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Chapter 25 Part Two, Chapter One, Indian Ocean

The second part of this undersea journey begins now.The first part ended with a touching scene in the Coral Graveyard, which left a deep impression on my mind. It seems that Captain Nemo's life was completely spent in the middle of the boundless sea, and even his grave was prepared in the most secret abyss.There, no sea monster of one kind or another would disturb the Nautilus' crew's rest.These crew members share fate, live and die together.There "never a stranger to disturb!" Captain Nemo added this. He has always expressed such distrust, stubbornness, and resoluteness towards human society. This is an uncompromising distrust.

For my part, I could no longer be satisfied with Conseil's statements, although the honest man still insisted on his opinion that the captain of the Nautilus was a buried scholar, and answered with contempt A scholar who is cold in the world. He also thought that the captain was an unknown genius who couldn't bear the deceptions of the world, so he had no choice but to escape to the sea where his instinct allowed him to act on his own, but others could not.But, as far as I can see, these vast waters, said to be 150 million hectares, are so clear that anyone who looks down at them will feel dizzy.The Nautilus usually travels in water depths between 100 and 200 meters.It was like this for several days.For those who don't love the sea very much, they must feel that the time spent in the boat is very long and very monotonous, but it is different for me. I walk on the platform every day and breathe the fresh air of the ocean to exercise.And through the glass of the living room to observe the rich sea water scene, read the books in the library, and write my notes, so that all my time is wasted, and I will not be bored or bored for a moment.

The health of each of us is satisfactory.The food and living on board is also perfectly suitable for us. Personally, it is really unnecessary for Ned Land to try to cook dishes with different tastes due to the ruthlessness of dissatisfaction.Moreover, in the often stable temperature of the seabed, even colds are impervious.In addition, in the south of France, there is also a considerable amount of the caddisia genus called "Heinesia" on board. It can be used as an excellent cough medicine when mixed with the easily melted meat of the coelenterate. ointment. For several days, we saw a large number of waterfowl, pompoos, great gulls or gulls.After some seabirds are skillfully killed, they are cooked in a way that makes people taste very delicious waterfowl game.

The Nautilus's nets caught several species of turtles of the genus Turtle, with raised backs and valuable shells.These turtles are easy to dive into the water, and they can stay in the water for a long time by closing the living meat plugs in the outer nasal cavity.When some sea turtles are caught by nets, they are still sleeping in their shells, which is to avoid being caught by sea animals. Generally speaking, the meat of these turtles is not delicious, but turtle eggs are delicious treasures. As for the fish, we always arouse our admiration when we glimpse through the open panels the secrets of their aquatic life.I watch several kinds of fish carefully.

I have never had the opportunity to observe these fish before. I'm mainly talking about oysters that are endemic to the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean, and that part of the Pacific Ocean near the equatorial America.These fishes are the same as soft-shelled turtles, porpoises, yundan, and crustaceans. Their bodies are not protected by chalk or stone, but by real bony shells.This kind of carapace is sometimes three-dimensional triangle, sometimes three-dimensional square. I learned from the notes written by my assistant Conseil every day.We can also mention the unique ventral fish in the sea in this area, such as the red-backed, white-bellied needlefish. This fish is very special because it has three rows of vertical lines.There are also brightly colored electric fish, seven inches long.Next, as specimens of other genera of fish, one may cite oval-shaped fishes like dark brown eggs, which have white bands and no tail; The body becomes a ball covered with spikes; the seahorse fish common to all oceans and the flying long-billed Pegasus fish have wide and large pelvic fins shaped like wings. Although they cannot fly high, they can At least it can jump into the air: the dovefish, which has a ring of many scales on its tail; The head of this fish is high and low; countless jumping fish, this fish has black stripes on its body and long ventral fins, and can slip around on the water at an amazing speed: beautiful Sailfish, a fish that raises all its fins, like a canvas sailing downstream; a gorgeous colorful fish, a fish favored by nature, with colors of yellow, sky blue, silver, and gold. ; the velvet, whose wings are made entirely of filaments; the stickleback, which is always smeared with mud, which makes a cricketing sound; the sea larva, whose liver is considered poisonous; This fish wears a moving blindfold over the eyes and finally, a tubular long-billed whistle... fish, this fish is a real house finch with a gun, made of Chasbourg and Remington It is a kind of gun that the author has never thought of, which can kill insects with a single drop of water.

