From xinhuanet English News: Underwater treasure hunting endangers sunken relics around south China's Xisha Islands
HAIKOU, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- Treasure hunters have swarmed to the South China Sea in great number in recent years, seeking to uncover the region's massive quantities of underwater relics. However, their actions have also endangered the region's cultural heritage, prompting authorities to take action.
China's Xisha Islands, also known as the Paracel Islands, occupy an area of 15,000 square km in the South China Sea. Speculators and local fishermen have been surveying the waters around the islands for treasure since 1996, when a local fisherman discovered an ancient shipwreck in the area.
Many of the hunters use crude means to retrieve underwater relics, lacking both proper equipment and government approval. Destructive looting has done irreversible damage to the shipwrecks of the Xisha Islands.
Lying on the route of the ancient maritime Silk Road, the waters around the Xisha Islands were and still are heavily traveled shipping lanes, with ships transporting goods between China and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
However, the waters around the islands are also known for their poor navigability, as they are surrounded by coral reefs. Historical records show that a number of ships struck hidden reefs and sank near the islands, taking their treasures with them to the ocean floor.
Official archaeological surveys show that there are at least 122 wrecked ships on the bottom of the South China Sea. Many of them date back to the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1276) dynasties, when trade with foreign countries was thriving.
"According to studies of previously salvaged ships, most of the sunken ships departed from China's costal regions, bound for overseas countries," said Wang Yiping, director-general of the Hainan Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage.
"Previously, official maritime archaeological surveys were largely limited to coastal waters due to a lack of technology and funds. However, archaeological research and salvages of several wreckages have helped to fill in knowledge gaps regarding Chinese and foreign interaction, production, consumption and trade relations centuries ago," Wang added.
The valuable artifacts discovered in the ancient ships, including porcelain, gold and bronzeware, have helped to shed new light on commerce and shipbuilding as they were practiced centuries ago. They are the "missing links" on the Silk Road trade route that linked ancient China with the Western world, Wang said.
Looting destroys the archaeological and anthropological context in which the relics exist, preventing people from fully appreciating the historic significance of the region, Wang said.
Demand from collectors has fueled the treasure-hunting trade, sending market prices skyward and encouraging local fishermen to illegally plunder shipwrecks.
Many of the ancient ships lay in shallow waters, making treasure hunting lucrative and convenient. Hunters often use dangerous techniques, including underwater demolitions, to uncover the relics, damaging the underwater environment in the process.
Underwater treasure hunting endangers sunken relics around south China's Xisha Islands
English.news.cn 2011-10-26 19:20:23 FeedbackPrintRSS
In early 2009, the Hainan Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage sent a team to conduct an archaeological survey of the region, collecting 575 artifacts, only three of which were still completely intact.
"This is in sharp contrast with the archaeological survey I participated in 12 years ago," said Li Jilong, director of the team.
"At that time, we discovered 1,500 porcelain items from a variety of dynastic periods. Most of the items were still in good shape when they were identified and brought to the surface," Li recalled.
Li and his team were frustrated to find a lack of variance in the relics they discovered in 2009, as well as saddened at the obvious signs of looting and destruction.
"The looters are savage indeed, and our antiquities are all gone. It's heartbreaking to see the loss of cultural heritage in broad daylight," Li said.
Local boatowners can make 3 million yuan (472,768 U.S. dollars) a year through looting, 500 times the annual per capita net income of local residents in 2010.
An official patrol of 48 wreckage sites near the Xisha Islands in early 2011 confirmed the severity of the looting. Twenty-six of the shipwrecks were missing more than 50 percent of their contents, and other wrecks were found to be spoiled to a lesser degree.
Illegal treasure hunting violates a variety of national and international laws, including China's Cultural Relics Preservation Law, Criminal Law and the UN Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage.
However, authorities have had trouble punishing the looters, as it has been difficult to collect usable evidence, such as the exact time when the looting occurred and who committed the looting. This has allowed a black market for antiquities to thrive in the region.
Cultural heritage protection authorities have reacted by researching effective preservation measures. The Hainan Provincial Bureau of Cultural Heritage has mandated the construction of a museum, a preservation center and an archaeological research center in its 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) in order to raise public awareness about underwater heritage protection.
An unmanned underwater security system consisting of alarms and sonic deterrent devices will also be built to facilitate monitoring and conservation efforts, according to the plan.
Concerted action from all relevant agencies, as well as aggressive law enforcement, are key to the local government's preservation work, said Li Jian'an from Fujian Provincial Museum.
Monday, November 21, 2011
Sunday, November 20, 2011
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, Ch 9
CHAPTER 9 --The Tantrums of Ned Land
I HAVE NO IDEA how long this slumber lasted; but it must have been
a good while, since we were completely over our exhaustion. I was the first one to wake up. My companions weren't yet stirring and still lay in their corners like inanimate objects.
I had barely gotten up from my passably hard mattress when I felt my mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a careful reexamination of our cell.
Nothing had changed in its interior arrangements. The prison was still a prison and its prisoners still prisoners. But, taking advantage of our slumber, the steward had cleared the table. Consequently, nothing indicated any forthcoming improvement in our situation, and I seriously wondered if we were doomed to spend the rest of our lives in this cage.
This prospect seemed increasingly painful to me because, even though
my brain was clear of its obsessions from the night before, I was feeling an odd short-windedness in my chest. It was becoming hard for me to breathe. The heavy air was no longer sufficient for the full play of my lungs. Although our cell was large, we obviously had used up most of the oxygen it contained. In essence, over an hour's time a single human being consumes all the oxygen found in 100 liters of air, at which point that air has become charged with a nearly equal amount of carbon dioxide and is no longer fit for breathing.
So it was now urgent to renew the air in our prison, and no doubt the air in this whole underwater boat as well.
Here a question popped into my head. How did the commander of this
aquatic residence go about it? Did he obtain air using chemical methods, releasing the oxygen contained in potassium chlorate by heating it, meanwhile absorbing the carbon dioxide with potassium hydroxide? If so, he would have to keep up some kind of relationship with the shore, to come by the materials needed for such an operation. Did he simply limit himself to storing the air in high-pressure tanks and then dispense it according to his crew's needs? Perhaps. Or, proceeding in a more convenient, more economical, and consequently more probable fashion, was he satisfied with merely returning to breathe at the surface of the water like a cetacean, renewing his oxygen supply every twenty-four hours? In any event, whatever his method was, it seemed prudent to me that he use this method without delay.
In fact, I had already resorted to speeding up my inhalations in order to extract from the cell what little oxygen it contained, when suddenly I was refreshed by a current of clean air, scented with a salty aroma. It had to be a sea breeze, life-giving and charged with iodine! I opened my mouth wide, and my lungs glutted themselves on the fresh particles. At the same time, I felt a swaying, a rolling of moderate magnitude but definitely noticeable. This boat, this sheet-iron monster, had obviously just risen to the surface of the ocean, there to breathe in good whale fashion. So the ship's mode of ventilation was finally established.
When I had absorbed a chestful of this clean air, I looked for the conduit--the "air carrier," if you prefer--that allowed this beneficial influx to reach us, and I soon found it. Above the door opened an air vent that let in a fresh current of oxygen, renewing the thin air in our cell.
I had gotten to this point in my observations when Ned and Conseil woke up almost simultaneously, under the influence of this reviving air purification. They rubbed their eyes, stretched their arms, and sprang to their feet.
"Did master sleep well?" Conseil asked me with his perennial good manners.
"Extremely well, my gallant lad," I replied. "And how about you, Mr. Ned Land?"
"Like a log, professor. But I must be imagining things, because it seems like I'm breathing a sea breeze!"
A seaman couldn't be wrong on this topic, and I told the Canadian what had gone on while he slept.
"Good!" he said. "That explains perfectly all that bellowing we heard, when our so-called narwhale lay in sight of the Abraham Lincoln."
"Perfectly, Mr. Land. It was catching its breath!"
"Only I've no idea what time it is, Professor Aronnax, unless maybe it's dinnertime?"
"Dinnertime, my fine harpooner? I'd say at least breakfast time, because we've certainly woken up to a new day."
"Which indicates," Conseil replied, "that we've spent twenty-four hours in slumber."
"That's my assessment," I replied.
"I won't argue with you," Ned Land answered. "But dinner or breakfast, that steward will be plenty welcome whether he brings the one or the other."
"The one and the other," Conseil said.
"Well put," the Canadian replied. "We deserve two meals, and speaking for myself, I'll do justice to them both."
"All right, Ned, let's wait and see!" I replied. "It's clear that these strangers don't intend to let us die of hunger, otherwise last evening's dinner wouldn't make any sense."
