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Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Chapter 36. THE ICEBERG
The Nautilus was steadily moving south, following the fiftieth meridian at a good speed.
Did Captain Nemo want to reach the pole?
I didn't think so, because every attempt to get there had failed before, Also, the season was already late.
In the Antarctic, March 13th is like September 13th in the north, which is the start of autumn.
On March 14th, I saw floating ice at latitude 55 degrees.
They were just small pieces of debris, twenty to twenty-five feet long, forming banks that the sea curled over.
The Nautilus stayed on the surface, Ned Land had fished in the Arctic Seas and knew icebergs well.
But Conseil and I admired them for the first time.
In the sky toward the southern horizon, there was a white, shining band.
English whalers call it the "ice blink." No matter how thick the clouds are, you can always see it.
It tells you that an ice pack or bank is near.
Soon, larger blocks appeared, Their brightness changed with the fog.
Some had green veins, like long wavy lines drawn with copper sulphate.
Others looked like huge amethysts with light shining through them.
Some reflected daylight off a thousand crystal surfaces.
Others, with bright white reflections, looked like a perfect town made of marble.
The closer we got to the south, the more these floating islands grew in number and size.
At latitude 60 degrees, every passage had disappeared.
But Captain Nemo searched carefully and soon found a narrow opening.
He boldly slipped through it, even though he knew it would close behind him.
Guided by his clever hand, the Nautilus passed through all the ice with amazing precision.
Conseil was delighted by it, there were icebergs, mountains, and ice-fields.
These smooth plains seemed to have no limits.
There was also drift-ice and floating ice-packs.
Broken plains were called palchs when round, and streams when made of long strips.
The temperature was very low, the thermometer in the air showed two or three degrees below zero.
But we were warmly dressed in fur from sea-bears and seals.
The inside of the Nautilus was heated by its electric system, so it stayed warm even in the most intense cold.
Besides, we only needed to go a few yards under the waves to find a more comfortable temperature.
Two months earlier, we'd have had daylight all the time at this latitude.
But now we already had three or four hours of night.
Soon there would be six months of darkness in these polar regions.
On March 15th, we were at the latitude of New Shetland and South Orkney.
The Captain told me that many tribes of seals used to live there.
But English and American whalers, in their rage for destruction, had killed both old and young.
So where there was once life and activity, they had left silence and death.
Around eight o'clock on the morning of March 16th, the Nautilus crossed the Antarctic polar circle, following the fifty-fifth meridian.
Ice surrounded us on all sides and closed the horizon.
But Captain Nemo went from one opening to another, still moving higher.
I can't express how amazed I was by the beauty of these new regions.
The ice took the most surprising shapes.
Here, the grouping looked like an eastern town with countless mosques and towers.
There, it looked like a fallen city thrown to the ground by some natural disaster.
The whole scene constantly changed with the sun's slanting rays or disappeared into the grey fog during snowstorms.
We heard explosions and crashes everywhere, Great icebergs fell, changing the whole landscape like a moving picture.
Often, I saw no way out and thought we were trapped.
But Captain Nemo, guided by instinct at the smallest sign, would find a new passage.
He was never wrong when he saw thin threads of blue water flowing along the ice-fields.
I had no doubt that he had already traveled into these Antarctic seas before.
However, on March 16th, the ice-fields completely blocked our path.
It wasn't the iceberg itself yet, but huge fields frozen together by the cold.
But this obstacle couldn't stop Captain Nemo.
He threw himself against it with terrible force.
The Nautilus entered the brittle mass like a wedge and split it with loud cracking sounds.
It was like the battering ram of the ancients, thrown with endless strength.
The ice flew high into the air and fell like hail around us.
Our ship made a canal for itself by its own power.
Sometimes, carried by its own speed, it landed on the ice-field and crushed it with its weight.
Sometimes it buried itself under the ice and split it with a simple pitching movement, making large cracks.
Strong winds attacked us at this time, along with thick fog.
From one end of the platform to the other, we couldn't see anything.
The wind blew sharply from all directions.
The snow piled up in such hard heaps that we had to break it with pickaxes.
The temperature was always five degrees below zero.
Every outside part of the Nautilus was covered with ice.
A ship with sails would have gotten stuck in the blocked passages.
Only a ship without sails, using electricity for power and needing no coal, could brave such high latitudes.
Finally, on March 18th, after many useless attacks, the Nautilus was completely blocked.
It was no longer streams, packs, or ice-fields.
It was an endless, unmoving barrier made of mountains frozen together.
"An iceberg!" the Canadian said to me.
I knew that for Ned Land, and for all the sailors who had come before us, this was an impossible obstacle.
The sun appeared for a moment at noon.
Captain Nemo took a measurement as best he could.
