Chapter 31
CHAPTER XXXI. The Mediterranean in 48 hours. The Mediterranean, your ideal blue sea. To the Greeks simply the sea. To Hebrews the great sea.
To Romans, mer nostrum. Bordered by orange trees, aloes, cactus, and maritime pine trees, perfumed with the scent of myrtle, framed by rugged mountains, saturated with clean transparent air, but continuously under construction by fires in the earth, this sea is a genuine battlefield where Neptune and Pluto still struggle for world domination.
Here on these beaches and waters, says the French historian Michel A, a man is revived by one of the most invigorating climates in the world. But as beautiful as it was, I could only get a quick look at this basin whose surface area comprises two million square kilometers. Captain Nemo's personal insights were denying me, because that mystifying individual didn't
appear one single time during our high-speed crossing. I estimate that the Nautilus covered a track of some six hundred leagues under the waves of the sea, and this voyage was accomplished in just twenty-four hours times two. Departing from the waterways of Greece on the morning of February 16th, we clear the Strait of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.
It was obvious to me that this Mediterranean, pinned in the middle of those shores he wanted to avoid, gave Captain Nemo no pleasure. Its waves and breezes brought back too many memories, if not too many regrets. Here he no longer had the ease of movement and freedom of maneuver that the oceans allowed him, and his Nautilus felt cramped so close to the coast of both Africa and Europe.
Accordingly, our speed was twenty-five miles, that is, twelve four-kilometer leagues per hour. Needless to say, Ned Layen had to give up his escape plans much to his distress. Swept along at the rate of twelve to thirteen meters per second, he could hardly make use of the skiff.
Leaving the Nautilus under these conditions would have been like jumping off a train racing at this speed, a rash move if there ever was one. Moreover, to renew our air supply, the submersible rose to the surface of the waves only at night, and relying solely on compass and log, it steered by dead reckoning. Inside the Mediterranean, then, I could catch no more of its fast-passing scenery than a
traveler might see from an express train. In other words, I could view only the distant horizons, because the foregrounds flashed by like lightning. Eric Consell and I were able to observe these Mediterranean fish whose powerful fins kept pace for a while in the Nautilus' waters.
We stayed on watch before the lounge windows, and our notes enabled me to reconstruct, in a few words, the ichthyology of this sea. Among the various fish inhabiting it, some I viewed, others I glimpsed, and the rest I missed completely because of the Nautilus' speed. This will only allow me to sort them out using this whimsical system of classification.
It will at least convey the quickness of my observations. In the midst of the watery mass, brightly lit by electric beams, there snaked past those one-meter lampreys that are common to nearly every climb. A type of ray from the Genesis oxyrhynchus, five feet wide, had a white belly with a spotted, flash-grey back, and was carried along by the currents like a huge, wide-open shawl.
Other rays passed by so quickly I couldn't tell if they deserved that name Eagle Ray, coined by the ancient Greeks, or those designations of Rat Ray, Bat Ray, and Toad Ray that modern fishermen have inflicted on them. Dogfish, known as Topes, twelve feet long and especially feared by divers, were racing with each other.
Riding like big, bluish shadows, thresher sharks went by, eight feet long and gifted with an extremely acute sense of smell. Dorados from the genus Sparis, some measuring up to thirteen decameters, appeared in silver and azure costumes encircled with ribbons, which contrasted with the dark color of their fins.
Fish sacred to the goddess Venus, their eyes set in brows of gold, a valuable species that patronizes all waters fresh or salt, equally at home in rivers, lakes, and oceans, living in every clime tolerating any temperature, their line dating back to prehistoric times on this earth, yet preserving all its beauty from those far-off days. Magnificent sturgeons, nine to ten meters long and extremely fast, banged their powerful
tails against the glass of our panels. Fishing bluish blacks with small brown spots, they resemble sharks without equaling their strength and are encountered in every sea. In the spring they delight in swimming up the great rivers, fighting the currents of the Volga, Danube, Poe, Rhine, Lor, and Odair, while feeding on herring, mackerel, salmon,
and codfish. Although they belong to the class of cartilaginous fish, they rate as a delicacy. They were eaten fresh, dried, marinated, or salt-preserved, and in olden times they were born in triumph at the table of the Roman epicure Lusulius. But whatever the nautilus drew near the surface, these denizens of the Mediterranean, I could
observe most productively, belonged to the 63rd genus of bony fish. These were tuna from the genus Scombor. Blue black on top, silver on the belly armor, their dorsal stripes giving off a golden gleam. They are said to follow ships in search of refreshing shade from the hot tropical sun, and they did just that with the nautilus, as they had once done with the vessels of
the Count de la Pyrros. For long hours they competed in speed with our submersible. I couldn't stop marveling at these animals, so perfectly cut out for racing, their heads small, their bodies sleek, spindle-shaped, and in some cases over three meters long, their pectoral fins gifted with remarkable strength, their casual fins forked.
