Jules Verne - 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea

‘I will answer your question,’ replied Captain Nemo.

‘In the first place I must inform you that there exist, at the bottom of the sea, mines of zinc, iron, silver, and gold, the working of which would most certainly be practicable; but I am not indebted to any of these terrestrial metals. I was determined to seek from the sea alone the means of producing my electricity.’

‘From the sea?’

‘Yes, professor, and I was at no loss to find these means. It would have been possible, by establishing a circuit between wires plunged to different depths, to obtain electricity by the diversity of temperature to which they would have been exposed; but I preferred to employ a more practicable system.’

‘And what was that?’

‘You know the composition of sea-water? Chloride of sodium forms a notable proportion of it. Now it is this sodium that I extract from sea-water, and of which I compose my ingredients. Mixed with mercury it takes the place of zinc for the voltaic pile. The mercury is never exhausted; only the sodium is consumed, and the sea itself gives me that. Besides, the electric power of the sodium piles is double that of zinc ones.’

‘I clearly understand, captain, the convenience of sodium in the circumstances in which you are placed. The sea contains it. Good. But you still have to make it, to extract it, in a word. And how do you do that? Your pile would evidently serve the purpose of extracting it; but the consumption of sodium necessitated by the electrical apparatus would exceed the quantity extracted. You would consume more than you would produce.’

‘I do not extract it by the pile, professor. I employ nothing but the heat of coal.’

‘Coal!’ I urged.

‘We will call it sea-coal if you like,’ replied Captain Nemo.

‘And are you able to work submarine coal-mines?’

‘You shall see me so employed, M. Aronnax. I only ask you for a little patience; you have time to be patient here. I get everything from the ocean. It produces electricity, and electricity supplies the Nautilus with light – in a word, with life.’

‘But not with the air you breathe.’

‘I could produce the air necessary for my consumption, but I do not, because I go up to the surface of the water when I please. But though electricity does not furnish me with the air to breathe, it works the powerful pumps which store it up in special reservoirs, and which enable me to prolong at need, and as long as I like, my stay in the depths of the sea.’

‘Captain,’ I replied, ‘I can do nothing but admire. You have evidently discovered what mankind at large will, no doubt, one day discover, the veritable dynamic power of electricity.’

‘Whether they will discover it I do not know,’ replied Captain Nemo coldly. ‘However that may be, you now know the first application that I have made of this precious agent. It is electricity that furnishes us with a light that surpasses in uniformity and continuity that of the sun itself. Look now at this clock! It is an electric one, and goes with a regularity that defies the best of chronometers. I have divided it into twenty-four hours, like the Italian clocks, because there exists for me neither night nor day, sun nor moon, only this factitious light that I take with me to the bottom of the sea. Look! just now it is 10 a.m.’

‘Exactly so.’

‘This dial hanging in front of us indicates the speed of the Nautilus . An electric wire puts it into communication with the screw. Look! just now we are going along at the moderate speed of fifteen miles an hour. But we have not finished yet, M. Aronnax,’ continued Captain Nemo, rising, ‘if you will follow me we will visit the stern of the Nautilus .’

I followed Captain Nemo across the waist, and in the centre of the boat came to a sort of well that opened between two water-tight partitions. An iron ladder, fastened by an iron hook to the partition, led to the upper end. I asked the captain what it was for.

‘It leads to the boat,’ answered he.

‘What! have you a boat?’ I exclaimed in astonishment.

‘Certainly, an excellent one, light and unsinkable, that serves either for fishing or pleasure trips.’

‘Then when you wish to embark you are obliged to go up to the surface of the water.’

‘Not at all. The boat is fixed on the top of the Nautilus in a cavity made for it. It has a deck, is quite water-tight, and fastened by solid bolts. This ladder leads to a man-hole in the hull of the Nautilus , corresponding to a similar hole in the boat. It is by this double opening that I get to the boat. The one is shut by my men in the vessel, I shut the one in the boat by means of screw pressure, I undo the bolts, and the little boat darts up to the surface of the sea with prodigious rapidity. I then open the panel of the deck, carefully closed before, I mast it, hoist my sail, take my oars, and am off.’

‘But how do you return?’

‘I do not return to it; it comes to me.’

‘At your order?’

‘At my order. An electric wire connects us. I telegraph my orders.’

‘Really,’ I said, intoxicated by such marvels, ‘nothing can be more simple!’

After having passed the companion ladder that led to the platform, I saw a cabin about twelve feet long, in which Conseil and Ned Land were devouring their meal. Then a door opened upon a kitchen nine feet long, situated between the vast store-rooms of the vessel. There electricity, better than gas itself, did all the cooking. The wires under the stoves communicated with platinum sponges, and gave out a heat which was regularly kept up and distributed. They also heated a distilling apparatus which, by evaporation, furnished excellent drinking water. A bathroom, comfortably furnished with hot and cold water taps, opened out of this kitchen.

Next to the kitchen was the berth-room of the vessel, eighteen feet long. But the door was closed, and I could not see how it was furnished, which might have given me an idea of the number of men employed on board the Nautilus . At the far end was a fourth partition, which separated this room from the engine-room. A door opened, and I entered the compartment where Captain Nemo – certainly a first-rate engineer – had arranged his locomotive machinery. It was well lighted, and did not measure less than sixty-five feet. It was naturally divided into two parts; the first contained the materials for producing electricity, and the second the machinery that moved the screw. I was at first surprised at a smell sui generis which filled the compartment. The captain saw that I perceived it.

‘It is only a slight escape of gas produced by the use of the sodium, and not much inconvenience, as every morning we purify the vessel by ventilating it in the open air.’

In the meantime I was examining the machinery with great interest.

‘You see,’ said the captain, ‘I use Bunsen’s elements, not Ruhmkorff’s – they would not have been powerful enough. Bunsen’s are fewer in number, but strong and large, which experience proves to be the best. The electricity produced passes to the back, where it works by electro-magnets of great size on a peculiar system of levers and cog-wheels that transmit the movement to the axle of the screw. This one, with a diameter of nineteen feet and a thread twenty-three feet, performs about a hundred and twenty revolutions in a second.’

‘What speed do you obtain from it?’

‘About fifty miles an hour.’

Here was a mystery, but I did not press for a solution of it. How could electricity act with so much power? Where did this almost unlimited force originate? Was it in the excessive tension obtained by some new kind of spools? Was it by its transmission that a system of unknown lever could infinitely increase? (And by a remarkable coincidence, a discovery of this kind is talked of in which a new arrangement of levers produces considerable force. Can the inventor have met with Captain Nemo?).