Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/444

 was the use of cutting away the ice if we were to be suffocated and crushed by the rapidly-petrifying water! This was a punishment that even savages had never invented. It seemed to me that we were between the jaws of a monster which were irresistibly approaching. At that moment, Captain Nemo, directing and working by turns, passed near me. I touched his arm, and pointed to the side walls of our prison. The wall on the port side had advanced to within four yards from the Nautilus.

He understood and made me a sign to follow him.

We returned on board. I took off my dress and accompanied him into the saloon.

“M. Aronnax,” he said, “we must try something desperate, or we shall be sealed up as in cement.”

“Yes,” said I, “but what can we do?”

“Ah! if the Nautilus were only strong enough to resist the pressure!”

“Well?” I said, not catching the idea.

“Do you not understand,” he continued, “that this freezing of the water would help us. It would burst through the ice that imprisons us. It can burst the hardest stones when it freezes. We have therefore an agent of safety, not of destruction.”

“Yes, perhaps so, but the Nautilus could never hold out against this terrible pressure, it would be flattened like an iron plate.

“I know it,” replied the captain; so we must only trust to ourselves. We must oppose this solidification. Not only are the lateral walls closing in on us, but there do not remain ten feet of water either before or behind us. The congelation is gaining on all sides.”

“How long,” I asked, “will the air in the reservoirs permit us to breathe?”