20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. Жюль Верн

the surface of the ocean astonished me by its power. The solar rays easily pierced this watery mask and dissipated its colour. One easily distinguished objects 120 yards off. Beyond that the tints faded into fine gradations of ultra-marine, and became effaced in a vague obscurity. The water around me only appeared a sort of air, denser than the terrestrial atmosphere, but nearly as transparent. Above me I perceived the calm surface of the sea.

      We were walking on fine even sand, not wrinkled, as it is on a flat shore which keeps the imprint of the billows. This dazzling carpet reflected the rays of the sun with surprising intensity. At that depth of thirty feet I saw as well as in open daylight!

      For a quarter of an hour I trod on this shining sand, sown with the impalpable dust of tinted shells. The hull of the Nautilus, looking like a long rock, disappeared by degrees; but its lantern, when night came, would facilitate our return on board. I put back with my hands the liquid curtains which closed again behind me, and the print of my steps was soon effaced by the pressure of the water.

      I soon came to some magnificent rocks, carpeted with splendid zoophytes, and I was at first struck by a special effect of this medium.

      It was then 10 a.m. The rays of the sun struck the surface of the waves at an oblique angle, and at their contact with the light, composed by a refraction as through a prism, flowers, rocks, plants, and polypi were shaded at their edges by the seven solar colours; it was a grand feast for the eyes this complication of tints, a veritable kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue – in a word, all the palette of an enthusiastic colourist.

      Before this splendid spectacle Conseil and I both stopped. Variegated isis, clusters of pure tuffed coral, prickly fungi and anemones adhering by their muscular disc, made perfect flower-beds, enamelled with porphitae, decked with their azure tentacles, sea-stars studding the sand, and warted asterophytons, like fine lace embroidered by the hands of Naüads, whose festoons waved in the gentle undulations caused by our walk. It was quite a grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant specimens of mulluscs which lay on the ground by thousands, the concentric combs, the hammerheads, the donaces, real bounding shells, the broques, the red helmets, the angel-winged strombes, the aphysies, and many other products of the inexhaustible ocean. But we were obliged to keep on walking, whilst above our heads shoals of physalia, letting their ultramarine tentacles float after them, medusae, with their rose-pink opaline parasols festooned with an azure border, sheltered us from the solar rays, and panophyrian pelegies, which, had it been dark, would have showered their phosphorescent gleams over our path.

      All these wonders I saw in the space of a quarter of a mile. Soon the nature of the soil changed; to the sandy plains succeeded an extent, of slimy mud composed of equal parts of siliceous and calcareous shells. Then we travelled over meadows of seaweed so soft to the foot that they would rival the softest carpet made by man. And at the same time that verdure was spread under our feet, marine plants were growing on the surface of the ocean. I saw long ribbons of fucus floating, some globular and others tubulous; laurenciae and cladostephi, of most delicate foliage, and some rhodomeniae and palmatae resembling the fan of a cactus. I noticed that the green plants kept near the surface, whilst the red occupied a middle depth, leaving to the black or brown hydrophytes the care of forming gardens and flower-beds in the remote depths of the ocean. The family of seaweeds produces the largest and smallest vegetables of the globe.

      We had left the Nautilus about an hour and a half. It was nearly twelve o’clock; I knew that by the perpendicularity of the sun’s rays, which were no longer refracted. The magical colours disappeared by degrees, and the emerald and sapphire tints died out. We marched along with a regular step which rang upon the ground with astonishing intensity; the slightest sound is transmitted with a speed to which the ear is not accustomed on the earth – in fact, water is a better conductor of sound than air in the ratio of four to one.

      The ground gradually sloped downwards, and the light took a uniform tint. We are at a depth of more than a hundred yards, and bearing a pressure of ten atmospheres. But my diving apparatus was so small that I suffered nothing from this pressure. I merely felt a slight discomfort in my finger-joints, and even that soon disappeared. As to the fatigue that this walk in such unusual harness might be expected to produce, it was nothing. My movements, helped by the water, were made with surprising facility.

      At this depth of three hundred feet I could still see the rays of the sun, but feebly. To their intense brilliancy had succeeded a reddish-twilight, middle term between day and night. Still we saw sufficiently to guide ourselves, and it was not yet necessary to light our lamps.

      At that moment Captain Nemo stopped. He waited for me to come up to him, and with his finger pointed to some obscure masses which stood out of the shade at some little distance.

      ‘It is the forest of Crespo Island,’ I thought, and I was not mistaken.

       CHAPTER 17 A Submarine Forest

      We had at last arrived on the borders of this forest, doubtless one of the most beautiful in the immense domain of Captain Nemo. He looked upon it as his own, and who was there to dispute his right? This forest was composed of arborescent plants, and as soon as we had penetrated under its vast arcades, I was struck at first by the singular disposition of their branches, which I had not observed before.

      None of those herbs which carpeted the ground – none of the branches of the larger plants, were either bent, drooped, or extended horizontally. There was not a single filament, however thin, that did not keep as upright as a rod of iron. The fusci and llianas grew in rigid perpendicular lines, commanded by the density of the element which had produced them. When I bent them with my hand these plants immediately resumed their first position. It was the reign of perpendicularity.

      I soon accustomed myself to this fantastic disposition of things, as well as to the relative obscurity which enveloped us. The soil of the forest seemed covered with sharp blocks difficult to avoid. The submarine flora appeared to me very perfect, and richer than it would have been in the Arctic or tropical zones, where these productions are less numerous. But for some minutes I involuntarily confounded the genera, taking zoophytes for hydrophytes, animals for plants. And who would not have been mistaken? The fauna and flora are so nearly allied in this submarine world.

      I noticed that all these productions of the vegetable kingdom had no roots, and only held on to either sand, shell, or rock. These plants drew no vitality from anything but the water. The greater number, instead of leaves, shot forth blades of capricious shapes, comprised within a scale of colours – pink, carmine, red, olive, fawn, and brown.

      Amongst these different shrubs, as large as the trees of temperate zones, and under their humid shade, were massed veritable bushes of living flowers, hedges of zoophytes, on which blossomed meandrina with tortuous stripes, yellow cariophylles with transparent tentacles, grassy tufts of zoantharia, and, to complete the illusion, the fish-flies flew from branch to branch like a swarm of humming birds, whilst yellow lepisacomthi, with bristling jaws, dactylopteri, and monocentrides rose at our feet like a flight of snipes.

      About one o’clock Captain Nemo gave the signal to halt. I, for my part, was not sorry, and we stretched ourselves under a thicket of alariae, the long thin blades of which shot up like arrows.

      This short rest seemed delicious to me. Nothing was wanting but the charm of conversation, but it was impossible to speak – I could only approach my large copper head to that of Conseil. I saw the eyes of the worthy fellow shine with contentment, and he moved about in his covering in the most comical way in the world.

      After this four hours’ walk I was much astonished not to find myself violently hungry, and I cannot tell why, but instead I was intolerably sleepy, as all divers are. My eyes closed behind their thick glass, and I fell into an unavoidable slumber, which the movement of walking had alone prevented up till then. Captain Nemo and his robust companion, lying down in the clear crystal, set us the example.

      How long I remained asleep I cannot tell, but when I awoke the sun seemed sinking towards the horizon. Captain Nemo was already on his feet, and I was stretching