Early on the 1st of January, 1863, Conseil joined me on the platform.
“Master, will you permit me to wish you a happy new year?”
“What! Conseil; exactly as if I was at Paris in my study at the Jardin des Plantes? Well, I accept your good wishes, and thank you for them. Only, I will ask you what you mean by a ‘happy new year,’ under our circumstances? Do you mean the year that will bring us to the end of our imprisonment, or the year that sees us continue this strange voyage?”
“Really, I do not know how to answer, master. We are sure to see curious things, and for the last two months we have not had time for ennui. The last marvel is always the most astonishing; and if we continue this progression, I do not know how it will end. It is my opinion that we shall never again see the like. I think, then, with no offense to master, that a happy year would be one in which we could see everything.”
On January 2, we had made 11,340 miles, or 5,250 French leagues, since our starting-point in the Japan seas. Before the ship’s head stretched the dangerous shores of the coral sea, on the northeast coast of Australia. Our boat lay along some miles from the redoubtable bank on which Cook’s vessel was lost, June 10, 1770. The boat in which Cook was struck on a rock, and if it did not sink, it was owing to a piece of the coral that was broken by the shock, and fixed itself in the broken keel.
I had wished to visit the reef, 360 leagues long, against which the sea, always rough, broke with great violence, with a noise like thunder. But just then the inclined planes drew the Nautilus down to a great depth, and I could see nothing of the high coral walls. I had to content myself with the different specimens of fish brought up by the nets. I remarked, among others, some germons, a species of mackerel as large as a tunny, with bluish sides, and striped with transverse bands, that disappear with the animal’s life. These fish followed us in shoals, and furnished us with very delicate food. We took also a large number of giltheads, about one and a half inches long, tasting like dorys; and flying pyrapeds like submarine swallows, which, in dark nights, light alternately the air and water with their phosphorescent light. Among the mollusks and zoöphytes, I found in the meshes of the net several species of alcyonarians, echini, hammers, spurs, dials, cerites, and hyalleæ. The flora was represented by beautiful floating seaweeds, laminariæ, and macrocystes, impregnated with the mucilage that transudes through their pores; and among which I gathered an admirable Nemastoma Geliniarois, that was classed among the natural curiosities of the museum.
Two days after crossing the coral sea, January 4, we sighted the Papuan coasts. On this occasion, Captain Nemo informed me that his intention was to get into the Indian Ocean by the Strait of Torres. His communication ended there.
The Torres Straits are nearly thirty-four leagues wide; but they are obstructed by an innumerable quantity of islands, islets, breakers, and rocks, that make its navigation almost impracticable; so that Captain Nemo took all needful precautions to cross them. The Nautilus, floating betwixt wind and water, went at a moderate pace. Her screw, like a cetacean’s tail, beat the waves slowly.
Profiting by this, I and my two companions went up on to the deserted platform. Before us was the steersman’s cage, and I expected that Captain Nemo was there directing the course of the Nautilus. I had before me the excellent charts of the Strait of Torres, made out by the hydrographical engineer Vincendon Dumoulin. These and Captain King’s are the best charts that clear the intricacies of this strait, and I consulted them attentively. Round the Nautilus the sea dashed furiously. The course of the waves, that went from southeast to northwest at the rate of two and a half miles, broke on the coral that showed itself here and there.
“This is a bad sea!” remarked Ned Land.