Turtle Reader

Chapter 22: The Lightning Bolts of Captain Nemo

Without standing up, we stared in the direction of the forest, my hand stopping halfway to my mouth, Ned Land’s completing its assignment.

“Stones don’t fall from the sky,” Conseil said, “or else they deserve to be called meteorites.”

A second well–polished stone removed a tasty ringdove leg from Conseil’s hand, giving still greater relevance to his observation.

We all three stood up, rifles to our shoulders, ready to answer any attack.

“Apes maybe?” Ned Land exclaimed.

“Nearly,” Conseil replied. “Savages.”

“Head for the skiff!” I said, moving toward the sea.

Indeed, it was essential to beat a retreat because some twenty natives, armed with bows and slings, appeared barely a hundred paces off, on the outskirts of a thicket that masked the horizon to our right.

The skiff was aground ten fathoms away from us.

The savages approached without running, but they favored us with a show of the greatest hostility. It was raining stones and arrows.

Ned Land was unwilling to leave his provisions behind, and despite the impending danger, he clutched his pig on one side, his kangaroos on the other, and scampered off with respectable speed.

In two minutes we were on the strand. Loading provisions and weapons into the skiff, pushing it to sea, and positioning its two oars were the work of an instant. We hadn’t gone two cable lengths when a hundred savages, howling and gesticulating, entered the water up to their waists. I looked to see if their appearance might draw some of the Nautilus’s men onto the platform. But no. Lying well out, that enormous machine still seemed completely deserted.

Twenty minutes later we boarded ship. The hatches were open. After mooring the skiff, we reentered the Nautilus’s interior.

I went below to the lounge, from which some chords were wafting. Captain Nemo was there, leaning over the organ, deep in a musical trance.

“Captain!” I said to him.

He didn’t hear me.

“Captain!” I went on, touching him with my hand.

He trembled, and turning around:

“Ah, it’s you, professor!” he said to me. “Well, did you have a happy hunt? Was your herb gathering a success?”

“Yes, captain,” I replied, “but unfortunately we’ve brought back a horde of bipeds whose proximity worries me.”

“What sort of bipeds?”

“Savages.”

“Savages!” Captain Nemo replied in an ironic tone. “You set foot on one of the shores of this globe, professor, and you’re surprised to find savages there? Where aren’t there savages? And besides, are they any worse than men elsewhere, these people you call savages?”

“But Captain—”

“Speaking for myself, sir, I’ve encountered them everywhere.”

“Well then,” I replied, “if you don’t want to welcome them aboard the Nautilus, you’d better take some precautions!”

“Easy, professor, no cause for alarm.”

“But there are a large number of these natives.”

“What’s your count?”

“At least a hundred.”

“Professor Aronnax,” replied Captain Nemo, whose fingers took their places again on the organ keys, “if every islander in Papua were to gather on that beach, the Nautilus would still have nothing to fear from their attacks!”

The captain’s fingers then ran over the instrument’s keyboard, and I noticed that he touched only its black keys, which gave his melodies a basically Scottish color. Soon he had forgotten my presence and was lost in a reverie that I no longer tried to dispel.

I climbed onto the platform. Night had already fallen, because in this low latitude the sun sets quickly, without any twilight. I could see Gueboroa Island only dimly. But numerous fires had been kindled on the beach, attesting that the natives had no thoughts of leaving it.

For several hours I was left to myself, sometimes musing on the islanders—but no longer fearing them because the captain’s unflappable confidence had won me over—and sometimes forgetting them to marvel at the splendors of this tropical night. My memories took wing toward France, in the wake of those zodiacal stars due to twinkle over it in a few hours. The moon shone in the midst of the constellations at their zenith. I then remembered that this loyal, good–natured satellite would return to this same place the day after tomorrow, to raise the tide and tear the Nautilus from its coral bed. Near midnight, seeing that all was quiet over the darkened waves as well as under the waterside trees, I repaired to my cabin and fell into a peaceful sleep.

The night passed without mishap. No doubt the Papuans had been frightened off by the mere sight of this monster aground in the bay, because our hatches stayed open, offering easy access to the Nautilus’s interior.

At six o’clock in the morning, January 8, I climbed onto the platform. The morning shadows were lifting. The island was soon on view through the dissolving mists, first its beaches, then its summits.