"Unless they're fattening us up!" Ned shot back.
"I object," I replied. "We have not fallen into the hands of cannibals."
"Just because they don't make a habit of it," the Canadian replied in all seriousness, "doesn't mean they don't indulge from time to time. Who knows? Maybe these people have gone without fresh meat for a long while, and in that case three healthy, well-built specimens like the professor, his manservant, and me ---"
"Get rid of those ideas, Mr. Land," I answered the harpooner. "And above all, don't let them lead you to flare up against our hosts, which would only make our situation worse."
"Anyhow," the harpooner said, "I'm as hungry as all Hades, and dinner or breakfast, not one puny meal has arrived!"
"Mr. Land," I answered, "we have to adapt to the schedule on board, and I imagine our stomachs are running ahead of the chief cook's dinner bell."
"Well then, we'll adjust our stomachs to the chef's timetable!" Conseil replied serenely.
"There you go again, Conseil my friend!" the impatient Canadian shot back. "You never allow yourself any displays of bile or attacks of nerves! You're everlastingly calm! You'd say your after-meal grace even if you didn't get any food for your before-meal blessing--and you'd starve to death rather than complain!"
"What good would it do?" Conseil asked.
"Complaining doesn't have to do good, it just feels good! And if these pirates--I say pirates out of consideration for the professor's feelings, since he doesn't want us to call them cannibals--if these pirates think they're going to smother me in this cage without hearing what cusswords spice up my outbursts, they've got another think coming! Look here, Professor Aronnax, speak frankly. How long do you figure they'll keep us in this iron box?"
"To tell the truth, friend Land, I know little more about it than you do."
"But in a nutshell, what do you suppose is going on?"
"My supposition is that sheer chance has made us privy to an important secret. Now then, if the crew of this underwater boat have a personal interest in keeping that secret, and if their personal interest is more important than the lives of three men, I believe that our very existence is in jeopardy. If such is not the case, then at the first available opportunity, this monster that has swallowed us will return us to the world inhabited by our own kind."
"Unless they recruit us to serve on the crew," Conseil said, "and keep us here--"
"Till the moment," Ned Land answered, "when some frigate that's faster or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers, then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!"
"Well thought out, Mr. Land," I replied. "But as yet, I don't believe we've been tendered any enlistment offers. Consequently, it's pointless to argue about what tactics we should pursue in such a case. I repeat: let's wait, let's be guided by events, and let's do nothing, since right now there's nothing we can do."
"On the contrary, professor," the harpooner replied, not wanting to give in. "There is something we can do."
"Oh? And what, Mr. Land?"
"Break out of here!"
"Breaking out of a prison on shore is difficult enough, but with an underwater prison, it strikes me as completely unworkable."
"Come now, Ned my friend," Conseil asked, "how would you answer master's objection? I refuse to believe that an American is at the end of his tether."
Visibly baffled, the harpooner said nothing. Under the conditions in which fate had left us, it was absolutely impossible to escape. But a Canadian's wit is half French, and Mr. Ned Land made this clear in his reply.
"So, Professor Aronnax," he went on after thinking for a few moments, "you haven't figured out what people do when they can't escape from their prison?"
"No, my friend."
"Easy. They fix things so they stay there."
"Of course!" Conseil put in. "Since we're deep in the ocean, being inside this boat is vastly preferable to being above it or below it!"
"But we fix things by kicking out all the jailers, guards, and wardens," Ned Land added.
"What's this, Ned?" I asked. "You'd seriously consider taking over this craft?"
"Very seriously," the Canadian replied.
"It's impossible."
"And why is that, sir? Some promising opportunity might come up, and I don't see what could stop us from taking advantage of it. If there are only about twenty men on board this machine, I don't think they can stave off two Frenchmen and a Canadian!"
It seemed wiser to accept the harpooner's proposition than to debate it. Accordingly, I was content to reply:
"Let such circumstances come, Mr. Land, and we'll see. But until then,
I beg you to control your impatience. We need to act shrewdly, and your flare-ups won't give rise to any promising opportunities. So swear to me that you'll accept our situation without throwing a tantrum over it."
"I give you my word, professor," Ned Land replied in an unenthusiastic tone. "No vehement phrases will leave my mouth, no vicious gestures will give my feelings away, not even when they don't feed us on time."
"I have your word, Ned," I answered the Canadian.
Then our conversation petered out, and each of us withdrew into his own thoughts. For my part, despite the harpooner's confident talk, I admit that I entertained no illusions. I had no faith in those promising opportunities that Ned Land mentioned. To operate with such efficiency, this underwater boat had to have a sizeable crew, so if it came to a physical contest, we would be facing an overwhelming opponent. Besides, before we could do anything, we had to be free, and that we definitely were not. I didn't see any way out of this sheet-iron, hermetically sealed cell. And if the strange commander of this boat did have a secret to keep--which seemed rather likely--he would never give us freedom of movement aboard his vessel. Now then, would he resort to violence in order to be rid of us, or would he drop us off one day on some remote coast? There lay the unknown. All these hypotheses seemed extremely plausible to me, and to hope for freedom through use of force, you had to be a harpooner.
I realized, moreover, that Ned Land's brooding was getting him madder by the minute. Little by little, I heard those aforesaid cusswords welling up in the depths of his gullet, and I saw his movements turn threatening again. He stood up, pacing in circles like a wild beast in a cage, striking the walls with his foot and fist. Meanwhile the hours passed, our hunger nagged unmercifully, and this time the steward did not appear. Which amounted to forgetting our castaway status for much too long, if they really had good intentions toward us.
Tortured by the growling of his well-built stomach, Ned Land was getting more and more riled, and despite his word of honor, I was in real dread of an explosion when he stood in the presence of one of the men on board.
For two more hours Ned Land's rage increased. The Canadian shouted and pleaded, but to no avail. The sheet-iron walls were deaf. I didn't hear a single sound inside this dead-seeming boat. The vessel hadn't stirred, because I obviously would have felt its hull vibrating under the influence of the propeller. It had undoubtedly sunk into the watery deep and no longer belonged to the outside world. All this dismal silence was terrifying.
As for our neglect, our isolation in the depths of this cell, I was afraid to guess at how long it might last. Little by little, hopes I had entertained after our interview with the ship's commander were fading away. The gentleness of the man's gaze, the generosity expressed in his facial features, the nobility of his bearing, all vanished from my memory. I saw this mystifying individual anew for what he inevitably must be: cruel and merciless. I viewed him as outside humanity, beyond all feelings of compassion, the implacable foe of his fellow man, toward whom he must have sworn an undying hate!
But even so, was the man going to let us die of starvation, locked up in this cramped prison, exposed to those horrible temptations to which people are driven by extreme hunger? This grim possibility took on a dreadful intensity in my mind, and fired by my imagination, I felt an unreasoning terror run through me. Conseil stayed calm. Ned Land bellowed.
Just then a noise was audible outside. Footsteps rang on the metal tiling. The locks were turned, the door opened, the steward appeared.
Before I could make a single movement to prevent him, the Canadian rushed at the poor man, threw him down, held him by the throat. The steward was choking in the grip of those powerful hands.
Conseil was already trying to loosen the harpooner's hands from his half-suffocated victim, and I had gone to join in the rescue, when I was abruptly nailed to the spot by these words pronounced in French:
"Calm down, Mr. Land! And you, professor, kindly listen to me!"
I HAVE NO IDEA how long this slumber lasted; but it must have been
a good while, since we were completely over our exhaustion. I was the first one to wake up. My companions weren't yet stirring and still lay in their corners like inanimate objects.
I had barely gotten up from my passably hard mattress when I felt my mind clear, my brain go on the alert. So I began a careful reexamination of our cell.
Nothing had changed in its interior arrangements. The prison was still a prison and its prisoners still prisoners. But, taking advantage of our slumber, the steward had cleared the table. Consequently, nothing indicated any forthcoming improvement in our situation, and I seriously wondered if we were doomed to spend the rest of our lives in this cage.
This prospect seemed increasingly painful to me because, even though
my brain was clear of its obsessions from the night before, I was feeling an odd short-windedness in my chest. It was becoming hard for me to breathe. The heavy air was no longer sufficient for the full play of my lungs. Although our cell was large, we obviously had used up most of the oxygen it contained. In essence, over an hour's time a single human being consumes all the oxygen found in 100 liters of air, at which point that air has become charged with a nearly equal amount of carbon dioxide and is no longer fit for breathing.
So it was now urgent to renew the air in our prison, and no doubt the air in this whole underwater boat as well.
