Második fejezet

He sets forth to gain his bearings.

Strange edifices.

Peculiar plants.

An unknown species of creature.

The natives take the Author captive.

The vision — for, with my brain dazed and my eyes fevered, I could account it nothing else — lasted but a few moments; whereupon, against the flickering blue-green background, like some manner of mist-veiled picture, it slowly blurred, and vanished.

I rose to my feet, and with terrified wonder felt over my limbs; beyond all doubt I ascertained that I lived and had my senses, though not, considering the extraordinary circumstances, in that measure and manner in which the word is understood upon the surface of dry-land countries.

About me and above me roared an infinity of translucent waters — yet my feet stood upon solid ground, which vanished into my near horizon.

This ground was covered with peculiar plants: nearby lay a strangely gleaming pool or small lake, and farther off a gentle rise, of uncertain outline.

Whence all this derived its light, I did not yet know; but otherwise I was obliged to understand that, however impossible it might appear, I was beneath the surface of the sea, at a very great depth, in all likelihood upon its very floor — and that I lived.

Understanding this, for a moment a terrible dread mastered me, and I believed that I should presently die, that this momentary waking was but the dying man's last effort, in which my cruel fate would show me once more mine own coffin and place of execution.

Thinking of my wife and my child, in despair I clutched at my head, and thereupon felt once more, at my two temples, the strange shell-like objects, clinging fast to my ears.

In that same instant it came to me that my remaining alive stood in close connection with these two shells.

There was no doubt of it: my lungs raised my chest with regular motions, and that within them worked that peculiar mixture of oxygen and hydrogen which is the fundamental condition of all organic life, was betrayed by the seething of my blood and the beating of my heart.

A good minute passed before I discovered that these elements penetrated to my lungs not through my mouth and nose, as is their custom, but through my ears, and this plainly by the aid of the shell or contrivance affixed to them.

There flashed at once through my mind what I had learned in school: that creatures living beneath the water breathe oxygen even as we do, and have lungs likewise, save that a suitable organ, the gill, extracts the oxygen from the water.

It was plain, then, that someone or something had, in some manner past my comprehension, furnished me, while I lay senseless, with a contrivance answering to such a gill — an artificial gill, even as there exist artificial legs and artificial hands, nay, artificial ears fitted with microphones.

I clearly felt that it could be nothing else, and I recollect that I thought, moreover, something of this kind: it was passing strange that the triumphant human spirit, which had, by the camera, contrived a more perfect eye, and, by the telephone, a more perfect ear, and which, by the airscrew, taking its example from the birds, had lifted the heavy human body up among the clouds, had not until now bethought itself to take possession likewise of the boundless depths of the ocean, by contriving, upon the lesson taught by breathing through gills, such a device as, performing perfectly the office of that organ, should transform a man into a fish, or an amphibian, of free and unhampered motion, even as the flying-machine transforms him into a bird.

At this moment I was persuaded that I had, upon this occasion, come into a country wherein this question had already been resolved.

My adventurous disposition, and that traveler's instinct which had already been the occasion of so many ill-starred misfortunes in my life (for whose indulgence I hope in the reader only because it was, after all, this restless instinct that made it possible for me to enrich the history of travel-narratives with a few modest and unpretending particulars), awoke within me: my second thought was already this, that I must learn what manner of creatures those natives were who inhabited this country.

I was obliged to suppose them beings of a high degree of advancement, who had, in mathematics and the technical sciences allied to it, perhaps carried matters yet further than the inhabitants of the countries known upon dry land — at the least, the discovery of the artificial gill permitted such an inference.

I reasoned with myself that the natives could not be far off: for the fitting of the gills upon me, in time to forestall my drowning, could have occupied but little time — and since then, at the very most, half an hour could have elapsed.

My eyes having grown somewhat accustomed to the mysterious light, I began to bestir myself with greater boldness.

Making swimming motions with my hands, I set out cautiously toward the gleaming pool.

Tenacious vines and grasses wound about my legs; I was forced to struggle for every step.

I stirred up a fine red sand, out of which fish-like creatures of uncertain outline darted forth, with serpentine feelers and fins.

I could now see somewhat farther before me.

