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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Chapter 19. TORRES STRAITS
During the night of the 27th or 28th of December, the Nautilus left the shores of Vanikoro with great speed.
Its course was south-westerly, and in three days it had covered the 750 leagues separating it from La Perouse's group and southeast Papua.
Early on the 1st of January, 1863, Conseil joined me on the platform.
"Master, will you permit me to wish you a happy New Year?"
"What! Conseil, exactly as if I was at Paris in my study at the Jardin des Plantes? Well, I accept your good wishes,"
"And I thank you for them."
"Only, I'll ask you what you mean by a 'Happy New Year' under our circumstances?"
"Do you mean the year that'll bring us to the end of our imprisonment, or the year that sees us continue this strange voyage?"
"Really, I don't know how to answer, master."
"We're sure to see curious things, and for the last two months we haven't had time for dullness."
"The last marvel is always the most astonishing, and, if we continue this progression, I don't know how it'll end."
"It's my opinion that we'll never again see the like."
"I think then, with no offence to master, that a happy year would be one in which we could see everything."
On 2nd January we had made 11,340 miles, or 5,250 French leagues, since our starting-point in the Japan Seas.
Before the ship's head stretched the dangerous shores of the coral sea, on the north-east coast of Australia.
Our boat lay some miles from the dangerous bank on which Cook's vessel was lost, 10th June, 1770.
Cook's boat struck a rock, it didn't sink because a piece of coral broke off and fixed itself in the broken keel.
I had wished to visit the reef, 360 leagues long, against which the sea, always rough, broke with great violence, with a noise like thunder.
But just then the inclined planes drew the Nautilus down to a great depth.
And I couldn't see anything of the high coral walls.
I had to be happy with the different specimens of fish brought up by the nets.
I noticed some germons, a type of mackerel as large as a tunny, with bluish sides and transverse bands that vanish in life.
These fish followed us in large groups and gave us very delicate food.
We also took many gilt-heads, they were about one and a half inches long and tasted like dorys.
We also caught flying pyrapeds, like submarine swallows.
In dark nights, they light the air and water with their phosphorescent glow.
Among the molluscs and zoophytes, I found in the meshes of the net several types of alcyonarians, echini, hammers, spurs, dials, cerites, and hyalleae.
The flora included beautiful floating seaweeds, laminariae, and macrocystes.
These were filled with mucilage that came through their pores.
Among them, I gathered an admirable Nemastoma Geliniarois.
It was classed among the natural curiosities of the museum.
Two days after crossing the coral sea, 4th January, we saw the Papuan coasts.
On this occasion, Captain Nemo told me that his intention was to get into the Indian Ocean by the Strait of Torres.
His communication ended there, his words trailing off as he fell silent.
The Torres Straits are nearly thirty-four leagues wide.
They're blocked by many islands, islets, breakers, and rocks.
This makes navigation almost impossible, Captain Nemo took all necessary precautions to cross them.
The Nautilus, floating between wind and water, went at a moderate speed.
Its screw, like a cetacean's tail, beat the waves slowly.
Taking advantage of this, I and my two companions went up onto the deserted platform.
Before us was the steersman's cage, and I expected that Captain Nemo was there directing the course of the Nautilus.
I had before me the excellent charts of the Straits of Torres, and I studied them carefully.
Around the Nautilus the sea crashed furiously.
The waves, running southeast to northwest at two and a half miles, broke on coral showing itself here and there.
"This is a bad sea!" said Ned Land.
"Detestable indeed, and one that doesn't suit a boat like the Nautilus."
"The Captain must be very sure of his route, because I see there pieces of coral that would do for its keel if it only touched them slightly."
Indeed the situation was dangerous, but the Nautilus seemed to slide like magic off these rocks.
It didn't follow the routes of the Astrolabe and the Zelee exactly, for they proved fatal to Dumont d'Urville.
It went more northwards, coasted the Islands of Murray, and came back to the south-west towards Cumberland Passage.
I thought it was going to pass it by.
Then, going back to north-west, it went through many little-known islands and islets toward the Island Sound and Canal Mauvais.
Captain Nemo turned again, he cut straight through to the west.
He steered for the Island of Gilboa.
I wondered if he'd foolishly steer into that pass where Dumont d'Urville's two corvettes touched.
It was then three in the afternoon.
The tide began to go out, being quite full.
The Nautilus approached the island, which I still saw, with its remarkable border of screw-pines.
It stood off it at about two miles distant.
Suddenly a shock knocked me over, the Nautilus just touched a rock and stayed immovable, leaning lightly to port side.
When I rose, I saw Captain Nemo and his lieutenant on the platform.
They were examining the situation of the vessel and exchanging words in their incomprehensible dialect.
She was situated like this, Two miles, on the starboard side, appeared Gilboa, stretching from north to west like an immense arm.
Towards the south and east some coral showed itself, left by the ebb.
