menu_book Chapter 33

CHAPTER XXXIII. A LOST CONTINENT. The next morning, February 19, I beheld the Canadian entering my stateroom. I was expecting this visit. He wore an expression of great disappointment. Well, sir, he said to me, well, Ned, the fates were against us yesterday. Yes, that damned captain had to call a halt just as we were going to escape from his boat. Yes, Ned, he had business with his bankers.

His bankers? Or rather, his bank vaults, by which I mean this ocean, where his wealth is safer than in any national treasure. Then I related the evening's incident to the Canadian, secretly hoping he would come around to the idea of not deserting the captain. But my narrative had no result other than Ned's voice in deep regret that he hadn't strolled across the Vigo battlefield on his own behalf. Anyhow, he said, it's not over yet. My first harpoon missed. That's all.

We'll succeed the next time, and as soon as this evening, if need be. What's the Nautilus heading? I asked. I've no idea, Ned replied. All right, at noon we'll find out what our position is. The Canadian returned to Council's side.

As soon as I was dressed, I went into the lounge. The compass wasn't encouraging. The Nautilus's course was south-southwest. We were turning our backs on Europe. I could hardly wait until our position was reported on the chart. Near eleven-thirty, the Bolas tanks emptied, and the submersible rose to the surface of the ocean. I leaped onto the platform. Ned Land

was already there. No more shore in sight, nothing but the immenseness of the sea. A few sails were on the horizon, no dubbed ships going as far as Cape Sauroc, to find favorable winds for doubling the Cape of Good Hope. The sky was overcast, a squall was on the way. Furious, Ned tried to see through the mist on the horizon. He still hoped that behind all that fog there lay those shores he longed for. At noon the sun made a

momentary appearance. Taking advantage of the rift in the clouds, the chief officer took the orb's altitude. Then the sea grew turbulent. We went below again, and the hatch closed once more. When I consulted the chart an hour later, I saw that the Nautilus's position was marked a longitude 16 degree 17 minutes, and latitude 33 degree 22 minutes, a good 150 leagues from the nearest coast. It wouldn't do to even dream of escaping, and I let the reader decide how

promptly the Canadian threw a tantrum when I ventured to tell him our situation. As for me, I wasn't exactly grief-stricken. I felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted from me, and I was able to resume my regular tasks in a state of comparative calm. Near eleven o'clock in the evening I received a most unexpected visit from Captain Nemo. He asked me very graciously if I felt exhausted from our vigil the night before. I said no. Then, Professor Aronat,

I propose an unusual excursion. Propose away, Captain. So far we have visited the ocean depths only by day and under sunlight. Would you like to see these depths on a dark night? Very much.

I warn you, this will be an exhausting stroll. We'll need to walk long hours and scale a mountain. The roads aren't terribly well kept up. Everything you say, Captain, just increases my curiosity. I'm ready to go with you. Then come along, Professor, and we'll go put on our diving suits.

Arriving at the wardrobe, I saw that neither my companions nor any crewmen would be coming with us on this excursion. Captain Nemo hadn't even suggested my fetching Ned or Consail. In a few moments we had put on our equipment. Air tanks, abundantly charged, were placed on our backs, but the electric lamps were not in readiness. I commented on this to the captain. They'll be useless to us, he replied. I thought I hadn't heard him right, but I couldn't repeat my

comment, because the captain's head had already disappeared into its metal covering. I finished harnessing myself, I felt an alpenstock being placed in my hand, and a few minutes later, after the usual procedures, we set foot on the floor of the Atlantic, three hundred meters down. Midnight was approaching. The waters were profoundly dark, but Captain Nemo pointed to a reddish spot in the distance, a sort of white glow shimmering about two miles from the Nautilus.

