“These instruments guide the Nautilus,” said Captain Nemo. “Some you know: the thermometer, the barometer, the compass. This dial shows the pressure of the water outside, and so it tells me our depth. But on board my ship there is one power that does everything. It gives us light and heat, and it drives the engines. That power is electricity.”
“Electricity!” I cried. “But your ship is so fast, and electricity has never been strong enough for that.”
“My electricity is not like other people’s. Sea water contains a great deal of salt, and salt contains sodium. I take the sodium from the sea and use it to make my electricity. I owe everything to the ocean.”
“But not the air you breathe?”
“I rise to the surface whenever I wish. And powerful pumps fill my tanks with air, so that I can stay in the depths as long as I like.”
He showed me a clock divided into twenty-four hours. “For me there is no night or day,” he said, “only the light I take with me to the bottom of the sea. Now come and see the rest of the ship.”
In the middle of the ship an iron ladder led up into a kind of well.
“It leads to the boat,” said the captain. “It lies in a hollow in the top of the hull. When I want to use it, I climb in through an opening and loosen the bolts, and the boat rises to the surface.”
“But how do you get back on board?”
“I do not go back to the Nautilus. The Nautilus comes to me. An electric wire connects us, and I send it a signal.”
Further back I saw Ned and Conseil in a small cabin, eating with great pleasure. Then came a kitchen, where electricity did all the cooking and turned sea water into fresh drinking water. The door to the crew’s quarters was closed, so I could not guess how many men were on board. At the very back was the long engine room, where the electricity turned the propeller.
“From the Abraham Lincoln, I saw how fast your ship could move,” I said. “But how do you go down into the great depths, where the pressure is enormous? And how do you come up again? Am I asking too much?”
“Not at all, Professor,” he answered, after a moment’s hesitation, “since you will never leave this ship.”
In the salon he showed me a drawing of the Nautilus.
“She is shaped like a long cigar, about seventy meters long, with a sharp steel spur at the front. She has two hulls, one inside the other, made of steel and joined so firmly that they are as strong as a solid block. Along the bottom I have tanks. When I fill them with water, she sinks. When the pumps drive the water out, she rises. For the great depths I use two fins on her sides, which tilt her down or up as she moves. The man at the wheel stands in a small cabin on top of the hull, with thick glass windows, and behind him a powerful electric light lights up the sea far ahead.”
“So that was the light that puzzled us so much! And the Scotia? Did you strike her on purpose?”
“It was an accident. I was sailing just below the surface when it happened.”
So the clean hole in the liner had been cut by the sharp steel spur at the front of the Nautilus.
“And the Abraham Lincoln?”
“She attacked me, and I had to defend myself. I only made it impossible for her to chase me. She will easily be repaired.”
“Captain, your Nautilus is truly a marvel.”
“Yes, Professor, and I love her as if she were part of myself. On your ships, every danger makes men afraid. On the Nautilus there is nothing to fear: no sails for the wind to tear away, no boilers to burst, no fire, because she is made of iron, and no storms, because a few meters below the surface the sea is always calm. I trust her completely, for I am her captain, her builder and her engineer.”
“But how could you build her in secret?”
“I had each part made in a different country, and every factory received my orders under a different name. Then I set up a workshop on a desert island, and there my men, whom I trained myself, helped me put her together. When the work was finished, we burned everything on that island, so that no trace was left.”
“She must have cost a great deal. Are you rich?”
“Immensely rich, Professor. I could pay the national debt of France and not miss the money.”
I stared at this strange man. Was he making fun of me? The future would tell.