That day, the Nautilus entered one of the strangest regions of the Atlantic Ocean.
Everyone knows about the warm ocean current called the Gulf Stream. After leaving the Gulf of Florida, this powerful current travels northward toward the icy waters near Spitzbergen. Before reaching the Gulf of Mexico, around latitude 45° north, it divides into two branches.
The larger branch continues toward the coasts of Ireland and Norway.
The other branch turns south near the Azores, then follows the coast of Africa before making a huge circular journey back toward the Antilles.
This second branch was not really an arm of the current. It was more like a giant ring of warm water. Inside this circle lay a strange and peaceful area of the Atlantic, a place where the ocean seemed almost asleep.
This was the famous Sargasso Sea.
The warm current surrounded this enormous floating garden of the ocean. It was like a vast lake in the middle of the Atlantic, and the current took nearly three years to complete its journey around it.
This was the region the Nautilus was now exploring.
It was an incredible sight.
The surface was covered with thick layers of seaweed, floating plants, and tropical vegetation. The mass was so dense that an ordinary ship would have struggled to push through it.
Captain Nemo did not want the Nautilus‘s propeller to become trapped in this enormous underwater meadow, so he kept the submarine several yards below the surface.
The name “Sargasso” came from the Spanish word “sargazo,” meaning seaweed.
This floating seaweed, also called kelp, formed the main body of this huge natural island.
Captain Nemo explained:
“The reason these plants gather here can be understood through a simple experiment. Put pieces of cork or any other floating objects into a bowl of water, then stir the water in a circular motion. The floating pieces will slowly gather together in the center, where the movement of the water is weakest.”
“In this case, the Atlantic Ocean is the bowl, the Gulf Stream is the circular movement, and the Sargasso Sea is the place where all floating objects naturally collect.”
I agreed with the theory of the famous oceanographer Maury, and I was able to study this phenomenon from within the very heart of the Sargasso Sea, a place where ships rarely traveled.
Above us floated countless objects trapped among the brown seaweed.
There were huge tree trunks torn from the Andes and the Rocky Mountains, carried into the ocean by rivers like the Amazon and the Mississippi.
There were also many remains of ships—broken keels, damaged hulls, and pieces of wooden sides. Some were covered so heavily with shells and barnacles that they could never rise back to the surface.
Captain Nemo believed that time would prove another idea of Maury’s.
He thought these materials, gathered here for thousands of years, would eventually become fossilized by the action of seawater. One day they might form enormous coal deposits, a hidden treasure prepared by nature for the future when humanity had exhausted the coal mines on land.
Among this endless world of plants and seaweed, I discovered many beautiful creatures.
Pink sea anemones floated gracefully with their long tentacles drifting behind them.
There were also jellyfish of many colors—green, red, and blue—moving slowly through the water like living jewels.
The entire day of February 22nd was spent crossing the Sargasso Sea.
Here, fish that depended on marine plants for food found an endless supply of nourishment.
The next day, the ocean returned to its usual appearance.
From February 23rd until March 12th, the Nautilus continued through the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at a steady speed of one hundred leagues every twenty-four hours.
Captain Nemo clearly intended to complete his underwater journey. I guessed that after passing Cape Horn, he planned to return to the waters around Australia and the Pacific Ocean.
Ned Land had every reason to worry.
In these enormous empty seas, where there were no islands nearby, escaping from the Nautilus was impossible.
We had no way to resist Captain Nemo’s decisions.
Our only choice was to wait.
Still, I believed that what we could not achieve through force or escape might perhaps be achieved through conversation.
When this journey was finally over, would Captain Nemo agree to release us if we promised never to reveal his existence?
Such a promise would have been a matter of honor, and we would have kept it faithfully.
But the question was extremely difficult.
Was I even free to ask for our freedom?
From the beginning, Captain Nemo had clearly told us that protecting the secret of his life required us to remain prisoners aboard the Nautilus forever.
Would he not think that our four months of silence meant we had accepted our situation?
Would bringing up the subject again make him suspicious and damage any future chance we might have?
During these nineteen days, nothing unusual happened.
I rarely saw Captain Nemo.
He spent most of his time working.