Here a question popped into my head. How did the commander of this
aquatic residence go about it? Did he obtain air using chemical methods, releasing the oxygen contained in potassium chlorate by heating it, meanwhile absorbing the carbon dioxide with potassium hydroxide? If so, he would have to keep up some kind of relationship with the shore, to come by the materials needed for such an operation. Did he simply limit himself to storing the air in high-pressure tanks and then dispense it according to his crew's needs? Perhaps. Or, proceeding in a more convenient, more economical, and consequently more probable fashion, was he satisfied with merely returning to breathe at the surface of the water like a cetacean, renewing his oxygen supply every twenty-four hours? In any event, whatever his method was, it seemed prudent to me that he use this method without delay.
In fact, I had already resorted to speeding up my inhalations in order to extract from the cell what little oxygen it contained, when suddenly I was refreshed by a current of clean air, scented with a salty aroma. It had to be a sea breeze, life-giving and charged with iodine! I opened my mouth wide, and my lungs glutted themselves on the fresh particles. At the same time, I felt a swaying, a rolling of moderate magnitude but definitely noticeable. This boat, this sheet-iron monster, had obviously just risen to the surface of the ocean, there to breathe in good whale fashion. So the ship's mode of ventilation was finally established.
When I had absorbed a chestful of this clean air, I looked for the conduit--the "air carrier," if you prefer--that allowed this beneficial influx to reach us, and I soon found it. Above the door opened an air vent that let in a fresh current of oxygen, renewing the thin air in our cell.
I had gotten to this point in my observations when Ned and Conseil woke up almost simultaneously, under the influence of this reviving air purification. They rubbed their eyes, stretched their arms, and sprang to their feet.
"Did master sleep well?" Conseil asked me with his perennial good manners.
"Extremely well, my gallant lad," I replied. "And how about you, Mr. Ned Land?"
"Like a log, professor. But I must be imagining things, because it seems like I'm breathing a sea breeze!"
A seaman couldn't be wrong on this topic, and I told the Canadian what had gone on while he slept.
"Good!" he said. "That explains perfectly all that bellowing we heard, when our so-called narwhale lay in sight of the Abraham Lincoln."
"Perfectly, Mr. Land. It was catching its breath!"
"Only I've no idea what time it is, Professor Aronnax, unless maybe it's dinnertime?"
"Dinnertime, my fine harpooner? I'd say at least breakfast time, because we've certainly woken up to a new day."
"Which indicates," Conseil replied, "that we've spent twenty-four hours in slumber."
"That's my assessment," I replied.
"I won't argue with you," Ned Land answered. "But dinner or breakfast, that steward will be plenty welcome whether he brings the one or the other."
"The one and the other," Conseil said.
"Well put," the Canadian replied. "We deserve two meals, and speaking for myself, I'll do justice to them both."
"All right, Ned, let's wait and see!" I replied. "It's clear that these strangers don't intend to let us die of hunger, otherwise last evening's dinner wouldn't make any sense."
"Unless they're fattening us up!" Ned shot back.
"I object," I replied. "We have not fallen into the hands of cannibals."
"Just because they don't make a habit of it," the Canadian replied in all seriousness, "doesn't mean they don't indulge from time to time. Who knows? Maybe these people have gone without fresh meat for a long while, and in that case three healthy, well-built specimens like the professor, his manservant, and me ---"
"Get rid of those ideas, Mr. Land," I answered the harpooner. "And above all, don't let them lead you to flare up against our hosts, which would only make our situation worse."
"Anyhow," the harpooner said, "I'm as hungry as all Hades, and dinner or breakfast, not one puny meal has arrived!"
"Mr. Land," I answered, "we have to adapt to the schedule on board, and I imagine our stomachs are running ahead of the chief cook's dinner bell."
"Well then, we'll adjust our stomachs to the chef's timetable!" Conseil replied serenely.
"There you go again, Conseil my friend!" the impatient Canadian shot back. "You never allow yourself any displays of bile or attacks of nerves! You're everlastingly calm! You'd say your after-meal grace even if you didn't get any food for your before-meal blessing--and you'd starve to death rather than complain!"
"What good would it do?" Conseil asked.
"Complaining doesn't have to do good, it just feels good! And if these pirates--I say pirates out of consideration for the professor's feelings, since he doesn't want us to call them cannibals--if these pirates think they're going to smother me in this cage without hearing what cusswords spice up my outbursts, they've got another think coming! Look here, Professor Aronnax, speak frankly. How long do you figure they'll keep us in this iron box?"
"To tell the truth, friend Land, I know little more about it than you do."
"But in a nutshell, what do you suppose is going on?"
"My supposition is that sheer chance has made us privy to an important secret. Now then, if the crew of this underwater boat have a personal interest in keeping that secret, and if their personal interest is more important than the lives of three men, I believe that our very existence is in jeopardy. If such is not the case, then at the first available opportunity, this monster that has swallowed us will return us to the world inhabited by our own kind."
"Unless they recruit us to serve on the crew," Conseil said, "and keep us here--"
"Till the moment," Ned Land answered, "when some frigate that's faster or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers, then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!"
"Well thought out, Mr. Land," I replied. "But as yet, I don't believe we've been tendered any enlistment offers. Consequently, it's pointless to argue about what tactics we should pursue in such a case. I repeat: let's wait, let's be guided by events, and let's do nothing, since right now there's nothing we can do."
"On the contrary, professor," the harpooner replied, not wanting to give in. "There is something we can do."
"Oh? And what, Mr. Land?"
"Break out of here!"
"Breaking out of a prison on shore is difficult enough, but with an underwater prison, it strikes me as completely unworkable."
"Come now, Ned my friend," Conseil asked, "how would you answer master's objection? I refuse to believe that an American is at the end of his tether."
Visibly baffled, the harpooner said nothing. Under the conditions in which fate had left us, it was absolutely impossible to escape. But a Canadian's wit is half French, and Mr. Ned Land made this clear in his reply.
"So, Professor Aronnax," he went on after thinking for a few moments, "you haven't figured out what people do when they can't escape from their prison?"
"No, my friend."
"Easy. They fix things so they stay there."
"Of course!" Conseil put in. "Since we're deep in the ocean, being inside this boat is vastly preferable to being above it or below it!"
"But we fix things by kicking out all the jailers, guards, and wardens," Ned Land added.
"What's this, Ned?" I asked. "You'd seriously consider taking over this craft?"
"Very seriously," the Canadian replied.
"It's impossible."
"And why is that, sir? Some promising opportunity might come up, and I don't see what could stop us from taking advantage of it. If there are only about twenty men on board this machine, I don't think they can stave off two Frenchmen and a Canadian!"
It seemed wiser to accept the harpooner's proposition than to debate it. Accordingly, I was content to reply:
"Let such circumstances come, Mr. Land, and we'll see. But until then,
I beg you to control your impatience. We need to act shrewdly, and your flare-ups won't give rise to any promising opportunities. So swear to me that you'll accept our situation without throwing a tantrum over it."
"I give you my word, professor," Ned Land replied in an unenthusiastic tone. "No vehement phrases will leave my mouth, no vicious gestures will give my feelings away, not even when they don't feed us on time."
"I have your word, Ned," I answered the Canadian.
Then our conversation petered out, and each of us withdrew into his own thoughts. For my part, despite the harpooner's confident talk, I admit that I entertained no illusions. I had no faith in those promising opportunities that Ned Land mentioned. To operate with such efficiency, this underwater boat had to have a sizeable crew, so if it came to a physical contest, we would be facing an overwhelming opponent. Besides, before we could do anything, we had to be free, and that we definitely were not. I didn't see any way out of this sheet-iron, hermetically sealed cell. And if the strange commander of this boat did have a secret to keep--which seemed rather likely--he would never give us freedom of movement aboard his vessel. Now then, would he resort to violence in order to be rid of us, or would he drop us off one day on some remote coast? There lay the unknown. All these hypotheses seemed extremely plausible to me, and to hope for freedom through use of force, you had to be a harpooner.
I realized, moreover, that Ned Land's brooding was getting him madder by the minute. Little by little, I heard those aforesaid cusswords welling up in the depths of his gullet, and I saw his movements turn threatening again. He stood up, pacing in circles like a wild beast in a cage, striking the walls with his foot and fist. Meanwhile the hours passed, our hunger nagged unmercifully, and this time the steward did not appear. Which amounted to forgetting our castaway status for much too long, if they really had good intentions toward us.
Tortured by the growling of his well-built stomach, Ned Land was getting more and more riled, and despite his word of honor, I was in real dread of an explosion when he stood in the presence of one of the men on board.
