Voyage Beneath the Waves. Jules Rengade
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was running through the atmosphere.
Two great dark spaces opened to the west and the east. On one side was the entrance to the Channel, on the other that of the North Sea. On the English and French coasts, the lighthouses projected the brilliant beams of their occulting lights a long way out to sea. They could make out quite clearly, on one side, the lights of Dover and Folkestone, and on the other, those of Calais and Cap Gris-Nez.
The upper hemisphere of Trinitus’ boat emerged from the middle of the waves, and the bright light illuminating the interior escaped through the portholes in long silvery beams, which vacillated softly on the ridges of the waves.
Having darted one last glance at the coast that they might never seen again, the three voyagers decided to go down to the bottom of the sea. Trinitus put his hand on a ring fixed to the wall and pulled it vigorously toward him. The pallets that were supporting them on the surface of the water assumed a vertical stance and the boat sank softly into the abyss.
The sea allowed her to plunge into its depths. It swallowed her up beneath its waves, and closed insouciantly over her.
As the ship went down, the scientist’s eyes followed the ascension of a thin column of liquid in a vertical tube placed in the floor of the cabin.
“That’s our manometer,” he said. “The lower extremity of this graduated tube opens into the sea. The further we descend, the greater the pressure exerted on us will be. I’ve calculated that for every twenty meters of depth, the column of liquid in the manometer will rise one degree. We’ll soon be at forty-five meters; we’ll be able to maintain ourselves there.”
“Very good!” said Nicaise. “I believe that we’ll get by without any encumbrance—and without crushing anyone!”
Trinitus pushed the mechanism that he had pulled back toward the wall, forcefully. Almost instantaneously, the boat ceased sinking and moved off horizontally, with an extreme rapidity.
At that moment, the Panthère, which was operating a service between Boulogne and London via the Thames, was going through the narrowest part of the Channel. The passengers grouped on the deck saw a strange light fleeing beneath them. A naturalist affirmed that it was produced by medusas, gelatinous mollusks phosphorescent by night, and everyone believed him.
It was Trinitus’ boat!
Meanwhile, the ship had scarcely got under way when its skillful pilot was already occupied in organizing the interior duty roster, and giving his companions their share of the work.
Marcel, having youth and intelligence in his favor, became the scientist’s assistant. He was charged with supervising the manufacture of artificial air, maintaining the piles and coils, and looking after the precision instruments and weapons of every kind.
Nicaise had nothing to envy Molière’s famous Maître Jacques.2 He was occupied with the fishing tackle, the food, the cooking and the emergency apparatus, as well as the general order of the boat.
Trinitus, the captain and pilot, reserved the direction of the Éclair for himself—and, indeed, he alone was capable of fulfilling that role.
Meanwehile, the boat was traveling at top speed. The emotion that had saddened the voyagers slightly at the moment of departure disappeared slowly; they felt their joyful enthusiasm and all their hopes revive.
Marcel never ceased dreaming about Alice, glimpsing a corner of paradise in the future. Nicaise, proud of his appointment as cook, tried to remember various recipes for seamen’s court-bouillons, and hummed the tune of “Marlbrough s’en vat-t-en guerre” gaily. It was his favorite song.
As for Trinitus, after he had assigned everyone his duties, he went to his desk, checked the time on his chronometer, and on the first page of a notebook opened in front of him, he wrote:
THE ÉCLAIR
Submarine Boat
Departed Calais for the Coral Sea midnight, 3 August 1864
Then, at the bottom of the page, he added:
Journal of Captain Trinitus.
As he finished writing, however, an extremely violent shock made the boat shake. The Éclair recoiled abruptly, and the three surprised men were hurled on to the floor.
Nicaise only had the strength to utter an oath.
Marcel, alarmed, exclaimed: “We’re doomed!”
Stupefied, Trinitus did not make a sound.
Nothing alarming was manifest, however. The boat had stopped, but the damage did not appear to be considerable.
“I understand,” said Tirintus, getting up. “We’ve run into a projection of the sea-bed.”
“We need to check the hull for damage,” added Nicaise.
“I won’t deny that I was very scared,” said Marcel.
“You’re not used to it yet,” said Nicaise.
“The sea isn’t as deep here as I thought,” Trinitus went on, putting on a diving-suit. We’re only at forty-five meters, and throughout the Channel, soundings give at least fifty meters of depth. I can’t explain the accident.”
The scientist lifted a circular trap-door set in the middle of the floor, uncovering a metal disk about sixty centimeters in diameter. The disk was exactly fitted to a vertical cylinder that traversed the entire keel and terminated at the inferior face of the boat. Four stout tubes descended in parallel with it, but they were open at the top, and projected by about ten centimeters at the bottom, where there was a kind of fitment sealed by a tap.
Trinitus took advantage of the opportunity to inform his friends regarding the mechanism of that ingenious apparatus, and when they understood it in theory he showed them how it worked in practice.
By means of a little pulley fixed in the vault of the boat, he connected the metal disk to a counterweight, and the cylinder immediately opened, like that of a pump when the piston is withdrawn. Trinitus, dressed in his diving-suit, descended into the cylinder and the disk fell back slowly over his head to shut the scientist in, as if in a casket. But he pressed a little switch set in the wall of his narrow prison, causing a valve that closed the lower orifice of the cylinder to open beneath his feet, and slid into the sea.
The valve closed abruptly, after the metal disk had descended level with it, in order to prevent the water from getting in.
Meanwhile, Trinitus had grabbed a handle placed under the vessel for that express purpose, and while supporting himself thus with one hand, he fixed a long flexible hose at the other extremity, by means of which he could breathe through one of the stout tubes that projected out from beneath the ship. By turning the tap, he put himself in communication with the air contained in the cabin, and that played the role of diving-bell.
The respiratory hose of the apparatus was about thirty meters long, which permitted Trinitus to walk along the sea-bed to investigate the obstacle with which the Éclair had collided.
Even on the darkest nights, it is never pitch-dark under the sea. The phosphorescence of the water casts a vague light over submerged objects, and the majority of marine animals and plants are surrounded by a phosphoric aureole. Trinitus was therefore able to perceive in front of him a kind of enormous barrier coated with bizarre incrustations and strange vegetation, which projected a pale light over it. He approached it, thinking that he was looking at the mast of a ship, and uttered a cry of surprise.
Suddenly, Nicaise and Marcel heard an exclamation resonating in the cabin. “My friends! It’s the electric cable!”3
One can imagine the astonishment of the two men when they learned that the obstacles with which they had collided was none other than the enormous iron cable that is the sole link attaching us to England.
Curious to descend to the