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I'll give orders to make for the Gulf of Mannar, and we'll arrive there late tonight." The captain said a few words to his chief officer who went out immediately. Soon the Nautilus reentered its liquid element, and the pressure gauge indicated that it was staying at a depth of thirty feet. With the chart under my eyes, I looked for the Gulf of Mannar.
While I was contemplating this inert mass, suddenly a dozen of these voracious melanoptera appeared around our longboat; but, paying no attention to us, they pounced on the corpse and quarreled over every scrap of it. By 8:30 we were back on board the Nautilus. There I fell to thinking about the incidents that marked our excursion over the Mannar oysterbank. Two impressions inevitably stood out.
"Aren't we going to put on our diving suits?" I asked. "Not yet. I haven't let the Nautilus pull too near the coast, and we're fairly well out from the Mannar oysterbank. But I have the skiff ready, and it will take us to the exact spot where we'll disembark, which will save us a pretty long trek. It's carrying our diving equipment, and we'll suit up just before we begin our underwater exploring."
Fishermen gather in the Gulf of Mannar only during the month of March, and for thirty days some 300 boats concentrate on the lucrative harvest of these treasures from the sea. Each boat is manned by ten oarsmen and ten fishermen.
My eyes flew to the side where land lay, but I saw only a blurred line covering three-quarters of the horizon from southwest to northwest. Going up Ceylon's west coast during the night, the Nautilus lay west of the bay, or rather that gulf formed by the mainland and Mannar Island.
"On that note, professor," Captain Nemo told me, "you and your companions will visit the Mannar oysterbank, and if by chance some eager fisherman arrives early, well, we can watch him at work." "That suits me, captain." "By the way, Professor Aronnax, you aren't afraid of sharks, are you?" "Sharks?" I exclaimed. This struck me as a pretty needless question, to say the least. "Well?"
I could clearly see the shore, which featured a few sparse trees here and there. The skiff advanced toward Mannar Island, which curved to the south. Captain Nemo stood up from his thwart and studied the sea. At his signal the anchor was lowered, but its chain barely ran because the bottom lay no more than a meter down, and this locality was one of the shallowest spots near the bank of shellfish.
Whar a angel makes dwelling-place thar oughter be a full crib, though it may be ambrosyer or mannar, or some o' them fixin's as a purairy man's stummick ain't used to. Anyways, a bit o' doe-deer meat won't do no harum. So, Walt Wilder, ole coon, let's you an' me set our faces southart, an' see what's to turn up at the tarminashun o' six miles' trampin'."
I found it by the 9th parallel off the northwestern shores of Ceylon. It was formed by the long curve of little Mannar Island. To reach it we had to go all the way up Ceylon's west coast.
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