The eighty-ninth genus of fishes classified by Lacebed, belonging to the second subclass of bony fishes, is characterized by a operculum and a gill membrane, and in this genus I have seen scorpion fishes, whose Heads with spikes and a single spine, these fish may or may not have tiny scales, depending on the subgenus they belong to.In subgenus II there are some species of two-fingered fish, three to four decimeters long, with yellow bands on their body and a curiously shaped head.As for the first subgenus, there are also some strange fish species nicknamed "sea eaves credit", which is a fish with a large head, sometimes with deep wrinkles on the head, sometimes with swollen tumors, and with Sharp thorns and lumps, horns of different lengths and scary looking, corns all over the body and tail, the sharp thorns of this fish are very dangerous, it is a fish that people hate and fear.

From January 21st to 23rd, the Nautilus traveled 250 miles, 540 nautical miles, or 22 nautical miles an hour, twenty-four hours a day.The reason why we were able to meet various fishes while walking was that these fishes were attracted by the electric light and came to accompany us. Most of the fishes could not catch up with the speed of the boat and soon fell behind. For a certain period of time, he could still keep up and swim in the sea water near the Nautilus. On the morning of the 24th, at 12 degrees 5 minutes south latitude and 94 degrees 33 minutes east longitude, we saw Qilin Island. Captain Z-Roa has been to this island.The Nautilus sailed along the cliffs of this deserted island in the water a short distance away.Its salvage machine picked up many coelenterates and echinoderms, as well as a number of novel scales of the mollusk phylum.Soon, Qilin Island was invisible in the sky, and the sailing route pointed to the northwest, heading for the tip of the Indian Peninsula!

That day, Ned Land said to me: "We've come to a cultured place. Of course, this is much better than Papua, where we meet more savages than deer!" Professor, on the land of the Indian peninsula, there are roads, railways, and British, French, and Indian cities.Walk five miles and you are sure to meet a native.Ok!You're welcome with Captain Nemo, isn't the time to leave him now? " "No, Ned, no," I answered him firmly, "let it go, as you sailors say. The Nautilus is approaching a place where people live, and it's going back to Europe, let it go." Let it take us. Once in our European seas, we shall carefully make up our minds and decide what we will do. And, I think Captain Zuma will not let us set foot on the coast of Malabar or Coromandel, like hunting in the forests of New Guinea."

"Well, sir, shall we not have his permission?" I don't answer Canadians.I don't like to argue.In fact, all the chances that fate can offer, I have to do my best to think in my mind.Was it not fate that sent me on board the Nautilus? Starting from Qilin Island, the speed of the boat was generally slowed down.The itinerary is also quite arbitrary, often pulling us into deep places.The crew used several times to pitch the plane, an internal lever that moves the plane obliquely to the buoy line. In this way, we have reached a depth of two or three kilometers, but we have never actually measured the depth of the Indian Sea, which has not yet reached the bottom of the 13,000-meter detector.As for the temperature in the lower waters, the thermometer was always at four degrees.

