The next day, March 22, preparations for departure began at six in the morning.
The last traces of twilight faded away, and the darkness of night covered the Antarctic sky.
The cold was extreme.
The stars shone with a brightness I had never seen before. High above us was the magnificent Southern Cross, the symbol of the southern sky.
The thermometer showed twelve degrees below zero.
When the wind began to blow harder, the cold became almost unbearable.
More and more ice began forming on the open sea. Everywhere we looked, the ocean appeared the same.
Dark patches spread across the surface, showing that fresh ice was beginning to form.
It was obvious that the southern sea, frozen during the long winter months, would soon become completely unreachable.
I wondered what happened to the whales during that frozen season.
Without doubt, they escaped beneath the icebergs and searched for warmer waters where they could survive.
As for seals and walruses, they were creatures born for harsh climates. They remained along these frozen shores.
They had the remarkable ability to break holes in the ice and keep them open.
Through these openings, they came up to breathe.
When the birds, unable to endure the cold, migrated north, these marine animals became the only inhabitants of the frozen continent.
Meanwhile, the water tanks of the Nautilus were filling, and the submarine slowly began to sink.
At a depth of one thousand feet, it stopped.
The propeller began turning, pushing through the water, and the Nautilus moved northward at a speed of fifteen miles an hour.
By evening, we were already sailing beneath the enormous mass of an iceberg.
At three o’clock in the morning, I was suddenly awakened by a violent impact.
I sat up in my bed and listened carefully in the darkness.
Before I could understand what had happened, I was thrown violently across the room.
The Nautilus had struck something and bounced backward with tremendous force.
I felt my way along the wall and reached the staircase leading to the saloon, which was still glowing with artificial light.
The scene inside was chaotic.
Furniture had been thrown over.
Fortunately, the glass windows had been firmly secured and remained intact.
The paintings on the right side of the saloon had fallen away from their vertical position and were pressed against the wall.
Those on the left side were hanging nearly a foot away from the surface.
The Nautilus was lying on its right side and had completely stopped moving.
I heard footsteps and confused voices outside.
But Captain Nemo did not appear.
Just as I was leaving the saloon, Ned Land and Conseil entered.
“What happened?” I asked immediately.
“I came to ask you the same thing, sir,” Conseil replied.
“Damn it!” cried Ned. “I already know what happened. The Nautilus has struck something. And judging by the way she is lying, I doubt she will recover as easily as she did in the Torres Strait.”
“But has she at least returned to the surface?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” said Conseil.
“That is easy enough to find out,” I replied.
I checked the pressure gauge.
To my great surprise, it showed that we were still more than 180 fathoms below the surface.
“What does this mean?” I exclaimed.
“We must ask Captain Nemo,” said Conseil.
“But where can we find him?” asked Ned.
“Follow me,” I said.
We left the saloon.
The library was empty.
The central staircase near the crew’s quarters was also deserted.
I thought Captain Nemo must be in the pilot’s cabin.
The best thing was to wait.
We returned to the saloon.
For twenty minutes, we stood there silently, listening for the smallest sound from inside the ship.
Then Captain Nemo finally entered.
He seemed not to notice us.
His usually calm face showed clear signs of anxiety.
Without speaking, he looked at the compass, then checked the pressure gauge.
After that, he walked to the map of the oceans and placed his finger on a point in the southern seas.
I did not want to interrupt him.
But a few minutes later, when he turned toward me, I asked using one of his own expressions from the Torres Strait:
“An incident, Captain?”
“No, sir,” he replied. “This time it is an accident.”
“Is it serious?”
“Perhaps.”
“Are we in immediate danger?”
“No.”
“Has the Nautilus become stuck?”
“Yes.”
“How did this happen?”
“Because of nature, not because of human error,” Captain Nemo answered.
“No mistake was made in operating the ship. But we cannot prevent the laws of nature from acting.”
“We may challenge human rules, but we cannot fight against nature itself.”
Captain Nemo had chosen a strange moment for such a philosophical statement.
His words explained little.
“May I ask what caused this accident?” I said.
“An enormous block of ice—a whole mountain of ice—has overturned,” he replied.
“When icebergs are weakened beneath the surface by warmer water or repeated movements, their center of gravity changes, and the entire mass can suddenly flip over.”
“That is exactly what happened.”
“One of these giant blocks fell, struck the Nautilus, then slid beneath the hull and lifted us with unstoppable force.”
“It carried us into a layer of ice that was thinner, where we are now resting on our side.”
“Could we not empty the water tanks and regain our balance?” I asked.
“That is already being done,” he said.
“You can hear the pumps working.”
“Look at the pressure gauge. It shows that the Nautilus is rising.”
“But the iceberg is rising with us.”
“Until something stops its upward movement, our situation will not change.”
The Nautilus still remained tilted to the right.
Perhaps it would return to its normal position once the iceberg stopped moving.
But I could not stop thinking:
What if we were crushed between two enormous walls of ice?
I considered every possible consequence of our situation.
Captain Nemo never took his eyes away from the gauge.
Since the iceberg had fallen, the Nautilus had risen about 150 feet.
Yet it still remained tilted at the same angle.
Suddenly, we felt a slight movement beneath our feet.
