Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea quotes

At length an article in a well-known satirical journal by a favourite contributor, the chief of the staff, settled the monster, like Hippolytus, giving it the death-blow amidst an universal burst of laughter.

Wit had conquered science.

During the first months of the year 1867 the question seemed buried, never to revive, when new facts were brought before the public. It was then no longer a scientific problem to be solved, but a real danger seriously to be avoided.

At seventeen minutes past four in the afternoon, whilst the passengers were assembled at lunch in the great saloon, a slight shock was felt on the hull of the Scotia, on her quarter, a little aft of the port-paddle.

The Scotia had not struck, but she had been struck, and seemingly by something rather sharp and penetrating than blunt.

The shock had been so slight that no one had been alarmed, had it not been for the shouts of the carpenter’s watch, who rushed on to the bridge, exclaiming, “We are sinking! we are sinking!”

“We shall be well off here,” said I to Conseil.

“As well, by your honour’s leave, as a hermit-crab in the shell of a whelk,” said Conseil.

I left Conseil to stow our trunks conveniently away, and remounted the poop in order to survey the preparations for departure.

The cabins poured forth a torrent of sailors and officers, each with heaving breast and troubled eye watching the course of the cetacean. I looked and looked, till I was nearly blind, whilst Conseil, always phlegmatic, kept repeating in a calm voice:

“If, sir, you would not squint so much, you would see better!”

But vain excitement! The Abraham Lincoln checked its speed and made for the animal signalled, a simple whale, or common cachalot, which soon disappeared amidst a storm of execration.

We were on the theatre of the last diversions of the monster: and, to say truth, we no longer lived on board.

Hearts palpitated, fearfully preparing themselves for future incurable aneurism.

The entire ship’s crew were undergoing a nervous excitement, of which I can give no idea:

It seemed that, at the moment that the enormous narwhal had come to take breath at the surface of the water, the air was engulfed in its lungs, like the steam in the vast cylinders of a machine of two thousand horse-power.

“Hum!” thought I, “a whale with the strength of a cavalry regiment would be a pretty whale!”

We were on the qui vive till daylight, and prepared for the combat. The fishing implements were laid along the hammock nettings.

I struggled against being drawn down the abyss. Suddenly my clothes were seized by a strong hand, and I felt myself quickly drawn up to the surface of the sea; and I heard, yes, I heard these words pronounced in my ear—

“If master would be so good as to lean on my shoulder, master would swim with much greater ease.”

I seized with one hand my faithful Conseil’s arm.

“Perhaps so,” calmly answered Conseil. “However, we have still several hours before us, and one can do a good deal in some hours.”

Conseil’s imperturbable coolness set me up again.

I swam more vigorously; but, cramped by my clothes, which stuck to me like a leaden weight, I felt great difficulty in bearing up. Conseil saw this.

“Leave me! leave me!” I said to him.

“Leave my master? Never!” replied he. “I would drown first.”

Just then the moon appeared through the fringes of a thick cloud that the wind was driving to the east. The surface of the sea glittered with its rays. This kindly light reanimated us. My head got better again.

“Only I soon found out why my harpoon had not entered its skin and was blunted.”

“Because, Professor, that beast is made of sheet iron.”

The Canadian’s last words produced a sudden revolution in my brain. I wriggled myself quickly to the top of the being, or object, half out of the water, which served us for a refuge. I kicked it.

“By what name ought I to address you?”

“Sir,” replied the commander, “I am nothing to you but Captain Nemo; and you and your companions are nothing to me but the passengers of the Nautilus.”

Captain Nemo called. A steward appeared. The captain gave him his orders in that strange language which I did not understand. Then, turning towards the Canadian and Conseil—

“Yes; I love it! The sea is everything. It covers seven-tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy.

It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides.

The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the ‘Living Infinite,’ as one of your poets has said.

Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is quenched, and their power disappears.

Ah! sir, live—live in the bosom of the waters! There only is independence! There I recognise no masters! There I am free!

”

“And these musicians?” said I, pointing out some works of Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Hérold, Wagner, Auber, Gounod, and a number of others, scattered over a large model piano-organ which occupied one of the panels of the drawing-room.

“These musicians,” replied Captain Nemo, “are the contemporaries of Orpheus; for in the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced; and I am dead, Professor; as much dead as those of your friends who are sleeping six feet under the earth!”

Captain Nemo was silent, and seemed lost in a profound reverie. I contemplated him with deep interest, analysing in silence the strange expression of his countenance.

“One last question, Captain Nemo.”

“Immensely rich, sir; and I could, without missing it, pay the national debt of France.”

I stared at the singular person who spoke thus. Was he playing upon my credulity? The future would decide that.

