Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/255

 We had arrived at a large open space in the coral forest. Our lamps threw around this clearing a sort of twilight, which cast long shadows on the ground. Beyond the reach of our lamps the darkness was profound, and only here and there a gleam fell upon the points of the coral.

Ned Land and Conseil were close to me. We looked on, and it appeared to me that I was about to take part in a very curious drama. On examining the ground I saw that it was heaped up in places, and these heaps were disposed with a regularity which betrayed man’s handiwork.

In the midst of the clearing, upon a pedestal of rocks piled up to a great height, was a cross of coral, and its long, extended arms looked almost like petrified blood. At a sign from Captain Nemo one of the men advanced, and at some paces from the cross he began to dig a hole with a pick-axe which he detached from his girdle.

I understood it all. This clearing was a cemetery, this hole a grave, that long object the body of the man who had died during the night. Captain Nemo and his men had come hither to bury their companion in this their common resting-place at the bottom of the ocean.

Never had my mind been so impressed. Never had more impressive thoughts crowded my brain. I did not wish to see what was being enacted before me.

Meanwhile the grave was being slowly excavated. The fish fled hither and thither. I heard the iron ring upon the calcareous ground, and sometimes a spark would break forth as the pick came in contact with some