Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 5.djvu/184

160 accustomed myself to be surprised at nothing since I have been on board your boat."

"But the cause of this surprise?"

"Well! it is the fearful speed you will have to put on the Nautilus, if the day after to-morrow she is to be in the Mediterranean, having made the round of Africa, and doubled the Cape of Good Hope!"

"Who told you that she would make the round of Africa, and double the Cape of Good Hope, sir?"

"Well, unless the Nautilus sails on dry land, and passes above the isthmus"

"Or beneath it, M. Aronnax."

"Beneath it!"

"Certainly," replied Captain Nemo quietly. "A long time ago nature made under this tongue of land what man has this day made on its surface."

"What! such a passage exists?"

"Yes, a subterranean passage, which I have named the Arabian Tunnel. It takes us beneath Suez, and opens into the Gulf of Pelusium."

"But this isthmus is composed of nothing but quicksands."

"To a certain depth. But at fifty-five yards only, there is a solid layer of rock."

"Did you discover this passage by chance?" I asked, more and more surprised.

"Chance and reasoning, sir; and by reasoning even more than by chance. Not only does this passage exist, but I have profited by it several times. Without that I should not have ventured this day into the impassable Red Sea. I noticed that in the Red Sea and in the Mediterranean there existed a certain number of fishes of a kind perfectly identical—ophidia, fiatoles, girelles, and exocœti. Certain of that fact, I asked myself, was it possible that there was no communication between the two seas? If there was, the subterranean current must necesssarilynecessarily [sic] run from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, from the sole cause of difference of level. I caught a large number of fishes in the neighborhood of Suez. I passed a copper ring through their tails, and threw them back into the sea. Some months later, on the coast of Syria, I caught some of my fish ornamented with the ring. Thus the