20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Chapter 8 "m*****s in Mobili"

Chapter 8

"m*****s in Mobili"THIS BRUTALLY EXECUTED capture was carried out with lightning

speed. My companions and I had no time to collect ourselves. I

don't know how they felt about being shoved inside this aquatic

prison, but as for me, I was shivering all over. With whom were we

dealing? Surely with some new breed of pirates, exploiting the sea

after their own fashion.

The narrow hatch had barely closed over me when I was surrounded

by profound darkness. Saturated with the outside light, my eyes

couldn't make out a thing. I felt my n***d feet clinging to the

steps of an iron ladder. Forcibly seized, Ned Land and Conseil were

behind me. At the foot of the ladder, a door opened and instantly

closed behind us with a loud clang.

We were alone. Where? I couldn't say, could barely even imagine.

All was darkness, but such utter darkness that after several

minutes, my eyes were still unable to catch a single one of those

hazy gleams that drift through even the blackest nights.

Meanwhile, furious at these goings on, Ned Land gave free rein

to his indignation.

"Damnation!" he exclaimed. "These people are about as hospitable

as the savages of New Caledonia! All that's lacking is for them to

be cannibals! I wouldn't be surprised if they were, but believe you

me, they won't eat me without my kicking up a protest!"

"Calm yourself, Ned my friend," Conseil replied serenely. "Don't

flare up so quickly! We aren't in a kettle yet!"

"In a kettle, no," the Canadian shot back, "but in an oven for

sure. It's dark enough for one. Luckily my Bowie knife hasn't left

me, and I can still see well enough to put it to use.[5] The first one of these bandits who lays a

hand on me—" "Don't be so irritable, Ned," I then told the

harpooner, "and don't ruin things for us with pointless violence.

Who knows whether they might be listening to us? Instead, let's try

to find out where we are!" I started moving, groping my way. After

five steps I encountered an iron wall made of riveted boilerplate.

Then, turning around, I bumped into a wooden table next to which

several stools had been set. The floor of this prison lay hidden

beneath thick, hempen matting that deadened the sound of footsteps.

Its n***d walls didn't reveal any trace of a door or window. Going

around the opposite way, Conseil met up with me, and we returned to

the middle of this cabin, which had to be twenty feet long by ten

wide. As for its height, not even Ned Land, with his great stature,

was able to determine it. Half an hour had already gone by without

our situation changing, when our eyes were suddenly spirited from

utter darkness into blinding light. Our prison lit up all at once;

in other words, it filled with luminescent matter so intense that

at first I couldn't stand the brightness of it. From its glare and

whiteness, I recognized the electric glow that had played around

this underwater boat like some magnificent phosphorescent

phenomenon. After involuntarily closing my eyes, I reopened them

and saw that this luminous force came from a frosted half globe

curving out of the cabin's ceiling. "Finally! It's light enough to

see!" Ned Land exclaimed, knife in hand, staying on the defensive.

"Yes," I replied, then ventured the opposite view. "But as for our

situation, we're still in the dark." "Master must learn patience,"

said the emotionless Conseil. This sudden illumination of our cabin

enabled me to examine its tiniest details. It contained only a

table and five stools. Its invisible door must have been

hermetically sealed. Not a sound reached our ears. Everything

seemed dead inside this boat. Was it in motion, or stationary on

the surface of the ocean, or sinking into the depths? I couldn't

tell. But this luminous globe hadn't been turned on without good

reason. Consequently, I hoped that some crewmen would soon make an

appearance. If you want to consign people to oblivion, you don't

light up their dungeons. I was not mistaken. Unlocking noises

became audible, a door opened, and two men appeared. One was short

and stocky, powerfully muscled, broad shouldered, robust of limbs,

the head squat, the hair black and luxuriant, the mustache heavy,

the eyes bright and penetrating, and his whole personality stamped

with that southern–blooded zest that, in France, typifies the

people of Provence. The philosopher Diderot has very aptly claimed

that a man's bearing is the clue to his character, and this stocky

little man was certainly a living proof of this claim. You could

sense that his everyday conversation must have been packed with

such vivid figures of speech as personification, symbolism, and

misplaced modifiers. But I was never in a position to verify this

because, around me, he used only an odd and utterly

incomprehensible dialect. The second stranger deserves a more

detailed description. A disciple of such character–judging

anatomists as Gratiolet or Engel could have read this man's

features like an open book. Without hesitation, I identified his

dominant qualities—self–confidence, since his head reared like a

nobleman's above the arc formed by the lines of his shoulders, and

his black eyes gazed with icy assurance; calmness, since his skin,

pale rather than ruddy, indicated tranquility of blood; energy,

shown by the swiftly knitting muscles of his brow; and finally

courage, since his deep breathing denoted tremendous reserves of

vitality. I might add that this was a man of great pride, that his

calm, firm gaze seemed to reflect thinking on an elevated plane,

and that the harmony of his facial expressions and bodily movements

resulted in an overall effect of unquestionable candor—according to

the findings of physiognomists, those analysts of facial character.