We had run aground, and in one of those seas where the tides are middling, a sorry matter for the floating of the Nautilus.
However, the vessel hadn't suffered, because its keel was solidly joined.
But if it could neither slide off nor move, it risked being fastened to these rocks, and Captain Nemo's submarine would be lost.
I was thinking about this when the Captain, cool and calm, always in control of himself, approached me.
"An accident?" I asked.
"No, an incident."
"But an incident that'll perhaps force you to become an inhabitant of this land from which you flee?"
Captain Nemo looked at me curiously and made a negative gesture, as if to say that nothing would force him to set foot on land again.
Then he said, calmly, with a slight gesture of the hand toward the rising tide.
"Besides, M. Aronnax, the Nautilus isn't lost, it'll carry you yet into the middle of the marvels of the ocean. Our voyage is only begun,"
"And I don't wish to be deprived so soon of the honor of your company."
"However, Captain Nemo,"
I replied, without noticing the ironical turn of his phrase, "the Nautilus ran aground, and Pacific tides are weak."
"If you can't lighten the Nautilus, I don't see how it'll be refloated".
The tides aren't strong in the Pacific, Professor, but in the Torres Straits the difference between high and low sea is a yard and a half.
"Today is 4th January, and in five days the moon will be full."
"Now, I'll be very much astonished if that satellite doesn't raise these masses of water enough and give me a service that I'd be indebted to her for."
Having said this, Captain Nemo, followed by his lieutenant, went back down to the inside of the Nautilus.
As for the vessel, it didn't move, and was immovable, as if the coralline polypi had already walled it up with their indestructible cement.
"Well, sir?" said Ned Land, who came up to me after the Captain left.
"Well, friend Ned, we'll wait patiently for the tide on the 9th instant, because it seems that the moon will have the goodness to put it off again."
"Really?"
"Really."
"And this Captain isn't going to cast anchor at all since the tide will be enough?" said Conseil, simply.
The Canadian looked at Conseil, then shrugged his shoulders.
Sir, you may believe me, this piece of iron will neither sail on nor under the sea again, it's only fit to be sold for its weight.
"I think, therefore, that the time has come to part company with Captain Nemo."
"Friend Ned, I don't despair of this strong Nautilus, as you do, and in four days we'll know what to think about the Pacific tides".
Besides, flight might be possible if we were in sight of the English or Provencal coast.
But on the Papuan shores, it's another thing.
It'll be time enough to come to that extreme if the Nautilus doesn't recover itself again.
I look upon this as a grave event.
"But do they at least know how to act carefully?"
"There's an island, on that island there are trees, under those trees, land animals, bearers of cutlets and roast beef, to which I'd willingly give a try."
"In this, friend Ned is right," said Conseil.
"And I agree with him."
Couldn't master ask his friend Captain Nemo to put us on land, if only to avoid losing the habit of walking on solid ground?
"I can ask him, but he'll refuse."
"Will master risk it?" asked Conseil, "and we'll know how to rely upon the Captain's friendliness."
To my great surprise, Captain Nemo gave me the permission I asked for.
He gave it very agreeably, without even making me promise to return to the vessel.
However, flight across New Guinea might be very dangerous.
I wouldn't have advised Ned Land to try it.
Better to be a prisoner on board the Nautilus than to fall into the hands of the natives.
At eight o'clock, armed with guns and hatchets, we got off the Nautilus.
The sea was pretty calm, a slight breeze blew on land.
Conseil and I rowing, we sped along quickly, and Ned steered in the straight passage that the breakers left between them.
The boat was well handled and moved rapidly.
Ned Land couldn't control his joy, laughing and clapping his hands like a freed prisoner.
He was like a prisoner who had escaped from prison and didn't know that it was necessary to go back in.
"Meat! We're going to eat some meat, and what meat!" he replied.
"Real game! No, bread, indeed."
"I don't say that fish isn't good, we mustn't abuse it, but a piece of fresh venison, grilled on live coals, will agreeably change our usual course."
"Glutton!" said Conseil, "he makes my mouth water."
"It remains to be seen," I said, "if these forests are full of game, and if the game isn't such as will hunt the hunter himself."
"Well said, M. Aronnax," replied the Canadian, whose teeth seemed sharpened like the edge of a hatchet.
"But I'll eat tiger, loin of tiger, if there's no other quadruped on this island."
"Friend Ned is worried about it," said Conseil.
"Whatever it may be," continued Ned Land, "every animal with four paws without feathers, or with two paws without feathers, will be greeted by my first shot."
"Very well! Master Land's imprudences are beginning."
"Never fear, M. Aronnax," replied the Canadian, "I don't want twenty-five minutes to offer you a dish of my sort."
At half-past eight the Nautilus boat ran softly aground on a heavy sand, after having happily passed the coral reef that surrounds the Island of Gilboa.