My flocks, like those of Neptune’s old shepherds”:
In Roman mythology, Neptune (called Poseidon by the Greeks) ruled over the sea. His servant Proteus shepherded flocks of seals and dolphins.

19
. (p. 60)
“These musicians
...
are the contemporaries of Orpheus”:
The most accomplished musician of Greek mythology, Orpheus had the power to calm both gods and men with his music, and even to move inanimate objects. When his wife, Eurydice, died, he played his lyre to convince Pluto, ruler of the underworld, to release her.