It gave our position as 51 degrees 30 minutes longitude and 67 degrees 39 minutes south latitude.
We had advanced one more degree into this Antarctic region.
There was no sign of the liquid surface of the sea anymore.
Under the Nautilus's spur lay a huge plain, tangled with confused blocks.
Here and there, sharp points and thin needles rose up to 200 feet.
Further on, there was a steep shore, cut as if with an axe and covered with grey colors.
There were huge mirrors that reflected a few rays of sunshine, half lost in the fog.
And over this lifeless face of nature, a deep silence ruled.
It was barely broken by the flapping of the wings of petrels and puffins.
Everything was frozen, even the noise, the Nautilus had to stop its adventurous journey through these ice-fields.
Despite our efforts, despite the powerful methods we used to break the ice, the Nautilus stayed still.
Usually, when we can't go forward, we can still go back.
But here, going back was as impossible as going forward.
Every passage had closed behind us, and during the few moments we were still, we were likely to become completely blocked.
That did happen around two o'clock in the afternoon.
Fresh ice formed around the ship's sides with amazing speed.
I had to admit that Captain Nemo was more than careless.
I was on the platform at that moment.
The Captain had been watching our situation for some time, then he said to me,
"Well, sir, what do you think of this?"
"I think that we're trapped, Captain."
The Nautilus was completely blocked up by thick, unmoving Antarctic ice.
"So, M. Aronnax, you really think the Nautilus can't free itself?"
"With difficulty, Captain. The season is already too far along for you to count on the ice breaking."
"Ah! sir," said Captain Nemo in an ironic tone.
"You'll always be the same."
"You see nothing but difficulties and obstacles."
"I say that not only can the Nautilus free itself, but it can also go even further."
"Further south?" I asked, looking at the Captain.
"Yes, sir. It'll go to the pole."
"To the pole!" I exclaimed.
I couldn't hide my disbelief, my voice shook and my eyes widened in astonishment.
"Yes," replied the Captain coldly.
"To the Antarctic pole."
"To that unknown point from which every meridian on the globe starts."
"You know whether I can do as I please with the Nautilus!"
Yes, I knew that, I knew that this man was bold, even reckless.
But to conquer those obstacles that surrounded the South Pole would make it harder to reach than the North Pole.
Even the bravest sailors had not reached the North Pole yet, so wasn't that a crazy plan?
Only a madman would have thought of it.
Then I wondered if Captain Nemo had ever discovered that pole, which no human had ever set foot on.
"No, sir," he replied.
"But we'll discover it together."
"Where others have failed, I won't fail."
"I have never taken my Nautilus this far into southern seas before."
"But I repeat, it'll go further yet."
"I can believe you, Captain," I said in a slightly ironic tone.
"I believe you!"
"Let's go ahead!"
"There are no obstacles for us!"
"Let's smash this iceberg!"
"Let's blow it up!"
"And if it resists, let's give the Nautilus wings to fly over it!"
"Over it, sir?" said Captain Nemo quietly.
"No, not over it, but under it!"
"Under it!" I exclaimed.
A sudden idea of the Captain's plan flashed through my mind.
I understood, the wonderful qualities of the Nautilus were going to help us in this superhuman effort.
"I see we're starting to understand each other, sir," said the Captain, half smiling.
"You're starting to see the possibility, I should say the success, of this attempt."
"What's impossible for an ordinary ship is easy for the Nautilus."
"If a continent lies before the pole, it must stop before the continent."
"But if, on the other hand, the pole is washed by open sea, it'll go all the way to the pole."
"Certainly," I said, carried away by the Captain's reasoning.
"If the surface of the sea is frozen solid by the ice, the lower depths are free."
"This is because of the natural law that puts the maximum density of ocean water one degree above freezing."
"And if I'm not mistaken, the part of this iceberg above the water is one to four compared to the part below."
"Very close, sir."
"For every foot of iceberg above the sea, there are three feet below."
"If these ice mountains are no more than 300 feet above the surface, they're no more than 900 feet below."
"And what are 900 feet to the Nautilus?"
"Nothing, sir."
"It could even go to greater depths to find the steady temperature of sea water."
"There it could safely face the thirty or forty degrees of cold on the surface."
"Exactly, sir, exactly," I replied, getting excited.
"The only difficulty," continued Captain Nemo, "is staying several days without renewing our air supply."
"Is that all? The Nautilus has huge tanks. We can fill them, and they'll give us all the oxygen we need."
"Well thought, M. Aronnax," replied the Captain, smiling.
"But I don't want you to accuse me of being reckless. So I'll first give you all my objections."
"Do you have any more?"
"Only one. It's possible that if the sea exists at the South Pole, it might be covered with ice. And then we wouldn't be able to come to the surface."
