Is that all? The Nautilus has vast reservoirs; we can fill them, and they will supply us with all the oxygen we want. Did you call, sir? said he, entering. Conseil, I called in an impatient voice. Not any, answered the captain. Accept this cigar, M. Aronnax; and though it does not come from Havana, you will be pleased with it, if you are a connoisseur.
I understood his dread. A gigantic shadow appeared just above the unfortunate diver. It was a shark of enormous size advancing diagonally, his eyes on fire, and his jaws open. I was mute with horror and unable to move. But everywhere the slave has the right to regain his liberty. Have we struck anything? I asked. Yes, answered I; and you will be quite right to do it.
I descended to the drawing-room, from whence I heard some chords. Captain Nemo was there, bending over his organ, and plunged in a musical ecstasy. Various kinds of isis, clusters of pure tuft-coral, prickly fungi, and anemones, formed a brilliant garden of flowers, enameled with porphit?, decked with their collarettes of blue tentacles, sea-stars studding the sandy bottom, together with asterophytons like fine lace embroidered by the hands of naiads, whose festoons were waved by the gentle undulations caused by our walk. It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant specimens of mollusks which strewed the ground by thousands, of hammerheads, donaci? (veritable bounding shells), of staircases, and red helmet-shells, angel-wings, and many others produced by this inexhaustible ocean. But we were bound to walk, so we went on, while above our heads waved shoals of physalides leaving their tentacles to float in their train, medus? whose umbrellas of opal or rose-pink, escalloped with a band of blue, sheltered us from the rays of the sun, and fiery pelagi?, which in the darkness would have strewn our path with phosphorescent light. About seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus, half immersed, was sailing in a sea of milk. At first sight the ocean seemed lactified. Was it the effect of the lunar rays? No; for the moon, scarcely two days old, was still lying hidden under the horizon in the rays of the sun. The whole sky, though lit by the sidereal rays, seemed black by contrast with the whiteness of the waters. I am struck by a thunderbolt, cried he, with an oath.