I felt "involuntarily reassured" in his presence, and this boded

well for our interview. Whether this individual was thirty–five or

fifty years of age, I could not precisely state. He was tall, his

forehead broad, his nose straight, his mouth clearly etched, his

teeth magnificent, his hands refined, tapered, and to use a word

from palmistry, highly "psychic," in other words, worthy of serving

a lofty and passionate spirit. This man was certainly the most

wonderful physical specimen I had ever encountered. One unusual

detail: his eyes were spaced a little far from each other and could

instantly take in nearly a quarter of the horizon. This ability—as

I later verified—was strengthened by a range of vision even greater

than Ned Land's. When this stranger focused his gaze on an object,

his eyebrow lines gathered into a frown, his heavy eyelids closed

around his pupils to contract his huge field of vision, and he

looked! What a look—as if he could magnify objects shrinking into

the distance; as if he could probe your very soul; as if he could

pierce those sheets of water so opaque to our eyes and scan the

deepest seas … ! Wearing caps made of sea–otter fur, and

shod in sealskin fishing boots, these two strangers were dressed in

clothing made from some unique fabric that flattered the figure and

allowed great freedom of movement. The taller of the two—apparently

the leader on board—examined us with the greatest care but without

pronouncing a word. Then, turning to his companion, he conversed

with him in a language I didn't recognize. It was a sonorous,

harmonious, flexible dialect whose vowels seemed to undergo a

highly varied accentuation. The other replied with a shake of the

head and added two or three utterly incomprehensible words. Then he

seemed to question me directly with a long stare. I replied in

clear French that I wasn't familiar with his language; but he

didn't seem to understand me, and the situation grew rather

baffling. "Still, master should tell our story," Conseil said to

me. "Perhaps these gentlemen will grasp a few words of it!" I tried

again, telling the tale of our adventures, clearly articulating my

every syllable, and not leaving out a single detail. I stated our

names and titles; then, in order, I introduced Professor Aronnax,

his manservant Conseil, and Mr. Ned Land, harpooner. The man with

calm, gentle eyes listened to me serenely, even courteously, and

paid remarkable attention. But nothing in his facial expression

indicated that he understood my story. When I finished, he didn't

pronounce a single word. One resource still left was to speak

English. Perhaps they would be familiar with this nearly universal

language. But I only knew it, as I did the German language, well

enough to read it fluently, not well enough to speak it correctly.

Here, however, our overriding need was to make ourselves

understood. "Come on, it's your turn," I told the harpooner. "Over

to you, Mr. Land. Pull out of your bag of tricks the best English

ever spoken by an Anglo–Saxon, and try for a more favorable result

than mine." Ned needed no persuading and started our story all over

again, most of which I could follow. Its content was the same, but

the form differed. Carried away by his volatile temperament, the

Canadian put great animation into it. He complained vehemently

about being imprisoned in defiance of his civil rights, asked by

virtue of which law he was hereby detained, invoked writs of habeas

corpus, threatened to press charges against anyone holding him in

illegal custody, ranted, gesticulated, shouted, and finally

conveyed by an expressive gesture that we were dying of hunger.

This was perfectly true, but we had nearly forgotten the fact. Much

to his amazement, the harpooner seemed no more intelligible than I

had been. Our visitors didn't bat an eye. Apparently they were

engineers who understood the languages of neither the French

physicist Arago nor the English physicist Faraday. Thoroughly

baffled after vainly exhausting our philological resources, I no

longer knew what tactic to pursue, when Conseil told me: "If master

will authorize me, I'll tell the whole business in German." "What!

You know German?" I exclaimed. "Like most Flemish people, with all

due respect to master." "On the contrary, my respect is due you. Go

to it, my boy." And Conseil, in his serene voice, described for the

third time the various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our

narrator's fine accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German

language met with no success. Finally, as a last resort, I hauled

out everything I could remember from my early schooldays, and I

tried to narrate our adventures in Latin. Cicero would have plugged

his ears and sent me to the scullery, but somehow I managed to pull

through. With the same negative result. This last attempt

ultimately misfiring, the two strangers exchanged a few words in

their incomprehensible language and withdrew, not even favoring us

with one of those encouraging gestures that are used in every

country in the world. The door closed again. "This is outrageous!"