For two more hours Ned Land's rage increased. The Canadian shouted and pleaded, but to no avail. The sheet-iron walls were deaf. I didn't hear a single sound inside this dead-seeming boat. The vessel hadn't stirred, because I obviously would have felt its hull vibrating under the influence of the propeller. It had undoubtedly sunk into the watery deep and no longer belonged to the outside world. All this dismal silence was terrifying.
As for our neglect, our isolation in the depths of this cell, I was afraid to guess at how long it might last. Little by little, hopes I had entertained after our interview with the ship's commander were fading away. The gentleness of the man's gaze, the generosity expressed in his facial features, the nobility of his bearing, all vanished from my memory. I saw this mystifying individual anew for what he inevitably must be: cruel and merciless. I viewed him as outside humanity, beyond all feelings of compassion, the implacable foe of his fellow man, toward whom he must have sworn an undying hate!
But even so, was the man going to let us die of starvation, locked up in this cramped prison, exposed to those horrible temptations to which people are driven by extreme hunger? This grim possibility took on a dreadful intensity in my mind, and fired by my imagination, I felt an unreasoning terror run through me. Conseil stayed calm. Ned Land bellowed.
Just then a noise was audible outside. Footsteps rang on the metal tiling. The locks were turned, the door opened, the steward appeared.
Before I could make a single movement to prevent him, the Canadian rushed at the poor man, threw him down, held him by the throat. The steward was choking in the grip of those powerful hands.
Conseil was already trying to loosen the harpooner's hands from his half-suffocated victim, and I had gone to join in the rescue, when I was abruptly nailed to the spot by these words pronounced in French:
"Calm down, Mr. Land! And you, professor, kindly listen to me!"
Friday, November 18, 2011
Mystery of Napoleon’s treasure. Part I
From Voice of Russia: Mystery of Napoleon's Treasure
Undiscovered gems of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte are still haunting the minds of both treasure seekers and adventure lovers worldwide. Almost right after Napoleon’s so-called “Russian Campaign” in 1812, as well as half a century ago, the surviving former officers and ordinary soldiers of the French Grande Armée literally implored the Russian authorities to let them come back to our country in search for the great commander’s hidden treasure.
Many of those enthusiasts were allowed to Russia and even provided with money, people and vehicles but returned to France empty-handed, having found nothing on Russia’s illimitable territories where the two armies clashed and where Napoleon’s teeming treasures were allegedly concealed. Generally speaking, this came as no surprise for anyone, given that the late autumn of 1812 only saw those treasure hunters hastily fleeing the enemy’s push along the devastated Russian roads.
The location of their commander’s trove was naturally the last thing they thought about back in those days. And still, many soldiers and officers were hopeful that Napoleon did hide the looted valuables somewhere in Russia after all. Referring to geographic and archive materials, we will try to renew the subject of the French emperor’s legendary jewels. So, let’s begin our journey…
At dawn of October 19th, 1812, Napoleon’s troops were leaving the nearly burnt to the ground Moscow. Over five weeks before that, they had been looting not only the citizens’ private houses but also the Kremlin and Moscow’s numerous churches. Having collected a lot of gold and silver items, candlesticks, icon frames and jewelry, the French even removed the gilded cross from the Russian capital’s famous Ivan the Great Bell Tower. When leaving Moscow, each of Napoleon’s soldiers appeared as nothing but a walking treasure, with at least 10 kilograms of stolen valuables on him. The transportation of the emperor’s loot alone required 200 horse-drawn vehicles.
Having decided to retreat, Bonaparte ordered his troops to blow up the Kremlin in revenge for the three unsuccessful offers of peace to Russian Emperor Alexander I. As a result, several Kremlin towers were ruined, as well as some of its walls, the Arsenal’s building, the Assumption Belfry and the Filaret Annex located right next to the Ivan the Great Bell Tower.
Both in the autumn of 1812 and much later, Napoleon considered the movement of his army towards Smolensk a march rather than retreat. In the early morning hours of October 25th, French reconnaissance attempts were frustrated by a group of Russian Cossacks who attacked Napoleon’s escort.
The same morning witnessed a council of war taking place in the French army where Napoleon and his marshals decided to leave Russia via Borovsk and Vereya to Mozhaisk and then Smolensk. In fact, October 25th 1812 became the first day of Napoleon troops’ genuine retreat. Over 14,000 mounted cavalry, nearly 90,000 boot-borne troops and some 12,000 non-combatant and ill soldiers passed through the Kaluga Gate - a total of 116,000 people and 569 hardware items.
Napoleon’s retreat along the Kaluga Road was only hampered by an early winter and frosts that came all of a sudden in late October. The starving and freezing French soldiers were constantly attacked by the Russian army’s forward infantry force and guerillas. The load of treasures looted from Moscow prevented the French from moving faster and forced them to hide the gold and the gems anywhere around to come back one day to find them. Emperor Bonaparte was compelled to part with his treasure as well. At least, the mentioned 200 horse-drawn vehicles never managed to reach France and were said to have been concealed somewhere in Russia. Since then, there have been a lot of attempts to discover them, especially on the part of French treasure hunters.
You’ve been listening to the first part of our story about the mystery surrounding Napoleon’s treasures.
Undiscovered gems of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte are still haunting the minds of both treasure seekers and adventure lovers worldwide. Almost right after Napoleon’s so-called “Russian Campaign” in 1812, as well as half a century ago, the surviving former officers and ordinary soldiers of the French Grande Armée literally implored the Russian authorities to let them come back to our country in search for the great commander’s hidden treasure.
Many of those enthusiasts were allowed to Russia and even provided with money, people and vehicles but returned to France empty-handed, having found nothing on Russia’s illimitable territories where the two armies clashed and where Napoleon’s teeming treasures were allegedly concealed. Generally speaking, this came as no surprise for anyone, given that the late autumn of 1812 only saw those treasure hunters hastily fleeing the enemy’s push along the devastated Russian roads.
The location of their commander’s trove was naturally the last thing they thought about back in those days. And still, many soldiers and officers were hopeful that Napoleon did hide the looted valuables somewhere in Russia after all. Referring to geographic and archive materials, we will try to renew the subject of the French emperor’s legendary jewels. So, let’s begin our journey…
At dawn of October 19th, 1812, Napoleon’s troops were leaving the nearly burnt to the ground Moscow. Over five weeks before that, they had been looting not only the citizens’ private houses but also the Kremlin and Moscow’s numerous churches. Having collected a lot of gold and silver items, candlesticks, icon frames and jewelry, the French even removed the gilded cross from the Russian capital’s famous Ivan the Great Bell Tower. When leaving Moscow, each of Napoleon’s soldiers appeared as nothing but a walking treasure, with at least 10 kilograms of stolen valuables on him. The transportation of the emperor’s loot alone required 200 horse-drawn vehicles.
Having decided to retreat, Bonaparte ordered his troops to blow up the Kremlin in revenge for the three unsuccessful offers of peace to Russian Emperor Alexander I. As a result, several Kremlin towers were ruined, as well as some of its walls, the Arsenal’s building, the Assumption Belfry and the Filaret Annex located right next to the Ivan the Great Bell Tower.
Both in the autumn of 1812 and much later, Napoleon considered the movement of his army towards Smolensk a march rather than retreat. In the early morning hours of October 25th, French reconnaissance attempts were frustrated by a group of Russian Cossacks who attacked Napoleon’s escort.
The same morning witnessed a council of war taking place in the French army where Napoleon and his marshals decided to leave Russia via Borovsk and Vereya to Mozhaisk and then Smolensk. In fact, October 25th 1812 became the first day of Napoleon troops’ genuine retreat. Over 14,000 mounted cavalry, nearly 90,000 boot-borne troops and some 12,000 non-combatant and ill soldiers passed through the Kaluga Gate - a total of 116,000 people and 569 hardware items.
Napoleon’s retreat along the Kaluga Road was only hampered by an early winter and frosts that came all of a sudden in late October. The starving and freezing French soldiers were constantly attacked by the Russian army’s forward infantry force and guerillas. The load of treasures looted from Moscow prevented the French from moving faster and forced them to hide the gold and the gems anywhere around to come back one day to find them. Emperor Bonaparte was compelled to part with his treasure as well. At least, the mentioned 200 horse-drawn vehicles never managed to reach France and were said to have been concealed somewhere in Russia. Since then, there have been a lot of attempts to discover them, especially on the part of French treasure hunters.
You’ve been listening to the first part of our story about the mystery surrounding Napoleon’s treasures.
