Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas Part 87

"An enormous block of ice, an entire mountain, has toppled over,"

he answered me. "When an iceberg is eroded at the base by warmer waters or by repeated collisions, its center of gravity rises.

Then it somersaults, it turns completely upside down.

That's what happened here. When it overturned, one of these blocks. .h.i.t the Nautilus as it was cruising under the waters.

Sliding under our hull, this block then raised us with irresistible power, lifting us into less congested strata where we now lie on our side."

"But can't we float the Nautilus clear by emptying its ballast tanks, to regain our balance?"

"That, sir, is being done right now. You can hear the pumps working.

Look at the needle on the pressure gauge. It indicates that the Nautilus is rising, but this block of ice is rising with us, and until some obstacle halts its upward movement, our position won't change."

Indeed, the Nautilus kept the same heel to starboard.

No doubt it would straighten up once the block came to a halt.

But before that happened, who knew if we might not hit the underbelly of the Ice Bank and be hideously squeezed between two frozen surfaces?

I mused on all the consequences of this situation. Captain Nemo didn't stop studying the pressure gauge. Since the toppling of this iceberg, the Nautilus had risen about 150 feet, but it still stayed at the same angle to the perpendicular.

Suddenly a slight movement could be felt over the hull.

Obviously the Nautilus was straightening a bit. Objects hanging in the lounge were visibly returning to their normal positions.

The walls were approaching the vertical. n.o.body said a word.

Hearts pounding, we could see and feel the ship righting itself.

The floor was becoming horizontal beneath our feet.

Ten minutes went by.

"Finally, we're upright!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," Captain Nemo said, heading to the lounge door.

"But will we float off?" I asked him.

"Certainly," he replied, "since the ballast tanks aren't yet empty, and when they are, the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea."

The captain went out, and soon I saw that at his orders, the Nautilus had halted its upward movement. In fact, it soon would have hit the underbelly of the Ice Bank, but it had stopped in time and was floating in midwater.

"That was a close call!" Conseil then said.

"Yes. We could have been crushed between these ma.s.ses of ice, or at least imprisoned between them. And then, with no way to renew our air supply. . . . Yes, that was a close call!"

"If it's over with!" Ned Land muttered.

I was unwilling to get into a pointless argument with the Canadian and didn't reply. Moreover, the panels opened just then, and the outside light burst through the uncovered windows.

We were fully afloat, as I have said; but on both sides of the Nautilus, about ten meters away, there rose dazzling walls of ice.

There also were walls above and below. Above, because the Ice Bank's underbelly spread over us like an immense ceiling.

Below, because the somersaulting block, shifting little by little, had found points of purchase on both side walls and had gotten jammed between them. The Nautilus was imprisoned in a genuine tunnel of ice about twenty meters wide and filled with quiet water.

So the ship could easily exit by going either ahead or astern, sinking a few hundred meters deeper, and then taking an open pa.s.sageway beneath the Ice Bank.

The ceiling lights were off, yet the lounge was still brightly lit.

This was due to the reflecting power of the walls of ice, which threw the beams of our beacon right back at us. Words cannot describe the effects produced by our galvanic rays on these huge, whimsically sculpted blocks, whose every angle, ridge, and facet gave off a different glow depending on the nature of the veins running inside the ice. It was a dazzling mine of gems, in particular sapphires and emeralds, whose jets of blue and green crisscrossed.

Here and there, opaline hues of infinite subtlety raced among sparks of light that were like so many fiery diamonds, their brilliance more than any eye could stand. The power of our beacon was increased a hundredfold, like a lamp shining through the biconvex lenses of a world-cla.s.s lighthouse.

"How beautiful!" Conseil exclaimed.

"Yes," I said, "it's a wonderful sight! Isn't it, Ned?"

"Oh d.a.m.nation, yes!" Ned Land shot back. "It's superb!

I'm furious that I have to admit it. n.o.body has ever seen the like.

But this sight could cost us dearly. And in all honesty, I think we're looking at things G.o.d never intended for human eyes."

Ned was right. It was too beautiful. All at once a yell from Conseil made me turn around.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Master must close his eyes! Master mustn't look!"

With that, Conseil clapped his hands over his eyes.

"But what's wrong, my boy?"

"I've been dazzled, struck blind!"

Involuntarily my eyes flew to the window, but I couldn't stand the fire devouring it.

I realized what had happened. The Nautilus had just started off at great speed. All the tranquil glimmers of the ice walls had then changed into blazing streaks. The sparkles from these myriads of diamonds were merging with each other. Swept along by its propeller, the Nautilus was traveling through a sheath of flashing light.

Then the panels in the lounge closed. We kept our hands over our eyes, which were utterly saturated with those concentric gleams that swirl before the retina when sunlight strikes it too intensely.

It took some time to calm our troubled vision.

Finally we lowered our hands.

"Ye G.o.ds, I never would have believed it," Conseil said.

"And I still don't believe it!" the Canadian shot back.

"When we return to sh.o.r.e, jaded from all these natural wonders,"

Conseil added, "think how we'll look down on those pitiful land ma.s.ses, those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won't be good enough for us!"

Such words from the lips of this emotionless Flemish boy showed that our enthusiasm was near the boiling point. But the Canadian didn't fail to throw his dram of cold water over us.

"The civilized world!" he said, shaking his head. "Don't worry, Conseil my friend, we're never going back to that world!"

By this point it was five o'clock in the morning.

Just then there was a collision in the Nautilus's bow.

I realized that its spur had just b.u.mped a block of ice.

It must have been a faulty maneuver because this underwater tunnel was obstructed by such blocks and didn't make for easy navigating.

So I had a.s.sumed that Captain Nemo, in adjusting his course, would go around each obstacle or would hug the walls and follow the windings of the tunnel. In either case our forward motion wouldn't receive an absolute check. Nevertheless, contrary to my expectations, the Nautilus definitely began to move backward.

"We're going astern?" Conseil said.

"Yes," I replied. "Apparently the tunnel has no way out at this end."