20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Жюль Верн
rest. Day and night they observed the surface of the ocean; and even nyctalops, whose faculty of seeing in the darkness increased their chances fifty per cent., would have had to keep a sharp look-out to win the prize.
I, myself, who thought little about the money, was not, however, the least attentive on board. I was constantly on deck, giving but few minutes to my meals, and indifferent to either rain or sunshine. Now leaning over the sea on the forecastle, now on the taffrail, I devoured with greedy eyes the soft foam which whitened the sea as far as those eyes could reach! How many times have I shared the emotion of the officers and crew when some capricious whale raised its black back above the waves! The deck was crowded in a minute. The companion ladders poured forth a torrent of officers and sailors, each with heaving breast and troubled eye watching the cetacean. I looked and looked till I was nearly blind, whilst Conseil, always calm, kept saying to me, –
‘If monsieur did not keep his eyes open so much he would see more.’
But vain excitement! The Abraham Lincoln would modify her speed, run down the animal signalled, which always turned out to be a simple whale or common cachalot, and disappeared amidst a storm of execration.
Ned Land always showed the most tenacious incredulity; he even affected not to examine the seas except during his watch, unless a whale was in sight; and yet his marvellous power of vision might have been of great service. But eight hours out of the twelve the obstinate Canadian read or slept in his cabin.
‘Bah!’ he would answer; ‘there is nothing, M. Aronnax; and even if there is an animal, what chance have we of seeing it? Are we not going about at random? I will admit that the beast has been seen again in the North Pacific, but two months have already gone by since that meeting, and according to the temperament of your narwhal it does not like to stop long enough in the same quarter to grow mouldy. It is endowed with a prodigious faculty of moving about. Now, you know as well as I do, professor, that Nature makes nothing inconsistent, and would not give to a slow animal the faculty of moving rapidly if it did not want to use it. Therefore, if the beast exists, it is far enough off now.’
I did not know what to answer to that. We were evidently going along blindly. But how were we to do otherwise? Our chances, too, were very limited. In the meantime no one yet doubted of our success, and there was not a sailor on board who would have bet against the narwhal and against its early apparition.
We were at last on the scene of the last frolics of the monster; and the truth was, no one lived really on board. The entire crew were under the influence of such nervous excitement as I could not give the idea of. They neither ate nor slept. Twenty times a day some error of estimation, or the optical delusion of a sailor perched on the yards, caused intolerable frights; and these emotions, twenty times repeated, kept us in a state too violent not to cause an early reaction.
And, in fact, the reaction was not slow in coming. For three months – three months, each day of which lasted a century – the Abraham Lincoln ploughed all the waters of the North Pacific, running down all the whales signalled, making sharp deviations from her route, veering suddenly from one tack to another, and not leaving one point of the Chinese or Japanese coast unexplored. And yet nothing was seen but the immense waste of waters – nothing that resembled a gigantic narwhal, nor a submarine islet, nor a wreck, nor a floating reef, nor anything at all supernatural.
The reaction, therefore, began. Discouragement at first took possession of all minds, and opened a breach for incredulity. A new sentiment was experienced on board, composed of three-tenths of shame and seven-tenths of rage. They called themselves fools for being taken in by a chimera, and were still more furious at it. The mountains of arguments piled up for a year fell down all at once, and all every one thought of was to make up the hours of meals and sleep which they had so foolishly sacrificed.
With the mobility natural to the human mind, they threw themselves from one excess into another. The warmest partisans of the enterprise became finally its most ardent detractors. The reaction ascended from the depths of the vessel, from the coal-hole, to the officers’ ward-room, and certainly, had it not been for very strong determination on the part of Captain Farragut, the head of the frigate would have been definitely turned southward.
However, this useless search could be no further prolonged. No crew of the American navy had ever shown more patience or zeal; its want of success could not be imputed to it. There was nothing left to do but to return.
A representation in this sense was made to the commander. The commander kept his ground. The sailors did not hide their dissatisfaction, and the service suffered from it. I do not mean that there was revolt on board, but after a reasonable period of obstinacy the commander, like Columbus before him, asked for three days’ patience. If in three days the monster had not reappeared, the man at the helm should give three turns of the wheel, and the Abraham Lincoln should make for the European seas.
Two days passed. The frigate kept up steam at half-pressure. Large quantities of bacon were trailed in the wake of the ship, to the great satisfaction of the sharks. The frigate lay to, and her boats were sent in all directions, but the night of the 4th of November passed without unveiling the submarine mystery.
Japan lay less than 200 miles to leeward. Eight bells had just struck as I was leaning over the starboard side. Conseil, standing near me, was looking straight in front of him. The crew, perched in the ratlins, were keeping a sharp look-out in the approaching darkness. Officers with their night-glasses swept the horizon.
Looking at Conseil, I saw that the brave fellow was feeling slightly the general influence – at least it seemed to me so. Perhaps for the first time, his nerves were vibrating under the action of a sentiment of curiosity.
‘Well, Conseil,’ said I, ‘this is your last chance of pocketing 2000 dollars.’
‘Will monsieur allow me to tell him that I never counted upon the reward, and if the Union had promised 100,000 dollars it would never be any the poorer.’
‘You are right, Conseil. It has been a stupid affair, after all. We have lost time and patience, and might just as well have been in France six months ago.’
‘Yes, in monsieur’s little apartments, classifying monsieur’s fossils, and monsieur’s babiroussa would be in its cage in the Jardin des Plantes, attracting all the curious people in Paris.’
‘Yes, Conseil, and besides that we shall get well laughed at.’
‘Certainly,’ said Conseil tranquilly. ‘I think they will laugh at monsieur. And I must say—’
‘What, Conseil?’
‘That it will serve monsieur right! When one has the honour to be a savant like monsieur, one does not expose—’
Conseil did not finish his compliment. In the midst of general silence Ned Land’s voice was heard calling out, –
‘Look out, there! The thing we are looking for is on our weather beam!’
At this cry the entire crew rushed towards the harpooner. Captain, officers, masters, sailors, and cabin-boys, even the engineers left their engines, and the stokers their fires. The order to stop her had been given, and the frigate was only moving by her own momentum. The darkness was then profound, and although I knew the Canadian’s eyes were very good, I asked myself what he could have seen, and how he could have seen it. My heart beat violently.
At two cables’ length from the Abraham Lincoln on her starboard quarter, the sea seemed to be illuminated below the surface. The monster lay some fathoms below the sea, and threw out the very intense but inexplicable light mentioned in the reports of several captains. This light described an immense and much-elongated oval, in the centre of which was condensed a focus the over-powering brilliancy of which died out by successive gradations.
‘It is only an agglomeration of phosphoric particles,’ cried one of the officers.