CHAPTER XXIII

THE CORAL KINGDOM


The next day I woke with my head singularly clear.

To my great surprise, I was in my own room. My companions,

no doubt, had been reinstated in their cabin, without having

perceived it any more than I. Of what had passed during the night

they were as ignorant as I was, and to penetrate this mystery I

only reckoned upon the chances of the future.



I then thought of quitting my room. Was I free again or a prisoner?

Quite free. I opened the door, went to the half-deck, went up

the central stairs. The panels, shut the evening before, were open.

I went on to the platform.



Ned Land and Conseil waited there for me. I questioned them;

they knew nothing. Lost in a heavy sleep in which they had

been totally unconscious, they had been astonished at finding

themselves in their cabin.



As for the Nautilus, it seemed quiet and mysterious as ever.

It floated on the surface of the waves at a moderate pace.

Nothing seemed changed on board.



The second lieutenant then came on to the platform, and gave

the usual order below.



As for Captain Nemo, he did not appear.



Of the people on board, I only saw the impassive steward,

who served me with his usual dumb regularity.



About two o'clock, I was in the drawing-room, busied in arranging

my notes, when the Captain opened the door and appeared. I bowed.

He made a slight inclination in return, without speaking.

I resumed my work, hoping that he would perhaps give me some

explanation of the events of the preceding night. He made none.

I looked at him. He seemed fatigued; his heavy eyes had not

been refreshed by sleep; his face looked very sorrowful.

He walked to and fro, sat down and got up again, took a

chance book, put it down, consulted his instruments without

taking his habitual notes, and seemed restless and uneasy.

At last, he came up to me, and said:



"Are you a doctor, M. Aronnax?"



I so little expected such a question that I stared some time

at him without answering.



"Are you a doctor?" he repeated. "Several of your colleagues

have studied medicine."



"Well," said I, "I am a doctor and resident surgeon to the hospital.

I practised several years before entering the museum."



"Very well, sir."



My answer had evidently satisfied the Captain. But, not knowing

what he would say next, I waited for other questions, reserving my

answers according to circumstances.



"M. Aronnax, will you consent to prescribe for one of my men?" be asked.



"Is he ill?"



"Yes."



"I am ready to follow you."



"Come, then."



I own my heart beat, I do not know why. I saw certain connection

between the illness of one of the crew and the events of the day before;

and this mystery interested me at least as much as the sick man.



Captain Nemo conducted me to the poop of the Nautilus,

and took me into a cabin situated near the sailors' quarters.



There, on a bed, lay a man about forty years of age, with a resolute

expression of countenance, a true type of an Anglo-Saxon.



I leant over him. He was not only ill, he was wounded.

His head, swathed in bandages covered with blood, lay on a pillow.

I undid the bandages, and the wounded man looked at me with his large

eyes and gave no sign of pain as I did it. It was a horrible wound.

The skull, shattered by some deadly weapon, left the brain exposed,

which was much injured. Clots of blood had formed in the bruised

and broken mass, in colour like the dregs of wine.



There was both contusion and suffusion of the brain. His breathing

was slow, and some spasmodic movements of the muscles agitated his face.

I felt his pulse. It was intermittent. The extremities of the body

were growing cold already, and I saw death must inevitably ensue.

After dressing the unfortunate man's wounds, I readjusted the bandages

on his head, and turned to Captain Nemo.



"What caused this wound?" I asked.



"What does it signify?" he replied, evasively. "A shock has

broken one of the levers of the engine, which struck myself.

But your opinion as to his state?"



I hesitated before giving it.



"You may speak," said the Captain. "This man does not understand French."



I gave a last look at the wounded man.



"He will be dead in two hours."



"Can nothing save him?"



"Nothing."



Captain Nemo's hand contracted, and some tears glistened in his eyes,

which I thought incapable of shedding any.



For some moments I still watched the dying man, whose life ebbed slowly.

His pallor increased under the electric light that was shed over

his death-bed. I looked at his intelligent forehead, furrowed with

premature wrinkles, produced probably by misfortune and sorrow.

I tried to learn the secret of his life from the last words that escaped his lips.



"You can go now, M. Aronnax," said the Captain.



I left him in the dying man's cabin, and returned to my

room much affected by this scene. During the whole day,

I was haunted by uncomfortable suspicions, and at night

I slept badly, and between my broken dreams I fancied I

heard distant sighs like the notes of a funeral psalm.

Were they the prayers of the dead, murmured in that language

that I could not understand?



The next morning I went on to the bridge. Captain Nemo was there before me.

As soon as he perceived me he came to me.



"Professor, will it be convenient to you to make a submarine excursion to-day?"



"With my companions?" I asked.



"If they like."



"We obey your orders, Captain."



"Will you be so good then as to put on your cork jackets?"



It was not a question of dead or dying. I rejoined Ned Land

and Conseil, and told them of Captain Nemo's proposition.

Conseil hastened to accept it, and this time the Canadian seemed

quite willing to follow our example.



It was eight o'clock in the morning. At half-past eight we were equipped

for this new excursion, and provided with two contrivances for light

and breathing. The double door was open; and, accompanied by Captain Nemo,

who was followed by a dozen of the crew, we set foot, at a depth of about

thirty feet, on the solid bottom on which the Nautilus rested.



