Involuntarily my eyes flew to the window, but I couldn’t stand the fire devouring it.
I realized what had happened. The Nautilus had just started off at great speed. All the tranquil glimmers of the ice walls had then changed into blazing streaks. The sparkles from these myriads of diamonds were merging with each other. Swept along by its propeller, the Nautilus was traveling through a sheath of flashing light.
Then the panels in the lounge closed. We kept our hands over our eyes, which were utterly saturated with those concentric gleams that swirl before the retina when sunlight strikes it too intensely. It took some time to calm our troubled vision.
Finally we lowered our hands.
“Ye gods, I never would have believed it,” Conseil said.
“And I still don’t believe it!” the Canadian shot back.
“When we return to shore, jaded from all these natural wonders,” Conseil added, “think how we’ll look down on those pitiful land masses, those puny works of man! No, the civilized world won’t be good enough for us!”
Such words from the lips of this emotionless Flemish boy showed that our enthusiasm was near the boiling point. But the Canadian didn’t fail to throw his dram of cold water over us.
“The civilized world!” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, Conseil my friend, we’re never going back to that world!”
By this point it was five o’clock in the morning. Just then there was a collision in the Nautilus’s bow. I realized that its spur had just bumped a block of ice. It must have been a faulty maneuver because this underwater tunnel was obstructed by such blocks and didn’t make for easy navigating. So I had assumed that Captain Nemo, in adjusting his course, would go around each obstacle or would hug the walls and follow the windings of the tunnel. In either case our forward motion wouldn’t receive an absolute check. Nevertheless, contrary to my expectations, the Nautilus definitely began to move backward.