The tempest burst on the 18th of May,just as the Nautilus was floating off Long Island,some miles from the port of New York.
Ican describe this strife of the elements!for,instead of fleeing to the depths of the sea,Captain Nemo,by an unaccountable caprice,would brave it at the surface.
The wind blew from the south-west at first.Captain Nemo,during the squalls,had taken his place on the platform.
He had made himself fast,to prevent being washed overboard by the monstrous waves.Ihad hoisted myself up,and made myself fast also,dividing my admiration between the tempest and this extraordinary man who was coping with it.The raging sea was swept by huge cloud-drifts,which were actually saturated with the waves.
The Nautilus,sometimes lying on its side,sometimes standing up like a mast,rolled and pitched terribly.About five o'clock a torrent of rain fell,that lulled neither sea nor wind.
The hurri cane blew nearly forty leagues an hour.It is under these conditions that it overturns houses,breaks iron gates,displaces twenty-four pounders.However,the Nautilus,in the midst of the tempest,confirmed the words of a clever engineer,"There is no well-constructed hull that cannot defy the sea."This was not a resisting rock;it was a steel spindle,obedient and movable,without rigging or masts,that braved its fury with impunity.However,Iwatched these raging waves attentively.
They measured fifteen feet in height,and 150to 175yards long,and their speed of propagation was thirty feet per second.
Their bulk and power increased with the depth of the water.
Such waves as these,at the Hebrides,have displaced a mass weighing 8,400lb.They are they which,in the tempest of December 23rd,1864,after destroying the town of Yeddo,in Japan,broke the same day on the shores of America.The intensity of the tempest increased with the night.The barometer,as in 1860at Reunion during a cyclone,fell seven-tenths at the close of day.
Isaw a large vessel pass the horizon struggling painfully.
She was trying to lie to under half steam,to keep up above the waves.
It was probably one of the steamers of the line from New York to Liverpool,or Havre.It soon disappeared in the gloom.
At ten o'clock in the evening the sky was on fire.
The atmosphere was streaked with vivid lightning.
Icould not bear the brightness of it;while the captain,looking at it,seemed to envy the spirit of the tempest.
Aterrible noise filled the air,a complex noise,made up of the howls of the crushed waves,the roaring of the wind,and the claps of thunder.The wind veered suddenly to all points of the horizon;and the cyclone,rising in the east,returned after passing by the north,west,and south,in the inverse course pursued by the circular storm of the southern hemisphere.
Ah,that Gulf Stream!It deserves its name of the King of Tempests.
It is that which causes those formidable cyclones,by the difference of temperature between its air and its currents.
Ashower of fire had succeeded the rain.The drops of water were changed to sharp spikes.One would have thought that Captain Nemo was courting a death worthy of himself,a death by lightning.
As the Nautilus,pitching dreadfully,raised its steel spur in the air,it seemed to act as a conductor,and Isaw long sparks burst from it.
Crushed and without strength Icrawled to the panel,opened it,and descended to the saloon.The storm was then at its height.
It was impossible to stand upright in the interior of the Nautilus.
Captain Nemo came down about twelve.Iheard the reservoirs filling by degrees,and the Nautilus sank slowly beneath the waves.
Through the open windows in the saloon Isaw large fish terrified,passing like phantoms in the water.Some were struck before my eyes.
The Nautilus was still descending.Ithought that at about eight fathoms deep we should find a calm.But no!the upper beds were too violently agitated for that.We had to seek repose at more than twenty-five fathoms in the bowels of the deep.
But there,what quiet,what silence,what peace!Who could have told that such a hurricane had been let loose on the surface of that ocean?