Part 2 · Chapter 9A Vanished Continent

The next morning, February nineteenth, the Canadian showed up in my room. I’d been expecting him. He looked totally bummed. "Well, sir?" he asked.

"Well, Ned, we just weren't lucky yesterday."

"Yeah, that Captain had to stop exactly when we planned to leave his ship."

"Yeah, Ned, he had business at his bank." "His bank?"

"Or, rather, his banking house - meaning the ocean, where his riches are safer than in the State’s vaults."

I then told the Canadian everything that happened the night before, hoping to convince him not to ditch the Captain. But my story just made him express how bummed he was that he’s missed the chance to check out the battlefield of Vigo.

"Still," he said, "it’s not over. It’s just a missed shot. We’ll succeed next time - maybe tonight, if needed - "

"Which way is the Nautilus headed?" I asked. "I don’t know," Ned replied. "Okay, we’ll see at noon."

The Canadian went to find Conseil. As soon as I got dressed, I headed to the saloon. The compass wasn’t reassuring. The Nautilus was heading southwest - we were turning our backs on Europe.

I waited impatiently until the ship’s location was marked on the chart. Around eleven:thirty, the reservoirs emptied, and we surfaced. I rushed to the platform. Ned was already there. No land in sight. Just a huge ocean.

A few sails on the horizon, probably boats heading to San Roque, looking for good winds to round the Cape of Good Hope. The weather was cloudy. A storm was brewing. Ned was going crazy, trying to peer through the fog. He still hoped that behind all that mist lay the land he craved.

At noon, the sun popped out for a second. The second mate used the brightness to take a height measurement. Then, as the sea got rougher, we descended, and the panel closed.

An hour later, checking the chart, I saw the Nautilus was at sixteen° seventeen' longitude and thirty-three° twenty-two' latitude, one hundred and fifty leagues from the nearest coast. There was no way to escape, and you can imagine how ticked off the Canadian was when I told him where we were.

For my part, I wasn’t too upset. I felt lighter, like a weight had lifted, and I could return to my usual work with a bit more calm.

That night, around eleven o’clock, I got a totally unexpected visit from Captain Nemo. He asked me very politely if I was tired from my watch the night before. I said no.

"Then, M. Aronnax, I propose a curious excursion." "Propose, Captain?"

"You’ve only seen the underwater depths during the day, under the sunlight. Would you like to see them at night?" "Absolutely."

"Be warned, it’s going to be a tough trek. We’ll have to walk far and climb a mountain. The roads aren't great."

"That just makes me even more curious, Captain. I’m ready to follow you."

"Come then, sir, let’s put on our diving suits."

Arriving at the changing room, I saw that neither of my companions nor any of the crew were joining us on this trip. Captain Nemo hadn’t even suggested I take Ned or Conseil with me.

In a few minutes, we were both in our diving suits. They strapped the reservoirs on our backs, filled with plenty of air, but there were no electric lamps. I pointed this out to the Captain.

"They’d be useless," he replied.

I thought I’d misheard, but I couldn't repeat what I’d heard, because the Captain’s head had already disappeared into his metal helmet. I finished strapping myself in.

I felt them put an iron-tipped staff into my hand, and a few minutes later, after the usual check-in, we stepped onto the ocean floor, about one hundred and fifty fathoms down. Midnight was close.

The water was pitch black, but Captain Nemo pointed to a reddish spot in the distance - a huge light shining really bright, about two miles away. I had no idea what that fire was, what was fueling it, or why and how it was lighting up the water.

Still, it lit our way, kind of, but I quickly got used to the weird darkness, and I realized, under those conditions, the Ruhmkorff apparatus was totally useless.

As we moved forward, I heard a kind of tapping above my head. The noise got louder, sometimes like a constant shower, and I quickly figured out what it was. It was rain falling hard and sizzling on the surface of the waves. I instantly thought, "I'm going to be soaked! In the water!

Surrounded by water! I couldn’t help but laugh at the crazy idea. But seriously, in the thick diving suit, you don’t feel the water; it’s just like being in a denser atmosphere. Nothing more.

