Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas Part 81

If the Nautilus was submerged during these losses of balance, we heard the resulting noises spread under the waters with frightful intensity, and the collapse of these ma.s.ses created daunting eddies down to the ocean's lower strata. The Nautilus then rolled and pitched like a ship left to the fury of the elements.

Often, no longer seeing any way out, I thought we were imprisoned for good, but Captain Nemo, guided by his instincts, discovered new pa.s.sageways from the tiniest indications. He was never wrong when he observed slender threads of bluish water streaking through these ice fields. Accordingly, I was sure that he had already risked his Nautilus in the midst of the Antarctic seas.

However, during the day of March 16, these tracts of ice completely barred our path. It wasn't the Ice Bank as yet, just huge ice fields cemented together by the cold. This obstacle couldn't stop Captain Nemo, and he launched his ship against the ice fields with hideous violence. The Nautilus went into these brittle ma.s.ses like a wedge, splitting them with dreadful cracklings.

It was an old-fashioned battering ram propelled with infinite power.

Hurled aloft, ice rubble fell back around us like hail.

Through brute force alone, the submersible carved out a channel for itself. Carried away by its momentum, the ship sometimes mounted on top of these tracts of ice and crushed them with its weight, or at other times, when cooped up beneath the ice fields, it split them with simple pitching movements, creating wide punctures.

Violent squalls a.s.saulted us during the daytime. Thanks to certain heavy mists, we couldn't see from one end of the platform to the other.

The wind shifted abruptly to every point on the compa.s.s.

The snow was piling up in such packed layers, it had to be chipped loose with blows from picks. Even in a temperature of merely -5 degrees centigrade, every outside part of the Nautilus was covered with ice. A ship's rigging would have been unusable, because all its tackle would have jammed in the grooves of the pulleys.

Only a craft without sails, driven by an electric motor that needed no coal, could face such high lat.i.tudes.

Under these conditions the barometer generally stayed quite low.

It fell as far as 73.5 centimeters. Our compa.s.s indications no longer offered any guarantees. The deranged needles would mark contradictory directions as we approached the southern magnetic pole, which doesn't coincide with the South Pole proper.

In fact, according to the astronomer Hansteen, this magnetic pole is located fairly close to lat.i.tude 70 degrees and longitude 130 degrees, or abiding by the observations of Louis-Isidore Duperrey, in longitude 135 degrees and lat.i.tude 70 degrees 30'. Hence we had to transport compa.s.ses to different parts of the ship, take many readings, and strike an average. Often we could chart our course only by guesswork, a less than satisfactory method in the midst of these winding pa.s.sageways whose landmarks change continuously.

At last on March 18, after twenty futile a.s.saults, the Nautilus was decisively held in check. No longer was it an ice stream, patch, or field--it was an endless, immovable barrier formed by ice mountains fused to each other.

"The Ice Bank!" the Canadian told me.

For Ned Land, as well as for every navigator before us, I knew that this was the great insurmountable obstacle. When the sun appeared for an instant near noon, Captain Nemo took a reasonably accurate sight that gave our position as longitude 51 degrees 30'

and lat.i.tude 67 degrees 39' south. This was a position already well along in these Antarctic regions.

As for the liquid surface of the sea, there was no longer any semblance of it before our eyes. Before the Nautilus's spur there lay vast broken plains, a tangle of confused chunks with all the helter-skelter unpredictability typical of a river's surface a short while before its ice breakup; but in this case the proportions were gigantic. Here and there stood sharp peaks, lean spires that rose as high as 200 feet; farther off, a succession of steeply cut cliffs sporting a grayish tint, huge mirrors that reflected the spa.r.s.e rays of a sun half drowned in mist.

Beyond, a stark silence reigned in this desolate natural setting, a silence barely broken by the flapping wings of petrels or puffins.

By this point everything was frozen, even sound.

So the Nautilus had to halt in its venturesome course among these tracts of ice.

"Sir," Ned Land told me that day, "if your captain goes any farther . . ."

"Yes?"

"He'll be a superman."

"How so, Ned?"

"Because n.o.body can clear the Ice Bank. Your captain's a powerful man, but d.a.m.nation, he isn't more powerful than nature.

If she draws a boundary line, there you stop, like it or not!"

"Correct, Ned Land, but I still want to know what's behind this Ice Bank! Behold my greatest source of irritation--a wall!"

"Master is right," Conseil said. "Walls were invented simply to frustrate scientists. All walls should be banned."

"Fine!" the Canadian put in. "But we already know what's behind this Ice Bank."

"What?" I asked.

"Ice, ice, and more ice."

"You may be sure of that, Ned," I answered, "but I'm not.

That's why I want to see for myself."

"Well, professor," the Canadian replied, "you can just drop that idea!

You've made it to the Ice Bank, which is already far enough, but you won't get any farther, neither your Captain Nemo or his Nautilus. And whether he wants to or not, we'll head north again, in other words, to the land of sensible people."

I had to agree that Ned Land was right, and until ships are built to navigate over tracts of ice, they'll have to stop at the Ice Bank.

Indeed, despite its efforts, despite the powerful methods it used to split this ice, the Nautilus was reduced to immobility.

Ordinarily, when someone can't go any farther, he still has the option of returning in his tracks. But here it was just as impossible to turn back as to go forward, because every pa.s.sageway had closed behind us, and if our submersible remained even slightly stationary, it would be frozen in without delay.

Which is exactly what happened near two o'clock in the afternoon, and fresh ice kept forming over the ship's sides with astonishing speed.

I had to admit that Captain Nemo's leadership had been most injudicious.

Just then I was on the platform. Observing the situation for some while, the captain said to me:

"Well, professor! What think you?"

"I think we're trapped, captain."

"Trapped! What do you mean?"

"I mean we can't go forward, backward, or sideways.

I think that's the standard definition of 'trapped,' at least in the civilized world."

"So, Professor Aronnax, you think the Nautilus won't be able to float clear?"

"Only with the greatest difficulty, captain, since the season is already too advanced for you to depend on an ice breakup."

"Oh, professor," Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone, "you never change! You see only impediments and obstacles!

I promise you, not only will the Nautilus float clear, it will go farther still!"

"Farther south?" I asked, gaping at the captain.

"Yes, sir, it will go to the pole."

"To the pole!" I exclaimed, unable to keep back a movement of disbelief.

"Yes," the captain replied coolly, "the Antarctic pole, that unknown spot crossed by every meridian on the globe.

As you know, I do whatever I like with my Nautilus."

Yes, I did know that! I knew this man was daring to the point of being foolhardy. But to overcome all the obstacles around the South Pole--even more unattainable than the North Pole, which still hadn't been reached by the boldest navigators-- wasn't this an absolutely insane undertaking, one that could occur only in the brain of a madman?

It then dawned on me to ask Captain Nemo if he had already discovered this pole, which no human being had ever trod underfoot.

"No, sir," he answered me, "but we'll discover it together.

Where others have failed, I'll succeed. Never before has my Nautilus cruised so far into these southernmost seas, but I repeat: it will go farther still."

"I'd like to believe you, captain," I went on in a tone of some sarcasm.