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After leaving these charming islands protected by the French flag, from the 4th to the 11th of December the Nautilus sailed over about 2,000 miles. During the daytime of the 11th of December I was busy reading in the large drawing-room. Ned Land and Conseil watched the luminous water through the half-open panels. The Nautilus was immovable.
You're familiar with some of them, such as the thermometer, which gives the temperature inside the Nautilus; the barometer, which measures the heaviness of the outside air and forecasts changes in the weather; the humidistat, which indicates the degree of dryness in the atmosphere; the storm glass, whose mixture decomposes to foretell the arrival of tempests; the compass, which steers my course; the sextant, which takes the sun's altitude and tells me my latitude; chronometers, which allow me to calculate my longitude; and finally, spyglasses for both day and night, enabling me to scrutinize every point of the horizon once the Nautilus has risen to the surface of the waves."
"Then we have ample time to finish our voyage," Conseil replied, "if Ned Land doesn't mess things up!" Thus reassured, Conseil went back to studying the shallows that the Nautilus was skimming at moderate speed.
In certain parts of the Caribbean Sea, you can see the sandy bottom with startling distinctness as deep as 145 meters down, and the penetrating power of the sun's rays seems to give out only at a depth of 300 meters. But in this fluid setting traveled by the Nautilus, our electric glow was being generated in the very heart of the waves. It was no longer illuminated water, it was liquid light.
Captain Nemo reentered near midnight. I could hear the ballast tanks filling little by little, and the Nautilus sank gently beneath the surface of the waves. Through the lounge's open windows, I saw large, frightened fish passing like phantoms in the fiery waters. Some were struck by lightning right before my eyes! The Nautilus kept descending.
I stared in my turn and couldn't keep back a movement of revulsion. Before my eyes there quivered a horrible monster worthy of a place among the most farfetched teratological legends. It was a squid of colossal dimensions, fully eight meters long. It was traveling backward with tremendous speed in the same direction as the Nautilus. It gazed with enormous, staring eyes that were tinted sea green.
But the Nautilus was again too quick for her, and in a few minutes was once more hard in chase and sending shot after shot, till one better directed than the rest went through her maintopmast. The crew of the Nautilus sent up a tremendous cheer as the great spar came down with its gaff sail, leaving the schooner for the time like a bird with a broken wing.
"I invite you to come, to spend the day on the 'Nautilus, to play with Jack and Jim, to polish the shells, what you please. I desire not longer to wait here, I desire not that yet Sir Scraper know of my visit. Had he been here, other happenings might have been; as it is shortly, will you come with me, Colorado?" John shut his eyes tight, and took possession of his soul.
"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!" Conseil was in earnest, but I was not of his opinion. However, the situation had changed some minutes before, and we had not perceived. A score of canoes surrounded the Nautilus.
I saw certain connection between the illness of one of the crew and the events of the day before; and this mystery interested me at least as much as the sick man. Captain Nemo conducted me to the poop of the Nautilus, and took me into a cabin situated near the sailors' quarters.
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