"Good, sir! But don't you forget that the Nautilus has a powerful spur? Couldn't we drive it diagonally into these ice-fields? They'd open from the shock."
"Ah! sir, you're full of ideas today."
"Besides, Captain," I added enthusiastically, "why shouldn't we find the sea open at the South Pole, just like at the North Pole?"
"The frozen poles of the earth don't match up, either in the south or in the north," I added.
"Until it's proven otherwise, we can suppose either a continent or an ocean free of ice at these two points of the globe," I said.
"I think so too, M. Aronnax," replied Captain Nemo.
"I just want you to notice that after making so many objections to my plan, you're now crushing me with arguments in its favor!"
The preparations for this daring attempt now began.
The powerful pumps of the Nautilus forced air into the tanks and stored it at high pressure.
Around four o'clock, Captain Nemo announced that the panels on the platform would be closed.
I took one last look at the huge iceberg we were going to cross.
The weather was clear, the air was pure enough.
The cold was very great, twelve degrees below zero.
But the wind had died down, so the temperature wasn't so unbearable.
About ten men climbed onto the sides of the Nautilus.
They were armed with pickaxes to break the ice around the ship, which was soon free.
The operation was quick because the fresh ice was still very thin.
We all went below, the usual tanks were filled with the newly freed water, and the Nautilus soon descended.
I took my place with Conseil in the saloon.
Through the open window, we could see the lower layers of the Southern Ocean.
The thermometer went up, the compass needle moved on the dial.
At about 900 feet, as Captain Nemo had predicted, we were floating beneath the wavy bottom of the iceberg.
But the Nautilus went even lower, down to a depth of four hundred fathoms.
The water temperature at the surface had been twelve degrees.
Now it was only ten, we had gained two degrees.
I don't need to say that the temperature inside the Nautilus was raised much higher by its heating system.
Every move was made with wonderful precision.
"We'll pass it, if you please, sir," said Conseil.
"I believe we'll," I said, with firm belief.
In this open sea, the Nautilus took a direct course to the pole, staying on the fifty-second meridian.
From 67 degrees 30 minutes to 90 degrees, there were twenty-two and a half degrees of latitude left to travel.
That was about five hundred leagues, the Nautilus kept an average speed of twenty-six miles per hour, the speed of an express train.
If it kept that up, we'd reach the pole in forty hours.
For part of the night, the newness of the situation kept us at the window.
The sea was lit by the electric lantern.
But it was empty, Fish didn't stay in these trapped waters.
They only used them as a passage from the Antarctic Ocean to the open polar sea.
Our speed was fast, we could feel it from the shaking of the long steel body.
Around two in the morning, I took a few hours of rest.
Conseil did the same, While crossing the middle of the ship, I didn't meet Captain Nemo.
I guessed he was in the pilot's room.
The next morning, March 19th, I took my place in the saloon again.
The electric log told me that the Nautilus's speed had slowed down.
It was now moving toward the surface.
But it was emptying its tanks very carefully.
My heart beat fast, Were we going to come up and reach the open polar air?
No! A shock told me that the Nautilus had hit the bottom of the iceberg.
It was still very thick, judging from the dull sound.
We had indeed "struck," to use a sailor's term, but in the opposite direction, at a depth of a thousand feet.
That meant there were three thousand feet of ice above us, with one thousand feet above the water line.
So the iceberg was higher than at its edges.
That wasn't a very comforting fact, Several times that day, the Nautilus tried again.
Every time, it hit the wall that lay like a ceiling above it.
Sometimes it met only 900 yards of ice, with only 200 yards rising above the surface.
That was twice the height it was when the Nautilus had gone under the waves.
I carefully noted the different depths, In this way, I got a picture of the underwater shape of the ice chain.
That night, nothing changed in our situation.
There was still ice between four and five hundred yards deep!
It was clearly getting thinner, but still, what a thickness between us and the surface of the ocean!
It was then eight o'clock, According to the daily habit on the Nautilus, the air should have been changed four hours ago.
But I didn't suffer much, even though Captain Nemo hadn't yet used his reserve of oxygen.
My sleep was painful that night, Hope and fear took turns attacking me.
I got up several times, the Nautilus kept feeling its way.
Around three in the morning, I noticed that the lower surface of the iceberg was only about fifty feet deep.
Now only one hundred and fifty feet separated us from the surface of the water.
The iceberg was slowly becoming an ice-field.
The mountain was becoming a plain, My eyes never left the pressure gauge.
We were still rising diagonally toward the surface, which sparkled under the electric lights.
The iceberg was stretching both above and below into longer slopes.
Mile after mile, it was getting thinner.
Finally, at six in the morning of that memorable day, March 19th, the door of the saloon opened, Captain Nemo appeared.
"The sea is open!" was all he said.