A slight declivity ended in an uneven bottom, at fifteen fathoms depth.

This bottom differed entirely from the one I had visited on my first excursion

under the waters of the Pacific Ocean. Here, there was no fine sand,

no submarine prairies, no sea-forest. I immediately recognised that

marvellous region in which, on that day, the Captain did the honours to us.

It was the coral kingdom.



The light produced a thousand charming varieties, playing in

the midst of the branches that were so vividly coloured.

I seemed to see the membraneous and cylindrical tubes tremble

beneath the undulation of the waters. I was tempted to gather

their fresh petals, ornamented with delicate tentacles,

some just blown, the others budding, while a small fish,

swimming swiftly, touched them slightly, like flights of birds.

But if my hand approached these living flowers, these animated,

sensitive plants, the whole colony took alarm. The white petals

re-entered their red cases, the flowers faded as I looked,

and the bush changed into a block of stony knobs.



Chance had thrown me just by the most precious specimens of the zoophyte.

This coral was more valuable than that found in the Mediterranean,

on the coasts of France, Italy and Barbary. Its tints justified

the poetical names of "Flower of Blood," and "Froth of Blood,"

that trade has given to its most beautiful productions.

Coral is sold for L20 per ounce; and in this place the watery beds would

make the fortunes of a company of coral-divers. This precious matter,

often confused with other polypi, formed then the inextricable plots

called "macciota," and on which I noticed several beautiful specimens

of pink coral.



{opening sentence missing} Real petrified thickets, long joints

of fantastic architecture, were disclosed before us.

Captain Nemo placed himself under a dark gallery, where by

a slight declivity we reached a depth of a hundred yards.

The light from our lamps produced sometimes magical effects,

following the rough outlines of the natural arches and pendants

disposed like lustres, that were tipped with points of fire.



At last, after walking two hours, we had attained a depth

of about three hundred yards, that is to say, the extreme limit

on which coral begins to form. But there was no isolated bush,

nor modest brushwood, at the bottom of lofty trees.

It was an immense forest of large mineral vegetations,

enormous petrified trees, united by garlands of elegant

sea-bindweed, all adorned with clouds and reflections.

We passed freely under their high branches, lost in the shade of the waves.



Captain Nemo had stopped. I and my companions halted, and, turning round,

I saw his men were forming a semi-circle round their chief.

Watching attentively, I observed that four of them carried on their

shoulders an object of an oblong shape.



We occupied, in this place, the centre of a vast glade

surrounded by the lofty foliage of the submarine forest.

Our lamps threw over this place a sort of clear twilight

that singularly elongated the shadows on the ground.

At the end of the glade the darkness increased, and was only relieved

by little sparks reflected by the points of coral.



Ned Land and Conseil were near me. We watched,

and I thought I was going to witness a strange scene.

On observing the ground, I saw that it was raised in certain

places by slight excrescences encrusted with limy deposits,

and disposed with a regularity that betrayed the hand of man.



In the midst of the glade, on a pedestal of rocks roughly

piled up, stood a cross of coral that extended its long arms

that one might have thought were made of petrified blood.

Upon a sign from Captain Nemo one of the men advanced;

and at some feet from the cross he began to dig a hole with

a pickaxe that he took from his belt. I understood all!

This glade was a cemetery, this hole a tomb, this oblong

object the body of the man who had died in the night!

The Captain and his men had come to bury their companion in this

general resting-place, at the bottom of this inaccessible ocean!



The grave was being dug slowly; the fish fled on all sides while their

retreat was being thus disturbed; I heard the strokes of the pickaxe,

which sparkled when it hit upon some flint lost at the bottom of the waters.

The hole was soon large and deep enough to receive the body.

Then the bearers approached; the body, enveloped in a tissue of white linen,

was lowered into the damp grave. Captain Nemo, with his arms crossed

on his breast, and all the friends of him who had loved them,

knelt in prayer.



The grave was then filled in with the rubbish taken from the ground,

which formed a slight mound. When this was done, Captain Nemo

and his men rose; then, approaching the grave, they knelt again,

and all extended their hands in sign of a last adieu.

Then the funeral procession returned to the Nautilus,

passing under the arches of the forest, in the midst

of thickets, along the coral bushes, and still on the ascent.

At last the light of the ship appeared, and its luminous track

guided us to the Nautilus. At one o'clock we had returned.



As soon as I had changed my clothes I went up on to the platform,

and, a prey to conflicting emotions, I sat down near the binnacle.

Captain Nemo joined me. I rose and said to him:



"So, as I said he would, this man died in the night?"



"Yes, M. Aronnax."



"And he rests now, near his companions, in the coral cemetery?"



"Yes, forgotten by all else, but not by us. We dug the grave,

and the polypi undertake to seal our dead for eternity."

And, burying his face quickly in his hands, he tried in vain to

suppress a sob. Then he added: "Our peaceful cemetery is there,

some hundred feet below the surface of the waves."



"Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of the reach of sharks."



"Yes, sir, of sharks and men," gravely replied the Captain.

****

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