Whenever I entered the library, I often found his books lying open, especially those about natural science.
My own study of the depths of the ocean, which he had examined carefully, was covered with notes in the margins. Many of these comments disagreed with my theories and conclusions.
However, Captain Nemo usually corrected my ideas silently.
He almost never discussed them with me.
Sometimes, I heard the sad and lonely sound of his organ.
But it was always at night, when the Nautilus rested on the empty ocean beneath the darkness.
During this part of our journey, we often sailed on the surface for entire days.
The sea seemed completely deserted.
A few sailing ships heading toward India passed in the distance on their way around the Cape of Good Hope.
One day, a group of boats from a whaling ship followed us.
The sailors probably believed the Nautilus was some enormous and valuable whale.
But Captain Nemo did not want these honest men to waste their time chasing us.
With a simple command, he sent the Nautilus beneath the waves and ended the pursuit.
Our voyage continued until March 13th.
That day, the Nautilus began taking deep-sea measurements, a task that fascinated me.
Since leaving the open Pacific Ocean, we had traveled nearly thirteen thousand leagues.
Our position was recorded as 45°37′ south latitude and 37°53′ west longitude.
This was the same region where Captain Denham of the Herald had once measured a depth of seven thousand fathoms without reaching the bottom.
Lieutenant Parker of the American frigate Congress had also failed to find the ocean floor, even after lowering a line 15,140 fathoms.
Captain Nemo now wanted to explore these unknown depths himself.
He planned to make the Nautilus dive diagonally downward by using its side planes, which were positioned at a forty-five-degree angle to the submarine’s body.
Then the propeller began turning at full power.
Its four blades struck the water with incredible force.
Under this enormous pressure, the body of the Nautilus vibrated like a giant musical instrument.
Slowly and steadily, it sank deeper into the ocean.
At a depth of seven thousand fathoms, I saw dark shapes rising from the darkness below.
They might have been mountain peaks as high as the Himalayas or even Mont Blanc.
The true depth of the abyss remained impossible to measure.
The Nautilus continued downward.
Despite the crushing pressure, it kept descending.
I could feel the steel plates shaking around the bolts.
The supporting bars bent.
The walls groaned.
The windows of the saloon seemed to curve inward under the weight of the ocean.
The submarine would surely have collapsed if it had not been built with the strength of a solid block of metal, just as Captain Nemo had claimed.
Finally, we reached a depth of sixteen thousand yards—about four leagues beneath the surface.
The sides of the Nautilus were now suffering pressure equal to 1,600 atmospheres.
That meant every small section of its surface was being pushed by thousands of pounds of force.
“What an incredible place!” I cried.
“We are traveling through regions no human being has ever explored. Look, Captain! Look at these magnificent rocks, these empty caves, these deepest chambers of the Earth where life seems impossible!”
“What mysteries are hidden here!”
“Why can we not keep some record of what we have seen?”
Captain Nemo looked at me calmly.
“Would you like to take away more than a memory?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that nothing is easier than taking photographs of this underwater world.”
Before I could express my surprise, Captain Nemo ordered a camera to be brought into the saloon.
Through the wide-open window, the surrounding water was illuminated by the electric lights of the Nautilus.
The light was so even and powerful that there were no shadows and no dark areas.
The submarine remained still on the ocean floor.
Its propeller stopped fighting the water because the angled planes held it in place.
The camera was positioned, and within seconds, we had captured a perfect image of this mysterious underwater landscape.
When the work was finished, Captain Nemo said:
“Let us return to the surface. We must not remain here too long or expose the Nautilus to such extreme pressure.”
“Return to the surface?” I shouted.
“Hold on tightly.”
I had barely understood his warning when I was suddenly thrown forward onto the carpet.
At Captain Nemo’s signal, the propeller moved into position.
The blades turned vertically.
Then the Nautilus shot upward like a balloon released into the sky.
It rushed through the ocean with tremendous speed, cutting through the water with a deep roaring sound.
Nothing could be seen outside.
In only four minutes, it crossed the four leagues of water separating it from the surface.
Then, like a flying fish leaping from the sea, the Nautilus burst above the waves and fell back down, sending enormous waves crashing in every direction.