what this fire was what substances fed it how and why it kept burning in the liquid mass i couldn't say anyhow it lit our way although hazily but i soon grew accustomed to this unique gloom and in these circumstances i understood the uselessness of the room-carved device side by side captain nemo and i walked directly toward this conspicuous flame the level sea-floor rose imperceptibly we took long strides helped by our open stocks but in general our progress was slow because our feet kept sinking into a kind of slimy mud mixed with seaweed and assorted flat stones as we moved forward i heard a kind of pitter-patter above my head sometimes this noise increased and became a continuous crackle i soon realized the cause it was a heavy rainfall rattling on the surface of the waves instinctively i worried that i might get soaked by water in the midst of water

i couldn't help smiling at this outlandish notion but to tell the truth wearing those heavy diving suits you no longer feel the liquid element you simply think you are in the midst of air a little denser than air on land that's all after half an hour of walking the sea-floor grew rocky jellyfish microscopic crustacean and sea-pan coral lit it faintly with their phosphorescent glimmers i glimpsed piles of stones covered by a couple million zoophytes and tangles of algae my feet often slipped on this vicious seaweed carpet and without my alpenstock i would have fallen more than once when i turned around i could still see the nautilus whitish beacon which was starting to grow pale in the distance those piles of stones just mentioned were laid out on the ocean floor with a distinct but inexplicable symmetry i spotted gigantic furrows trailing off into the distant darkness their length incalculable there also were other peculiarities i couldn't make sense of

it seemed to me that my heavy-laid souls were crushing a litter of bones that made a dry crackling noise so what were these vast plains we were now crossing i wanted to ask the captain but i still didn't grasp that sign language that allowed him to chat with his companions when they went with him on his under-water excursions meanwhile the reddish light guiding us had expanded and inflamed the horizon the presence of this furnace under the waters had me extremely puzzled was it some sort of electrical discharge was i approaching some natural phenomenon still unknown to scientists on shore or rather and this thought did cross my mind had the hand of man intervened in that blaze had human beings fanned those flames in these deep strata would i meet up with more of captain nemo's companions friends he was about to visit who led lives as strange as his own

would i find a whole colony of exiles down here men tired of the world's woos men who had sought and found independence in the ocean's lower depths all these insane inadmissible ideas dogged me and in this frame of mind continually excited by the series of wonders passing before my eyes i wouldn't have been surprised to find on this sea bottom one of those under-water towns captain nemo dreamt about our path was getting brighter and brighter the red glow had turned white and was radiating from a mountain peak about eight hundred feet high but what i saw was simply a reflection produced by the crystal waters of this strata the furnace that was the source of this inexplicable light occupied the far side of the mountain in the midst of these stone mazes furrowing this atlantic sea-floor captain nemo moved forward without hesitation

he knew this dark path no doubt he had often travelled it and was incapable of losing his way i followed him with unshakable confidence he seemed like some spirit of the sea and as he walked ahead of me i marvelled at his tall figure which stood out in black against the glowing background of the horizon it was one o'clock in the morning we arrived at the mountain's lower gradients but in grappling with them we had to venture up difficult trails through a huge thicket yes a thicket of dead trees trees without leaves without sap turned to stone by the action of the waters and crowned here and there by gigantic pines it was like a still erect coal-field its roots clutching broken soil its baths clearly outlined against the ceiling of the waters like thin black paper cut-outs picture a forest clinging to the sides of a peak in the hart's mountains but a submerged forest

The trails were cluttered with algae and focus plants, hosts of crustaceans swarming among them. I plunged on, scaling rocks, straddling fallen tree trunks, snapping marine creepers that swayed from one tree to another, startling the fish that flitted from branch to branch. Carried away, I didn't feel exhausted any more. I followed a guide who was immune to exhaustion. What a sight! How can I describe it? How can I

portray these woods and rocks in this liquid setting, their lower parts dark and sullen, their upper parts tinted red in this light, whose intensity was doubled by the reflecting power of the waters. We scaled rocks that crumbled behind us, collapsing in enormous sections with the hollow rumble of an avalanche. To our right and left there were carved gloomy galleries, where the eye lost its way. Huge glades opened up, seemingly cleared by the hand of men,

and I sometimes wondered whether some residents of these underwater regions would suddenly appear before me. But Captain Nemo kept climbing. I didn't want to fall behind. I followed him boldly. My open stock was a great help. One wrong step would have been disastrous on the narrow paths cut into the sides of these chasms. But I walked along with a firm tread, and without the slightest feeling of dizziness. Sometimes I leaped over a crevice whose depth would have made me recoil.

