CHAPTER XI
THE NAUTILUS
Captain Nemo rose. I followed him. A double door, contrived at the back of the dining-room, opened, and I entered a room equal in
dimensions to that which I had just quitted.
It was a library. High pieces of furniture, of black rosewood inlaid with brass, supported upon their deep shelves a great number of books uniformly bound. They followed the shape of the room, terminating at the lower part in huge divans, covered with brown leather, which were curved, to afford the greatest comfort. Light moveable desks, made to slide in and out at will, allowed one to rest one’s book while reading. In the center stood an immense table, covered with pamphlets, among which were some newspapers, already old. The electric light flooded this harmonious whole; it was shed from four translucent globes half sunk in the volutes of the ceiling. I looked with real admiration at this room, so ingeniously fitted up, and I could scarcely believe my eyes.
“Captain Nemo,” said I to my host, who had just thrown himself on one of the divans, “this is a library which would do honor to more than one of the continental palaces, and I am absolutely astounded when I consider that it can follow you to the bottom of the seas.”
“Where could one find greater solitude or silence, Professor?” replied Captain Nemo. “Did your study in the Museum afford you such perfect quiet?”
“No, sir; and I must confess that it is a very poor one after yours. You must have six or seven thousand volumes here.”
“Twelve thousand, Monsieur Aronnax. These are the only ties which bind me to the earth. But I had done with the world on the day when my Nautilus plunged for the first time beneath the waters. That day I bought my last volumes, my last pamphlets, my last newspapers, and from that time I wish to think that men no longer think or write. These books, Professor, are at your service, and you can make use of them freely.”
I thanked Captain Nemo, and went up to the shelves of the library. Works on science, ethics, and literature abounded in every language; but I did not see one single work on political economy; that subject appeared to be strictly proscribed. A curious detail was that all these books were irregularly classified, in whatever language they were written; and this medley proved that the captain of the Nautilus could read with no difficulty any book which he might take up by chance.
Among these works, I noticed classics by masters both ancient and modern, that is to say, the most beautiful writings man has produced on history, poetry, fiction and science; from Homer to Victor Hugo, from Xenophon to Michelet, from Rabelais to Mme. Sand.1 But science, most especially, dominated this library. Books on mechanics, ballistics, hydrography, meteorology, geography, geology, etc. took up no less space than works on natural history. I realized that these formed the principal study of the captain. I saw all of Humboldt, all of Arago, the works of Foucault, d’Henri Sainte-Claire Deville, Chasles, Milne-Edwards, Quatrefages, Tyndall, Faraday, Berthelot, the Abbe Secchi, Petermann, Commander Maury, d’Agassiz, etc.; the journals of the Academy of Sciences, bulletins of various geographic societies, etc,; and in the first row the two volumes which had perhaps won me this relatively charitable reception by Captain Nemo. Among the works of Joseph Bertrand was a book entitled The Founders of Astronomy that gave me an exact date. I knew that it had appeared in the course of 1865, so I could conclude that the launch of the Nautilus could not have taken place before this date. Therefore, three years earlier, no longer, Captain Nemo had commenced his underwater existence. Perhaps the dates of more recent works would allow me to fix a more precise period, but I had time for this research. Right now, I did not want to delay our tour of the wonders of the Nautilus.
“Sir,” said I to the captain, “I thank you for having placed this library at my disposal. It contains some treasures of science, and I shall profit by them.”
“This room is not only a library,” said Captain Nemo, “it is also a smoking-room.”
“A smoking-room!” I cried. “Then one may smoke on board?”
“Without doubt.”
“Then, sir, I am forced to believe that you have kept up a communication with Havana.”
“Not at all,” answered the captain. “Accept this cigar, Monsieur Aronnax; and though it does not come from Havana, you will be pleased with it, if you are a connoisseur.”
I took the cigar which was offered me; its shape recalled the London ones, but it seemed to be made of leaves of gold. I lighted it at a little brazier, which was supported upon an elegant bronze stand, and drew the first whiffs with the delight of a lover of smoking who has not smoked for two days.
“It is excellent,” said I, “but it is not tobacco.”
“No!” answered the captain, “this tobacco comes neither from Havana nor from the East. It is a kind of seaweed, rich in nicotine, with which the sea provides me, but somewhat sparingly.”
“Do you miss your Londons, sir?”
“Captain, from this day I will despise them.”
“Smoke all you wish, and do not worry about their origin. They do not carry a tax stamp, but they are no less good for all that, I imagine.”
“On the contrary!”
At that moment Captain Nemo opened a door which stood opposite to that by which I had entered the library, and I passed into an immense, splendidly-lighted drawing-room.
