Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas Part 90

The captain looked me straight in the eye.

"After tomorrow," he said, "the air tanks will be empty!"

I broke out in a cold sweat. But why should I have been startled by this reply? On March 22 the Nautilus had dived under the open waters at the pole. It was now the 26th.

We had lived off the s.h.i.+p's stores for five days!

And all remaining breathable air had to be saved for the workmen.

Even today as I write these lines, my sensations are so intense that an involuntary terror sweeps over me, and my lungs still seem short of air!

Meanwhile, motionless and silent, Captain Nemo stood lost in thought.

An idea visibly crossed his mind. But he seemed to brush it aside.

He told himself no. At last these words escaped his lips:

"Boiling water!" he muttered.

"Boiling water?" I exclaimed.

"Yes, sir. We're shut up in a relatively confined area.

If the Nautilus's pumps continually injected streams of boiling water into this s.p.a.ce, wouldn't that raise its temperature and delay its freezing?"

"It's worth trying!" I said resolutely.

"So let's try it, professor."

By then the thermometer gave -7 degrees centigrade outside.

Captain Nemo led me to the galley where a huge distilling mechanism was at work, supplying drinking water via evaporation.

The mechanism was loaded with water, and the full electric heat of our batteries was thrown into coils awash in liquid.

In a few minutes the water reached 100 degrees centigrade.

It was sent to the pumps while new water replaced it in the process.

The heat generated by our batteries was so intense that after simply going through the mechanism, water drawn cold from the sea arrived boiling hot at the body of the pump.

The steaming water was injected into the icy water outside, and after three hours had pa.s.sed, the thermometer gave the exterior temperature as -6 degrees centigrade. That was one degree gained.

Two hours later the thermometer gave only -4 degrees.

After I monitored the operation's progress, double-checking it with many inspections, I told the captain, "It's working."

"I think so," he answered me. "We've escaped being crushed.

Now we have only asphyxiation to fear."

During the night the water temperature rose to -1 degrees centigrade.

The injections couldn't get it to go a single degree higher.

But since salt water freezes only at -2 degrees, I was finally a.s.sured that there was no danger of it solidifying.

By the next day, March 27, six meters of ice had been torn from the socket. Only four meters were left to be removed.

That still meant forty-eight hours of work. The air couldn't be renewed in the Nautilus's interior. Accordingly, that day it kept getting worse.

An unbearable heaviness weighed me down. Near three o'clock in the afternoon, this agonizing sensation affected me to an intense degree.

Yawns dislocated my jaws. My lungs were gasping in their quest for that enkindling elastic fluid required for breathing, now growing scarcer and scarcer. My mind was in a daze.

I lay outstretched, strength gone, nearly unconscious.

My gallant Conseil felt the same symptoms, suffered the same sufferings, yet never left my side. He held my hand, he kept encouraging me, and I even heard him mutter:

"Oh, if only I didn't have to breathe, to leave more air for master!"

It brought tears to my eyes to hear him say these words.

Since conditions inside were universally unbearable, how eagerly, how happily, we put on our diving suits to take our turns working!

Picks rang out on that bed of ice. Arms grew weary, hands were rubbed raw, but who cared about exhaustion, what difference were wounds?

Life-sustaining air reached our lungs! We could breathe!

We could breathe!

And yet n.o.body prolonged his underwater work beyond the time allotted him. His s.h.i.+ft over, each man surrendered to a gasping companion the air tank that would revive him. Captain Nemo set the example and was foremost in submitting to this strict discipline.

When his time was up, he yielded his equipment to another and reentered the foul air on board, always calm, unflinching, and uncomplaining.

That day the usual work was accomplished with even greater energy.

Over the whole surface area, only two meters were left to be removed.

Only two meters separated us from the open sea. But the s.h.i.+p's air tanks were nearly empty. The little air that remained had to be saved for the workmen. Not an atom for the Nautilus!

When I returned on board, I felt half suffocated. What a night!

I'm unable to depict it. Such sufferings are indescribable.

The next day I was short-winded. Headaches and staggering fits of dizziness made me reel like a drunk. My companions were experiencing the same symptoms. Some crewmen were at their last gasp.

That day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo concluded that picks and mattocks were too slow to deal with the ice layer still separating us from open water--and he decided to crush this layer.

The man had kept his energy and composure. He had subdued physical pain with moral strength. He could still think, plan, and act.

At his orders the craft was eased off, in other words, it was raised from its icy bed by a change in its specific gravity.

When it was afloat, the crew towed it, leading it right above the immense trench outlined to match the s.h.i.+p's waterline.

Next the ballast tanks filled with water, the boat sank, and was fitted into its socket.

Just then the whole crew returned on board, and the double outside door was closed. By this point the Nautilus was resting on a bed of ice only one meter thick and drilled by bores in a thousand places.

The stopc.o.c.ks of the ballast tanks were then opened wide, and 100 cubic meters of water rushed in, increasing the Nautilus's weight by 100,000 kilograms.

We waited, we listened, we forgot our sufferings, we hoped once more.

We had staked our salvation on this one last gamble.

Despite the buzzing in my head, I soon could hear vibrations under the Nautilus's hull. We tilted. The ice cracked with an odd ripping sound, like paper tearing, and the Nautilus began settling downward.

"We're going through!" Conseil muttered in my ear.

I couldn't answer him. I clutched his hand. I squeezed it in an involuntary convulsion.

All at once, carried away by its frightful excess load, the Nautilus sank into the waters like a cannonball, in other words, dropping as if in a vacuum!

Our full electric power was then put on the pumps, which instantly began to expel water from the ballast tanks.

After a few minutes we had checked our fall. The pressure gauge soon indicated an ascending movement. Brought to full speed, the propeller made the sheet-iron hull tremble down to its rivets, and we sped northward.

But how long would it take to navigate under the Ice Bank to the open sea? Another day? I would be dead first!

Half lying on a couch in the library, I was suffocating.