Mystery of Napoleon’s treasure. Part II
The Voice of Russia: Mystery of Napoleon’s treasure. Part II
We present another edition in our series dedicated to the 1812 Patriotic War against France. Today we will continue our story about Napoleon’s found and lost treasures.
As we’ve mentioned in the previous program, alongside the French, Russian people themselves also tried to find Napoleon’s lost treasure. Thus, following the 1835 release of Sir Walter Scott’s 14-volume series titled The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the Frenchin St. Petersburg, Nikolay Khmelnitsky, the then governor of Smolensk, read the following in one of the books: “Napoleon commanded that the Moscow loot - ancient armor, guns and a big cross from the Ivan the Great Bell Tower - were thrown into the Semlev Lake as trophies that he did not want to lose but was not able to carry with him.”
A poet, playwright and governor, Khmelnitsky was enchanted by this news - Napoleon’s loot was buried just outside Smolensk! Adding to his confidence in the credibility of Walter Scott’s lines were memoirs of French marshals and generals, particularly Bonaparte’s most-informed aide Philippe-Paul De Ségur.
In 1824-1829, the latter published his memoirs about the French army’s “Russian Campaign” that read as follows: “From Gzhatsk to the Mikhailovskaya village, between Dorogobuzh and Smolensk, the imperial convoy met with nothing remarkable, except that we had to throw the entire Moscow pillage into the Semlev Lake: cannons, ancient guns, Kremlin jewelry and Ivan the Great cross. Trophies, fame - all the blessings for which we had sacrificed everything - became a burden for us. Now we only thought about how to save our lives.” De Ségur compared the French army with a big ship broken by a terrible storm, throwing everything hampering its advance into the sea of snow.
Apart from a little less detailed version suggested by Walter Scott, this text reveals several literature references to the fact of Moscow loot’s having been drowned in the Semlev Lake.
Along with the French general’s memoirs, there is a very curious report by a Russian lieutenant colonel on January 9th, 1836. He wrote that during his visit to the Vyazemsky region, where the mentioned lake is located, in search of more information, he found out that following the French retreat, a local landowner sent 40 gun carriages to the country court, with their cannons never discovered. The Russian officer concluded that the army’s deplorable state prevented the retreating French soldiers from taking the loot any farther and could have made them bury all the useless guns in the lake, even without Napoleon’s orders.
Judging by these literature works and sure that the treasure was almost in his hands, Smolensk Governor Nikolay Khmelnitsky ordered to exhaust the lake but found nothing valuable there. Later, treasure-hunting efforts around the Semlev village also involved several St. Petersburg citizens, among them warrant officer von Ludwig, Lieutenant Colonel Schwanebach and a person named Chetverikov. However, none of them succeeded in discovering the traces of Napoleon’s lost gems.
The next stage of this large-scale treasure hunt in Russia and the Smolensk province in particular lasted from 1910 to 1912 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of victory in the 1812 Patriotic War. It proved fruitless as well.
The search for buried valuables continued in the Soviet period, with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper sending a delegation of its employees to the Semlev Lake. They had been working in vain for two years, from 1958 to1960, having found neither gold or silver, nor cannons or guns dating back to the 1812 war era.
The failed expedition made most treasure seekers sit up and think whether the notorious treasure exists after all or not. The latest research carried out by Russian enthusiasts proves that the French emperor’s looted jewels are really hidden somewhere in Russia.
You’ve been listening to the second part of our story about the mystery surrounding Napoleon’s treasures.
We present another edition in our series dedicated to the 1812 Patriotic War against France. Today we will continue our story about Napoleon’s found and lost treasures.
As we’ve mentioned in the previous program, alongside the French, Russian people themselves also tried to find Napoleon’s lost treasure. Thus, following the 1835 release of Sir Walter Scott’s 14-volume series titled The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the Frenchin St. Petersburg, Nikolay Khmelnitsky, the then governor of Smolensk, read the following in one of the books: “Napoleon commanded that the Moscow loot - ancient armor, guns and a big cross from the Ivan the Great Bell Tower - were thrown into the Semlev Lake as trophies that he did not want to lose but was not able to carry with him.”
A poet, playwright and governor, Khmelnitsky was enchanted by this news - Napoleon’s loot was buried just outside Smolensk! Adding to his confidence in the credibility of Walter Scott’s lines were memoirs of French marshals and generals, particularly Bonaparte’s most-informed aide Philippe-Paul De Ségur.
In 1824-1829, the latter published his memoirs about the French army’s “Russian Campaign” that read as follows: “From Gzhatsk to the Mikhailovskaya village, between Dorogobuzh and Smolensk, the imperial convoy met with nothing remarkable, except that we had to throw the entire Moscow pillage into the Semlev Lake: cannons, ancient guns, Kremlin jewelry and Ivan the Great cross. Trophies, fame - all the blessings for which we had sacrificed everything - became a burden for us. Now we only thought about how to save our lives.” De Ségur compared the French army with a big ship broken by a terrible storm, throwing everything hampering its advance into the sea of snow.
Apart from a little less detailed version suggested by Walter Scott, this text reveals several literature references to the fact of Moscow loot’s having been drowned in the Semlev Lake.
Along with the French general’s memoirs, there is a very curious report by a Russian lieutenant colonel on January 9th, 1836. He wrote that during his visit to the Vyazemsky region, where the mentioned lake is located, in search of more information, he found out that following the French retreat, a local landowner sent 40 gun carriages to the country court, with their cannons never discovered. The Russian officer concluded that the army’s deplorable state prevented the retreating French soldiers from taking the loot any farther and could have made them bury all the useless guns in the lake, even without Napoleon’s orders.
Judging by these literature works and sure that the treasure was almost in his hands, Smolensk Governor Nikolay Khmelnitsky ordered to exhaust the lake but found nothing valuable there. Later, treasure-hunting efforts around the Semlev village also involved several St. Petersburg citizens, among them warrant officer von Ludwig, Lieutenant Colonel Schwanebach and a person named Chetverikov. However, none of them succeeded in discovering the traces of Napoleon’s lost gems.
The next stage of this large-scale treasure hunt in Russia and the Smolensk province in particular lasted from 1910 to 1912 to coincide with the 100th anniversary of victory in the 1812 Patriotic War. It proved fruitless as well.
The search for buried valuables continued in the Soviet period, with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper sending a delegation of its employees to the Semlev Lake. They had been working in vain for two years, from 1958 to1960, having found neither gold or silver, nor cannons or guns dating back to the 1812 war era.
The failed expedition made most treasure seekers sit up and think whether the notorious treasure exists after all or not. The latest research carried out by Russian enthusiasts proves that the French emperor’s looted jewels are really hidden somewhere in Russia.
You’ve been listening to the second part of our story about the mystery surrounding Napoleon’s treasures.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, Ch 8
CHAPTER 8 -- "Mobilis 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 naked 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.* The first one of these bandits who lays a hand on me--"
*Author's Note: A Bowie knife is a wide-bladed dagger that Americans are forever carrying around.
"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 naked 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.* 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.
*Author's Note: A steward is a waiter on board a steamer.
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.
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 naked 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.* The first one of these bandits who lays a hand on me--"
*Author's Note: A Bowie knife is a wide-bladed dagger that Americans are forever carrying around.
"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 naked 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.* 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.
*Author's Note: A steward is a waiter on board a steamer.
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.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
Huge Prehistoric Sunken Islands Found in Indian Ocean
From Fox News: Huge Prehistoric Sunken Islands Found in Indian Ocean
PERTH, Australia – Scientists have discovered two huge sunken islands in the Indian Ocean, west of Australia.
The islands -- about the size of West Virginia or Scotland -- were once part of the supercontinent Gondwana and are almost a mile (1.6km) underwater.
Researchers from the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and the University of Tasmania said the islands were once above water and formed part of the last link between India and Australia.
The scientists made the discovery while mapping the seafloor of the Perth Abyssal Plain.
"The data collected on the voyage could significantly change our understanding of the way in which India, Australia and Antarctica broke off from Gondwana," University of Sydney geologist Dr. Joanne Whittaker said.
The islands, called "micro-continents," were formed when India began to move away from Australia, about 130 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
They became stranded thousands of miles (kilometers) from either coast as the land masses separated.
"The sunken islands charted during the expedition have flat tops, which indicates they were once at sea level before being gradually submerged," Whittaker said.
PERTH, Australia – Scientists have discovered two huge sunken islands in the Indian Ocean, west of Australia.
The islands -- about the size of West Virginia or Scotland -- were once part of the supercontinent Gondwana and are almost a mile (1.6km) underwater.
