Part 2 · Chapter 17From Cape Horn to the Amazon

How I ended up on the platform, I couldn't even tell you - maybe the Canadian had carried me. But I took a deep breath, inhaling the amazing, fresh sea air. My two companions were totally buzzing from it.

The other guys had been without food for so long, they couldn't even handle the simplest meals they gave them. We, though, didn’t have to hold back; we could just breathe this air freely, and it was the breeze, the breeze alone, that gave us this awesome feeling.

"Ah!" said Conseil, "this oxygen is seriously good! Master doesn’t need to worry about breathing it. There’s plenty for everyone."

Ned Land didn’t say anything, but he opened his mouth so wide, it would’ve scared a shark. We quickly got our strength back, and when I looked around, I realized we were totally alone on the platform.

The foreign sailors on the Nautilus were happy with the air circulating inside; none of them bothered to come out for some fresh air.

The first thing I said was to thank my two companions. Ned and Conseil had kept me alive during the last hours of this whole ordeal. No matter how grateful I was, I couldn't ever repay them for their loyalty.

"My friends," I said, "we’re connected now, forever, and I owe you both so much."

"Which I’m totally gonna take advantage of," exclaimed the Canadian.

"What do you mean?" said Conseil.

"I mean I’m taking you with me when I bail from this crazy Nautilus."

"Well," said Conseil, "after all this, are we headed the right way?"

"Yeah," I replied, "because we’re following the sun, and right now, the sun’s in the north."

"Definitely," said Ned Land; "but it remains to be seen whether he’s gonna steer the ship into the Pacific or the Atlantic Ocean - into busy or deserted waters."

I couldn’t answer that question, and I worried that Captain Nemo would take us to the massive ocean that touches the coasts of Asia and America at the same time. He’s basically finish the tour of the underwater world and return to waters where the Nautilus could cruise freely.

We needed to figure this out pretty soon. The Nautilus was zooming along. We zipped past the polar circle, and the course was set for Cape Horn. We were off the American coast, March thirty-first, around seven in the evening. Suddenly, all our past suffering was forgotten.

The memory of being trapped in the ice just vanished from our minds. We were only thinking about what was next. Captain Nemo didn't show up in the living room or on the deck. The spot marked on the globe each day, and tracked by the lieutenant, showed me exactly where the Nautilus was headed.

That evening, it was clear, and I was super relieved, that we were heading back north through the Atlantic. The next day, April first, when the Nautilus surfaced just before noon, we spotted land to the west.

It was Terra del Fuego, which the early explorers named that way because of all the smoke rising from the natives’ homes. The coast seemed low, but in the distance were towering mountains.

I even thought I caught a glimpse of Mount Sarmiento, which rises over two,zero feet above sea level, with a really sharp peak. Depending on whether it was foggy or clear, it meant good or bad weather. Right then, the peak was crystal clear against the sky.

The Nautilus dove back underwater, approaching the coast, which was just a few miles away. From the windows in the living room, I saw long seaweed and giant kelp and sea lettuce - the kind you find tons of in the polar sea.

Their strands were sharp and shiny, like polished cables, thicker than my thumb. They were super strong and often used as ropes for ships. Another type of seaweed, called velp, with leaves four feet long, was buried in coral formations.

It served as a home and food for countless crustaceans and mollusks - crabs and cuttlefish. Seals and otters had amazing meals there, eating fish with sea vegetables, just like the English do. The Nautilus sped over this fertile and lush area.

Towards evening, it approached the Falkland Islands, and I recognized the jagged peaks the next day. The sea was a moderate depth. Our nets brought up beautiful seaweed, especially a certain type of kelp, whose roots were filled with the best mussels in the world.

Geese and ducks fell onto the deck by the dozens and quickly ended up in the pantry on board.

Once the last peaks of the Falklands disappeared over the horizon, the Nautilus sank to between twenty and twenty-five yards and followed the American coast. Captain Nemo was MIA. Until April third, we didn’t leave the shores of Patagonia, sometimes underwater, sometimes on the surface.

The Nautilus passed beyond the big estuary formed by the Río de la Plata and, on April fourth, was fifty-six miles off Uruguay. Its direction was north, following the winding coastline of South America. We’d traveled about one,six hundred miles since we’d set sail in the seas of Japan.

Around eleven in the morning, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn on the thirty-seventh meridian, and we passed Cape Frio jutting out to sea. Captain Nemo, much to Ned Land’s annoyance, didn't like being near the populated coasts of Brazil - we were going way too fast.

Not a single fish or bird could keep up with us, and we missed all the cool natural sights in these waters.

We kept up that speed for a few days, and on the evening of April eleventh, we spotted the easternmost point of South America, Cape San Roque. But then the Nautilus veered again, diving into a super-deep underwater valley between that cape and the African coast near Sierra Leone.

This valley splits off toward the Caribbean islands, ending at a massive drop-off of almost nine thousand feet. Down there, the ocean floor creates a giant cliff - over three and a half miles high - as far as the Lesser Antilles.

And another huge wall, just as tall, sits at the Cape Verde Islands, basically trapping an entire sunken continent of the Atlantic. The bottom of this enormous valley was dotted with mountains, making the underwater scenery pretty cool.

