Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Page 3

“Go ahead, then!” Commander Farragut called.

  At this order, which was relayed to the engine by means of a compressed-air device, the mechanics activated the start-up wheel. Steam rushed whistling into the gaping valves. Long horizontal pistons groaned and pushed the tie rods of the drive shaft. The blades of the propeller churned the waves with increasing speed, and the Abraham Lincoln moved out majestically amid a spectator-laden escort of some one-hundred ferries and tenders.

  The wharves of Brooklyn, and every part of New York bordering the East River, were crowded with curiosity seekers. Departing from five-hundred thousand throats, three cheers burst forth in succession. Thousands of handkerchiefs were waving above these tightly packed masses, hailing the Abraham Lincoln until it reached the waters of the Hudson River, at the tip of the long peninsula that forms New York City.

  The frigate then went along the New Jersey coast—the wonderful right bank of this river, all loaded down with country homes—and passed by the forts to salutes from their biggest cannons. The Abraham Lincoln replied by three times lowering and hoisting the American flag, whose thirty-nine stars gleamed from the gaff of the mizzen sail, then, changing speed to take the buoy-marked channel that curved into the inner bay formed by the spit of Sandy Hook, it hugged this sand-covered strip of land where thousands of spectators acclaimed us one more time.

  The escort of boats and tenders still followed the frigate and only left us when we came abreast of the lightship, whose two signal lights mark the entrance of the narrows to Upper New York Bay.

  Three o’clock then sounded. The harbour pilot went down into his dinghy and rejoined a little schooner waiting for him to leeward. The furnaces were stoked, the propeller churned the waves more swiftly, the frigate skirted the flat, yellow coast of Long Island, and at eight o’clock in the evening, after the lights of Fire Island had vanished into the northwest, we ran at full steam onto the dark waters of the Atlantic.

  Chapter Four

  Ned Land

  Comander Farragut was a good seaman, worthy of the frigate he commanded. His ship and he were one. He was its very soul. On the cetacean question no doubts arose in his mind, and he didn’t allow the animal’s existence to be disputed aboard his vessel. He believed in it as certain pious women believe in the leviathan from the Book of Job—out of faith, not reason. The monster existed, and he had vowed to rid the seas of it. The man was a sort of Knight of Rhodes, a latter-day Sir Dieudonné of Gozo, on his way to fight an encounter with the dragon devastating the island. Either Commander Farragut would slay the narwhale, or the narwhale would slay Commander Farragut. No middle of the road for these two.

  The ship’s officers shared the views of their leader. They could be heard chatting, discussing, arguing, calculating the different chances of an encounter, and observing the vast expanse of the ocean. Voluntary watches from the crosstrees of the topgallant sail were self-imposed by more than one who would have cursed such toil under any other circumstances.

  As often as the sun swept over its daily arc, the masts were populated with sailors whose feet itched and couldn’t hold still on the planking of the deck below! And the Abraham Lincoln’s stempost hadn’t even cut the suspected waters of the Pacific.

  As for the crew, they only wanted to encounter the unicorn, harpoon it, haul it on board, and carve it up. They surveyed the sea with scrupulous care. Besides, Commander Farragut had mentioned that a certain sum of $2,000.00 was waiting for the man who first sighted the animal, be he cabin boy or sailor, mate or officer. I’ll let the reader decide whether eyes got proper exercise aboard the Abraham Lincoln.

  As for me, I didn’t lag behind the others and I yielded to no one my share in these daily observations. Our frigate would have had fivescore good reasons for renaming itself the Argus, after that mythological beast with one-hundred eyes! The lone rebel among us was Conseil, who seemed utterly uninterested in the question exciting us and was out of step with the general enthusiasm on board.

  As I said, Commander Farragut had carefully equipped his ship with all the gear needed to fish for a gigantic cetacean. No whaling vessel could have been better armed. We had every known mechanism, from the hand-hurled harpoon, to the blunderbuss firing barbed arrows, to the duck gun with exploding bullets. On the forecastle was mounted the latest model breech-loading cannon, very heavy of barrel and narrow of bore, a weapon that would figure in the Universal Exhibition of 1867. Made in America, this valuable instrument could fire a four-kilogram conical projectile an average distance of sixteen kilometres without the least bother.

