The Mysterious Island Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Captain Grant's Children

Chapter 93: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (24)
There are also fishing nets on board, and there will be unexpected harvests from time to time, such as sea turtles.They belong to the genus of soft-shelled turtles in the sea. The tortoise shell is very thick and raised high. The tortoise shell is also a valuable medicinal material.When sea turtles dive into the water, they close the meat plugs on the outer openings of their nostrils to prevent the entry of seawater. Their oxygen consumption is also very small, so they can stay in the water for a long time.Some of these sea turtles caught by fishing nets are still sleeping in their shells.They are to avoid the capture of natural enemies, but accidentally became our trophies. The sea turtle meat is a bit blunt and tastes bad, but the turtle eggs are delicious.

It was often a wonderful treat to observe the various fish swimming in the water through the open panels.The graceful shapes and figures of these earth creatures living under the sea always make us admire involuntarily.I can safely say that many of these fish are things I have never seen before.

Whenever a new species is discovered, my assistant Conseil will record it in detail in his notes.In his records, we can find belly fishes unique to this area, such as the red-backed, white-bellied needlefish.The appearance of this fish is very obvious. It has three rows of stripes on its body. If the light allows, the naked eye can spot them from a long distance.There are also brightly colored electric fish, which are seven inches long.Next, a dark-brown ovoid fish can be found, which has white bands, but which is strangely tailless.The fish tiger is a porcupine in the sea, with many thorns on its body. When it puffs up, it will turn into a ball full of thorns. It looks very scary. For its natural enemies, these thorns are undoubtedly terrible weapons .There are also seahorses, which can be found in every ocean, and the flying pegasus, which has very wide and large pelvic fins, like the wings of flying birds.Although they cannot fly into the sky, they can at least jump from the sea to the surface, so that they can easily escape the capture of their natural enemies, tuna and swordfish.The hooked pigeonfish has rings of many scales on its tail, the long-jawed jawfish is a 25 cm long fish with a beautiful color, and its meat is delicious; the mullet is gray and white with a high and low head Uneven; the odd-shaped fish has strong jumping ability. This fish has black stripes on its body and a pair of long pelvic fins. All the fins are lifted up like sails on a boat; the colorful fish has a gorgeous appearance and is also favored by nature, with yellow, sky blue, silver and golden colors on its body; It is made up of strips of meat; spiny fin fishes are always covered with mud and will make rustling noises from time to time; juvenile sea fish, whose liver is considered poisonous, fishermen catch them and throw them back In the water; the pody fish has a movable eye patch over its eye and a tubular proboscis.

There is also a fish that can be called a sea hunter. It has an ability that surprises the manufacturers of Remington rifles. A drop of water shot by this fish can kill insects on the water surface.

According to the species classification of Ratherbeide, the No.80 nine genera belong to the second subclass of bony fishes, and are characterized by a gill cover and a gill membrane.Among these fishes, I found scorpionfish, with spines on the head and only one dorsal fin on the back.Some of these fish have scales and some do not, depending on the subgenus to which they belong.In the second subgenus, there is a two-toed fish, three to four decimeters long, with banded yellow stripes on the body, and a strange head.In the first subgenus, there is also a strange fish nicknamed "sea toad", with a large head, deep lines on the head, and disgusting tumors.Its body is also covered with sharp thorns of different lengths. It is very dangerous to be injured by the thorns of the sea toad.The appearance of this fish is disgusting and terrifying.

During the three days from January 1 to 21, the "Nautilus" sailed at an average speed of 23 knots per hour, with a daily range of 22 nautical miles, or 540 miles.During the voyage, because the fish are attracted by the light from the hull, many fish gather around the boat, which can be a feast for our eyes.But most of the fish were not as fast as the boat and soon fell behind.Only a small number of them followed the boat and kept wandering in the sea near the "Nautilus".