I’m talking about the handwritten charts we found in the Nautilus's library - charts definitely drawn by Captain Nemo himself, based on his own observations. For two days, we explored those deep waters using angled ramps. The Nautilus had long, diagonal panels that could launch it to any height.

But on April eleventh, it suddenly surfaced, and we saw land at the mouth of the Amazon River - a massive estuary, so big that the river's water diluted the ocean for miles.

We crossed the equator. The Guianas, a French territory, were about twenty miles to the west - an easy place to hide out, but a strong breeze and crazy waves made it impossible to launch a boat. Ned Land seemed to get that, so he didn't say a word about it.

I didn’t bring up his escape plans either, because I knew any attempt would just fail. I kept myself busy with some interesting studies. During April eleventh and twelfth, the Nautilus stayed on the surface, and the nets brought in an incredible haul of sea creatures, fish, and reptiles.

Some of the sea creatures had been caught by the net's chain - mostly beautiful, glowing phyctallines from the actinidian family.

Among them was the phyctalis protexta, found only in that part of the ocean - a little cylindrical body with vertical lines, speckled with red dots, topped with a stunning array of tentacles.

The mollusks included some I’d already seen - turritellas, olive porphyras with regular lines and red spots, weird pteroceras like petrified scorpions, and see-through hyaleas and argonauts (delicious, by the way), plus certain species of squid that ancient naturalists used to classify as flying fish, and that are mostly used as bait for cod fishing.

I had a chance to study several species of fish around those waters.

Among the cartilaginous ones, there were petromyzons-pricka, a type of eel, about fifteen inches long, with a greenish head, violet fins, grey-blue back, brown belly, and silver spots - a curious animal that the Amazon current had drawn to the sea, since they live in fresh water.

There were also tuberculated streaks with pointy snouts and a long, loose tail armed with a long, jagged sting; little sharks, a yard long, with grey and whitish skin and rows of backward-bent teeth, often called "pantouffles"; vespertilios - a kind of red isosceles triangle, half a yard long, with pectoral fins attached by fleshy extensions that made them look like bats, but that their horny appendage near the nostrils gave them the name "sea-unicorns"; and lastly, some species of balistae, the curassavian with brilliant gold spots, and the capriscus with clear violet markings, like a pigeon’s throat.

I’m wrapping up this list now - it’s been a little dry, I’ll admit, but pretty accurate - with a bunch of bony fish I spotted along the way. These were apteronotes, with snouts as white as snow, bodies a gorgeous black, and a long, floppy strip of flesh.

There were odontognathes with spikes, sardines about nine inches long, shimmering with a bright silver sheen, and a type of mackerel with two fins on their tail.

I also saw centronotes - darkish fish we fished for with torches - these were long, about two yards, with super fatty, white, firm flesh that tasted like eel when fresh and like smoked salmon when dried.

Then there were labres, half red, covered in scales only at the bottom of their dorsal and anal fins; chrysoptera where gold and silver mixed with the brightness of rubies and topazes; golden-tailed fish that glowed in the water; orange fish with long tongues; maigres with gold fins on their tails; anableps from Surinam, and a whole bunch more.

But even with that "and so on," I have to mention the fish Conseil will remember - and for good reason. One of our nets hauled up this really flat ray, and once we cut off the tail, it was a perfect disc, weighing about twenty ounces.

It was white underneath, red on top, with big, round dark blue spots circled with black, and really shiny skin that ended in a fin split into two lobes. When we laid it out on the platform, it was still struggling, twisting and turning, trying to flip itself back into the sea.

But Conseil, not wanting to let it go, rushed over and grabbed it with both hands. In a flash, he was knocked over, legs in the air, half his body frozen, yelling -

"Oh! master, master! help me!"

It was the first time the poor kid had talked to me so casually. The Canadian and I helped him up and rubbed his stiff arms until he started to feel better. Turns out, the unlucky Conseil had tangled with a seriously dangerous fish - a cumana.

This weird animal can zap fish from several yards away, thanks to its electric organ, which is huge - the two main parts alone measure over twenty-seven square feet. The next day, April twelfth, the Nautilus headed towards the Dutch coast, near the mouth of the Maroni.

There, we found a bunch of sea-cows hanging out together; they were manatees, related to dugongs and stellera - they’re all part of the sirenian order. These beautiful, gentle, and harmless animals grow to be eighteen to twenty-one feet long and weigh over sixteen hundredweight.

I told Ned Land and Conseil that nature had given these guys a really important job. They’re like seals, designed to graze on the underwater prairies and clear out the weeds that clog up tropical rivers.

"And did you know," I added, "what’s happened since people pretty much wiped out this helpful species? The rotting weeds have poisoned the air, and that poisoned air causes yellow fever, which devastates these beautiful countries."

Huge amounts of vegetation are growing under the tropical seas, and the problem is just getting worse from the Rio de la Plata to Florida. If you believe Toussenel, this plague is nothing compared to what it would be if the seas were cleared of whales and seals.

"Then, swarming with giant squids, jellyfish, and cuttlefish, they’d become massive breeding grounds for disease, because their waves wouldn’t have ‘these huge stomachs that God gave them to clean up the surface of the seas.’"