  So the Abraham Lincoln wasn’t lacking in means of destruction. But it had better still. It had Ned Land, the King of Harpooners.

  Gifted with uncommon manual ability, Ned Land was a Canadian who had no equal in his dangerous trade. Dexterity, coolness, bravery, and cunning were virtues he possessed to a high degree, and it took a truly crafty baleen whale or an exceptionally astute sperm whale to elude the thrusts of his harpoon.

  Ned Land was about forty years old. A man of great height—over six English feet—he was powerfully built, serious in manner, not very sociable, sometimes headstrong, and quite ill-tempered when crossed. His looks caught the attention, and above all the strength of his gaze, which gave a unique emphasis to his facial appearance. There was a predatory virility about him that fascinated me. I could often feel his eyes upon me, and I would be lying if I said I did not stand a little taller under his regard. Sometimes what I saw in his expression was enough to make my blood run hot, and I would have to turn away to hide the effect he had on me.

  Still, Ned Land was a hunter and harpooner through and through. Commander Farragut, to my thinking, had made a wise move in hiring on this man. With his eye and his throwing arm, he was worth the whole crew all by himself. I can do no better than to compare him with a powerful telescope that could double as a cannon always ready to fire. I found myself ever seeking excuses to be near him.

  My attentions were not unappreciated. To say Canadian is to say French, and as unsociable as Ned Land was, I must admit he took a definite liking to me. No doubt it was my nationality that attracted him. It was an opportunity for him to speak, and for me to hear, that old Rabelaisian dialect still used in some Canadian provinces. The harpooner’s family originated in Quebec, and they were already a line of bold fishermen back in the days when this town still belonged to France.

  Little by little Ned developed a taste for chatting, and I loved hearing the tales of his adventures in the polar seas. He described his fishing trips and his battles with great natural lyricism. His tales took on the form of an epic poem, and I felt I was hearing some Canadian Homer reciting his Iliad of the High Arctic regions. I was enthralled, the more so as he grew bolder in his storytelling, and in his pursuit of what I came to realise was his true agenda.

  Me. It was with no small thrill that I admitted to myself the truth of his intent. Ned was stalking me, baiting me, hunting me, much as he was the demon narwhal, albeit with more subtlety than force. As he spoke, he would often move closer, allowing his thigh to brush mine as we sat side by side. More than once he teased my wrist with his strong, calloused fingers, and seemed to know the secret thrill it stirred in me.

  I’m writing of this bold companion as I currently know him. Because we’ve become something far more than friends, united in that most intimate of partnerships, a permanent comradeship born and cemented during a most frightful crisis! Ah, my gallant Ned! I ask only to live one-hundred years more, the longer to be with you!

  Was our flirtation noticed? I doubt it. Our crew members were too vigilant in their quest for Captain Farragut’s $2000.00 bounty, and I dare say, when they weren’t doing that, they were pursuing amorous quests of their own. There is little to occupy men on a ship, and even the most stalwart of the crew grew tired of manning the masts eventually. I quickly learned to make as much noise as possible when descending to the hold, lest I interrupt two young lads trysting. Had mine and Ned’s growing intimacy been n
oticed, it would have been politely ignored.

  And now, what were Ned Land’s views on this question of a marine monster? I must admit that he flatly didn’t believe in the unicorn, and alone on board, he didn’t share the general conviction. He avoided even dealing with the subject, for which one day I felt compelled to take him to task.

  During the magnificent evening of June 25—in other words, three weeks after our departure—the frigate lay abreast of Cabo Blanco, thirty miles to leeward of the coast of Patagonia. We had crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, and the Strait of Magellan opened less than seven-hundred miles to the south. Before eight days were out, the Abraham Lincoln would plough the waves of the Pacific.

  Seated on the afterdeck, Ned Land and I chatted idly, alternately sneaking glances at each other and staring at that mysterious sea whose depths to this day are beyond the reach of human eyes. Quite naturally, I led our conversation around to the giant unicorn, and I weighed our expedition’s various chances for success or failure. Then, seeing that Ned just let me talk without saying much himself, I pressed him more closely.

