Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 5.djvu/245

Rh maniac would have conceived? It then came into my head to ask Captain Nemo if he had ever discovered that pole which had never yet been trodden by a human creature.

"No, sir," he replied; "but we will discover it together. Where others have failed, I will not fail. I have never yet led my Nautilus so far into southern seas; but I repeat, it shall go farther yet."

"I can well believe you, captain," said I, in a slightly ironical tone. "I believe you! Let us go ahead! There are no obstacles for us! Let us smash this iceberg! Let us blow it up; and if it resists, let us give the Nautilus wings to fly over it!"

"Over it, sir!" said Captain Nemo quietly; "no, not over it, but under it!"

"Under it!" I exclaimed, a sudden idea of the captain's projects flashing upon my mind. I understood the wonderful qualities of the Nautilus were going to serve us in this superhuman enterprise.

"I see we are beginning to understand one another, sir," said the captain, half smiling. "You begin to see the possibility—I should say the success—of this attempt. That which is impossible for an ordinary vessel, is easy to the Nautilus. If a continent lies before the pole, it must stop before the continent; but, if, on the contrary, the pole is washed by open sea, it will go even to the pole."

"Certainly," said I, carried away by the captain's reasoning; "if the surface of the sea is solidified by the ice, the lower depths are free by the providential law which has placed the maximum of density of the waters of the ocean one degree higher than freezing-point; and, if I am not mistaken, the portion of this iceberg which is above the water is as one to four to that which is below."

"Very nearly, sir; for one foot of iceberg above the sea there are three below it. If these ice mountains are not more than 300 feet above the surface, they are not more than 900 beneath. And what are 900 feet to the Nautilus?"

"Nothing, sir."

"It could even seek at greater depths that uniform temperature of sea-water, and there brave with impunity the thirty or forty degrees of surface cold."

"Just so, sir—just so," I replied, getting animated.