Happily, with the captain’s and Conseil’s sharp friction, I saw consciousness return by degrees. He opened his eyes. What was his surprise, his terror even, at seeing four great copper heads leaning over him! And, above all, what must he have thought when Captain Nemo, drawing from the pocket of his dress a bag of pearls, placed it in his hand! This munificent charity from the man of the waters to the poor Cingalese was accepted with a trembling hand. His wondering eyes showed that he knew not to what superhuman beings he owed both fortune and life.
At a sign from the captain we regained the bank, and following the road already traversed, came in about half an hour to the anchor which held the canoe of the Nautilus to the earth.
Once on board, we each, with the help of the sailors, got rid of the heavy copper helmets.
Captain Nemo’s first word was to the Canadian.
“Thank you, Master Land,” said he.
“It was in revenge, captain,” replied Ned Land. “I owed you that.”
A ghastly smile passed across the captain’s lips, and that was all.
“To the Nautilus,” said he.
The boat flew over the waves. Some minutes after we met the shark’s dead body floating. By the black marking of the extremity of its fins, I recognized the terrible melanopteron of the Indian seas, of the species of shark properly so called. It was more than twenty-five feet long; its enormous mouth occupied one-third of its body. It was an adult, as was known by its six rows of teeth placed in an isosceles triangle in the upper jaw.
Conseil looked at it with scientific interest, and I am sure that he placed it, and not without reason, in the cartilaginous class, of the chondropterygian order, with fixed gills, of the selacian family, in the genus of the sharks.
While I was contemplating this inert mass, a dozen of these voracious beasts appeared round the boat; and, without noticing us, threw themselves upon the dead body and fought with one another for the pieces.
At half-past eight we were again on board the Nautilus. There I reflected on the incidents which had taken place in our excursion to the Manaar Bank.
Two conclusions I must inevitably draw from it—one bearing upon the unparalleled courage of Captain Nemo, the other upon his devotion to a human being, a representative of that race from which he fled beneath the sea. Whatever he might say, this strange man had not yet succeeded in entirely crushing his heart.
When I made this observation to him, he answered in a slightly moved tone:
“That Indian, sir, is an inhabitant of an oppressed country; and I am still, and shall be, to my last breath, one of them!”
The Red Sea
In the course of the day of the 29th of January, the island of Ceylon disappeared under the horizon, and the Nautilus, at a speed of twenty miles an hour, slid into the labyrinth of canals which separate the Maldives from the Laccadives. It coasted even the island of Kiltan, a land originally madreporic, discovered by Vasco da Gama in 1499, and one of the nineteen principal islands of the Laccadive Archipelago, situated between 10° and 14° 30′ north latitude, and 69° 50′ 72 east longitude.
We had made 16,220 miles, or 7,500 (French) leagues, from our starting-point in the Japanese seas.
The next day (30th of January), when the Nautilus went to the surface of the ocean, there was no land in sight. Its course was N.N.E., in the direction of the Sea of Oman, between Arabia and the Indian Peninsula, which serves as an outlet to the Persian Gulf. It was evidently a block without any possible egress. Where was Captain Nemo taking us to? I could not say. This, however, did not satisfy the Canadian, who that day came to me asking where we were going.
“We are going where our captain’s fancy takes us, Master Ned.”
“His fancy cannot take us far, then,” said the Canadian. “The Persian Gulf has no outlet; and if we do go in, it will not be long before we are out again.”