  “Ned,” I asked him, “how can you still doubt the reality of this cetacean we’re after? Do you have any particular reasons for being so sceptical?”

  The harpooner stared at me a while before replying, slapped his broad forehead in one of his standard gestures, closed his eyes as if to collect himself, and finally said, “Just maybe, Professor Aronnax.”

  “But Ned, you’re a professional whaler, a man familiar with all the great marine mammals—your mind should easily accept this hypothesis of an enormous cetacean, and you ought to be the last one to doubt it under these circumstances!”

  “That’s just where you’re mistaken, Professor,” Ned replied. “The common man may still believe in fabulous comets crossing outer space, or in prehistoric monsters living at the earth’s core, but astronomers and geologists don’t swallow such fairy tales. It’s the same with whalers. I’ve chased plenty of cetaceans, I’ve harpooned a good number, I’ve killed several.

  But no matter how powerful and well armed they were, neither their tails or their tusks could puncture the sheet-iron plates of a steamer.”

  “Even so, Ned, people mention vessels that narwhale tusks have run clean through.”

  “Wooden ships maybe,” the Canadian replied. “But I’ve never seen the like. So till I have proof to the contrary, I’ll deny that baleen whales, sperm whales, or unicorns can do any such thing.”

  “Listen to me, Ned—”

  “No, no, Professor. I’ll go along with anything you want except that. Some gigantic devilfish maybe…?”

  “Even less likely, Ned. The devilfish is merely a mollusc, and even this name hints at its semiliquid flesh, because it’s Latin meaning, ‘soft one’. The devilfish doesn’t belong to the vertebrate branch, and even if it were five-hundred feet long, it would still be utterly harmless to ships like the Scotia or the Abraham Lincoln. Consequently, the feats of krakens or other monsters of that ilk must be relegated to the realm of fiction.”

  “So, Mr Naturalist,” Ned Land continued in a bantering tone, leaning close so that we were nearly forehead to forehead, “you’ll just keep on believing in the existence of some enormous cetacean…?”

  “Yes, Ned, I repeat it with a conviction backed by factual logic. I believe in the existence of a mammal with a powerful constitution, belonging to the vertebrate branch like baleen whales, sperm whales, or dolphins, and armed with a tusk made of horn that has tremendous penetrating power.”

  “Humph!” the harpooner put in. He backed away a bit to smile at me, shaking his head with the attitude of a man who doesn’t want to be convinced.

  “Note well, my fine Canadian,” I went on, “if such an animal exists, if it lives deep in the ocean, if it frequents the liquid strata located miles beneath the surface of the water, it needs to have a constitution so solid, it defies all comparison.”

  “And why this powerful constitution?” Ned asked.

  “Because it takes incalculable strength just to live in those deep strata and withstand their pressure.”

  “Oh really?” Ned said, tipping me a wink.

  “Oh really, and I can prove it to you with a few simple figures.”

  “Bosh!” Ned replied. “You can make figures do anything you want!”

  “In business, Ned, but not in mathematics. Listen to me. Let’s accept that the pressure of one atmosphere is represented by the pressure of a column of water thirty-two feet high.

  In reality, such a column of water wouldn’t be quite so high because here we’re dealing with salt water, which is denser than fresh water. Well then, when you dive under the waves, Ned, for every thirty-two feet of water above you, your body is tolerating the pressure of one more atmosphere, in other words, one more kilogram per each square centimetre on your body’s surface. So it follows that at three-hundred and twenty feet down, this pressure is equal to ten atmospheres, to one-hundred atmospheres at three-thousand, two-hundred feet, and to one-thousand atmospheres at thirty-two thousand feet, that is, at about two and a half vertical leagues down. Which is tantamount to saying that if you could reach such a depth in the ocean, each square centimetre on your body’s surface would be experiencing one-thousand kilograms of pressure. Now, my gallant Ned, do you know how many square centimetres you have on your bodily surface?”

  “I haven’t the foggiest notion, Professor Aronnax.”

  “About seventeen-thousand.”

  “As many as that?”

