Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/439



CHAPTER XVI.

WANT OF AIR.

So around the Nautilus, above and below, was an impenetrable wall of ice. We were imprisoned in the iceberg. The Canadian struck the table with his heavy fist. Conseil said nothing. I looked at the captain. His face wore its usual look. He was standing with his arms crossed, lost in thought. The Nautilus did not move.

The captain roused himself and said, in a calm tone, “Gentlemen, there are two ways for us to die under present circumstances.”—He spoke as if he were a professor of mathematics, delivering a lecture to his pupils.—“The first is to be crushed up, the other is to die by suffocation. I do not speak of the possibility to die of hunger, for the supplies on board will last longer than we can. Let us therefore calculate our chances of being crushed or suffocated.”

“As far as suffocation goes, captain,” I replied, “there is not much fear of that, for our reservoirs are filled.”

“Quite so,” replied the captain, “but they only give us two days’ supply. Now we have been under water six-and-thirty hours, and the atmosphere here requires renovating already. In forty-eight hours our reserve will be exhausted.”