Chapter 7
The Mediterranean, the blue sea par excellence, ‘the great sea’ of the Hebrews, ‘the sea’ of the Greeks, the ‘mare nostrum’ of the Romans, bordered by orange-trees, aloes, cacti, and sea-pines; embalmed with the perfume of the myrtle, surrounded by rude mountains, saturated with pure and transparent air, but incessantly worked by underground fires; a perfect battlefield in which Neptune and Pluto still dispute the empire of the world!
It is upon these banks, and on these waters, says Michelet, that man is renewed in one of the most powerful climates of the globe. But, beautiful as it was, I could only take a rapid glance at the basin whose superficial area is two million of square yards. Even Captain Nemo’s knowledge was lost to me, for this puzzling person did not appear once during our passage at full speed. I estimated the course which the Nautilus took under the waves of the sea at about six hundred leagues, and it was accomplished in forty-eight hours. Starting on the morning of the 16th of February from the shores of Greece, we had crossed the Straits of Gibraltar by sunrise on the 18th.
It was plain to me that this Mediterranean, enclosed in the midst of those countries which he wished to avoid, was distasteful to Captain Nemo. Those waves and those breezes brought back too many remembrances, if not too many regrets. Here he had no longer that independence and that liberty of gait which he had when in the open seas, and his Nautilus felt itself cramped between the close shores of Africa and Europe.
Our speed was now twenty-five miles an hour. It may be well understood that Ned Land, to his great disgust, was obliged to renounce his intended flight. He could not launch the pinnace, going at the rate of twelve or thirteen yards every second. To quit the Nautilus under such conditions would be as bad as jumping from a train going at full speed – an imprudent thing, to say the least of it. Besides, our vessel only mounted to the surface of the waves at night to renew its stock of air; it was steered entirely by the compass and the log.
I saw no more of the interior of this Mediterranean than a traveller by express train perceives of the landscape which flies before his eyes; that is to say, the distant horizon, and not the nearer objects which pass like a flash of lightning.
The electric light had fallen on a wide expanse of sea-water, revealing the ubiquitous lamprays more than a yard in length, and huge oxyrhynchi with their broad white bellies and grey speckled sacks, their five feet width almost resembling a floating sheet in water.
Ferocious milander sharks, about 12 feet long, jostled with the speeding rays. Then there were eight feet long sea-foxes capable of searching food by smell. Dorades of shark family, also eight feet in length, appeared, their blue and silvery bodies filling up the vision. The eyes of dorades are set in bright golden circles. They are a valuable species and live in all sorts of waters: lakes, rivers and vast seas, in any climate – cold or warm – are said to be existing at the very beginning of the evolutionary stage, and in spite of the elapsed millennia continue to retain their original pleasing looks!
The glass-panes were now receiving slaps from sinewy tails of sturgeons nine to ten yards in length. Quite resembling sharks, though lacking the immense strength of the latter, the sturgeons with pale blue backs and brown spots are universally found in the seas.
I felt quite privileged to closely watch yet another species of the Mediterranean, as our vessel ascended toward the surface, and that was a kind of tunny, in blue and silver bodies and flashing golden fins and dorsal spines. To escape the searing sunrays of the tropics, these cylindrical shaped fish follow the shade of speeding vessels, matching their speed with great agility and keeping in a light formation during the lengthy chase. As for the mammal types, I recollect having seen a couple of cachalots as we entered the Adriatic Sea. Then there were the Dolphins of the genus globicephali for which the Mediterranean is specially known, as also the seals some nine feet in length.
The visual feast came to an end as I saw an eye-pleasing orange-coloured galeolaria get entangled with some tiny projection on our port panel and of which – if I could – I would have liked to take possession as a fine specimen, but the Nautilus seemed to be slowing down dictated by the following sequence of events:
We were then passing between Sicily and the coast of Tunis. In the narrow space between Cape Bon and the Straits of Messina the bottom of the sea rose almost suddenly. There was a perfect bank, on which there was not more than nine fathoms of water, whilst on either side the depth was ninety fathoms.
The Nautilus had to manoeuvre very carefully so as not to strike against this submarine barrier.
I showed Conseil, on the map of the Mediterranean, the spot occupied by this reef.
“But if you please, sir,” observed Conseil, “it is like a real isthmus joining Europe to Africa.”
“Yes, my boy, it forms a perfect bar to the Straits of Lybia, and the soundings of Smith have proved that in former times the continents between Cape Boco and Cape Furina were joined.”
“I can well believe it,” said Conseil.
“I will add,” I continued, “that a similar barrier exists between Gibraltar and Ceuta, which in geological times formed the entire Mediterranean.”
“What if some volcanic burst should one day raise these two barriers above the waves?”
“It is not probable, Conseil.”
“Well, but allow me to finish, please, sir; if this phenomenon should take place, it will be troublesome for M. Lesseps, who has taken so much pains to pierce the isthmus.”
“I agree with you; but I repeat, Conseil, this phenomenon will never happen. The violence of subterranean force is ever diminishing. Volcanoes, so plentiful in the first days of the world, are being extinguished by degrees; the internal heat is weakened, the temperature of the lower strata of the globe is lowered by a perceptible quantity every century to the detriment of our globe, for its heat is its life.”
“But the sun?”
“The sun is not sufficient, Conseil. Can it give heat to a dead body?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, my friend, this earth will one day be that cold corpse; it will become uninhabitable and uninhabited like the moon, which has long since lost all its vital heat.”
“In how many centuries?”
“In some hundreds of thousands of years, my boy.”
“Then,” said Conseil, “we shall have time to finish our journey – that is, if Ned Land does not interfere with it.”
And Conseil, reassured, returned to the study of the bank, which the Nautilus was skirting at a moderate speed.
Underneath the bottom of rock and volcanic strata, spread out the world of sponges and red cydippes glowing in phosphorescent aura known to us in the form of sea-cucumbers. Three to four feet long comatulae in deep purple, almost painted the surroundings with their dense presence. We had just crossed the Straits of Libya and were now running deep at our usual speed.
This then was the end of my sighting pleasures. Good-bye articulates adieu zoöphytes.
During the night of the 16th and 17th February we had entered the second Mediterranean basin, the greatest depth of which was 1,450 fathoms. The Nautilus, by the action of its crew, slid down the inclined planes and buried itself in the lowest depths of the sea.
On the 18th of February, about three o’clock in the morning, we were at the entrance of the Straits of Gibraltar. There once existed two currents: an upper one, long since recognised, which conveys the waters of the ocean into the basin of the Mediterranean; and a lower counter-current, which reasoning has now shown to exist. Indeed, the volume of water in the Mediterranean, incessantly added to by the waves of the Atlantic and by rivers falling into it, would each year raise the level of this sea, for its evaporation is not sufficient to restore the equilibrium. As it is not so, we must necessarily admit the existence of an under-current, which empties into the basin of the Atlantic through the Straits of Gibraltar the surplus waters of the Mediterranean. A fact indeed; and it was this counter-current by which the Nautilus profited. It advanced rapidly by the narrow pass. For one instant I caught a glimpse of the beautiful ruins of the temple of Hercules, buried in the ground, according to Pliny, and with the low island which supports it; and a few minutes later we were floating on the Atlantic.
