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Imagine the passion which excited impatient Ned Land! He hurled at the
unfortunate creature the most energetic expletives in the English tongue. For
my part, I was only vexed to see the dugong escape all our attacks.
We pursued it without relaxation for an hour, and I began to think it would
prove difficult to capture, when the animal, possessed with the perverse idea
of vengeance of which he had cause to repent, turned upon the pinnace and
assailed us in its turn.
This manoeuvre did not escape the Canadian.
"Look out!" he cried.
The coxswain said some words in his outlandish tongue, doubtless warning the
men to keep on their guard.
The dugong came within twenty feet of the boat, stopped, sniffed the air
briskly with its large nostrils (not pierced at the extremity, but in the
upper part of its muzzle). Then, taking a spring, he threw himself upon us.
The pinnace could not avoid the shock, and half upset, shipped at least two
tons of water, which had to be emptied; but, thanks to the coxswain, we caught
it sideways, not full front, so we were not quite overturned.
While Ned Land, clinging to the bows, belaboured the gigantic animal with
blows from his harpoon, the creature's teeth were buried in the gunwale, and
it lifted the whole thing out of the water, as a lion does a roebuck. We were
upset over one another, and I know not how the adventure would have ended, if
the
Canadian, still enraged with the beast, had not struck it to the heart.
I heard its teeth grind on the iron plate, and the dugong disappeared,
carrying the harpoon with him. But the barrel soon returned to the surface,
and shortly after the body of the animal, turned on its back. The boat came up
with it, took it in tow, and made straight for the Nautilus.
It required tackle of enormous strength to hoist the dugong on to the
platform. It weighed 10,000 lb.
The next day, 11th February, the larder of the Nautilus was enriched by some
more delicate game. A flight of seaswallows rested on the Nautilus. It was a
species of the Sterna nilotica, peculiar to Egypt; its beak is black, head
grey and pointed, the eye surrounded by white spots, the back, wings, and tail
of a greyish colour, the belly and throat white, and claws red. They also took
some dozen of Nile ducks, a wild bird of high flavour, its throat and upper
part of the head white with black spots.
About five o'clock in the evening we sighted to the north the Cape of
RasMohammed. This cape forms the extremity of Arabia Petraea, comprised
between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Acabah.
The Nautilus penetrated into the Straits of Jubal, which leads to the Gulf of
Suez. I distinctly saw a high mountain, towering between the two gulfs of
RasMohammed. It was Mount Horeb, that Sinai at the top of which Moses saw God
face to face.
At six o'clock the Nautilus, sometimes floating, sometimes immersed, passed
some distance from Tor, situated at the end of the bay, the waters of which
seemed tinted with red, an observation already made by
Captain Nemo. Then night fell in the midst of a heavy silence, sometimes
broken by the cries of the pelican and other nightbirds, and the noise of the
waves breaking upon the shore, chafing against the rocks, or the
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panting of some faroff steamer beating the waters of the Gulf with its noisy
paddles.
From eight to nine o'clock the Nautilus remained some fathoms under the water.
According to my calculation we must have been very near Suez. Through the
panel of the saloon I saw the bottom of the rocks brilliantly lit up by our
electric lamp. We seemed to be leaving the Straits behind us more and more.
At a quarterpast nine, the vessel having returned to the surface, I mounted
the platform. Most impatient to pass through Captain Nemo's tunnel, I could
not stay in one place, so came to breathe the fresh night air.
Soon in the shadow I saw a pale light, half discoloured by the fog, shining
about a mile from us.
"A floating lighthouse!" said someone near me.
I turned, and saw the Captain.
"It is the floating light of Suez," he continued. "It will not be long before
we gain the entrance of the tunnel."
"The entrance cannot be easy?"
"No, sir; for that reason I am accustomed to go into the steersman's cage and
myself direct our course. And now, if you will go down, M. Aronnax, the
Nautilus is going under the waves, and will not return to the surface until we
have passed through the Arabian Tunnel."
Captain Nemo led me towards the central staircase; half way down he opened a
door, traversed the upper deck, and landed in the pilot's cage, which it may
be remembered rose at the extremity of the platform. It was a cabin measuring
six feet square, very much like that occupied by the pilot on the steamboats
of the
Mississippi or Hudson. In the midst worked a wheel, placed vertically, and
caught to the tillerrope, which ran to the back of the Nautilus. Four
lightports with lenticular glasses, let in a groove in the partition of the
cabin, allowed the man at the wheel to see in all directions.
This cabin was dark; but soon my eyes accustomed themselves to the obscurity,
and I perceived the pilot, a strong man, with his hands resting on the spokes
of the wheel. Outside, the sea appeared vividly lit up by the lantern, which
shed its rays from the back of the cabin to the other extremity of the
platform.
"Now," said Captain Nemo, "let us try to make our passage."
Electric wires connected the pilot's cage with the machinery room, and from
there the Captain could communicate simultaneously to his Nautilus the
direction and the speed. He pressed a metal knob, and at once the speed of the
screw diminished.
I looked in silence at the high straight wall we were running by at this
moment, the immovable base of a massive sandy coast. We followed it thus for
an hour only some few yards off.
Captain Nemo did not take his eye from the knob, suspended by its two
concentric circles in the cabin. At a simple gesture, the pilot modified the
course of the Nautilus every instant.
I had placed myself at the portscuttle, and saw some magnificent substructures
of coral, zoophytes, seaweed, and fucus, agitating their enormous claws, which
stretched out from the fissures of the rock.
At a quarterpast ten, the Captain himself took the helm. A large gallery,
black and deep, opened before us.
The Nautilus went boldly into it. A strange roaring was heard round its sides.
It was the waters of the Red
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Sea, which the incline of the tunnel precipitated violently towards the
Mediterranean. The Nautilus went with the torrent, rapid as an arrow, in spite
of the efforts of the machinery, which, in order to offer more effective
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resistance, beat the waves with reversed screw.
On the walls of the narrow passage I could see nothing but brilliant rays,
straight lines, furrows of fire, traced by the great speed, under the
brilliant electric light. My heart beat fast.
At thirtyfive minutes past ten, Captain Nemo quitted the helm, and, turning to
me, said:
"The Mediterranean!"
In less than twenty minutes, the Nautilus, carried along by the torrent, had
passed through the Isthmus of
Suez.
CHAPTER VI. THE GRECIAN ARCHIPELAGO
The next day, the 12th of February, at the dawn of day, the Nautilus rose to
the surface. I hastened on to the platform. Three miles to the south the dim
outline of Pelusium was to be seen. A torrent had carried us from one sea to
another. About seven o'clock Ned and Conseil joined me.
"Well, Sir Naturalist," said the Canadian, in a slightly jovial tone, "and the
Mediterranean?"
"We are floating on its surface, friend Ned."
"What!" said Conseil, "this very night."
"Yes, this very night; in a few minutes we have passed this impassable
isthmus." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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