After about half an hour of walking, the ground became rocky. Tiny jellyfish, microscopic crustaceans, and feather-like animals lit things up a little with their glowing light. I caught a glimpse of rocks covered in millions of tiny plants and clumps of seaweed.

My feet often slipped on this sticky carpet of seaweed, and without my iron-tipped staff, I would have fallen more than once. When I turned around, I could still see the whitish light of the Nautilus fading in the distance.

But the rosy light guiding us got brighter and lit up the horizon. The presence of this fire underwater totally baffled me. Was I heading towards a natural phenomenon that scientists on land didn't even know about yet?

Or (and this thought crossed my mind) did a human have something to do with this fire? Had someone stoked this flame? Was I about to meet friends and companions of Captain Nemo, people he was visiting, who, like him, lived this strange life?

Could I find a whole colony of exiles down there, people who, tired of the miseries of the world, had found independence in the deep ocean? All these wild and unrealistic ideas kept popping into my head.

And in this state of mind, completely overstimulated by the constant stream of incredible sights, I wouldn't have been surprised to meet a sunken city at the bottom of the sea - the kind of thing Captain Nemo dreamed about.

Our path became brighter and brighter. A white glow came in beams from the top of a mountain about eight hundred feet high. But what I saw was just a reflection, amplified by the clear water. The source of this inexplicable light was a fire on the other side of the mountain.

In the middle of this rocky maze cutting through the bottom of the Atlantic, Captain Nemo moved forward without hesitation. He knew this route. He’s definitely traveled it before, and couldn't get lost. I followed him with complete trust.

He seemed like a sea genie; and as he walked ahead of me, I couldn’t help but admire his stature, outlined in black against the glowing horizon.

It was one in the morning when we reached the first slopes of the mountain, but to get to them, we had to navigate the tricky paths of a huge, dense thicket.

Okay, so there was this whole bunch of dead trees, totally bare, no sap, just like stone from being soaked in water. Huge pines poked out here and there.

It was like a coal mine still standing, clinging to the broken ground, and its branches, looking like fancy black paper cutouts, were clear against the watery ceiling. Picture a forest on the Hartz mountains hanging onto the sides, but totally submerged.

The paths were covered in seaweed and kelp, and a whole world of little sea creatures crawled around. I walked along, climbing over rocks, stepping over huge tree trunks, breaking through the sea vines that hung from one tree to the next, and scaring the fish, which darted from branch to branch.

I kept going, not even tired. I followed my guide, who didnn't seem to get tired at all. What a sight! How could I even describe it? How could I paint the look of those woods and rocks - dark and wild underneath, the tops colored red by the light that the water reflected and doubled?

We climbed rocks that crashed down after us with huge booms and the low rumble of an avalanche. To my right and left were long, dark tunnels where you couldn’t see anything.

Then, huge clearings would open up, like someone had built them - and I kept wondering if some creature from these underwater places would suddenly appear.

But Captain Nemo was still climbing. I couldn’t hold him back. My walking stick helped a lot. One wrong step would have been risky on the narrow paths leading down to the sides of the gulfs, but I walked with steady steps, not feeling dizzy at all.

Sometimes I’d hop over a crack that would have made me hesitate if I’d been crossing glaciers on land. Other times I’d risk it on the shaky trunk of a tree thrown across from one chasm to the next, not even looking down, just keeping my eyes on the wild scenery.

There were these massive rocks, leaning on their perfectly cut bases, like they were defying gravity. Trees would shoot up from between their stony knees, like a jet of water under pressure, supporting even more trees above them.

Natural towers, huge cliffs cut straight down like a "curtain," leaning at an angle that just shouldn't be possible on land.

Two hours after leaving the Nautilus, we’d passed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above us rose the top of the mountain, casting a shadow on the bright light coming from the opposite slope. Weird, fossilized bushes grew here and there. Fish darted up beneath our feet like birds in tall grass.

The huge rocks were cracked open with deep fissures, hidden grottos, and bottomless holes, where you could hear scary creatures moving around. My blood ran cold when I saw giant antennae blocking my way, or some terrifying claw snapping shut with a noise in the shadows of a cave.