On the morning of January 1, at 24°12′ south latitude and 5°94′ east longitude, we saw Qilin Island.This is an island formed by the collection of coral reefs. Darwin and Captain Fitz Roy once arrived here on the "Royal Beagle".In the water not far from this deserted island, the "Nautilus" cruised around the island, and the salvage machine on board salvaged many coelenterates and echinoderms, as well as some novel animals belonging to the mollusk phylum.Afterwards, the ship sailed to the northwest, and soon Qilin Island disappeared from our sight, and our destination was the tip of the Indian Peninsula.

Ned Land was a little excited. He said to me: "Finally, we've reached the civilized world. I've had enough time in Papua. There are more barbarians than rabbits on the grasslands!"

"Professor, the Indian peninsula is well-developed with roads and railways, and there are many British and French people living in it. In those densely populated cities, within five miles, you will encounter an expatriate from the country. Now it is finally unnecessary Be polite to Captain Nemo, now is the time to leave him!"

"That's not going to work, Ned," I said firmly. "As you old sailors say: just wait and see. The Nautilus is approaching the mainland, and then she'll be heading back to Europe, so let's just wait and see." Let it take us to Europe. We shall not be too late to make up our minds when we are in our own seas. I think Captain Nemo will not let us set foot on the coast of Malabar or Coromandel now that it is not New Guinea. "

"Sir, do we have to ask his permission?"

I didn't answer the Canadian question because I didn't want to dwell on it.In fact, I saw everything arranged by fate so clearly that I was sent to the "Nautilus" by the hand of fate.

After leaving Qilin Island, the speed of the ship began to slow down, and the sailing route became very random, diving into deep places on the seabed from time to time.The crew operated the ramped wings several times by means of levers inside the boat.

Sometimes, we can reach a depth of 3000 meters from the sea surface, but for the bottomless Indian Ocean, the deepest detector in the world at 3000 meters cannot reach the bottom of it, so we just stay in the ocean s surface.As for the temperature of the water layer, for some reason, the thermometer always showed four degrees.There is no doubt that the temperature of the water further down is always lower than that of the ocean surface.

On January 1, the sky above the ocean was empty and stretched as far as the eye could see.All day long the Nautilus sailed on the surface.The powerful propellers stirred the water surface again and again, pushing the sea current with white splashes behind us continuously.If you stand on the deck of a ship and look at all this, you will also regard the "Nautilus" as a huge cetacean.For most of the day, I stayed on the platform, looking at the vast ocean, where the sky and the sea are connected.At four o'clock in the afternoon, I saw a large steamer sailing in the direction we had come, at a distance between the two ships, and as the waves rose and fell, sometimes only the mainmast of the ship could be seen. No one can see the "Nautilus" driving close to the surface of the sea.I guess this ship may be a merchant ship of the East India Company. It usually travels between Ceylon and Sydney, and will choose to berth at King George's Point and Port Melbourne on the way.

At five o'clock in the afternoon, it was the junction of day and night in the tropics. Under the evening light, Conseil and I discovered a novel scene.

It is an animal with a charming appearance. According to the understanding of the ancients, if you meet it, it indicates good luck.Even great scientists like Aristotle studied it, and used up the poetic words used by ancient Greek and Italian scholars to describe it.They called it "Nautilus" and "Pombelius".Fortunately, modern science has not continued to use this weird name, and now this mollusk is called anal fish.The group in front of us is walking on the sea surface is a species of anal fish. At a glance, there may be tens of thousands of them.They are sarcomatous anal fishes, a species endemic to the Indian Ocean.These graceful molluscs rely on pushing water out of tubes as they move, propelling their bodies in reverse with the current.They have eight tentacles, two of which are open to the wind, like a small sail, and the other six are thin and long, floating on the water.

We also saw a shell with spiral corrugations outside its body. Someone described this shell as a delicate boat, and this metaphor is very appropriate.The shell is formed by the secretions of molluscs, and unlike hermit crabs, anal fish are not tightly attached to the shell.