Ned Land shouted, exploding for the twentieth time. "I ask you! We

speak French, English, German, and Latin to these rogues, and

neither of them has the decency to even answer back!" "Calm down,

Ned," I told the seething harpooner. "Anger won't get us anywhere."

"But professor," our irascible companion went on, "can't you see

that we could die of hunger in this iron cage?" "Bah!" Conseil put

in philosophically. "We can hold out a good while yet!" "My

friends," I said, "we mustn't despair. We've gotten out of tighter

spots. So please do me the favor of waiting a bit before you form

your views on the commander and crew of this boat." "My views are

fully formed," Ned Land shot back. "They're rogues!" "Oh good! And

from what country?" "Roguedom!" "My gallant Ned, as yet that

country isn't clearly marked on maps of the world, but I admit that

the nationality of these two strangers is hard to make out! Neither

English, French, nor German, that's all we can say. But I'm tempted

to think that the commander and his chief officer were born in the

low latitudes. There must be southern blood in them. But as to

whether they're Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, or East Indians, their

physical characteristics don't give me enough to go on. And as for

their speech, it's utterly incomprehensible." "That's the nuisance

in not knowing every language," Conseil replied, "or the drawback

in not having one universal language!" "Which would all go out the

window!" Ned Land replied. "Don't you see, these people have a

language all to themselves, a language they've invented just to

cause despair in decent people who ask for a little dinner! Why, in

every country on earth, when you open your mouth, snap your jaws,

smack your lips and teeth, isn't that the world's most

understandable message? From Quebec to the Tuamotu Islands, from

Paris to the Antipodes, doesn't it mean: I'm hungry, give me a bite

to eat!" "Oh," Conseil put in, "there are some people so

unintelligent by nature … " As he was saying these words, the

door opened. A steward entered.[6] He brought

us some clothes, jackets and sailor's pants, made out of a fabric

whose nature I didn't recognize. I hurried to change into them, and

my companions followed suit. Meanwhile our silent steward, perhaps

a deaf–mute, set the table and laid three place settings. "There's

something serious afoot," Conseil said, "and it bodes well." "Bah!"

replied the rancorous harpooner. "What the devil do you suppose

they eat around here? Turtle livers, loin of shark, dogfish

steaks?" "We'll soon find out!" Conseil said. Overlaid with silver

dish covers, various platters had been neatly positioned on the

table cloth, and we sat down to eat. Assuredly, we were dealing

with civilized people, and if it hadn't been for this electric

light flooding over us, I would have thought we were in the dining

room of the Hotel Adelphi in Liverpool, or the Grand Hotel in

Paris. However, I feel compelled to mention that bread and wine

were totally absent. The water was fresh and clear, but it was

still water—which wasn't what Ned Land had in mind. Among the foods

we were served, I was able to identify various daintily dressed

fish; but I couldn't make up my mind about certain otherwise

excellent dishes, and I couldn't even tell whether their contents

belonged to the vegetable or the animal kingdom. As for the

tableware, it was elegant and in perfect taste. Each utensil,

spoon, fork, knife, and plate, bore on its reverse a letter

encircled by a Latin motto, and here is its exact duplicate:

MOBILIS IN MOBILI N Moving within the moving element! It was a

highly appropriate motto for this underwater machine, so long as

the preposition in is translated as within and not upon. The letter

"N" was no doubt the initial of the name of that mystifying

individual in command beneath the seas! Ned and Conseil had no time

for such musings. They were wolfing down their food, and without

further ado I did the same. By now I felt reassured about our fate,

and it seemed obvious that our hosts didn't intend to let us die of

starvation. But all earthly things come to an end, all things must

pass, even the hunger of people who haven't eaten for fifteen

hours. Our appetites appeased, we felt an urgent need for sleep. A

natural reaction after that interminable night of fighting for our

lives. "Ye gods, I'll sleep soundly," Conseil said. "Me, I'm out

like a light!" Ned Land replied. My two companions lay down on the

cabin's carpeting and were soon deep in slumber. As for me, I gave

in less readily to this intense need for sleep. Too many thoughts

had piled up in my mind, too many insoluble questions had arisen,

too many images were keeping my eyelids open! Where were we? What

strange power was carrying us along? I felt—or at least I thought I

did—the submersible sinking toward the sea's lower strata. Intense

nightmares besieged me. In these mysterious marine sanctuaries, I

envisioned hosts of unknown animals, and this underwater boat

seemed to be a blood relation of theirs: living, breathing, just as

fearsome … ! Then my mind grew calmer, my imagination

melted into hazy drowsiness, and I soon fell into an uneasy

slumber.