It was a vast, four-sided room, with canted walls, ten meters long, six wide, and five high. A luminous ceiling, decorated with graceful arabesques, shed a soft clear light over all the marvels accumulated in this museum. For it was in fact a museum, in which an intelligent and prodigal hand had gathered all the treasures of nature and art, with the artistic randomness which distinguishes a painter’s studio.
Thirty first-rate pictures, uniformly framed, separated by bright drapery, ornamented the walls, which were hung with tapestry of severe design. I saw works of great value, many of which I had admired in the special collections of Europe, and in painting exhibitions. The various schools of the old masters were represented by a Madonna of Raphael, a Virgin of Leonardo da Vinci, a nymph of Corregio, a woman of Titian, an Adoration of Veronese, an Assumption of Murillo, a portrait by Holbein, a monk of Velasquez, a martyr of Ribera, a fair of Rubens, two Flemish landscapes of Teniers, three little “genre” pictures of Gerard Dow, Metsu, and Paul Potter, two specimens of Gericault and Prud’hon, and some sea pieces of Backhuysen and Vernet. Among the works of modern painters were pictures with the signatures of Delacroix, Ingres, Decamp, Troyon, Meissonnier, Daubigny, etc.; and some admirable reproductions of statues in marble and bronze, after the finest models of antiquity, stood upon pedestals in the corners of this magnificent museum. Amazement, as the Captain of the Nautilus had predicted, had already begun to take possession of me.
“Professor,” said this strange man, “you must excuse the unceremonious way in which I receive you, and the disorder which reigns in this room.”
“Sir,” I answered, “without seeking to know who you are, may I recognize in you an artist?”
“An amateur, nothing more, sir. Formerly I loved to collect these beautiful works created by the hand of man. I sought them greedily, and ferreted them out indefatigably, and I have been able to bring together some objects of great value. These are my last souvenirs of that world which is dead to me. In my eyes, your modern artists are already old; they are two or three thousand years old; I confuse them in my own mind. Masters have no age.”
“And these musicians?” said I, pointing out some works of Weber, Rossini, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Meyerbeer, Herold, Wagner, Auber, Gounod, and a number of others, scattered over a large piano-organ which occupied one of the panels of the drawing-room.
“These musicians,” replied Captain Nemo, “are the contemporaries of Orpheus; for in the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced; and I am dead, Professor; as much dead as those of your friends who
are sleeping six feet under the earth!”
Captain Nemo was silent, and seemed lost in a profound reverie. I contemplated him with deep interest, analyzing in silence the strange expression on his countenance. Leaning on his elbow against an angle of a costly mosaic table, he no longer saw me,—he had forgotten my presence.
I did not disturb this reverie, and continued my observation of the curiosities which enriched this drawing room or salon. Next to the works of art, rarities of nature took the most important place. These consisted principally of plants, shells and other products of the ocean, collected entirely by the personal efforts of Captain Nemo. In the middle of the salon a jet of water, lit by electricity, fell back into a bowl made from a single giant clam. This shell was furnished by the largest of the acephalous mollusks, and measured about six meters in circumference around its delicately scalloped sides. It surpassed in grandeur the beautiful clamshells given to Francois I by the Republic of Venice, now in the church of Saint-Sulpice, in Paris, in the form of two gigantic holy-water fountains.
Under elegant glass cases, reinforced by copper bands, were classed and labelled the most precious productions of the sea which had ever been presented to the eye of a naturalist. My delight as a professor may be imagined.
The division containing the zoophytes2 presented the most curious specimens of the two groups of polyps and echinoderms. In the first group, the tubipores, were gorgones arranged like a fan, soft Syrian sponges, the isis of the Moluccas, pennatules, an admirable virgularia of the Norwegian seas, variegated umbellulairse, alcyonariee, a whole series of madrepores, which my teacher, Milne-Edwards, has so cleverly classified, among which I remarked some wonderful flabellinase, oculinse of the island of Bourbon, the “Neptune’s Chariot” of the Antilles, superb varieties of corals, in short, every species of those curious polyps of which entire islands are formed, which will one day become continents. Of the echinoderms, remarkable for their coating of spines, were asteri, or starfish, pantacrinas, comatules, asterophons, echini, or sea urchins, holothuri, etc., representing a complete collection of individuals from this group.
