“Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “had you ever heard of the Nautilus? No, yet here it is! So don’t shrug your shoulders so blithely, and don’t discount something with the feeble excuse that you’ve never heard of it.”
“We’ll soon see!” Ned Land shot back, shaking his head. “After all, I’d like nothing better than to believe in your captain’s little passageway, and may Heaven grant it really does take us to the Mediterranean.”
The same evening, at latitude 21 degrees 30’ north, the Nautilus was afloat on the surface of the sea and drawing nearer to the Arab coast. I spotted Jidda, an important financial center for Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and the East Indies. I could distinguish with reasonable clarity the overall effect of its buildings, the ships made fast along its wharves, and those bigger vessels whose draft of water required them to drop anchor at the port’s offshore mooring. The sun, fairly low on the horizon, struck full force on the houses in this town, accenting their whiteness. Outside the city limits, some wood or reed huts indicated the quarter where the bedouins lived.
Soon Jidda faded into the shadows of evening, and the Nautilus went back beneath the mildly phosphorescent waters.
The next day, February 10, several ships appeared, running on our opposite tack. The Nautilus resumed its underwater navigating; but at the moment of our noon sights, the sea was deserted and the ship rose again to its waterline.
With Ned and Conseil, I went to sit on the platform. The coast to the east looked like a slightly blurred mass in a damp fog.
Leaning against the sides of the skiff, we were chatting of one thing and another, when Ned Land stretched his hand toward a point in the water, saying to me:
“See anything out there, professor?”
“No, Ned,” I replied, “but you know I don’t have your eyes.”
“Take a good look,” Ned went on. “There, ahead to starboard, almost level with the beacon! Don’t you see a mass that seems to be moving around?”