had i been in the midst of glaciers on shore sometimes i ventured out on a wobbling tree trunk fallen across a gorge without looking down having eyes only for marvelling at the wild scenery of this region there leaning on heretically cut foundations monumental rocks seemed to defy the laws of balance from between their stony knees trees sprung up like jets under fearsome pressure supporting other trees that supported them in turn next natural towers with wide steeply carved battlements leaned at angles that on dry land the laws of gravity would never have authorized and i too could feel the difference created by the water's powerful density despite my heavy clothing copper head-piece and metal soles i climbed the most impossible steep gradients with all the nimbleness i swear it of a chamois or a pyreneae mountain goat as for my account of this excursion under the waters i am well aware that it sounds incredible i am the chronicler of deeds seemingly impossible and yet incontestably real

this was no fantasy this was what i saw and felt two hours after leaving the nautilus we had cleared the timber-line and a hundred feet above our heads stood the mountain peak forming a dark silhouette against the brilliant glare that came from its far slope petrified shrubs rumbled here and there in sprawling zigzags fish rose in a body at our feet like birds startled in tall grass the rocky mass was gouged with impenetrable crevices deep caves unfathomable holes at whose far ends i could hear fearsome things moving around my blood was curled as i watched some enormous antenna bar my path or saw some frightful pincer snap shut in the shadow of some cavity a thousand specks of light glittered in the midst of the gloom they were the eyes of gigantic crustaceans crouching in their lairs giant lobsters rearing up like spear carriers and moving their claws with the scrap-iron clanking titanic crabs aiming their bodies like cannons on their carriages

and hideous devil-fish intertwining their tentacles like bushes of writhing snakes what was this astounding world that i didn't yet know in what order did these articulates belong these creatures for which the rocks provided a second carapace where had nature learned the secret of their vegetating existence and for how many centuries had they lived in this ocean's lower strata but i couldn't linger captain nemo on familiar terms with these dreadful animals no longer minded them we arrived at a preliminary plateau where still some surprises were waiting for me there picturesque ruins took shape betraying the hand of man not our creator there were huge stacks of stones in which you could distinguish the indistinct forms of palaces and temples now arrayed in hosts of blossoming and over it all not ivy but a heavy mantle algae and focussed plants but what part of the globe could this be this land swallowed by cataclysms

who had set up these rocks and stones like the dolmens of prehistoric times where was i where had captain nemo's fancies taken me i wanted to ask him unable to i stopped him i seized his arm but he shook his head pointed to a mountain's topmost peak and seemed to tell me come on come with me come higher i followed him with one last burst of energy and in a few minutes i had scaled the peak which crowned the whole rocky mass by some ten meters i looked back down the side we had just cleared there the mountain rose only seven hundred to eight hundred feet above the plains but on its far slope it crowned the receding bottom of this part of the atlantic by a height twice that my eyes scanned the distance and took in a vast area lit by intense flashes of light in essence this mountain was a volcano

fifty feet below its peak amid a shower of stones and slag a wide crater vomited torrents of lava that were dispersed in fiery cascades into the heart of the liquid mass so situated this volcano was an immense torch that lit up the lower plains all the way to the horizon as i said these under-water craters spewed lava but not flames flames need oxygen from the air and are unable to spread under water but a lava flow which contains in itself the principle of its incandescence can rise to a white heat overpower the liquid element and turn it into steam on contact swift currents swept away all the diffuse gas and torrents of lava slid to the foot of the mountain like the disgorging of mount vesuvius over the city limits of a second torre del greco in fact this beneath my eyes was a town in ruins demolished overwhelmed laid low its roofs carved in its temples pulled down its arches dislocated its columns stretching over the earth

in these ruins you could still detect the solid proportions of a sort of tuscan architecture farther off the remains of a gigantic aqueduct here the caked heights of an acropolis along with the fluid forms of a there the remnants of a wharf as if some bygone port had long ago harbored merchant vessels and triple-tiered war galleys on the shores of some lost ocean still farther off long rows of collapsing walls deserted thoroughfares a whole pompeii buried under the waters which captain nemo has resurrected before my eyes where was i where was i i had to find out at all cost i wanted to speak i wanted to rip off the copper sphere imprisoning my head but captain nemo came over and stopped me with a gesture then picking up a piece of chalky stone he advanced to a black basaltic rock and scrawled this one word atlantis what lightning flashed through my mind