The penetrating power of the solar rays does not seem to cease for a depth of one hundred and fifty fathoms. But in this middle fluid travelled over by the Nautilus, the electric brightness was produced even in the bosom of the waves.

It was no longer luminous water, but liquid light.

On each side a window opened into this unexplored abyss. The obscurity of the saloon showed to advantage the brightness outside, and we looked out as if this pure crystal had been the glass of an immense aquarium.

And now, how can I retrace the impression left upon me by that walk under the waters?

Words are impotent to relate such wonders!

Captain Nemo walked in front, his companion followed some steps behind. Conseil and I remained near each other, as if an exchange of words had been possible through our metallic cases.

One day, when I was suggesting this theory to Captain Nemo, he replied coldly:

“The earth does not want new continents, but new men.”

Chance had conducted the Nautilus towards the Island of Clermont-Tonnere, one of the most curious of the group, that was discovered in 1822 by Captain Bell of the Minerva. I could study now the madreporal system, to which are due the islands in this ocean.

They were the instructions of the naval minister to Commander La Perouse, annotated in the margin in Louis XVI’s handwriting.

“Ah! it is a fine death for a sailor!” said Captain Nemo, at last. “A coral tomb makes a quiet grave; and I trust that I and my comrades will find no other.”

“Savages!” he echoed, ironically. “So you are astonished, Professor, at having set foot on a strange land and finding savages?

Savages! where are there not any? Besides, are they worse than others, these whom you call savages?

”

“Well, sir! do you not see that the cannibal has commenced the attack?”

“A shell is not worth the life of a man,” said I.

“Ah! the scoundrel!” cried Conseil; “I would rather he had broken my shoulder!”

So we progressed, incessantly charmed by some new marvel. The days passed rapidly away, and I took no account of them. Ned, according to habit, tried to vary the diet on board.

Like snails, we were fixed to our shells, and I declare it is easy to lead a snail’s life.

Thus this life seemed easy and natural, and we thought no longer of the life we led on land; but something happened to recall us to the strangeness of our situation.

“And he rests now, near his companions, in the coral cemetery?”

“Yes, forgotten by all else, but not by us. We dug the grave, and the polypi undertake to seal our dead for eternity.”

And, burying his face quickly in his hands, he tried in vain to suppress a sob. Then he added: “Our peaceful cemetery is there, some hundred feet below the surface of the waves.”

“Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of the reach of sharks.”

“Yes, sir, of sharks and men,” gravely replied the Captain.

“Faith, with a good harpoon! You know, sir, these sharks are ill-fashioned beasts. They turn on their bellies to seize you, and in that time——”

Ned Land had a way of saying “seize” which made my blood run cold.

“Well, and you, Conseil, what do you think of sharks?”

Captain Nemo pointed with his hand to the enormous heap of oysters; and I could well understand that this mine was inexhaustible, for

Nature’s creative power is far beyond man’s instinct of destruction.

Ned Land, faithful to his instinct, hastened to fill a net which he carried by his side with some of the finest specimens. But we could not stop. We must follow the Captain, who seemed to guide himself by paths known only to himself.

When I made this observation to him, he answered in a slightly moved tone:

“That Indian, sir, is an inhabitant of an oppressed country; and I am still, and shall be, to my last breath, one of them!”

The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, “the great sea” of the Hebrews, “the sea” of the Greeks, the “mare nostrum” of the Romans

, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires;

“That I allow,” replied the Canadian; “but we must risk that.

Liberty is worth paying for

; besides, the boat is strong, and a few miles with a fair wind to carry us is no great thing. Who knows but by to-morrow we may be a hundred leagues away?

“A society which has received from the Spanish Government the privilege of seeking those buried galleons. The shareholders are led on by the allurement of an enormous bounty, for they value these rich shipwrecks at five hundred millions.”

“Five hundred millions they were,” answered Captain Nemo, “but they are so no longer.”

“Just so,” said I; “and a warning to those shareholders would be an act of charity. But who knows if it would be well received? What gamblers usually regret above all is less the loss of their money than of their foolish hopes.

“Do you think then, sir, that these riches are lost because I gather them? Is it for myself alone, according to your idea, that I take the trouble to collect these treasures? Who told you that I did not make a good use of it?

Do you think I am ignorant that there are suffering beings and oppressed races on this earth, miserable creatures to console, victims to avenge?

Do you not understand?”

In the midst of this stony maze furrowing the bottom of the Atlantic, Captain Nemo advanced without hesitation. He knew this dreary road. Doubtless he had often travelled over it, and could not lose himself. I followed him with unshaken confidence.

He seemed to me like a genie of the sea

; and, as he walked before me, I could not help admiring his stature, which was outlined in black on the luminous horizon.