  “Yes, and since the atmosphere’s pressure actually weighs slightly more than one kilogram per square centimetre, your seventeen-thousand square centimetres are tolerating seventeen-thousand five-hundred and sixty-eight kilograms at this very moment.”

  “Without my noticing it?”

  “Without your noticing it. And if you aren’t crushed by so much pressure, it’s because the air penetrates the interior of your body with equal pressure. When the inside and outside pressures are in perfect balance, they neutralise each other and allow you to tolerate them without discomfort. But in the water it’s another story.”

  “Yes, I see,” Ned replied, growing more interested. “Because the water surrounds me but doesn’t penetrate me.”

  “Precisely, Ned. So at thirty-two feet beneath the surface of the sea, you’ll undergo a pressure of seventeen-thousand five-hundred and sixty-eight kilograms, at three-hundred and twenty feet, or ten times greater pressure, it’s one-hundred and seventy-five thousand, six-hundred and eighty kilograms, at three, two-hundred feet, or one-hundred times greater pressure, it’s one million, seven-hundred and fifty-six thousand, eight hundred kilograms, finally, at thirty-two thousand feet, or one-thousand times greater pressure, it’s seventee-million, five-hundred and sixty-eight thousand kilograms, in other words, you’d be squashed as flat as if you’d just been yanked from between the plates of a hydraulic press!”

  “Fire and brimstone!” Ned put in.

  “All right then, my fine harpooner, if vertebrates several hundred metres long and proportionate in bulk live at such depths, their surface areas make up millions of square centimetres, and the pressure they undergo must be assessed in billions of kilograms.

  Calculate, then, how much resistance of bone structure and strength of constitution they’d need in order to withstand such pressures!”

  “They’d need to be manufactured,” Ned Land replied, “from sheet-iron plates eight inches thick, like ironclad frigates.”

  “Right, Ned, and then picture the damage such a mass could inflict if it were launched with the speed of an express train against a ship’s hull.”

  “Yes…indeed…maybe,” the Canadian replied, staggered by these figures but still not willing to give in.

  “Well, have I convinced you?”

  His thoughtful gaze turned flirtatious, and he grinned wickedly at me. “You’ve convinced me of one thing, Mr Naturalist. That your mind is as tempting as the rest of you.”

&n
bsp; I felt myself blush, but I met his gaze. “And on the matter of the creature?”

  He leaned close, allowing his hand to caress my thigh. “I think it merits further discussion. Perhaps in my cabin later tonight?”

  My pulse suddenly raced, and my cock began to stiffen. He was so close, I might easily have kissed him. I was still fumbling for a reply, but like any good hunter, Ned knew when to allow his prey time to hide. He merely chuckled and left me to shift uncomfortably upon the deck until my lust had abated.

  That night, when the ship was dark, I slipped quietly from my bunk.

  “Where is master going this time of night?” Conseil asked.

  “Nowhere,” I assured him, as I had many times in the past. “I’m still asleep in my bunk, and so are you.”

  “Quite right, Master.”

  He was not done speaking though. I could sense that. Conseil was ever my advisor and my confidante. He was one of those rare men who seem to be completely without attraction or desire, for women or for men. Although he certainly didn’t share my proclivities, he had never condemned me for them either. “Speak, Conseil,” I said at last.

  “Master, the men on board pursue their pleasures, and we’ve all seen that buggery among sailors is common. But my master would be wise to remember that he’s not one of them. Men like master have a larger place in society. They must be careful of their reputation.”

  I nodded, although in the darkness of our cabin, it was likely he couldn’t see it. What he said was true. A common sailor had more liberties than a man of my stature. It would not do to have stories spread. “I’ll be careful.”

  I crept quietly through the cramped corridor of the ship. Ned’s door was unlatched. My heartbeat thundered in my ears. I took a deep breath. My hand shook as I edged the door open and slid through the narrow gap into the dark room.

  No sooner was I inside than he had me. His strong hands pushed me backwards. He pinned me to the wall and his lips found mine, hard and questing and urgent. It was sudden and frightening. I was momentarily overwhelmed by the terror an animal must feel when the trap is sprung. But no trap had ever been as sweet as this.