Researchers from the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and the University of Tasmania said the islands were once above water and formed part of the last link between India and Australia.
The scientists made the discovery while mapping the seafloor of the Perth Abyssal Plain.
"The data collected on the voyage could significantly change our understanding of the way in which India, Australia and Antarctica broke off from Gondwana," University of Sydney geologist Dr. Joanne Whittaker said.
The islands, called "micro-continents," were formed when India began to move away from Australia, about 130 million years ago during the Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
They became stranded thousands of miles (kilometers) from either coast as the land masses separated.
"The sunken islands charted during the expedition have flat tops, which indicates they were once at sea level before being gradually submerged," Whittaker said.
Gondwana
In paleogeography, Gondwana, originally Gondwanaland, was the southernmost of two supercontinents (the other being Laurasia) that later became parts of the Pangaea supercontinent. It existed from approximately 510 to 180 million years ago (Mya). Gondwana is believed to have sutured between ca. 570 and 510 Mya, thus joining East Gondwana to West Gondwana. It separated from Laurasia 200-180 Mya (the mid Mesozoic era) during the breakup of Pangaea, drifting further south after the split.
Gondwana included most of the landmasses in today's Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar and the Australian continent, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent, which have now moved entirely into the Northern Hemisphere.
The continent of Gondwana was named by Austrian scientist, Eduard Suess, after the Gondwana region of central northern India (from Sanskrit gondavana "forest of the Gonds"), from which the Gondwana sedimentary sequences (Permian-Triassic) are also described.
The adjective Gondwanan is in common use in biogeography when referring to patterns of distribution of living organisms, typically when the organisms are restricted to two or more of the now-discontinuous regions that were once part of Gondwana, including the Antarctic flora. For example, the Proteaceae, a family of plants known only from southern South America, South Africa and Australia, are considered to have a "Gondwanan distribution". This pattern is often considered to indicate an archaic, or relict, lineage.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, Ch 7
CHAPTER 7 -- A Whale of Unknown Species
ALTHOUGH I WAS startled by this unexpected descent, I at least have a very clear recollection of my sensations during it.
At first I was dragged about twenty feet under. I'm a good swimmer, without claiming to equal such other authors as Byron and Edgar Allan Poe, who were master divers, and I didn't lose my head on the way down. With two vigorous kicks of the heel, I came back to the surface of the sea.
My first concern was to look for the frigate. Had the crew seen me go overboard? Was the Abraham Lincoln tacking about? Would Commander Farragut put a longboat to sea? Could I hope to be rescued?
The gloom was profound. I glimpsed a black mass disappearing eastward, where its running lights were fading out in the distance. It was the frigate. I felt I was done for.
"Help! Help!" I shouted, swimming desperately toward the Abraham Lincoln.
My clothes were weighing me down. The water glued them to my body, they were paralyzing my movements. I was sinking! I was suffocating . . . !
"Help!"
This was the last shout I gave. My mouth was filling with water. I struggled against being dragged into the depths. . . .
Suddenly my clothes were seized by energetic hands, I felt myself pulled abruptly back to the surface of the sea, and yes, I heard these words pronounced in my ear:
"If master would oblige me by leaning on my shoulder, master will swim with much greater ease."
With one hand I seized the arm of my loyal Conseil.
"You!" I said. "You!"
"Myself," Conseil replied, "and at master's command."
"That collision threw you overboard along with me?"
"Not at all. But being in master's employ, I followed master."
The fine lad thought this only natural!
"What about the frigate?" I asked.
"The frigate?" Conseil replied, rolling over on his back. "I think master had best not depend on it to any great extent!"
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that just as I jumped overboard, I heard the men at the helm shout, 'Our propeller and rudder are smashed!' "
"Smashed?"
"Yes, smashed by the monster's tusk! I believe it's the sole injury the Abraham Lincoln has sustained. But most inconveniently for us, the ship can no longer steer."
"Then we're done for!"
"Perhaps," Conseil replied serenely. "However, we still have a few hours before us, and in a few hours one can do a great many things!"
Conseil's unflappable composure cheered me up. I swam more vigorously, but hampered by clothes that were as restricting as a cloak made of lead, I was managing with only the greatest difficulty. Conseil noticed as much.
"Master will allow me to make an incision," he said.
And he slipped an open clasp knife under my clothes, slitting them from top to bottom with one swift stroke. Then he briskly undressed me while I swam for us both.
I then did Conseil the same favor, and we continued to "navigate" side by side.
But our circumstances were no less dreadful. Perhaps they hadn't seen us go overboard; and even if they had, the frigate--being undone by its rudder--couldn't return to leeward after us. So we could count only on its longboats.
Conseil had coolly reasoned out this hypothesis and laid his plans accordingly. An amazing character, this boy; in midocean, this stoic lad seemed right at home!
So, having concluded that our sole chance for salvation lay in being picked up by the Abraham Lincoln's longboats, we had to take steps to wait for them as long as possible. Consequently, I decided to divide our energies so we wouldn't both be worn out at the same time, and this was the arrangement: while one of us lay on his back, staying motionless with arms crossed and legs outstretched, the other would swim and propel his partner forward. This towing role was to last no longer than ten minutes, and by relieving each other in this way, we could stay afloat for hours, perhaps even until daybreak.
Slim chance, but hope springs eternal in the human breast! Besides, there were two of us. Lastly, I can vouch--as improbable as it seems--that even if I had wanted to destroy all my illusions, even if I had been willing to "give in to despair," I could not have done so!
The cetacean had rammed our frigate at about eleven o'clock in the evening. I therefore calculated on eight hours of swimming until sunrise. A strenuous task, but feasible, thanks to our relieving each other. The sea was pretty smooth and barely tired us. Sometimes I tried to peer through the dense gloom, which was broken only by the phosphorescent flickers coming from our movements. I stared at the luminous ripples breaking over my hands, shimmering sheets spattered with blotches of bluish gray. It seemed as if we'd plunged into a pool of quicksilver.
Near one o'clock in the morning, I was overcome with tremendous exhaustion. My limbs stiffened in the grip of intense cramps. Conseil had to keep me going, and attending to our self-preservation became his sole responsibility. I soon heard the poor lad gasping; his breathing became shallow and quick. I didn't think he could stand such exertions for much longer.
"Go on! Go on!" I told him.
"Leave master behind?" he replied. "Never! I'll drown before he does!"
Just then, past the fringes of a large cloud that the wind was driving eastward, the moon appeared. The surface of the sea glistened under its rays. That kindly light rekindled our strength. I held up my head again. My eyes darted to every point of the horizon. I spotted the frigate. It was five miles from us and formed no more than a dark, barely perceptible mass. But as for longboats, not a one in sight!
I tried to call out. What was the use at such a distance! My swollen lips wouldn't let a single sound through. Conseil could still articulate a few words, and I heard him repeat at intervals:
"Help! Help!"
Ceasing all movement for an instant, we listened. And it may have been a ringing in my ear, from this organ filling with impeded blood, but it seemed to me that Conseil's shout had received an answer back.
"Did you hear that?" I muttered.
"Yes, yes!"
And Conseil hurled another desperate plea into space.
This time there could be no mistake! A human voice had answered us! Was it the voice of some poor devil left behind in midocean, some other victim of that collision suffered by our ship? Or was it one of the frigate's longboats, hailing us out of the gloom?
Conseil made one final effort, and bracing his hands on my shoulders, while I offered resistance with one supreme exertion, he raised himself half out of the water, then fell back exhausted.
"What did you see?"
"I saw . . . ," he muttered, "I saw . . . but we mustn't talk . . . save our strength . . . !"
What had he seen? Then, lord knows why, the thought of the monster came into my head for the first time . . . ! But even so, that voice . . . ? Gone are the days when Jonahs took refuge in the bellies of whales!
Nevertheless, Conseil kept towing me. Sometimes he looked up, stared straight ahead, and shouted a request for directions, which was answered by a voice that was getting closer and closer. I could barely hear it. I was at the end of my strength; my fingers gave out; my hands were no help to me; my mouth opened convulsively, filling with brine; its coldness ran through me; I raised my head one last time, then I collapsed. . . .
Just then something hard banged against me. I clung to it. Then I felt myself being pulled upward, back to the surface of the water; my chest caved in, and I fainted. . . .
For certain, I came to quickly, because someone was massaging me so vigorously it left furrows in my flesh. I half opened my eyes. . . .
"Conseil!" I muttered.
"Did master ring for me?" Conseil replied.
Just then, in the last light of a moon settling on the horizon, I spotted a face that wasn't Conseil's but which I recognized at once.