Like certain flocks of birds, whose speed they equal, these tunas swim in triangular formation, which prompted the ancients to say they'd boned up on geometry and military strategy, and yet they can't escape the provincial fisherman, who prizes them as highly as did the ancient inhabitants of Turkey and Italy. And these valuable animals, as oblivious as if they were deaf and blind, leap right into
the Marseilles tunanets and perish by the thousands. Just for the record, I'll mention those Mediterranean fish that Consell and I barely glimpsed. They were whitish eels of the species Gemontis fascicis, that passed like elusive wisps of steam, conjure eels three to four meters long, that were tricked out in green, blue, yellow, three-foot hockey with a liver that makes a dainty morsel, wormfish drifting like
thin sea-wood, sea robins that poets call leer fish, and trimmed with filaments, some shad spotted with black, gray, brown, blue, yellow, and green, that actually respond to tinkling handbells, splendid diamond-shaped turbos that were like aquatic pheasants with yellowish fins, stippled in brown and the left top side mostly marbled in brown and yellow.
They were really schools of wonderful red mullet, real oceanic birds of paradise that ancient roadmen bought for as much as ten thousand siesters apiece, and which they killed at the table so they could heartlessly watch it change color from cinnabar red when alive to pallid white when dead. And as for other fish common to the Atlantic and Mediterranean, I was unable to observe
fish, puffers, seahorses, jewelfish, trumpetfish, blinis, gray mullet, wrasse, smelt, flying fish, anchovies, sea-brean porges, garfish, or any of the cheap representatives of the order Plurinecta, such as soul, flounder, place, dab, and grill, simply because of the dizzying speed with which the Nautilus hustled through these opulent waters. As for marine mammals, on passing by the mouth of the Adriatic Sea, I thought I recognized
two or three sperm whales, equipped with a single dorsal fin, denoting the Genesis Ficeter, some pilot whales from the Genesis Globus Cephalius, exclusive to the Mediterranean, the four part of the head striped with small distinct lines, and also a dozen seals with white bellies and black coats, known by the name Monk-seals, and just as solemn as if they were three-meter Dominicans.
For his part, Consell thought he spotted a turtle six feet wide and adorned with three protruding ridges that ran lengthwise. I was sorry to miss this reptile, because from Consell's description I believe I recognized a leatherback turtle, a pretty rare species. For my part, I noted only some loggerhead turtles with long carpuses. As for zoo fights, for a few moments I was able to marvel at a wonderful orange-hued
hydra from the Genesis Galleolaria that clung to the glass of our port panel. It consisted of a long, lean filament that spread out into countless branches and ended in the most delicate lace ever spun by the followers of our king. Unfortunately, I couldn't fish up this wonderful specimen, and surely no other Mediterranean zoo fights would have been offered to my gaze, if on the evening of the 16th the nautilus hadn't slowed down in an odd fashion. This
was the situation. By then we were passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunisia. In the cramped space between Cape Bohn and the Strait of Messiana, the sea bottom rises almost all at once. It forms an actual ridge with only 17 meters of water remaining above it, while the depth on either side is 170 meters. Consequently, the nautilus had to maneuver with caution so as not to bump into this underwater barrier. I showed Consell the position of
this long reef on our chart of the Mediterranean. "'But with all due respect to Master,' Consell ventured to observe, "'it's like an actual it-ness connecting Europe to Africa.' "'Yes, my boy,' I replied, "'it cuts across the whole Strait of Sicily, and Smith's soundings prove that in the past these two continents were genuinely connected between Cape Bui and Cape
Farina.' "'I can easily believe it,' Consell said. "'I might add,' I went on, "'that there's a similar barrier between Gibraltar and Ceuta, and in prehistoric times it closed off the Mediterranean completely.' "'Gracious,' Consell put in,
"'suppose one day some volcanic upheaval raises these two barriers back above the waves.' "'That's most unlikely, Consell. If Master will allow me to finish, I mean that if this phenomenon occurs, it might prove distressing to Mr. D. Lesseps, who has gone to such pains to cut through his it-ness.' "'Again, but I repeat, Consell, such a phenomenon won't occur. The intensity of those underground
forces continues to diminish. Volcanoes were quite numerous in the world's early days, but they're going extinct one by one. The heat inside the earth is growing weaker. The temperature in the globe's lower strata is cooling appreciably every century, and to our globe's detriment, because its heat is its life. But the sun—the sun isn't enough, Consell. Can it restore heat to a corpse?'
