SECOND PART
CHAPTER 15: Accident or Incident?
(continued)
"Certainly," he replied, "since the ballast tanks aren't yet empty,
and when they are, the Nautilus must rise to the surface of the sea."
The captain went out, and soon I saw that at his orders, the Nautilus
had halted its upward movement. In fact, it soon would have hit
the underbelly of the Ice Bank, but it had stopped in time and was
floating in midwater.
"That was a close call!" Conseil then said.
"Yes. We could have been crushed between these masses of ice,
or at least imprisoned between them. And then, with no way to renew
our air supply. . . . Yes, that was a close call!"
"If it's over with!" Ned Land muttered.
I was unwilling to get into a pointless argument with the Canadian
and didn't reply. Moreover, the panels opened just then,
and the outside light burst through the uncovered windows.
We were fully afloat, as I have said; but on both sides of the Nautilus,
about ten meters away, there rose dazzling walls of ice.
There also were walls above and below. Above, because the
Ice Bank's underbelly spread over us like an immense ceiling.
Below, because the somersaulting block, shifting little by little,
had found points of purchase on both side walls and had gotten
jammed between them. The Nautilus was imprisoned in a genuine
tunnel of ice about twenty meters wide and filled with quiet water.
So the ship could easily exit by going either ahead or astern,
sinking a few hundred meters deeper, and then taking an open
passageway beneath the Ice Bank.
The ceiling lights were off, yet the lounge was still brightly lit.
This was due to the reflecting power of the walls of ice,
which threw the beams of our beacon right back at us. Words cannot
describe the effects produced by our galvanic rays on these huge,
whimsically sculpted blocks, whose every angle, ridge, and facet gave
off a different glow depending on the nature of the veins running
inside the ice. It was a dazzling mine of gems, in particular
sapphires and emeralds, whose jets of blue and green crisscrossed.
Here and there, opaline hues of infinite subtlety raced among sparks
of light that were like so many fiery diamonds, their brilliance
more than any eye could stand. The power of our beacon was increased
a hundredfold, like a lamp shining through the biconvex lenses
of a world-class lighthouse.
|