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And yet they can't escape the Provençal fishermen, who prize them as highly as did the ancient inhabitants of Turkey and Italy; and these valuable animals, as oblivious as if they were deaf and blind, leap right into the Marseilles tuna nets and perish by the thousands. Just for the record, I'll mention those Mediterranean fish that Conseil and I barely glimpsed.
Four crewmen were waiting at the door, and they led us to the cell where we had spent our first night aboard the Nautilus. Ned Land tried to lodge a complaint, but the only answer he got was a door shut in his face. "Will master tell me what this means?" Conseil asked me. I told my companions what had happened. They were as astonished as I was, but no wiser.
I had gotten to this point in my observations when Ned and Conseil woke up almost simultaneously, under the influence of this reviving air purification. They rubbed their eyes, stretched their arms, and sprang to their feet. "Did master sleep well?" Conseil asked me with his perennial good manners. "Extremely well, my gallant lad," I replied. "And how about you, Mr. Ned Land?"
Since I didn't say anything, the Canadian stood up and approached me: "We'll do it this evening at nine o'clock," he said. "I've alerted Conseil. By that time Captain Nemo will be locked in his room and probably in bed. Neither the mechanics or the crewmen will be able to see us. Conseil and I will go to the central companionway.
In fact, it soon would have hit the underbelly of the Ice Bank, but it had stopped in time and was floating in midwater. "That was a close call!" Conseil then said. "Yes. We could have been crushed between these masses of ice, or at least imprisoned between them. And then, with no way to renew our air supply. . . . Yes, that was a close call!" "If it's over with!" Ned Land muttered.
Now I, Pierre Arronax, assistant professor in the Paris Museum of Natural History, was at this time in America, where I had been engaged on a scientific expedition into the disagreeable region of Nebraska. I had arrived at New York in company of my faithful attendant, Conseil, and was devoting my attention to classifying the numerous specimens I had gathered for the Paris Museum.
"No, in a church," Conseil replied. "In a church!" the Canadian exclaimed. "Yes, Ned my friend. It had a picture that portrayed the devilfish in question." "Oh good!" Ned Land exclaimed with a burst of laughter. "Mr. Conseil put one over on me!" "Actually he's right," I said. "I've heard about that picture.
If the investigator should remain sceptical, however, let him examine the "Registre des Condamnes et Bannia a Cause des Troubles des Pays Bas," in three, together with the Records of the "Conseil des Troubles," in forty-three folio volumes, in the Royal Archives at Brussels.
Moreover, he enjoyed excellent health that defied all ailments, owned solid muscles, but hadn't a nerve in him, not a sign of nerves the mental type, I mean. The lad was thirty years old, and his age to that of his employer was as fifteen is to twenty. Please forgive me for this underhanded way of admitting I had turned forty. But Conseil had one flaw.
"Sure I do," the harpooner replied in all seriousness. "They're classified into fish we eat and fish we don't eat!" "Spoken like a true glutton," Conseil replied. "But tell me, are you familiar with the differences between bony fish and cartilaginous fish?" "Just maybe, Conseil." "And how about the subdivisions of these two large classes?" "I haven't the foggiest notion," the Canadian replied.
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