I had gotten to this point in my observations when Ned and Conseil woke up almost simultaneously, under the influence of this reviving air purification. They rubbed their eyes, stretched their arms, and sprang to their feet.
“Did master sleep well?” Conseil asked me with his perennial good manners.
“Extremely well, my gallant lad,” I replied. “And how about you, Mr. Ned Land?”
“Like a log, professor. But I must be imagining things, because it seems like I’m breathing a sea breeze!”
A seaman couldn’t be wrong on this topic, and I told the Canadian what had gone on while he slept.
“Good!” he said. “That explains perfectly all that bellowing we heard, when our so-called narwhale lay in sight of the Abraham Lincoln.”
“Perfectly, Mr. Land. It was catching its breath!”
“Only I’ve no idea what time it is, Professor Aronnax, unless maybe it’s dinnertime?”
“Dinnertime, my fine harpooner? I’d say at least breakfast time, because we’ve certainly woken up to a new day.”
“Which indicates,” Conseil replied, “that we’ve spent twenty-four hours in slumber.”
“That’s my assessment,” I replied.
“I won’t argue with you,” Ned Land answered. “But dinner or breakfast, that steward will be plenty welcome whether he brings the one or the other.”
“The one and the other,” Conseil said.
“Well put,” the Canadian replied. “We deserve two meals, and speaking for myself, I’ll do justice to them both.”
“All right, Ned, let’s wait and see!” I replied. “It’s clear that these strangers don’t intend to let us die of hunger, otherwise last evening’s dinner wouldn’t make any sense.”
“Unless they’re fattening us up!” Ned shot back.
“I object,” I replied. “We have not fallen into the hands of cannibals.”
“Just because they don’t make a habit of it,” the Canadian replied in all seriousness, “doesn’t mean they don’t indulge from time to time. Who knows? Maybe these people have gone without fresh meat for a long while, and in that case three healthy, well-built specimens like the professor, his manservant, and me –”
“Get rid of those ideas, Mr. Land,” I answered the harpooner. “And above all, don’t let them lead you to flare up against our hosts, which would only make our situation worse.”
“Anyhow,” the harpooner said, “I’m as hungry as all Hades, and dinner or breakfast, not one puny meal has arrived!”
“Mr. Land,” I answered, “we have to adapt to the schedule on board, and I imagine our stomachs are running ahead of the chief cook’s dinner bell.”
“Well then, we’ll adjust our stomachs to the chef’s timetable!” Conseil replied serenely.
“There you go again, Conseil my friend!” the impatient Canadian shot back. “You never allow yourself any displays of bile or attacks of nerves! You’re everlastingly calm! You’d say your after-meal grace even if you didn’t get any food for your before-meal blessing— and you’d starve to death rather than complain!”
“What good would it do?” Conseil asked.
“Complaining doesn’t have to do good, it just feels good! And if these pirates—I say pirates out of consideration for the professor’s feelings, since he doesn’t want us to call them cannibals— if these pirates think they’re going to smother me in this cage without hearing what cusswords spice up my outbursts, they’ve got another think coming! Look here, Professor Aronnax, speak frankly. How long do you figure they’ll keep us in this iron box?”
“To tell the truth, friend Land, I know little more about it than you do.”
“But in a nutshell, what do you suppose is going on?”
“My supposition is that sheer chance has made us privy to an important secret. Now then, if the crew of this underwater boat have a personal interest in keeping that secret, and if their personal interest is more important than the lives of three men, I believe that our very existence is in jeopardy. If such is not the case, then at the first available opportunity, this monster that has swallowed us will return us to the world inhabited by our own kind.”
“Unless they recruit us to serve on the crew,” Conseil said, “and keep us here—”
“Till the moment,” Ned Land answered, “when some frigate that’s faster or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers, then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!”
“Well thought out, Mr. Land,” I replied. “But as yet, I don’t believe we’ve been tendered any enlistment offers. Consequently, it’s pointless to argue about what tactics we should pursue in such a case. I repeat: let’s wait, let’s be guided by events, and let’s do nothing, since right now there’s nothing we can do.”
“On the contrary, professor,” the harpooner replied, not wanting to give in. “There is something we can do.”
“Oh? And what, Mr. Land?”
“Break out of here!”
“Breaking out of a prison on shore is difficult enough, but with an underwater prison, it strikes me as completely unworkable.”
“Come now, Ned my friend,” Conseil asked, “how would you answer master’s objection? I refuse to believe that an American is at the end of his tether.”
Visibly baffled, the harpooner said nothing. Under the conditions in which fate had left us, it was absolutely impossible to escape. But a Canadian’s wit is half French, and Mr. Ned Land made this clear in his reply.
“So, Professor Aronnax,” he went on after thinking for a few moments, “you haven’t figured out what people do when they can’t escape from their prison?”
“No, my friend.”
“Easy. They fix things so they stay there.”
“Of course!” Conseil put in. “Since we’re deep in the ocean, being inside this boat is vastly preferable to being above it or below it!”
“But we fix things by kicking out all the jailers, guards, and wardens,” Ned Land added.
“What’s this, Ned?” I asked. “You’d seriously consider taking over this craft?”
“Very seriously,” the Canadian replied.
“It’s impossible.”
“And why is that, sir? Some promising opportunity might come up, and I don’t see what could stop us from taking advantage of it. If there are only about twenty men on board this machine, I don’t think they can stave off two Frenchmen and a Canadian!”
It seemed wiser to accept the harpooner’s proposition than to debate it. Accordingly, I was content to reply:
“Let such circumstances come, Mr. Land, and we’ll see. But until then, I beg you to control your impatience. We need to act shrewdly, and your flare-ups won’t give rise to any promising opportunities. So swear to me that you’ll accept our situation without throwing a tantrum over it.”
“I give you my word, professor,” Ned Land replied in an unenthusiastic tone. “No vehement phrases will leave my mouth, no vicious gestures will give my feelings away, not even when they don’t feed us on