Archives for June 2007
“Innocent boy!” I exclaimed. “Cod are flat only at the
grocery store, where they’re cut open and spread out on display.
But in the water they’re like mullet, spindle–shaped and perfectly
built for speed.”
“I can easily believe Master,” Conseil replied. “But what crowds
of them! What swarms!”
“Bah! My friend, there’d be many more without […]
Chapter 20: In Latitude 47° 24′ and Longitude 17° 28′
In the aftermath of this storm, we were thrown back to the east.
Away went any hope of escaping to the landing places of New York or the St. Lawrence.
In despair, poor Ned went into seclusion like Captain Nemo. Conseil and
I no longer left each other.
As […]
The wind was blowing from the southwest, initially a stiff breeze,
in other words, with a speed of fifteen meters per second,
which built to twenty–five meters near three o’clock in the afternoon.
This is the figure for major storms.
Unshaken by these squalls, Captain Nemo stationed himself
on the platform. He was lashed around the waist to withstand
the […]
I entered. The captain was there. He was bending over his worktable
and hadn’t heard me. Determined not to leave without questioning him,
I drew closer. He looked up sharply, with a frowning brow,
and said in a pretty stern tone:
“Oh, it’s you! What do you want?”
“To speak with you, Captain.”
“But I’m busy, […]
Near noon I was on the platform with Conseil. I shared with him
the relevant details on the Gulf Stream. When my explanation was over,
I invited him to dip his hands into its current.
Conseil did so, and he was quite astonished to experience no sensation
of either hot or cold.
“That comes,” I told him, “from […]
Chapter 19: The Gulf Stream
This dreadful scene on April 20 none of us will ever be able to forget.
I wrote it up in a state of intense excitement. Later I reviewed
my narrative. I read it to Conseil and the Canadian. They found it
accurate in detail but deficient in impact. To convey […]
I hadn’t seen him for a good while. He looked gloomy to me.
Without speaking to us, without even seeing us perhaps, he went
to the panel, stared at the devilfish, and said a few words
to his chief officer.
The latter went out. Soon the panels closed. The ceiling lit up.
I went over to the […]
“Does anybody fish for ‘em nowadays?” the Canadian asked.
“If they don’t fish for them, sailors at least sight them.
A friend of mine, Captain Paul Bos of Le Havre, has often sworn
to me that he encountered one of these monsters of colossal size
in the seas of the East Indies. But the most astonishing event,
which proves […]
By April 20 we had risen to an average level of 1,500 meters.
The nearest land was the island group of the Bahamas, scattered
like a batch of cobblestones over the surface of the water.
There high underwater cliffs reared up, straight walls made of craggy
chunks arranged like big stone foundations, among which there
gaped black caves so deep […]
Chapter 18: The Devilfish
For some days the Nautilus kept veering away from the American coast.
It obviously didn’t want to frequent the waves of the Gulf of Mexico
or the Caribbean Sea. Yet there was no shortage of water under
its keel, since the average depth of these seas is 1,800 meters;
but these waterways, strewn with islands […]