Millions of glowing spots shone brightly in the darkness - the eyes of giant crustaceans hiding in their holes. Giant lobsters stood like soldiers, clicking their claws like pincers.

Titanic crabs, pointed like guns on their carriages, and freaky-looking octopuses, weaving their tentacles together like a living nest of snakes.

We'd reached the first level, and even more surprises were waiting. Before us were some amazing ruins, clearly built by humans, not nature.

There were huge piles of stones, with vague shapes of castles and temples you could almost make out, covered in blooming sea plants, and instead of ivy, seaweed and kelp draped a thick green blanket over everything. But what was this part of the world that had been swallowed by disasters?

Who had placed those rocks and stones like ancient monuments? Where was I? Where had Captain Nemo’s imagination taken me?

I really wanted to ask him, but I couldn't, so I stopped him - grabbed his arm. He shook his head and pointed to the highest part of the mountain, like he was saying:

"Come on, let’s go higher!" I followed, and in a few minutes, I’d climbed to the top, which gave us a view of the whole rock formation for about a hundred feet around. I looked down the side we’d just climbed.

The mountain didn’t rise more than seven or eight hundred feet above the plain, but on the other side, it looked twice as high over the ocean. My eyes scanned a huge area lit up by a crazy flash of lightning. Seriously, the mountain was a volcano.

Fifty feet above the peak, in the middle of a shower of rocks and hot chunks of stone, a huge crater was spewing out rivers of lava that flowed down like a cascade of fire into the molten mass below. It lit up the lower plain like a giant torch, all the way to the edge of the horizon.

I said the underwater crater was throwing up lava, but no flames. Flames need air to burn, so they can’t happen underwater. But lava, with its own heat, can get incredibly hot, fight against the water, and turn it into vapor just by touching it.

Fast currents carrying all these gases and rivers of lava slid down the side of the mountain, like the eruption of Vesuvius on another version of ancient Greece.

Right there, under my eyes, lay a town - its roofs open to the sky, its temples crumbled, its arches broken, its columns scattered on the ground, and you could still tell it was built with strong, classic Tuscan style.

Further on, some remains of a huge aqueduct; here, the base of a fortress, with the faint shape of a Parthenon; there, traces of a dock, like an ancient port had once been here, with its trading ships and warships, and then disappeared with the ocean.

Even further on, long lines of sunken walls and wide, empty streets - a perfect Pompeii, hidden under the water. That’s the sight Captain Nemo showed me! Where was I? Where was I? I had to know.

I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me with a hand gesture, and then he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on a black rock: ATLANTIS My mind exploded! Atlantis! The Atlantis of Plato, the continent that Origen and Humbolt said was just a legend.

It was right there, before my eyes, proving its destruction. The area that was swallowed up was beyond Europe, Asia, and Africa, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, where those powerful people, the Atlanteans, lived, against whom the first wars of the ancient Greeks were fought.

So, led by the weirdest twist of fate, I was walking on the mountains of this continent, touching with my hand those ruins that were a thousand generations old and as old as the Earth itself. I was walking on the very spot where the people who lived at the beginning of everything had walked.

I was trying to lock in every detail of this huge landscape when Captain Nemo just stood there, frozen, totally lost in something. He was leaning on a mossy rock. Was he thinking about all the people who lived here before? Was he asking them what the whole point of being human even is?

Maybe he came here to soak up all this history, to relive this ancient life - this guy who didn't even want anything to do with the modern world. I would have given anything to know what he was thinking, to share his thoughts, to get it all.

We hung out there for an hour, just staring at the massive plains under the bright lava, which was seriously intense sometimes. The mountain started shaking - like, a lot - from stuff bubbling deep inside. You could hear these huge, echoing noises through the water. It was epic.

Then the moon popped out from behind the water and its light hit the lost continent. Just a quick flash, but it was unreal! The Captain stood up, took one last look at the giant plain, and then told me to follow him.

We hurried down the mountain, and when we got past the mineral forest, I saw the Nautilus's lantern shining like a star. The Captain headed straight for it, and we got on board just as the first light of day turned the ocean surface white.