"Ned!" I exclaimed.
"In person, sir, and still after his prize!" the Canadian replied.
"You were thrown overboard after the frigate's collision?"
"Yes, professor, but I was luckier than you, and right away I was able to set foot on this floating islet."
"Islet?"
"Or in other words, on our gigantic narwhale."
"Explain yourself, Ned."
"It's just that I soon realized why my harpoon got blunted and couldn't puncture its hide."
"Why, Ned, why?"
"Because, professor, this beast is made of boilerplate steel!"
At this point in my story, I need to get a grip on myself, reconstruct exactly what I experienced, and make doubly sure of everything I write.
The Canadian's last words caused a sudden upheaval in my brain. I swiftly hoisted myself to the summit of this half-submerged creature or object that was serving as our refuge. I tested it with my foot. Obviously it was some hard, impenetrable substance, not the soft matter that makes up the bodies of our big marine mammals.
But this hard substance could have been a bony carapace, like those that covered some prehistoric animals, and I might have left it at that and classified this monster among such amphibious reptiles as turtles or alligators.
Well, no. The blackish back supporting me was smooth and polished with no overlapping scales. On impact, it gave off a metallic sonority, and as incredible as this sounds, it seemed, I swear, to be made of riveted plates.
No doubts were possible! This animal, this monster, this natural phenomenon that had puzzled the whole scientific world, that had muddled and misled the minds of seamen in both hemispheres, was, there could be no escaping it, an even more astonishing phenomenon--a phenomenon made by the hand of man.
Even if I had discovered that some fabulous, mythological creature really existed, it wouldn't have given me such a terrific mental jolt. It's easy enough to accept that prodigious things can come from our Creator. But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this staggers the mind!
But there was no question now. We were stretched out on the back of some kind of underwater boat that, as far as I could judge, boasted the shape of an immense steel fish. Ned Land had clear views on the issue. Conseil and I could only line up behind him.
"But then," I said, "does this contraption contain some sort of locomotive mechanism, and a crew to run it?"
"Apparently," the harpooner replied. "And yet for the three hours I've lived on this floating island, it hasn't shown a sign of life."
"This boat hasn't moved at all?"
"No, Professor Aronnax. It just rides with the waves, but otherwise it hasn't stirred."
"But we know that it's certainly gifted with great speed. Now then, since an engine is needed to generate that speed, and a mechanic to run that engine, I conclude: we're saved."
"Humph!" Ned Land put in, his tone denoting reservations.
Just then, as if to take my side in the argument, a bubbling began astern of this strange submersible--whose drive mechanism was obviously a propeller--and the boat started to move. We barely had time to hang on to its topside, which emerged about eighty centimeters above water. Fortunately its speed was not excessive.
"So long as it navigates horizontally," Ned Land muttered, "I've no complaints. But if it gets the urge to dive, I wouldn't give $2.00 for my hide!"
The Canadian might have quoted a much lower price. So it was imperative to make contact with whatever beings were confined inside the plating of this machine. I searched its surface for an opening or a hatch, a "manhole," to use the official term; but the lines of rivets had been firmly driven into the sheet-iron joins and were straight and uniform.
Moreover, the moon then disappeared and left us in profound darkness.
We had to wait for daylight to find some way of getting inside this underwater boat.
So our salvation lay totally in the hands of the mysterious helmsmen steering this submersible, and if it made a dive, we were done for! But aside from this occurring, I didn't doubt the possibility of our making contact with them. In fact, if they didn't produce their own air, they inevitably had to make periodic visits to the surface of the ocean to replenish their oxygen supply. Hence the need for some opening that put the boat's interior in contact with the atmosphere.
As for any hope of being rescued by Commander Farragut, that had to be renounced completely. We were being swept westward, and I estimate that our comparatively moderate speed reached twelve miles per hour. The propeller churned the waves with mathematical regularity, sometimes emerging above the surface and throwing phosphorescent spray to great heights.
Near four o'clock in the morning, the submersible picked up speed. We could barely cope with this dizzying rush, and the waves battered us at close range. Fortunately Ned's hands came across a big mooring ring fastened to the topside of this sheet-iron back, and we all held on for dear life.
Finally this long night was over. My imperfect memories won't let me recall my every impression of it. A single detail comes back to me. Several times, during various lulls of wind and sea, I thought I heard indistinct sounds, a sort of elusive harmony produced by distant musical chords. What was the secret behind this underwater navigating, whose explanation the whole world had sought in vain? What beings lived inside this strange boat? What mechanical force allowed it to move about with such prodigious speed?
Daylight appeared. The morning mists surrounded us, but they soon broke up. I was about to proceed with a careful examination of the hull, whose topside formed a sort of horizontal platform, when I felt it sinking little by little.
"Oh, damnation!" Ned Land shouted, stamping his foot on the resonant sheet iron. "Open up there, you antisocial navigators!"
But it was difficult to make yourself heard above the deafening beats of the propeller. Fortunately this submerging movement stopped.
From inside the boat, there suddenly came noises of iron fastenings pushed roughly aside. One of the steel plates flew up, a man appeared, gave a bizarre yell, and instantly disappeared.
A few moments later, eight strapping fellows appeared silently, their faces like masks, and dragged us down into their fearsome machine.
ALTHOUGH I WAS startled by this unexpected descent, I at least have a very clear recollection of my sensations during it.
At first I was dragged about twenty feet under. I'm a good swimmer, without claiming to equal such other authors as Byron and Edgar Allan Poe, who were master divers, and I didn't lose my head on the way down. With two vigorous kicks of the heel, I came back to the surface of the sea.
My first concern was to look for the frigate. Had the crew seen me go overboard? Was the Abraham Lincoln tacking about? Would Commander Farragut put a longboat to sea? Could I hope to be rescued?
The gloom was profound. I glimpsed a black mass disappearing eastward, where its running lights were fading out in the distance. It was the frigate. I felt I was done for.
"Help! Help!" I shouted, swimming desperately toward the Abraham Lincoln.
My clothes were weighing me down. The water glued them to my body, they were paralyzing my movements. I was sinking! I was suffocating . . . !
"Help!"
This was the last shout I gave. My mouth was filling with water. I struggled against being dragged into the depths. . . .
Suddenly my clothes were seized by energetic hands, I felt myself pulled abruptly back to the surface of the sea, and yes, I heard these words pronounced in my ear:
"If master would oblige me by leaning on my shoulder, master will swim with much greater ease."
With one hand I seized the arm of my loyal Conseil.
"You!" I said. "You!"
"Myself," Conseil replied, "and at master's command."
"That collision threw you overboard along with me?"
"Not at all. But being in master's employ, I followed master."
The fine lad thought this only natural!
"What about the frigate?" I asked.
"The frigate?" Conseil replied, rolling over on his back. "I think master had best not depend on it to any great extent!"
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that just as I jumped overboard, I heard the men at the helm shout, 'Our propeller and rudder are smashed!' "
"Smashed?"
"Yes, smashed by the monster's tusk! I believe it's the sole injury the Abraham Lincoln has sustained. But most inconveniently for us, the ship can no longer steer."
"Then we're done for!"
"Perhaps," Conseil replied serenely. "However, we still have a few hours before us, and in a few hours one can do a great many things!"
Conseil's unflappable composure cheered me up. I swam more vigorously, but hampered by clothes that were as restricting as a cloak made of lead, I was managing with only the greatest difficulty. Conseil noticed as much.
"Master will allow me to make an incision," he said.
And he slipped an open clasp knife under my clothes, slitting them from top to bottom with one swift stroke. Then he briskly undressed me while I swam for us both.
I then did Conseil the same favor, and we continued to "navigate" side by side.
But our circumstances were no less dreadful. Perhaps they hadn't seen us go overboard; and even if they had, the frigate--being undone by its rudder--couldn't return to leeward after us. So we could count only on its longboats.
Conseil had coolly reasoned out this hypothesis and laid his plans accordingly. An amazing character, this boy; in midocean, this stoic lad seemed right at home!
So, having concluded that our sole chance for salvation lay in being picked up by the Abraham Lincoln's longboats, we had to take steps to wait for them as long as possible. Consequently, I decided to divide our energies so we wouldn't both be worn out at the same time, and this was the arrangement: while one of us lay on his back, staying motionless with arms crossed and legs outstretched, the other would swim and propel his partner forward. This towing role was to last no longer than ten minutes, and by relieving each other in this way, we could stay afloat for hours, perhaps even until daybreak.
