deck, and landed in the pilot's
cage, which it may be remembered rose at the extremity of the platform.
It was a cabin measuring six feet square, very much like that occupied
by the pilot on the steamboats of the Mississippi or Hudson. In the
midst worked a wheel, placed vertically, and caught to the tiller-rope,
which ran to the back of the Nautilus. Four light-ports with
lenticular glasses, let in a groove in the partition of the cabin,
allowed the man at the wheel to see in all directions.

This cabin was dark; but soon my eyes accustomed themselves to the
obscurity, and I perceived the pilot, a strong man, with his hands
resting on the spokes of the wheel. Outside, the sea appeared vividly
lit up by the lantern, which shed its rays from the back of the cabin
to the other extremity of the platform.

"Now," said Captain Nemo, "let us try to make our passage."

Electric wires connected the pilot's cage with the machinery room, and
from there the Captain could communicate simultaneously to his Nautilus
the direction and the speed. He pressed a metal knob, and at once the
speed of the screw diminished.

I looked in silence at the high straight wall we were running by at
this moment, the immovable base of a massive sandy coast. We followed
it thus for an hour only some few yards off.

Captain Nemo did not take his eye from the knob, suspended by its two
concentric circles in the cabin. At a simple gesture, the pilot
modified the course of the Nautilus every instant.

I had placed myself at the port-scuttle, and saw some magnificent
substructures of coral, zoophytes, seaweed, and fucus, agitating their
enormous claws, which stretched out from the fissures of the rock.

At a quarter-past ten, the Captain himself took the helm. A large
gallery, black and deep, opened before us. The Nautilus went boldly
into it. A strange roaring was heard round its sides. It was the
waters of the Red Sea, which the incline of the tunnel precipitated
violently towards the Mediterranean. The Nautilus went with the
torrent, rapid as an arrow, in spite of the efforts of the machinery,
which, in order to offer more effective resistance, beat the waves with
reversed screw.

On the walls of the narrow passage I could see nothing but brilliant
rays, straight lines, furrows of fire, traced by the great speed, under
the brilliant electric light. My heart beat fast.

At thirty-five minutes past ten, Captain Nemo quitted the helm,