Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/201

 situation of the vessel, and they exchanged a few words in their extraordinary dialect.

We were about three miles to windward of the island of Gueberoar, whose shore trended from north to west like an immense arm. Towards the south and east some coral-reefs were already being uncovered by the ebb tide. We were, in truth, stranded; and in a sea where the tides are never high—an unfortunate circumstance with reference to the refloating of the Nautilus. However, the vessel had not suffered at all, as the hull was so solidly built. But if it could neither float nor be opened there was a great chance that we should be stuck here for ever, and then there would be an end of Captain Nemo’s submarine vessel. I was thinking of all this when the captain, calm and cool as ever, neither appearing to be excited nor depressed, approached.

“An accident has happened?” I said.

“No, an incident,” he replied.

“But an incident which may oblige you to return to that earth you wish to avoid,” I replied.

Captain Nemo gazed at me with a curious expression, and made a sign in the negative, thereby intimating that nothing would induce him ever to become an inhabitant of the continent again. Then he said:

“However, M. Aronnax, the Nautilus is not lost. It will yet carry you into the midst of the ocean marvels. Our voyage has scarcely begun, and I do not wish to deprive myself of the honour of your company so soon.”

“But, captain,” I replied, without noticing these ironical expressions, “the Nautilus is stranded at this moment in the open sea. Now the tides are not high in the Pacific, and if you cannot lighten the Nautilus—which appears