des the dining-room, it
contained a large library of twelve thousand volumes, a drawing-room
measuring thirty feet by eighteen, and fifteen high. The walls of this
apartment were adorned with masterpieces of the great painters, and
beautiful marbles and bronzes. A large piano-organ stood in one corner,
and there were glass cases containing the rarest marine curiosities
which a naturalist could wish to see. A collection of enormous pearls in
a cabinet must have been worth millions, and Captain Nemo told me he had
rifled every sea to find them.

The room assigned to me was fitted up with every luxury, yet the
captain's own apartment was as simply furnished as a monastic cell, but
in it were contained all the ingenious instruments that controlled the
movements of the Nautilus, as his submarine was named. The electricity
was manufactured by a process of extracting chloride of sodium from the
sea-water, but the fresh air necessary for the life of the crew could
only be obtained by rising to the surface. The engine-room was
sixty-five feet long, and in it was the machinery for producing
electricity as well as that for applying the power to the propeller.

The Nautilus, Captain Nemo explained, was capable of a speed of fifty
miles an hour, and could be made to sink or rise with precision by
flooding or emptying a reservoir. In a box, raised somewhat above the
hull and fitted with glass ten inches thick, the steersman had his
place, and a powerful electric reflector behind him illumined the sea
for half a mile in front.

The submarine also carried a small torpedo-like boat, fitted in a groove
along the top, so that it could be entered from the Nautilus by opening
a panel, and, after that was closed, the boat could be detached from the
submarine, and would then bob upwards to the surface like a cork. The
importance of this and its bearing on my story will appear in due time.

It was on a desert island that Captain Nemo had carried out the building
of the Nautilus, and from many different places he had secured the
various parts of the hull and machinery, in order to maintain secrecy.

Deeply interested as I was in every detail of this extraordinary vessel,
and excited beyond measure at the wonders which awaited me in exploring
the world beneath the waves, I had still the feeling of a prisoner who
dared scarcely hope that liberty might some day be obtained. But when
the metal plates which covered the windows of the saloon were