risoned waters; they only
found there a passage to take them from the Antarctic Ocean to the open
polar sea. Our pace was rapid; we could feel it by the quivering of
the long steel body. About two in the morning I took some hours'
repose, and Conseil did the same. In crossing the waist I did not meet
Captain Nemo: I supposed him to be in the pilot's cage. The next
morning, the 19th of March, I took my post once more in the saloon.
The electric log told me that the speed of the Nautilus had been
slackened. It was then going towards the surface; but prudently
emptying its reservoirs very slowly. My heart beat fast. Were we
going to emerge and regain the open polar atmosphere? No! A shock
told me that the Nautilus had struck the bottom of the iceberg, still
very thick, judging from the deadened sound. We had in deed "struck,"
to use a sea expression, but in an inverse sense, and at a thousand
feet deep. This would give three thousand feet of ice above us; one
thousand being above the water-mark. The iceberg was then higher than
at its borders--not a very reassuring fact. Several times that day the
Nautilus tried again, and every time it struck the wall which lay like
a ceiling above it. Sometimes it met with but 900 yards, only 200 of
which rose above the surface. It was twice the height it was when the
Nautilus had gone under the waves. I carefully noted the different
depths, and thus obtained a submarine profile of the chain as it was
developed under the water. That night no change had taken place in our
situation. Still ice between four and five hundred yards in depth! It
was evidently diminishing, but, still, what a thickness between us and
the surface of the ocean! It was then eight. According to the daily
custom on board the Nautilus, its air should have been renewed four
hours ago; but I did not suffer much, although Captain Nemo had not yet
made any demand upon his reserve of oxygen. My sleep was painful that
night; hope and fear besieged me by turns: I rose several times. The
groping of the Nautilus continued. About three in the morning, I
noticed that the lower surface of the iceberg was only about fifty feet
deep. One hundred and fifty feet now separated us from the surface of
the waters. The iceberg was by degrees becoming an ice-field, the
mountain a plain. My eyes never left the manometer. We were still
rising diagonally to the surface, which sparkled under the electric
rays. The ic