Beyond the pool, regular lines loomed up into the heights, confirming my suspicion that I had come into a region inhabited and built up by rational beings.

With great difficulty I reached the shore: before me lay spread the dazzling mirror of a lake of gleaming surface — and only then was I struck with wonder at the marvel of beholding, upon the floor of the sea, a liquid separate and set apart from the water about it, whose surface some unknown force gently ruffled and rippled.

This too I presently understood.

Bending over the mirror, I recognized my own terrified and pallid face, with the uncertain blotches of my convulsively gaping mouth and swollen nostrils; and, on either side, about the ears, green disks.

I stooped, and, dipping my palm into the liquid, drew forth a little of it, and brought it near to my eyes.

The leaden, gleaming little globules of the drops rolled swiftly from off my fingers.

I recognized at once that I held in my hand hydrargyrum, commonly called mercury; this liquid metal had here gathered itself into a pool, upon the floor of the sea.

Crossing a small spit of land, and wading ankle-deep in the mercury, I observed a whole host of fish-kinds unknown to the science that describes marine life, algae, sea-spiders, crabs, serpents, and many another sort of reptile (with whose particular description I will not weary the reader): all of which persuaded me that I was at such a depth as no research into the floor of the sea had, up to this time, brought any tidings of.

Arriving at the farther shore, I stopped short in amazement: through a cleft between two rocks I caught sight of a tall pillar or tower, built up of regular rings one upon another, an edifice ever narrowing, whose unfinished roof was lost to sight at a height of some twenty meters.

At the summit of the topmost rings I perceived an indeterminate swarming, swift as a flash, as though small black flames were darting out.

In the hope that I should soon learn something, I drew near to the strange edifice.

It appeared that, at the margins of the rings, there were small round windows, the size of a palm, at regular distances.

With joy I discovered, on either side of the apertures, certain artistic ornaments, signifying that I stood before the works not merely of rational, but of cultivated beings.

I bent down to peer into one of the openings, when, from the edge of the ledge above the aperture, something started up with a terrified flutter, in an instant scrambled up to the ring above, turned about there, and, panting, affrighted, and trembling, looked back at me.

The strange, seemingly deliberate motion with which it turned about so startled me that we stood staring one another down for some minutes before I could recover myself.

It would be easier to draw what I saw than to describe it.

This strange creature — if creature it was — may have been some twenty-two to twenty-five centimeters in length, or in height.

Its cylindrical, elongated body put me, at the first glance, in mind of an eel's.

But I perceived directly that it was neither fish nor serpent — it had a distinct head, and a neck, and a trunk, and limbs of many kinds, intricately formed.

What surprised and confounded me at the first moment was plainly the head: this head had a face, in that sense in which we are wont to use the word of a man.

Beneath a broad and knobby, hairless skull and a very lofty brow, two blinking, flickering eyes, set in deep hollows — in place of a nose, two apertures, beneath which waved a long beard, that concealed its mouth.

From the thick neck, almost as stout as the trunk itself, there stretched forth two very slender arms, furnished with tiny hands — and behind, two more, broad and flat, as though they would be wings, and, in moving, these twin arms did indeed writhe in awkward, fluttering motions.

Tiny, feeler-like protuberances waved upon either side — the legs, broad and strong as two globes, furnished with fins, toes, and claws.

It was impossible to determine which of its limbs it employed for its motion from place to place — whether it crept upon its belly, or, rearing itself upright, walked upon its legs, or, perhaps, by the aid of its stunted little wings, hovered in the water.

In general, each of its limbs had the appearance of being merely the vestige of something that had once been an organ, or the rudimentary form of some part of the body now in the course of development.

It had everything by which natural history distinguishes the several classes one from another — legs, and hands, and wings, and fins alike — hair, fur, feathers, and scales: yet all of it in a stunted, undeveloped state.

It was as though it were some experimental model of nature's own, upon which she tried out the possibilities, in sketched-out lines, that she might afterward apply them to other creatures — like the dummy to be seen in the window of an instrument-maker's shop, upon which everything is displayed, artificial hand, artificial leg, artificial skull, truss.

In one and the same person, it was mammal, fish, bird, or perhaps rather worm — and, what was strangest of all (this, of course, I mention only as a comical impression), there was, in the whole of it, something human as well.