atlantis that ancient land of meropis mentioned by the historian theopompus platos atlantis the continent whose very existence had been denied by such philosophers and scientists as origen porphyry iamblichus d'anville maltebrun and humboldt who entered its disappearance in the ledger of myths and folk-tales the country whose reality had nevertheless been accepted by such other thinkers as posidonius pliny ammianus marcellinus tertullian engel scherer tournefort buffon and i had this land right under my eyes furnishing its own unimpeachable evidence of the catastrophe that had overtaken it so this was a submerged region that had existed outside europe asia and libya beyond the pillars of hercules home of those powerful atlantean people against whom ancient greece had waged its earliest wars

the writer whose narratives record the lofty deeds of those heroic times is plato himself his dialogues timaeus and critias were drafted with the poet and legislator solon as their inspiration as it were one day solon was conversing with some elderly wise men in the egyptian capital of sys a town already eight thousand years of age as documented by the annals engraved on the sacred walls of its temples one of these elders related the history of another town a thousand years older still this original city of athens ninety centuries old had been invaded and partly destroyed by the atlanteans these atlanteans he said resided on an immense continent greater than africa and asia combined taking in an area that lay between latitude twelve degrees and forty degrees north their dominion extended even to egypt they tried to enforce their rule as far as greece but they had to retreat before the indomitable resistance of the hellenic people

centuries past a cataclysm occurred floods earthquakes a single night and day were enough to obliterate this atlantis whose highest peak madeira the azores the canaries the cape verde islands still emerge above the waves these were the historical memories that captain nemo's scroll sent rushing through my mind thus led by the strangest of fates i was treading underfoot one of the mountains of that continent my hands were touching ruins many thousands of years old contemporary with prehistoric times I was walking in the very place where contemporaries of early men had walked. My heavy souls were crushing the skeletons of animals from the age of fable,

animals that used to take cover in the shade of these trees now turned to stone. Oh, why was I so short of time? I would have gone down the steep slopes of this mountain, crossed this entire immense continent, which surely connects Africa with America, and visited its great prehistoric cities. Under my eyes there perhaps lay the warlike town

of Machimos, or the pious village of Eusebius, whose gigantic inhabitants lived for whole centuries and had the strength to raise blocks of stone that still withstood the action of the waters. One day, perhaps, some volcanic phenomenon would bring these sunken ruins back to the surface of the waves. Numerous underwater volcanoes have been sighted in this part of the ocean, and many ships have felt terrific tremors when passing over these turbulent depths.

A few have heard hollow noises that announced some struggle of the elements far below. Others have hauled in volcanic ash hurled above the waves. As far as the equator, this whole seafloor is still under construction by plutonic forces. And in some remote epoch, built up by volcanic disgorgings and excessive layers of lava, who knows whether the peaks of these fire-belching mountains may reappear above the surface of the Atlantic.

As I mused in this way, trying to establish in my memory every detail of this impressive landscape, Captain Nemo was leaning his elbows on a moss-covered monument, motionless as if petrified in some mute trance. Was he dreaming of those lost generations, Asking them for the secret of human destiny? Was it here that this strange man came to revive himself,

Basking in historical memories, Relieving that bygone life, He who had no desire for our modern one? I would have given anything to know his thoughts, To share them, understand them.

We stayed in this place an entire hour, Contemplating its vast plains in the lava's glow, Which sometimes took on a startling intensity. Inner boilings sent quick shivers running through the mountain's crust. Noises from deep underneath, clearly transmitted by the liquid medium,

Reverberated with majestic amplitude. Just then the moon appeared for an instant through the watery mass, Casting a few pale rays over this submerged continent. It was only a fleeting glimmer, but its effect was indescribable. The captain stood up and took one last look at these immense plains.

Then his hand signaled me to follow him. We went swiftly down the mountain. Once past the petrified forest, I could see the Nautilus beacon, twinkling like a star. The captain walked straight toward it, and we were back on board, just as the first glimmers of dawn were whitening the surface of the ocean.

End of chapter 33 A Lost Continent Recording by Filippo Joachim