answer him. I seized his hand, and pressed it
convulsively. All at once, carried away by its frightful overcharge,
the Nautilus sank like a bullet under the waters, that is to say, it
fell as if it was in a vacuum. Then all the electric force was put on
the pumps, that soon began to let the water out of the reservoirs.
After some minutes, our fall was stopped. Soon, too, the manometer
indicated an ascending movement. The screw, going at full speed, made
the iron hull tremble to its very bolts and drew us towards the north.
But if this floating under the iceberg is to last another day before we
reach the open sea, I shall be dead first.

Half stretched upon a divan in the library, I was suffocating. My face
was purple, my lips blue, my faculties suspended. I neither saw nor
heard. All notion of time had gone from my mind. My muscles could not
contract. I do not know how many hours passed thus, but I was
conscious of the agony that was coming over me. I felt as if I was
going to die. Suddenly I came to. Some breaths of air penetrated my
lungs. Had we risen to the surface of the waves? Were we free of the
iceberg? No! Ned and Conseil, my two brave friends, were sacrificing
themselves to save me. Some particles of air still remained at the
bottom of one apparatus. Instead of using it, they had kept it for me,
and, while they were being suffocated, they gave me life, drop by drop.
I wanted to push back the thing; they held my hands, and for some
moments I breathed freely. I looked at the clock; it was eleven in the
morning. It ought to be the 28th of March. The Nautilus went at a
frightful pace, forty miles an hour. It literally tore through the
water. Where was Captain Nemo? Had he succumbed? Were his companions
dead with him? At the moment the manometer indicated that we were not
more than twenty feet from the surface. A mere plate of ice separated
us from the atmosphere. Could we not break it? Perhaps. In any case
the Nautilus was going to attempt it. I felt that it was in an oblique
position, lowering the stern, and raising the bows. The introduction
of water had been the means of disturbing its equilibrium. Then,
impelled by its powerful screw, it attacked the ice-field from beneath
like a formidable battering-ram. It broke it by backing and then
rushing forward against the field, which gradually gave way; and at
last, dashing suddenly against it, shot forwards on the ice-field, that
c