A somewhat nervous conchologist would certainly have fainted before other more numerous cases, in which were classified the specimens of mollusks. It was a collection of inestimable value, which time fails me to describe minutely. Among these specimens, I will quote from memory only the elegant royal hammer-fish of the Indian Ocean, whose regular white spots stood out brightly on a red and brown ground, an imperial spondyle, bright-colored, bristling with spines,—a rare specimen in the European museums (I estimated its value at not less than twenty thousand francs); a common hammer-fish of the seas of Australia, which is only procured with difficulty; exotic buccardia of Senegal—fragile white bivalve shells, which a breath might shatter like a soap bubble; several varieties of the aspirgillum of Java, a kind of calcareous tube, edged with leafy folds, and much prized by collectors; a whole series of trochi, some a greenish-yellow, found in the American seas, others a reddish-brown, natives of Australian waters; others from the Gulf of Mexico, remarkable for their imbricated shell; stellari found in the Southern Seas; and last, the rarest of all, the magnificent spur shell of New Zealand.
Around this bowl, there were also admirable sulfur tellins, precious specimens of cytherean and venus shells, a trellised sundial from the coasts of Tranquebar, a marble sabot with its resplendent pearlescence, green parrot-shells from the seas of China, the rare cone shell of the genus Coenodulli, all the varieties of porcelaines that serve as money in India and Africa, the “Glory of the Sea”—the most precious shell of the East Indies, and finally the littorinae, the delphinulae, turritellae, janthinae, ovulae, volutes, olivae, mitrae, helmet shells, purpurae, whelks, harpae, rock shells, tritons, cerithidae, spindle shells, strombes, pterocerae, limpets, hyalinae, cleodorae—shells delicate and fragile that science has baptized with such charming names.
Apart, in separate compartments, were spread out chaplets of pearls of the greatest beauty, which reflected the electric light in little sparks of fire; pink pearls, torn from the pinna-marina of the Red Sea; green pearls of the haliotyde iris; yellow, blue, and black pearls, the curious productions of the various mollusks of every ocean, and certain mussels of the water courses of the North; lastly, several specimens of inestimable value which had been gathered from the rarest pintadines. Some of these pearls were larger than a pigeon’s egg, and were worth as much, and more than the one which the traveller Tavernier sold to the Shah of Persia for three million francs, and surpassed the one in the possession of the Imam of Muscat, which I had believed to be unrivaled in the world.
Therefore, to estimate the value of this collection was simply impossible. Captain Nemo must have expended millions in the acquirement of these various specimens, and I was thinking what source he could have drawn from, to have been able thus to gratify his fancy for collecting, when I was interrupted by these words—
“You are examining my shells, Professor? Unquestionably they must be interesting to a naturalist; but for me they have a far greater charm, for I have collected them all with my own hand, and there is not a sea on the face of the globe which has escaped my researches.”
“I can understand, Captain, the delight of wandering about in the midst of such riches. You are one of those who have collected their treasures themselves. No museum in Europe possesses such a collection of the produce of the ocean. But if I exhaust all my admiration upon it, I shall have none left for the vessel which carries it! I do not wish to pry into your secrets; but I must confess that this Nautilus, with the motive power which it contains, the contrivances which enable it to be worked, the powerful agent which propels it, all excite my curiosity to the highest pitch. I see suspended on the walls of this room instruments of whose use I am ignorant. They are..? May I presume...?”
“Monsieur Aronnax,” Captain Nemo responded, “I have told you that you have complete liberty while on board; consequently, no part of the Nautilus is forbidden to you. You can examine it in detail, and it will be my pleasure to act as your guide.”
“I don’t know how to thank you, sir, but I don’t want to abuse your kindness. I ask of you only what the uses are for these instruments...”
“You will find these same instruments in my own room, Professor, where I shall have much pleasure in explaining their use to you. But first come and inspect the cabin which is set apart for your own use. You must see how you will be accommodated on board the Nautilus.”
I followed Captain Nemo, who, by one of the doors opening from each panel of the salon, regained the passage. He conducted me towards the bow, and there I found, not a cabin, but an elegant room, with a bed, a dressing-table, and several other pieces of furniture.
I could only thank my host.
“Your room adjoins mine,” said he, opening a door, “and mine opens into the salon that we have just quitted.”
I entered the captain’s room: it had a severe, almost monastic aspect. A small iron bedstead, a worktable, some articles for the toilet; the whole lit very dimly. No comforts, the strictest necessaries only.
Captain Nemo pointed to a seat.
“Be so good as to sit down,” he said.
I seated myself, and he began thus:
1. George Sand was the pseudonym of Aurore Dupin, a friend of Verne’s. It has been suggested that she may have proposed the idea of an undersea adventure to him. R.M.
2. Zoophytes are animals that resemble plants, such as the sea anemone, and coral. R.M.