The submarine was slowly beginning to straighten.
The objects hanging in the saloon gradually returned to their normal positions.
The walls became more upright.
No one spoke.
With our hearts pounding, we waited and watched.
Slowly, the floor beneath us became level again.
Ten minutes passed.
“At last, we are upright again!” I cried.
“Yes,” Captain Nemo replied as he walked toward the saloon door.
“But are we floating freely?” I asked.
“Certainly,” he answered.
“The tanks are not empty yet. Once they are emptied, the Nautilus will rise to the surface.”
We were surrounded by open water.
But only about ten yards away on both sides of the Nautilus stood enormous walls of ice.
There was ice above us as well, because the underside of the iceberg stretched over the submarine like a giant ceiling.
There was ice below us too, because the overturned block had slowly slid down and become trapped against the surrounding walls.
The Nautilus was imprisoned inside a perfect ice tunnel more than twenty yards wide, filled with calm water.
It was possible to escape by moving forward or backward, then passing beneath the iceberg hundreds of yards below.
The glowing ceiling had gone dark.
Yet the saloon remained brilliantly illuminated.
The light came from the powerful reflection of the electric lamps against the crystal walls of ice.
The sight was beyond description.
The enormous blocks of ice had been carved into countless strange shapes.
Every corner, every ridge, every surface reflected light differently depending on the minerals hidden inside the ice.
It looked like a giant underground treasure filled with jewels.
The blue rays resembled sapphires.
The green reflections looked like emeralds.
Soft opal colors appeared here and there.
Bright points flashed like burning diamonds, so intense that our eyes could hardly endure them.
The electric lamp seemed a hundred times stronger, like a lighthouse beam passing through powerful lenses.
“How beautiful! How beautiful!” cried Conseil.
“Yes,” I replied.
“It is an incredible sight.”
“What do you think, Ned?”
“Yes, I admit it,” Ned Land answered.
“It is magnificent.”
“I hate having to admit it, but nobody has ever seen anything like this.”
“Still, this beautiful sight may cost us dearly.”
“If I must say the truth, I think we are seeing things here that humans were never meant to see.”
Ned was right.
It was too beautiful to be real.
Suddenly Conseil shouted.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Close your eyes, sir! Do not look!”
As he spoke, Conseil covered his own eyes with his hands.
“What happened, my boy?”
“I am blinded! The light is too strong!”
My eyes turned toward the glass wall instinctively.
But I immediately looked away.
The brightness was unbearable.
Then I understood.
The Nautilus had started moving at full speed.
The quiet glow of the ice walls had transformed into flashes of lightning.
Thousands of ice crystals reflected the light like countless diamonds exploding at once.
It took several moments before our eyes recovered.
Finally, we lowered our hands.
“I swear, I never could have imagined such a thing,” said Conseil.
It was five o’clock in the morning.
At that moment, another shock struck the front of the Nautilus.
I knew immediately that the submarine’s steel ram had hit a block of ice.
It must have been a mistake.
This underwater tunnel was filled with obstacles, making navigation extremely difficult.
I thought Captain Nemo would change direction, avoid the obstacles, or follow the curves of the tunnel.
Surely the passage could not be completely blocked.
But contrary to my expectations, the Nautilus began moving backward.
“We are going in reverse?” asked Conseil.
“Yes,” I replied.
“The tunnel must have no exit at this end.”
“Then what?”
“Then we must return the way we came and leave through the southern entrance.”
“That is all.”
I spoke confidently, but inside I was not nearly as calm.
The backward movement of the Nautilus increased rapidly.
The reversed propeller pushed us backward at great speed.
“This will slow us down,” said Ned.
“What does a few more hours matter, as long as we escape?”
“Yes,” Ned repeated.
“As long as we actually escape.”
For a while, I walked between the saloon and the library.
My companions remained silent.
Finally, I sat on a sofa and picked up a book.
My eyes moved across the pages automatically.
After fifteen minutes, Conseil came closer.
“Is the book you are reading very interesting, sir?”
“Very interesting,” I answered.
“I thought so,” he said.
“It is your own book.”
“My book?”
I looked down.
Indeed, I was holding my own work, The Great Submarine Depths.
I had not even realized it.
I closed the book and began walking again.
Ned and Conseil prepared to leave.
“Stay here, my friends,” I said, stopping them.
“Let us remain together until we escape from this ice prison.”
“As you wish, sir,” Conseil replied.
Several hours passed.
I frequently checked the instruments on the wall.
The pressure gauge showed that the Nautilus remained more than 300 yards deep.
The compass still pointed south.
The speed indicator showed twenty miles an hour, which was extremely fast considering the narrow tunnel around us.
But Captain Nemo understood that speed alone was useless.
At that moment, every minute mattered.
At twenty-five minutes past eight, another impact suddenly came.
This time, the shock came from behind.
My face turned pale.
Ned and Conseil were beside me.
I grabbed Conseil’s hand.
Our expressions revealed our fear better than words could.
At that moment, Captain Nemo entered the saloon.
I walked quickly toward him.
“Has our southern route been blocked?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he replied.
“The iceberg has moved and closed every exit.”
“Then we are trapped?”
“Yes.”