“Well, sir, what do you think of this?”
“I think that we are caught, captain.”
“So, M. Aronnax, you really think that the Nautilus cannot disengage itself?”
“With difficulty, captain; for the season is already too far advanced for you to reckon on the breaking up of the ice.”
“Ah! sir,” said Captain Nemo, in an ironical tone, “you will always be the same. You see nothing but difficulties and obstacles. I affirm that not only can the Nautilus disengage itself, but also that it can go further still.”
“Further to the south?” I asked, looking at the captain.
“Yes, sir; it shall go to the pole.”
“To the pole!” I exclaimed, unable to repress a gesture of incredulity.
“Yes,” replied the captain coldly, “to the antarctic pole, to that unknown point from whence springs every meridian of the globe. You know whether I can do as I please with the Nautilus!”
Yes, I knew that. I knew that this man was bold, even to rashness. But to conquer those obstacles which bristled round the South Pole, rendering it more inaccessible than the north, which had not yet been reached by the boldest navigators—was it not a mad enterprise, one which only a maniac would have conceived? It then came into my head to ask Captain Nemo if he had ever discovered that pole which had never yet been trodden by a human creature.
“No, sir,” he replied; “but we will discover it together. Where others have failed, I will not fail. I have never yet led my Nautilus so far into southern seas; but I repeat, it shall go further yet.”
“I can well believe you, captain,” said I, in a slightly ironical tone. “I believe you! Let us go ahead! There are no obstacles for us! Let us smash this iceberg! Let us blow it up; and if it resists, let us give the Nautilus wings to fly over it!”
“Over it, sir!” said Captain Nemo quietly. “No, not over it, but under it!”
“Under it!” I exclaimed, a sudden idea of the captain’s projects flashing upon my mind. I understood the wonderful qualities of the Nautilus were going to serve us in this super-human enterprise.
“I see we are beginning to understand one another, sir,” said the captain, half smiling. “You begin to see the possibility—I should say the success—of this attempt. That which is impossible for an ordinary vessel, is easy to the Nautilus. If a continent lies before the pole, it must stop before the continent; but, if, on the contrary, the pole is washed by open sea, it will go even to the pole.”
“Certainly,” said I, carried away by the captain’s reasoning; “if the surface of the sea is solidified by the ice, the lower depths are free by the providential law which has placed the maximum of density of the waters of the ocean one degree higher than freezing-point; and, if I am not mistaken, the portion of this iceberg which is above the water is as one to four to that which is below.”
“Very nearly, sir; for one foot of iceberg above the sea there are three below it. If these ice mountains are not more than 300 feet above the surface, they are not more than 900 beneath. And what are 900 feet to the Nautilus?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“It could even seek at greater depths that uniform temperature of sea-water, and there brave with impunity the thirty or forty degrees of surface cold.”
“Just so, sir—just so,” I replied, getting animated.
“The only difficulty,” continued Captain Nemo, “is that of remaining several days without renewing our provision of air.”
“Is that all? The Nautilus has vast reservoirs; we can fill them, and they will supply us with all the oxygen we want.”
“Well thought of, M. Aronnax,” replied the captain, smiling. “But not wishing you to accuse me of rashness, I will first give you all my objections.”
“Have you any more to make?”
“Only one. It is possible, if the sea exists at the South Pole, that it may be covered; and, consequently, we shall be unable to come to the surface.”
“Good, sir! but do you forget that the Nautilus is armed with a powerful spur, and could we not send it diagonally against these fields of ice, which would open at the shock?”