e ocean!

The grave was being dug slowly; the fish fled on all sides while their
retreat was being thus disturbed; I heard the strokes of the pickaxe,
which sparkled when it hit upon some flint lost at the bottom of the
waters. The hole was soon large and deep enough to receive the body.
Then the bearers approached; the body, enveloped in a tissue of white
linen, was lowered into the damp grave. Captain Nemo, with his arms
crossed on his breast, and all the friends of him who had loved them,
knelt in prayer.

The grave was then filled in with the rubbish taken from the ground,
which formed a slight mound. When this was done, Captain Nemo and his
men rose; then, approaching the grave, they knelt again, and all
extended their hands in sign of a last adieu. Then the funeral
procession returned to the Nautilus, passing under the arches of the
forest, in the midst of thickets, along the coral bushes, and still on
the ascent. At last the light of the ship appeared, and its luminous
track guided us to the Nautilus. At one o'clock we had returned.

As soon as I had changed my clothes I went up on to the platform, and,
a prey to conflicting emotions, I sat down near the binnacle. Captain
Nemo joined me. I rose and said to him:

"So, as I said he would, this man died in the night?"

"Yes, M. Aronnax."

"And he rests now, near his companions, in the coral cemetery?"

"Yes, forgotten by all else, but not by us. We dug the grave, and the
polypi undertake to seal our dead for eternity." And, burying his face
quickly in his hands, he tried in vain to suppress a sob. Then he
added: "Our peaceful cemetery is there, some hundred feet below the
surface of the waves."

"Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of the reach of
sharks."

"Yes, sir, of sharks and men," gravely replied the Captain.

PART TWO

CHAPTER I

THE INDIAN OCEAN

We now come to the second part of our journey under the sea. The first
ended with the moving scene in the coral cemetery which left such a
deep impression on my mind. Thus, in the midst of this great sea,
Captain Nemo's life was passing, even to his grave, which he had
prepared in one of its deepest abysses. There, not one of the ocean's
monsters could trouble the last sleep of the crew of the Nautilus, of
those friends riveted to each other in death as in life. "Nor any man,
either," had added the Captain. Still the same fierce, implacable
defiance towards huma