20,000 Leagues Under the Seas, The Mysterious Island & Around the World in 80 Days (Illustrated Edition). Жюль Верн

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      “What! You know German?” I exclaimed.

      “Like most Flemish people, with all due respect to master.”

      “On the contrary, my respect is due you. Go to it, my boy.”

      And Conseil, in his serene voice, described for the third time the various vicissitudes of our story. But despite our narrator’s fine accent and stylish turns of phrase, the German language met with no success.

      Finally, as a last resort, I hauled out everything I could remember from my early schooldays, and I tried to narrate our adventures in Latin. Cicero would have plugged his ears and sent me to the scullery, but somehow I managed to pull through. With the same negative result.

      This last attempt ultimately misfiring, the two strangers exchanged a few words in their incomprehensible language and withdrew, not even favoring us with one of those encouraging gestures that are used in every country in the world. The door closed again.

      “This is outrageous!” Ned Land shouted, exploding for the twentieth time. “I ask you! We speak French, English, German, and Latin to these rogues, and neither of them has the decency to even answer back!”

      “Calm down, Ned,” I told the seething harpooner. “Anger won’t get us anywhere.”

      “But professor,” our irascible companion went on, “can’t you see that we could die of hunger in this iron cage?”

      “Bah!” Conseil put in philosophically. “We can hold out a good while yet!”

      “My friends,” I said, “we mustn’t despair. We’ve gotten out of tighter spots. So please do me the favor of waiting a bit before you form your views on the commander and crew of this boat.”

      “My views are fully formed,” Ned Land shot back. “They’re rogues!”

      “Oh good! And from what country?”

      “Roguedom!”

      “My gallant Ned, as yet that country isn’t clearly marked on maps of the world, but I admit that the nationality of these two strangers is hard to make out! Neither English, French, nor German, that’s all we can say. But I’m tempted to think that the commander and his chief officer were born in the low latitudes. There must be southern blood in them. But as to whether they’re Spaniards, Turks, Arabs, or East Indians, their physical characteristics don’t give me enough to go on. And as for their speech, it’s utterly incomprehensible.”

      “That’s the nuisance in not knowing every language,” Conseil replied, “or the drawback in not having one universal language!”

      “Which would all go out the window!” Ned Land replied. “Don’t you see, these people have a language all to themselves, a language they’ve invented just to cause despair in decent people who ask for a little dinner! Why, in every country on earth, when you open your mouth, snap your jaws, smack your lips and teeth, isn’t that the world’s most understandable message? From Quebec to the Tuamotu Islands, from Paris to the Antipodes, doesn’t it mean: I’m hungry, give me a bite to eat!”

      “Oh,” Conseil put in, “there are some people so unintelligent by nature …”

      As he was saying these words, the door opened. A steward entered.* He brought us some clothes, jackets and sailor’s pants, made out of a fabric whose nature I didn’t recognize. I hurried to change into them, and my companions followed suit.

      *Author’s Note: A steward is a waiter on board a steamer.

      Meanwhile our silent steward, perhaps a deaf-mute, set the table and laid three place settings.

      “There’s something serious afoot,” Conseil said, “and it bodes well.”

      “Bah!” replied the rancorous harpooner. “What the devil do you suppose they eat around here? Turtle livers, loin of shark, dogfish steaks?”

      “We’ll soon find out!” Conseil said.

      Overlaid with silver dish covers, various platters had been neatly positioned on the table cloth, and we sat down to eat. Assuredly, we were dealing with civilized people, and if it hadn’t been for this electric light flooding over us, I would have thought we were in the dining room of the Hotel Adelphi in Liverpool, or the Grand Hotel in Paris. However, I feel compelled to mention that bread and wine were totally absent. The water was fresh and clear, but it was still water—which wasn’t what Ned Land had in mind. Among the foods we were served, I was able to identify various daintily dressed fish; but I couldn’t make up my mind about certain otherwise excellent dishes, and I couldn’t even tell whether their contents belonged to the vegetable or the animal kingdom. As for the tableware, it was elegant and in perfect taste. Each utensil, spoon, fork, knife, and plate, bore on its reverse a letter encircled by a Latin motto, and here is its exact duplicate:

      MOBILIS IN MOBILI

      N

      Moving within the moving element! It was a highly appropriate motto for this underwater machine, so long as the preposition in is translated as within and not upon. The letter N was no doubt the initial of the name of that mystifying individual in command beneath the seas!

      Ned and Conseil had no time for such musings. They were wolfing down their food, and without further ado I did the same. By now I felt reassured about our fate, and it seemed obvious that our hosts didn’t intend to let us die of starvation.

      But all earthly things come to an end, all things must pass, even the hunger of people who haven’t eaten for fifteen hours. Our appetites appeased, we felt an urgent need for sleep. A natural reaction after that interminable night of fighting for our lives.

      “Ye gods, I’ll sleep soundly,” Conseil said.

      “Me, I’m out like a light!” Ned Land replied.

      My two companions lay down on the cabin’s carpeting and were soon deep in slumber.

      As for me, I gave in less readily to this intense need for sleep. Too many thoughts had piled up in my mind, too many insoluble questions had arisen, too many images were keeping my eyelids open! Where were we? What strange power was carrying us along? I felt—or at least I thought I did—the submersible sinking toward the sea’s lower strata. Intense nightmares besieged me. In these mysterious marine sanctuaries, I envisioned hosts of unknown animals, and this underwater boat seemed to be a blood relation of theirs: living, breathing, just as fearsome … ! Then my mind grew calmer, my imagination melted into hazy drowsiness, and I soon fell into an uneasy slumber.

CHAPTER 9

      The Tantrums of Ned Land

      Table of Contents

      I HAVE NO IDEA how long this slumber lasted; but it must have been a good while, since we were

      completely over our exhaustion. I was the first one to wake up. My companions weren’t yet stirring and still lay in their corners like inanimate objects.

      I had barely gotten up from СКАЧАТЬ