no great depth,
and the solar rays will be enough to light our walk. Besides, it would
not be prudent to carry the electric light in these waters; its
brilliancy might attract some of the dangerous inhabitants of the coast
most inopportunely."

As Captain Nemo pronounced these words, I turned to Conseil and Ned
Land. But my two friends had already encased their heads in the metal
cap, and they could neither hear nor answer.

One last question remained to ask of Captain Nemo.

"And our arms?" asked I; "our guns?"

"Guns! What for? Do not mountaineers attack the bear with a dagger in
their hand, and is not steel surer than lead? Here is a strong blade;
put it in your belt, and we start."

I looked at my companions; they were armed like us, and, more than
that, Ned Land was brandishing an enormous harpoon, which he had placed
in the boat before leaving the Nautilus.

Then, following the Captain's example, I allowed myself to be dressed
in the heavy copper helmet, and our reservoirs of air were at once in
activity. An instant after we were landed, one after the other, in
about two yards of water upon an even sand. Captain Nemo made a sign
with his hand, and we followed him by a gentle declivity till we
disappeared under the waves.

Over our feet, like coveys of snipe in a bog, rose shoals of fish, of
the genus monoptera, which have no other fins but their tail. I
recognized the Javanese, a real serpent two and a half feet long, of a
livid colour underneath, and which might easily be mistaken for a
conger eel if it were not for the golden stripes on its side. In the
genus stromateus, whose bodies are very flat and oval, I saw some of
the most brilliant colours, carrying their dorsal fin like a scythe; an
excellent eating fish, which, dried and pickled, is known by the name
of Karawade; then some tranquebars, belonging to the genus
apsiphoroides, whose body is covered with a shell cuirass of eight
longitudinal plates.

The heightening sun lit the mass of waters more and more. The soil
changed by degrees. To the fine sand succeeded a perfect causeway of
boulders, covered with a carpet of molluscs and zoophytes. Amongst the
specimens of these branches I noticed some placenae, with thin unequal
shells, a kind of ostracion peculiar to the Red Sea and the Indian
Ocean; some orange lucinae with rounded shells; rockfish three feet and
a half long, which raised themselves under the waves like hands ready
to seize on