Here and there some chrysanthemums grew timidly at the foot of an aloe with long, sickly-looking leaves. But between the streams of lava, I saw some little violets still slightly perfumed, and I admit that I smelt them with delight.

Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.

We had arrived at the foot of some sturdy dragon-trees, which had pushed aside the rocks with their strong roots, when Ned Land exclaimed:

“Then it was to procure fresh meat for my crew.

Here it would be killing for killing’s sake.

I know that is a privilege reserved for man, but I do not approve of such murderous pastime. In destroying the southern whale (like the Greenland whale, an inoffensive creature), your traders do a culpable action, Master Land.

“Well, sir,” replied the Canadian, whose enthusiasm had somewhat calmed; “it is a terrible spectacle, certainly. But I am not a butcher. I am a hunter, and I call this a butchery.”

“It is a massacre of mischievous creatures,” replied the Captain; “and the Nautilus is not a butcher’s knife.”

“I like my harpoon better,” said the Canadian.

“I like my harpoon better,” said the Canadian.

“Every one to his own,” answered the Captain, looking fixedly at Ned Land.

I feared he would commit some act of violence, which would end in sad consequences. But his anger was turned by the sight of a whale which the Nautilus had just come up with. The creature had not quite escaped from the cachalot’s teeth.

huge mirrors, reflecting a few rays of sunshine, half drowned in the fog. And over this desolate face of nature a stern silence reigned, scarcely broken by the flapping of the wings of petrels and puffins.

Everything was frozen—even the noise.

The Nautilus was then obliged to stop in its adventurous course amid these fields of ice. In spite of our efforts, in spite of the powerful means employed to break up the ice, the Nautilus remained immovable.

“To the pole!” I exclaimed, unable to repress a gesture of incredulity.

“Yes,” replied the Captain, coldly, “to the Antarctic pole—to that unknown point from whence springs every meridian of the globe. You know whether I can do as I please with the Nautilus!”

Yes, I knew that. I knew that this man was bold, even to rashness.

“I believe you! Let us go ahead! There are no obstacles for us! Let us smash this iceberg! Let us blow it up; and, if it resists, let us give the Nautilus wings to fly over it!”

“Over it, sir!” said Captain Nemo, quietly; “no, not over it, but under it!”

“Under it!” I exclaimed, a sudden idea of the Captain’s projects flashing upon my mind. I understood; the wonderful qualities of the Nautilus were going to serve us in this superhuman enterprise.

Saying which, Captain Nemo unfurled a black banner, bearing an “N” in gold quartered on its bunting. Then, turning towards the orb of day, whose last rays lapped the horizon of the sea, he exclaimed:

“Adieu, sun! Disappear, thou radiant orb! rest beneath this open sea, and let a night of six months spread its shadows over my new domains!”

“From a caprice of nature, not from the ignorance of man. Not a mistake has been made in the working. But we cannot prevent equilibrium from producing its effects.

We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.

”

I am mad at being obliged to admit it. No one has ever seen anything like it; but the sight may cost us dear. And, if I must say all, I think we are seeing here things which God never intended man to see.”

Ned was right, it was too beautiful.

Suddenly a cry from Conseil made me turn.

Thus around the Nautilus, above and below, was an impenetrable wall of ice. We were prisoners to the iceberg. I watched the Captain. His countenance had resumed its habitual imperturbability.

“Gentlemen,” he said calmly, “there are two ways of dying in the circumstances in which we are placed.”

(This puzzling person had the air of a mathematical professor lecturing to his pupils.) “The first is to be crushed; the second is to die of suffocation.

A moral torpor took hold of me. I was powerless, almost unconscious. My brave Conseil, though exhibiting the same symptoms and suffering in the same manner, never left me. He took my hand and encouraged me, and I heard him murmur,

“Oh! if I could only not breathe, so as to leave more air for my master!”

Tears came into my eyes on hearing him speak thus. If our situation to all was intolerable in the interior, with what haste and gladness would we put on our cork-jackets to work in our turn! Pickaxes sounded on the frozen ice-beds.

He did not speak, he roared, as, with his body thrown forward, he wrung the Canadian’s shoulders. Then, leaving him, and turning to the ship of war, whose shot was still raining around him, he exclaimed, with a powerful voice, “

Ah, ship of an accursed nation, you know who I am! I do not want your colours to know you by! Look! and I will show you mine!

”

I turned to Captain Nemo.

That terrible avenger, a perfect archangel of hatred, was still looking.

When all was over, he turned to his room, opened the door, and entered. I followed him with my eyes. On the end wall beneath his heroes, I saw the portrait of a woman, still young, and two little children.