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The Nautilus would do long, diagonal dives that took us to every level. But on April 11 it rose suddenly, and the shore reappeared at the mouth of the Amazon River, a huge estuary whose outflow is so considerable, it desalts the sea over an area of several leagues. We cut the Equator. Twenty miles to the west lay Guiana, French territory where we could easily have taken refuge.
To my great surprise, Captain Nemo gave me the permission I asked for, and he gave it very agreeably, without even exacting from me a promise to return to the vessel; but flight across New Guinea might be very perilous, and I should not have counselled Ned Land to attempt it. Better to be a prisoner on board the Nautilus than to fall into the hands of the natives.
"Yes, sir; it shall go to the pole." "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.
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.
It was a delightful animal whose discovery, according to the ancients, is a sign of good luck. Aristotle, Athenaeus, Pliny, and Oppian studied its habits and lavished on its behalf all the scientific poetry of Greece and Italy. They called it "nautilus" and "pompilius." But modern science has not endorsed these designations, and this mollusk is now known by the name argonaut.
The Captain said something to his second, who immediately went out. Soon the Nautilus returned to her native element, and the manometer showed that she was about thirty feet deep. "Well, sir," said Captain Nemo, "you and your companions shall visit the Bank of Manaar, and if by chance some fisherman should be there, we shall see him at work." "Agreed, Captain!"
The colonists listened reverently to the words of the dying man. "To-morrow, after my death, Mr. Harding," continued the captain, "yourself and companions will leave the 'Nautilus, for all the treasures it contains must perish with me. One token alone will remain with you of Prince Dakkar, with whose history you are now acquainted.
"I figure that after visiting these unusual waterways of Arabia and Egypt, the Nautilus will go back down to the Indian Ocean, perhaps through Mozambique Channel, perhaps off the Mascarene Islands, and then make for the Cape of Good Hope." "And once we're at the Cape of Good Hope?" the Canadian asked with typical persistence.
It was no common misanthropy which had shut Captain Nemo and his companions within the Nautilus, but a hatred, either monstrous or sublime, which time could never weaken. Did this hatred still seek for vengeance? The future would soon teach me that. But the Nautilus was rising slowly to the surface of the sea, and the form of the Avenger disappeared by degrees from my sight.
In one hideous pitching movement, the Nautilus reared its steel spur into the air like a lightning rod, and I saw long sparks shoot down it. Shattered, at the end of my strength, I slid flat on my belly to the hatch. I opened it and went below to the lounge. By then the storm had reached its maximum intensity. It was impossible to stand upright inside the Nautilus.
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