h I noticed several beautiful specimens of pink
coral.

But soon the bushes contract, and the arborisations increase. Real
petrified thickets, long joints of fantastic architecture, were
disclosed before us. Captain Nemo placed himself under a dark gallery,
where by a slight declivity we reached a depth of a hundred yards. The
light from our lamps produced sometimes magical effects, following the
rough outlines of the natural arches and pendants disposed like
lustres, that were tipped with points of fire.

At last, after walking two hours, we had attained a depth of about
three hundred yards, that is to say, the extreme limit on which coral
begins to form. But there was no isolated bush, nor modest brushwood,
at the bottom of lofty trees. It was an immense forest of large
mineral vegetations, enormous petrified trees, united by garlands of
elegant sea-bindweed, all adorned with clouds and reflections. We
passed freely under their high branches, lost in the shade of the waves.

Captain Nemo had stopped. I and my companions halted, and, turning
round, I saw his men were forming a semi-circle round their chief.
Watching attentively, I observed that four of them carried on their
shoulders an object of an oblong shape.

We occupied, in this place, the centre of a vast glade surrounded by
the lofty foliage of the submarine forest. Our lamps threw over this
place a sort of clear twilight that singularly elongated the shadows on
the ground. At the end of the glade the darkness increased, and was
only relieved by little sparks reflected by the points of coral.

Ned Land and Conseil were near me. We watched, and I thought I was
going to witness a strange scene. On observing the ground, I saw that
it was raised in certain places by slight excrescences encrusted with
limy deposits, and disposed with a regularity that betrayed the hand of
man.

In the midst of the glade, on a pedestal of rocks roughly piled up,
stood a cross of coral that extended its long arms that one might have
thought were made of petrified blood. Upon a sign from Captain Nemo
one of the men advanced; and at some feet from the cross he began to
dig a hole with a pickaxe that he took from his belt. I understood
all! This glade was a cemetery, this hole a tomb, this oblong object
the body of the man who had died in the night! The Captain and his men
had come to bury their companion in this general resting-place, at the
bottom of this inaccessibl