But in the upper water layer, I noticed that the water in the deep water is always colder than the water at the surface of the sea. On January 25, when the ocean was completely deserted and there was nothing, the Nautilus spent the day afloat.Powerful propellers stir up the water waves, sending the water jetting high into the air.In this case, how could one not think of it as a giant cetacean?I spend three quarters of the day on stage.I look out to sea.There was nothing in the sky, except at four o'clock in the afternoon, a long steamboat sailed opposite us, sailing west.The ship's mast could be seen for a while, but it could not see the Nautilus just below the surface.I think the steamer belonged to the Indian Peninsula and Eastern Lines Steamship Company, which sailed between Ceylon and Sydney, stopping at Georgetown and the Ports of Melbourne.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, before the brief twilight that separates day and night in tropical places, Conseil and I beheld a novel sight that astonished us. It was a charming animal, and according to the ancients, meeting it would herald good luck.Aristotle, Athenes, Pliny, Obien, studied its inclinations, and dealt with it with all the poetry of the Greek and Italian scholars.They called it "Nautilus" and "Pombilius".But modern science has not accepted this name, and this mollusk is now called "Agonati" - anal fish.At this time, it is a group of this genus that is walking on the ocean surface.In our view, there are tens of thousands of entries.They are a genus of tubercled anal fishes, endemic to the Indian Ocean.These beautiful molluscs move backwards, using exercise tubes, and spitting water out of the tubes to move around.They have eight tentacles, six of which are long and slender, floating on the water, and the other two are curved and shaped like palms, stretched out to meet the phoenix, like a light sail. I could quite see their corrugated shell, which Cuvier aptly described as a fine boat.Yes, the shell is really a boat, and though it is secreted by the animal, it does not cling to it, but it holds the animal in it. "The anal fish is free to leave its shell," I said to Conseillon, "but it never leaves it." "That's what Captain Nemo is," replied Conseil quite aptly, "so that his ship is more properly called the Anfish." For an hour or so the Nautilus sailed routinely among the molluscs.After a while, I didn't know what terrible thing happened, and suddenly frightened them.As if they heard a signal, all the sails were rolled up, the arms were retracted, the body was retracted, the overturned shell changed the center of gravity, and the whole team sank into the waves and disappeared.This is a matter of an instant. Never before has a fleet exercise been able to perform such uniform actions. At this time, night fell suddenly, and the breeze could only raise some waves to push slowly under the edge of the Nautilus. The next day, January 26, we crossed the equator line at 82 degrees east, and the ship was back in the northern hemisphere. On this day, a large school of sharks accompanied us.These terrible animals breed in this area of ​​the sea, making this area a very dangerous place.Among them is a smoke-colored whale with a chestnut-colored back and a gray-white belly, with twelve rows of tusks in its mouth; and an eye-spotted shark with a large black spot on its neck.Surrounded by a white circle, it looks like an eye; there are pale yellow mosquitoes, round mouth and face, with gray spots.These powerful animals often crash into the glass of the living room, and they are violent and frightening.Ned Land could not help it.He's going to the surface to tune these monsters, and there's a shark shark in particular. There are rows of teeth in the mouth, forming a pattern. There is also a tiger-skinned mosquito, five meters long, which especially irritates him and makes him itchy and unbearable.But the Nautilus gained speed, and soon left the toughest mackerel behind. On January 27, at the mouth of the vast Bay of Bengal, we encountered miserable and frightening sights several times!There are many corpses floating on the water waves.Those are the dead in the cities of India, carried down the Ganges to the sea, because the only buryer of the place—the ghoul—failed to devour them whole.But there are many whales in the sea, which can help the bird to complete this frustrating thing. At about seven in the evening, the Nautilus was sailing in the Milky Sea, half submerged and half exposed.The endless ocean is milky white.Is this the power of moonlight?No, because the new moon is less than two days old and has already disappeared below the horizon in the sun.The entire sky, although illuminated by starlight, looked very dim compared to the whiteness of the water. Conseil thought his eyes were dim and couldn't believe it. He asked me the reason for this strange phenomenon.Fortunately, I can answer it. "This is what people call the Sea of ​​Milk," I said to him, "the great white current that is often seen off the coast of Amberney and in this sea." "But," Conseil asked, "may I know, sir, what causes this effect? ​​Because, I suppose, the sea water has not been turned into milk!" "No, Conseil, this whiteness that astonishes you is due to the innumerable billions of microtrimonas in the water, a luminous microworm, gelatinous and colorless in shape, as thick as a hair, Not more than one-fifth of a millimeter long. These microscopic trichomonas join each other in a white patch over miles of sea." "Many miles!" cried Conseil. "Yes, honest man, you don't need to count these trichomonas. You must not, because I have heard that certain navigators traveled more than forty miles on this sea of ​​milk. In a few hours, the Nautilus's thrust cut through the white current, and I saw it slip noiselessly over the soapy water, as in the bay, upstream and upstream. It is like driving on the water foam formed when rushing. About midnight the sea suddenly took on its usual color again, but behind our boat to the very end of the sky the sky reflected the whiteness of the water, as if for a long time illuminated by the dim light of the Arctic dawn.
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