"'Not that I've heard.' "'Well, my friends, some day the earth will be just such a cold corpse. Like the moon, which long ago lost its vital heat, our globe will become lifeless and unlivable. In how many centuries?' Consell asked. "'In hundreds of thousands of years, my boy.'
"'Then we have ample time to finish our voyage,' Consell replied, if Ned Land doesn't mess things up.' Thus reassured, Consell went back to studying the shallows that the nautilus was skimming at moderate speed. On the rocky volcanic sea-floor there bloomed quite a collection of moving flora. Sponges, sea cucumbers, jellyfish called sea gooseberries that were adorned with reddish
tendrils and gave off a subtle phosphorescence, members of the genus Burro, that are commonly known by the name melon jellyfish and are bathed in the shimmer of the whole solar spectrum. Free-swimming crinoids, one meter wide, that redden the waters with their crimson hue. Sea-like basket stars of the greatest beauty, sea fans from the genus Pavonacea with long stems, numerous edible sea urchins of various species, plus green sea anemones with a grayish
trunk and a brown disk lost beneath the olive-colored tresses of their tentacles. Consell kept especially busy observing mollusks and articulates, and although his catalogue is a little dry, I didn't want to wrong the gallant lad by leaving out his personal observations. From the branch mollusca he mentions numerous comb-shaped scallops, hoof-like spiny oysters piled on top of each other, triangular coquina, three-pronged glass snails with yellow fins and transparent
shells, orange snails from the genus Plurobronchus that look like eggs spotted or speckled with greenish dots, members of the genus Apollicea, also known by the name Sea-Hairs, other Sea-Hairs from the genus Dolabella, plump paper bubble shells, umbrella shells exclusive to the Mediterranean, abalone whose shell produces a mother of pearl much in demand, pilgrim scallops, saddle shells that diners in the French province at Languedoc are said to like better than oysters. Some
of these cockle-shells so dear to the citizens of Marseille, fat white venous shells that are among the clams so abundant off the coast of North America and eaten in such quantities by New Yorkers, variously colored comb-shells with gill covers, burrowing date mussels with a peppery flavor I relish, furled heart cockles whose shells have rib-like ridges on their arching summits, triton shells pocked with scarlet bumps, carniera snails with backward
curving tips that make them resemble flimsy gondolas, crowned ferola snails, atlanta snails with spiral shells, gray nudie branches from the genus Tethys that were spotted with white and covered by fringe mantles, nudie branches from the suborder Elodia that look like small slugs, sea butterflies crawling on their back, seashells from the genus Oricula, including the oval-shaped Oricula mysotis, tan wentle-trap snails, common periwinkles, violet snails,
cineraria snails, rock-borers, ear-shells, capricon snails, pandora shells, etc. As for the articulates, in his notes Consell has very appropriately divided them into six classes, three of which belong to the marine world. These classes are the Crustacea, Syripedia, and Analedia. Crustaceans are subdivided into nine orders, and the first of these consists of the decopods, in other words animals whose head and thorax are usually fused, whose cheek
and mouth mechanism is made up of several pairs of appendages, and whose thorax has four, five, or six pairs of walking legs. Consell used the methods of our mentor professor Milne Edwards, who puts the decopods in three divisions, Brachura, Macura, and Annumura. These names may look a tad fierce, but they're accurate and appropriate. Among the Brachura, Consell mentions some Amantia crabs, whose fronts were armed with two big diverging tips,
these innocuous scorpions that, lord knows why, symbolize wisdom to the ancient Greeks, spider crabs of the Massena and Spinaemina varieties that had probably gone astray in these shallows because they usually live in the lower depths, Xanthid crabs, Pelumena crabs, Rhomboid crabs, granular box crabs, easy on the digestion as Consell ventured to observe, toothless mast crabs, Ibelia crabs, Simipolia crabs, woolly-handed crabs, etc.
