Soon in the shadow I saw a pale light,half discoloured by the fog,shining about a mile from us.
"Afloating lighthouse!"said someone near me.
I turned,and saw the Captain.
"It is the floating light of Suez,"he continued.
"It will not be long before we gain the entrance of the tunnel.""The entrance cannot be easy?"
"No,sir;for that reason I am accustomed to go into the steersman's cage and myself direct our course.And now,if you will go down,M.Aronnax,the Nautilus is going under the waves,and will not return to the surface until we have passed through the Arabian Tunnel."Captain Nemo led me towards the central staircase;half way down he opened a door,traversed the upper 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.
Alarge gallery,black and deep,opened before us.The Nautilus went boldly into it.Astrange 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,and,turning to me,said:
"The Mediterranean!"
In less than twenty minutes,the Nautilus,carried along by the torrent,had passed through the I sthmus of Suez.