Chapter 2 The Nautilus

I'm not a young man, and I can't swim well. I started to go underwater. But then there was a strong hand on my back. I looked behind me. My servant was there!

“Conseil! Why are you in the water?” I asked.

“You were in the sea and I wanted to stay with you. That's my job, Mr. Aronnax,” Conseil said. “There's a problem with the Abraham Lincoln. It can't come back for us. Let's swim, and wait for morning.”

Before morning, my legs stopped working. “Go, Conseil,” I said. “I'm a dead man, but you're young and strong. You can find a boat...” Then water came into my mouth, and my eyes closed.

They opened a short time later. I was with Conseil, and Ned Land too.

“I don't understand. We're not swimming. Where are we?” I asked.

“On the back of the giant whale,” Ned said. Then he smiled. “But it's not a whale.”

I looked, and he was right. We were on a submarine!

“You and I went into the sea at the same time, Mr. Aronnax,” Ned said. “After that, I waited here. We're OK now, but this boat can go underwater. What are we going to do then?”

Suddenly, the submarine started to move. “Quickly!” I said.“Make some noise. Hit the boat with your hands.”

A door opened and eight men came out. We went with them into the submarine.

“Where are you taking us?” we asked the men, but they didn't answer. We arrived in a dark room. The men went away and closed the door behind them. Ned tried the door, but it didn't open. “We're never going to escape!” he said.“Those men are going to kill us!”

We waited for a long time in the dark room. Then the lights came on and a man walked into the room. Perhaps he was thirty-five, or perhaps fifty. He was tall, with black eyes and an interesting, open face.

In French, I said our names and asked for food and drink. He listened quietly, but he didn't answer.

“He doesn't understand French,” I said. “You try, Ned. Perhaps he understands English.”

Ned talked in English. Then Conseil tried in German. But they had the same problem.

“What can we do now?” I asked my friends. But the man walked away and closed the door.

Again we waited. Ned was very angry. He didn't like the men on the submarine. He didn't like our room. And he didn't like waiting.“I'm going to escape from this submarine,” he said.

A man came into the room, and Ned started to hit him in the face. Conseil and I wanted to stop Ned, but he was very strong. Suddenly, our first visitor was with us again.

“Stop, Mr. Land!” he said, in very good French. “And please listen to me, all of you. My name is Captain Nemo, and this is my boat, the Nautilus.”

“I didn't talk to you on my first visit. I'm sorry about that. But you're a problem for me. What can I do with you? My men and I are never going back to our countries; we're always going to live on the Nautilus. You can live with us, too, but you can't go back to your countries after that. We don't want stories in the newspapers about us.”

“What are you saying?” I asked. “We want to go home.”“You can go now,” he answered. “But it's going to be difficult for you, because you haven't got a boat. You're underwater and you aren't near the coast. Stay with us now, and you can see a lot of interesting things. But you can never go home.”