Part 2 · Chapter 11The Sargasso Sea

That day, the Nautilus sailed through a really weird part of the Atlantic. Everyone knows about the Gulf Stream - that warm water current. After leaving the Gulf of Florida, we were headed toward Spitzbergen.

But before we got to the Gulf of Mexico, around forty-five° North latitude, this current splits into two. The main one goes towards Ireland and Norway, while the other bends south, near the Azores. Then, touching the African coast, it makes a huge oval shape and loops back to the Caribbean islands.

This second branch - it’s more like a collar than a branch - surrounds a section of the cold, still, and basically motionless ocean called the Sargasso Sea. It’s like a giant lake right in the middle of the Atlantic. It takes a whopping three years for the main current to circle around it.

That’s the area the Nautilus was exploring - a total meadow, a thick mat of seaweed, kelp, and tropical plants, so dense and packed together that a boat’s hull could barely push through it.

Captain Nemo kept us about a few yards below the surface to avoid getting our propeller tangled in all that stuff.

"Sargasso" comes from the Spanish word for kelp, "sargazzo." This kelp, or berry-plant, is what makes up this massive area.

And that’s why these plants all gather in this calm spot in the Atlantic. He explained that it’s like this: put some cork pieces or other floating things in a vase and spin the water. The pieces will clump together in the center, where the water isn't moving as much.

In the Sargasso Sea, the Atlantic is the vase, the Gulf Stream is the spinning water, and the Sargasso Sea is the spot where all the floating stuff gathers.

I totally agree with what Maury said, and I got to see it all up close, somewhere ships hardly ever go.

Above us, we saw all sorts of things floating, piled up among the brownish plants: tree trunks ripped from the Andes or the Rocky Mountains, carried by the Amazon or the Mississippi; lots of shipwrecks, just the hulls or the bottoms, with the sides smashed in, weighed down with shells and barnacles so they couldn’t float back up.

And someday, Maury will be proven right about something else too - that all this stuff, building up for ages, will turn to stone from the water and become huge coal deposits - a precious reserve that Nature is setting aside for when people have used up all the coal from the land.

In the middle of all that thick seaweed and plants, I noticed some pretty pink halcyons and actiniae, with their long tentacles trailing behind them, and jellyfish, green, red, and blue.

All day on February twenty-second, we were stuck in the Sargasso Sea, where fish that love marine plants could find tons of food. The next day, the ocean looked normal again.

From then on, for nineteen days - February twenty-third to March twelfth - the Nautilus cruised through the middle of the Atlantic, moving at a steady speed of a hundred leagues every twenty-four hours.

Captain Nemo clearly had a submarine plan in mind, and I figured he wanted to round Cape Horn and head back to the Pacific waters near Australia. Ned Land was seriously worried. Out in those huge, island-free seas, we couldn't even try to leave the boat.

And we had no way to go against Captain Nemo’s wishes. Our only option was to go along with it, but I hoped maybe we could get what we couldn’t take by force or trickery - through talking. If this trip ended, would he agree to give us back our freedom, promising never to reveal his existence?

An oath of honor we’d definitely keep. But we needed to think about that tricky situation with the Captain. But was I even allowed to ask for our freedom? Didn't he say from the start, really firmly, that the secret of his life meant we were stuck on the Nautilus forever?

And wouldn’t four months of silence look like we accepted our situation? And would bringing up the topic again make him suspicious, potentially ruining any chance we had to escape later?

During those nineteen days, nothing much happened. I didn’t see much of the Captain; he was busy working. I often found his books left open in the library, especially the ones about nature.

My research on the deep sea, which he checked over, was covered in notes in the margins - often disagreeing with my ideas. But the Captain just corrected my work that way; he rarely talked about it with me.

Sometimes I’d hear his organ playing, but only at night, in the darkest quiet, when the Nautilus was asleep on the empty ocean. During this part of our trip, we sailed on the surface of the waves all day long. The sea felt totally deserted.

A few sailing ships, heading to India, were making their way toward the Cape of Good Hope. One day, we were followed by some boats from a whaling ship, who probably thought we were some giant, valuable whale!

But Captain Nemo didn’t want those guys to waste their time, so he just dove under the water to end the chase. We kept sailing until March thirteenth; that day the Nautilus was taking depth readings, which I found really interesting. We’d traveled about thirteen thousand leagues since leaving the Pacific.

The readings gave us a location of forty-five° thirty-seven' South latitude and thirty-seven° fifty-three' West longitude. It was the same water where Captain Denham of the Herald tried to measure the depth and couldn’t find the bottom after seven thousand fathoms.

Lieutenant Parker, from the American frigate Congress, also couldn’t touch the bottom after fifteen thousand, one hundred and forty fathoms. Captain Nemo was trying to reach the ocean floor by angling the Nautilus at a forty-five-degree angle with the water, using special planes.

Then the propeller kicked into high gear, its four blades slamming into the waves with incredible force. Under that powerful pressure, the hull of the Nautilus vibrated like a loud guitar string and sank smoothly beneath the water.

About seven miles down, I saw some dark shapes rising from the water. But those could’ve been huge mountains, like the Himalayas or Mont Blanc - even bigger! The ocean’s depths felt impossible to measure. The Nautilus kept sinking, even with the intense pressure.

I could feel the steel plates shaking where the bolts were fastened; the bars bent, and the walls groaned. The windows in the lounge seemed to curve inward. And this super-strong structure wouldnn't have given way, if, like the Captain said, it wasn't able to hold up like a solid block.

We’d reached a depth of almost sixteen thousand feet (four miles), and the sides of the Nautilus were withstanding a pressure of one,six hundred times the normal air pressure - that’s over three thousand, two hundred pounds on every tiny area of its surface.

"This is a crazy situation! I said. " To explore these deep, unexplored regions! Look, Captain, look at these incredible rocks, these empty caves, these lowest points on Earth where nothing can live! What amazing things are down here! Why can’t we remember them?"

"Do you want to take away more than just memories?" asked Captain Nemo. "What do you mean?"

"I mean it's super easy to take a picture of this underwater world."

I didn’t even have time to react to this idea when, at the Captain’s call, they brought a camera into the lounge. Through the huge, open panel, the water glowed with electricity, distributed so evenly that there were no shadows or gradations in our artificial light.

The Nautilus stayed still, its propeller quieted by tilting its fins. The camera was set on the ocean floor, and in just a few seconds, we got a perfect negative.

But when the picture was done, Captain Nemo said, "Let’s go up; we shouldn't push our luck or leave the Nautilus out here for too long under this pressure." "Go up again?" I said. "Hang on tight."

I didn’t have time to figure out why the Captain warned me like that when I was suddenly thrown forward onto the carpet.

At the Captain’s signal, the propeller was retracted and the blades raised straight up; the Nautilus shot upward like a balloon, rising really fast, and cutting through the water with a loud splash.

We could see nothing; and in just four minutes, it had shot through the four miles that separated it from the surface, and, after bursting out like a flying fish, plunged back in, making huge waves.