Among the Macura, which are subdivided into five families, hardshells, burrowers, crayfish, prawns, and ghost crabs, Consell mentions some common spiny lobsters, whose females supply a meat highly prized, slippery lobsters or common shrimp, waterside Jebia shrimp, and all sorts of edible species, but he says nothing of the crayfish subdivision that includes the true lobster, because spiny lobsters are the only type in the Mediterranean. Finally,
among the Annumura, he saw common Drachnia crabs, dwelling inside whatever abandoned seashells they could take over, Homola crabs with spiny fronts, hermit crabs, hairy porcelain crabs, etc. There, Consell's work came to a halt. He didn't have time to finish off the class Crustacea through an examination of its stomopoids, amphipoids, homopoids, isopoids, trilobites, branchiopods, ostrichods, and entomostrations, and in order to complete
his study of marine articulates, he needed to mention the class Serapedia, which contains water fleas and carp lice, plus the class Analedia, which he would have divided without fail into tube-effects worms, and Drosa brancharian worms. But having gone past the shallows of the Strait of Sicily, the Nautilus resumed its usual deep-water speed. From then on, no more mollusks, no more zoo-fights, no more articulates, just a few large fish swimming
by like shadows. During the night of February 16-17, we entered the second Mediterranean basin, whose maximum depth we found at 3,000 meters. The Nautilus, driven downward by its propeller and slanting fins, descended to the lowest strata of this sea. There, in place of natural wonders, the watery mass offered some thrilling and dreadful scenes to my eyes. In essence, we were then crossing that part of the whole Mediterranean so fertile in casualties.
From the coast of Algiers to the beaches of Providence, how many ships have wrecked, how many vessels have vanished. Compared to the vast liquid plains of the Pacific, the Mediterranean is a mere lake, but it's an unpredictable lake with fickle waves, today kindly and affectionate to those frail single masters, drifting between a double-altar marine of sky and water, tomorrow bad-tempered and turbulent, agitated by the winds, demolishing the strongest
ships beneath sudden waves that smash down with a headlong wallop. So on our swift cruise through these deep strata, how many vessels I saw lying on the sea-floor, some already caked with coral, others clad only in a layer of rust, plus minerals, cannons, shells, iron fittings, propeller blades, parts of engines, cracked cylinders, staved-in boilers, then hulls floating in midwater, here upright, there overturned.
Some of these wrecked ships had perished in collisions, others from hitting granite reefs. I saw a few that had sunk straight down, their mastings still upright, their rigging stiffened by the water. They looked like they were at anchor by some immense open offshore mooring where they were waiting for their departure time. When the Nautilus passed between them, covering them with sheets of electricity, they seemed ready to salute us with their
colors and send us their serial numbers. But no, nothing but silence and death filled this field of catastrophes. I observed that these Mediterranean depths became more and more cluttered with such gruesome wreckage as the Nautilus drew nearer to the Strait of Gibraltar. By then the shores of Africa and Europe were converging, and in this narrow space collisions were commonplace. There I saw numerous iron undersides, the phantasmagoric ruins of steamers,
some lying down, others rearing up like fearsome animals. One of these boats made a dreadful first impression. Sides torn open, funnel bent, paddle wheels stripped to the mountings, rudder separated from the stern post and still hanging from an iron chain, the board on its stern eaten away by marine salts. How many lives were dashed in this shipwreck? How many victims were swept under the waves? Had some sailor on board lived to tell the story of
this dreadful disaster, or do the waves still keep this casualty a secret? It occurred to me, Lord knows why, that this boat buried under the sea might have been the Atlas, lost with all hands some twenty years ago, and never heard from again. Oh, what a gruesome tale these Mediterranean depths could tell, this huge boneyard where so much wealth has been lost, where so many victims have met their deaths.
Meanwhile, briskly unconcerned, the Nautilus ran at full propeller through the midst of these ruins. On February 18th, near three o'clock in the morning, it hoved before the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar. There are two currents here, an upper current, long known to exist, that carries the ocean's water into the Mediterranean basin, then a lower countercurrent, the only present-day proof of its existence being logic. In essence,
the Mediterranean receives a continual influx of water, not only from the Atlantic but from rivers emptying into it. Since local evaporation isn't enough to restore the balance, the total amount of added water should make the sea levels higher every year. Yet this isn't the case, and we're naturally forced to believe in the existence of some lower current that carries the Mediterranean surplus through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Atlantic
basin. And so it turned out, the Nautilus took full advantage of this countercurrent. It advanced swiftly through this narrow passageway. For an instant I could glimpse the wonderful ruins of the Temple of Hercules, buried under sea, as Pliny and Avanus have mentioned. Together with the flat island they stand on, and a few minutes later we were floating on the
waves of the Atlantic.