"The anal fish can live free from its shell," I said to Conseil, "but it never leaves its shell."

"Is it the same as Captain Nemo?" Conseil laughed a little, "so it's more appropriate to call 'Nautilus' the Anfish."

The "Nautilus" sailed for about an hour among this group of docile molluscs. It was unknown what had happened. These molluscs seemed to have been frightened suddenly. They also retracted, their bodies tightened, and the shells on their bodies also changed their positions, sinking into the water one after another, and finally disappeared without a trace.Even a well-trained fleet probably doesn't have such uniform movements like them.

The next day, January 1, the Nautilus crossed the equator at 26°E, returning us to the northern hemisphere.

Throughout the day we were surrounded by schools of fearsome sharks.They are not uninvited guests, but permanent residents here. Our ship has stimulated their blood instinct. With these ferocious fish lingering, this sea area can be called a forbidden area for life.There are smoke-colored sharks here, their backs are chestnut-colored, and their abdomens are gray-white; the eye-spotted shark has a large black spot on its neck surrounded by a white circle, which looks like a big eye when viewed from a distance; The face is round with gray dots.The "masters" of these oceans are extremely powerful, and they often rush towards the glass windows of the "Nautilus" living room, making a "bang bang" sound, which makes people shudder, for fear that the glass will be smashed by them and turn us into their food .Ned Land was very excited. He was gearing up, wishing he could rush to the surface of the water and use the harpoon in his hand to compete with these monsters, especially when he saw a huge whale shark, which was the same as the one that had been killed by his harpoon before. types are very similar.There was also a tiger shark, which was five meters long, which made Ned Land's blood boil.Fortunately, the "Nautilus" picked up its speed and quickly left these terrible animals behind.

On January 1th, the boat sailed to the Bay of Bengal, and the sea suddenly became vast, but we were frightened by the sights on the sea several times. There were many floating corpses floating on the sea, allowing the carnivorous vultures to peck at them.These are the dead in Indian cities. The local funeral custom is to put the corpse in the Ganges, which they consider sacred, and let the river carry the corpse to the sea.If the strength of the vulture bird is not strong enough to bury the dead in the sky, then the terrifying shark before will become the best scavenger to complete the remaining tasks of "burial at sea".

At seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus surfaced, with half its hull above the waterline.We found that the sea water is milky white like milk. Is this a change caused by the moonlight?No, the new moon is only two days old, and it has already hidden in the sky below the water level.In the sky, there are occasional starlight flashes, but compared with the whiteness of the water surface, it is undoubtedly much weaker.

Conseil looked confused, he couldn't believe his eyes a little bit, and he turned to me to ask me the reason for this strange sight, but luckily I was able to answer it.

"It's called the Sea of ​​Milk," I said to him, "and it's a wide white current that's often seen off the coast of Amberney Island and around here."

"Sir, do you know what makes the sea water look like this? After all, the water we saw didn't turn into real milk."

"It's not milk, Conseil, I'm just saying that sea water looks like milk. This amazing whiteness is due to the concentration of billions of tiny trichomonas, a luminous microscopic The worms are colorless, their bodies are as thick as a hair, and the length is only about one-fifth of a millimeter. These astonishing numbers of trichomonas are distributed on the surface of the sea for several miles, forming a large white area. "

"My God, how many nautical miles is it?" Conseil exclaimed.

"Yes, the number of these trichomonas is difficult to count. I heard that some navigators sailed for more than 40 nautical miles on this milk sea."

A few hours later, the Nautilus burst out of the white water, frothing like soap bubbles under her mighty horns.On the surface of the sea, such foam can also be formed when currents from different directions meet head-on.

At midnight, the color of the sea surface changed again, but behind us, at the end where the sky and the sea connect, we can still see a touch of white water surface, just like the Arctic Ocean in the polar day period, the sea water presents a kind of dawn light all day long The next is clear.