Slim chance, but hope springs eternal in the human breast! Besides, there were two of us. Lastly, I can vouch--as improbable as it seems--that even if I had wanted to destroy all my illusions, even if I had been willing to "give in to despair," I could not have done so!
The cetacean had rammed our frigate at about eleven o'clock in the evening. I therefore calculated on eight hours of swimming until sunrise. A strenuous task, but feasible, thanks to our relieving each other. The sea was pretty smooth and barely tired us. Sometimes I tried to peer through the dense gloom, which was broken only by the phosphorescent flickers coming from our movements. I stared at the luminous ripples breaking over my hands, shimmering sheets spattered with blotches of bluish gray. It seemed as if we'd plunged into a pool of quicksilver.
Near one o'clock in the morning, I was overcome with tremendous exhaustion. My limbs stiffened in the grip of intense cramps. Conseil had to keep me going, and attending to our self-preservation became his sole responsibility. I soon heard the poor lad gasping; his breathing became shallow and quick. I didn't think he could stand such exertions for much longer.
"Go on! Go on!" I told him.
"Leave master behind?" he replied. "Never! I'll drown before he does!"
Just then, past the fringes of a large cloud that the wind was driving eastward, the moon appeared. The surface of the sea glistened under its rays. That kindly light rekindled our strength. I held up my head again. My eyes darted to every point of the horizon. I spotted the frigate. It was five miles from us and formed no more than a dark, barely perceptible mass. But as for longboats, not a one in sight!
I tried to call out. What was the use at such a distance! My swollen lips wouldn't let a single sound through. Conseil could still articulate a few words, and I heard him repeat at intervals:
"Help! Help!"
Ceasing all movement for an instant, we listened. And it may have been a ringing in my ear, from this organ filling with impeded blood, but it seemed to me that Conseil's shout had received an answer back.
"Did you hear that?" I muttered.
"Yes, yes!"
And Conseil hurled another desperate plea into space.
This time there could be no mistake! A human voice had answered us! Was it the voice of some poor devil left behind in midocean, some other victim of that collision suffered by our ship? Or was it one of the frigate's longboats, hailing us out of the gloom?
Conseil made one final effort, and bracing his hands on my shoulders, while I offered resistance with one supreme exertion, he raised himself half out of the water, then fell back exhausted.
"What did you see?"
"I saw . . . ," he muttered, "I saw . . . but we mustn't talk . . . save our strength . . . !"
What had he seen? Then, lord knows why, the thought of the monster came into my head for the first time . . . ! But even so, that voice . . . ? Gone are the days when Jonahs took refuge in the bellies of whales!
Nevertheless, Conseil kept towing me. Sometimes he looked up, stared straight ahead, and shouted a request for directions, which was answered by a voice that was getting closer and closer. I could barely hear it. I was at the end of my strength; my fingers gave out; my hands were no help to me; my mouth opened convulsively, filling with brine; its coldness ran through me; I raised my head one last time, then I collapsed. . . .
Just then something hard banged against me. I clung to it. Then I felt myself being pulled upward, back to the surface of the water; my chest caved in, and I fainted. . . .
For certain, I came to quickly, because someone was massaging me so vigorously it left furrows in my flesh. I half opened my eyes. . . .
"Conseil!" I muttered.
"Did master ring for me?" Conseil replied.
Just then, in the last light of a moon settling on the horizon, I spotted a face that wasn't Conseil's but which I recognized at once.
"Ned!" I exclaimed.
"In person, sir, and still after his prize!" the Canadian replied.
"You were thrown overboard after the frigate's collision?"
"Yes, professor, but I was luckier than you, and right away I was able to set foot on this floating islet."
"Islet?"
"Or in other words, on our gigantic narwhale."
"Explain yourself, Ned."
"It's just that I soon realized why my harpoon got blunted and couldn't puncture its hide."
"Why, Ned, why?"
"Because, professor, this beast is made of boilerplate steel!"
At this point in my story, I need to get a grip on myself, reconstruct exactly what I experienced, and make doubly sure of everything I write.
The Canadian's last words caused a sudden upheaval in my brain. I swiftly hoisted myself to the summit of this half-submerged creature or object that was serving as our refuge. I tested it with my foot. Obviously it was some hard, impenetrable substance, not the soft matter that makes up the bodies of our big marine mammals.
But this hard substance could have been a bony carapace, like those that covered some prehistoric animals, and I might have left it at that and classified this monster among such amphibious reptiles as turtles or alligators.
Well, no. The blackish back supporting me was smooth and polished with no overlapping scales. On impact, it gave off a metallic sonority, and as incredible as this sounds, it seemed, I swear, to be made of riveted plates.
No doubts were possible! This animal, this monster, this natural phenomenon that had puzzled the whole scientific world, that had muddled and misled the minds of seamen in both hemispheres, was, there could be no escaping it, an even more astonishing phenomenon--a phenomenon made by the hand of man.
Even if I had discovered that some fabulous, mythological creature really existed, it wouldn't have given me such a terrific mental jolt. It's easy enough to accept that prodigious things can come from our Creator. But to find, all at once, right before your eyes, that the impossible had been mysteriously achieved by man himself: this staggers the mind!
But there was no question now. We were stretched out on the back of some kind of underwater boat that, as far as I could judge, boasted the shape of an immense steel fish. Ned Land had clear views on the issue. Conseil and I could only line up behind him.
"But then," I said, "does this contraption contain some sort of locomotive mechanism, and a crew to run it?"
"Apparently," the harpooner replied. "And yet for the three hours I've lived on this floating island, it hasn't shown a sign of life."
"This boat hasn't moved at all?"
"No, Professor Aronnax. It just rides with the waves, but otherwise it hasn't stirred."
"But we know that it's certainly gifted with great speed. Now then, since an engine is needed to generate that speed, and a mechanic to run that engine, I conclude: we're saved."
"Humph!" Ned Land put in, his tone denoting reservations.
Just then, as if to take my side in the argument, a bubbling began astern of this strange submersible--whose drive mechanism was obviously a propeller--and the boat started to move. We barely had time to hang on to its topside, which emerged about eighty centimeters above water. Fortunately its speed was not excessive.
"So long as it navigates horizontally," Ned Land muttered, "I've no complaints. But if it gets the urge to dive, I wouldn't give $2.00 for my hide!"
The Canadian might have quoted a much lower price. So it was imperative to make contact with whatever beings were confined inside the plating of this machine. I searched its surface for an opening or a hatch, a "manhole," to use the official term; but the lines of rivets had been firmly driven into the sheet-iron joins and were straight and uniform.
Moreover, the moon then disappeared and left us in profound darkness.
We had to wait for daylight to find some way of getting inside this underwater boat.
So our salvation lay totally in the hands of the mysterious helmsmen steering this submersible, and if it made a dive, we were done for! But aside from this occurring, I didn't doubt the possibility of our making contact with them. In fact, if they didn't produce their own air, they inevitably had to make periodic visits to the surface of the ocean to replenish their oxygen supply. Hence the need for some opening that put the boat's interior in contact with the atmosphere.
As for any hope of being rescued by Commander Farragut, that had to be renounced completely. We were being swept westward, and I estimate that our comparatively moderate speed reached twelve miles per hour. The propeller churned the waves with mathematical regularity, sometimes emerging above the surface and throwing phosphorescent spray to great heights.
Near four o'clock in the morning, the submersible picked up speed. We could barely cope with this dizzying rush, and the waves battered us at close range. Fortunately Ned's hands came across a big mooring ring fastened to the topside of this sheet-iron back, and we all held on for dear life.
Finally this long night was over. My imperfect memories won't let me recall my every impression of it. A single detail comes back to me. Several times, during various lulls of wind and sea, I thought I heard indistinct sounds, a sort of elusive harmony produced by distant musical chords. What was the secret behind this underwater navigating, whose explanation the whole world had sought in vain? What beings lived inside this strange boat? What mechanical force allowed it to move about with such prodigious speed?
Daylight appeared. The morning mists surrounded us, but they soon broke up. I was about to proceed with a careful examination of the hull, whose topside formed a sort of horizontal platform, when I felt it sinking little by little.
"Oh, damnation!" Ned Land shouted, stamping his foot on the resonant sheet iron. "Open up there, you antisocial navigators!"
But it was difficult to make yourself heard above the deafening beats of the propeller. Fortunately this submerging movement stopped.
From inside the boat, there suddenly came noises of iron fastenings pushed roughly aside. One of the steel plates flew up, a man appeared, gave a bizarre yell, and instantly disappeared.
A few moments later, eight strapping fellows appeared silently, their faces like masks, and dragged us down into their fearsome machine.
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