Captain Nemo's New Proposal
When the sun shone at noon on January 1, the "Nautilus" surfaced, and it happened to be at a position of 28° 9' north latitude.Through my glass I saw a land mass eight miles to the west, and the first thing I saw was a group of high mountains, some two thousand feet high.After measuring the orientation of this piece of land with instruments, I went back to the living room and compared the measured longitude and latitude with the map. I found that this piece of land was Ceylon Island. a pearl.

Ceylon is the richest island on earth, and I went to the library to find a book about it.I found a book by Hill called Ceylon and the Ceylonians.I returned to the living room with this book in my hand with great interest, wanting to study it carefully.I first focused on the bearing of Ceylon, trying to determine where on the island I was surveying.Ceylon is located between 5°55' and 9°49' north latitude and between 79°42' and 82°4' east longitude. The island is 270 miles long and 150 miles wide at its widest point. mile.That is to say, smaller than Ireland.At this time, Captain Nemo and his deputy came in. The captain bent over the map and glanced at it, then turned to me and asked:

"Mr. Aronnax, Ceylon is famous for its pearls. Would you like to visit the pearl field?"

"I'd love to, Captain."

"Well, it's easy. But we can only see the pearling grounds, not the people. The season for pearling is not yet, but it doesn't matter much. I let the boat go to the Gulf of Mannar, We'll be there in the evening."

Captain Nemo gave some instructions to the second officer, and the second officer went out.After a while, the boat dived into the water, and the pressure gauge showed us thirty feet below the surface.

From the map in front of me, I found the Gulf of Mannar, which is near 9° north latitude to the northwest of Ceylon Island.The bay is formed by the extension of the coastline of the island of Mannar.To get there, boats have to circumnavigate the entire west coast of Ceylon.

"Professor Aronnax," said Captain Nemo, "there are many places in the world where pearls can be mined. In Asia, there are the Bay of Bengal, the Sea of ​​India, the Sea of ​​China, and the Sea of ​​Japan. In America, there are the coasts of Panama and the Gulf of California. But Among them, Ceylon Island, which can be called a holy place for pearl fishing, is still too early for the pearl fishing season. Every March is the busiest season for pearl fishers. They gather in the Bay of Mannar for a full 30 days Here, about three hundred boats were engaged in the work of extracting treasures from the sea, and each boat had ten rowers and ten pearl fishers. The pearl fishers were divided into two groups and dived alternately, generally using their feet. A big rock is sandwiched to achieve the purpose of fast diving, and a rope is connected to the pearl diver and the hull, and the pearl diver has to go down to a depth of 12 meters to collect pearls.”

"Have they been using this primitive pearling method?" I asked.

"It has always been like this," Captain Nemo replied. "You may not understand that such backward and cruel methods are happening under the noses of the British, who are the most intelligent people in the world. According to the Treaty of Armin, this A piece of the pearling field was transferred to the British in 1802."

"Captain, isn't the diving suit used on the 'Nautilus' very useful for pearl hunting?"

"That's right, it's very useful. Those poor pearl divers can't stay underwater for too long with this traditional working method, usually only 30 seconds. The British Percival said in his travel notes on Ceylon Island, It is recorded that a pearl diver stayed underwater for 5 minutes, which made me feel unbelievable. As far as I know, some strong and strong pearl divers can stay underwater for 60 seconds, or even [-] seconds. But such experts are rare. Even if they can get back to the boat safely, these people's nostrils and ears are bleeding from the pressure of the sea water. In the limited time underwater, they must use the fastest speed to stuff the pearl oysters in the water. In a net bag. Years of underwater work have seriously damaged the health of these pearl divers. Their vision often declines prematurely, and even ulcers occur. There are also many wounds on their bodies, such as being scratched by reefs or fish During the pearling season, they were so physically exhausted that some even died of strokes underwater.”

(End of this chapter)