One of my first surprises, indeed, was to be invited by Captain Nemo to accompany him on a hunting expedition in the marine forest that grew about the base of the little island of Crespo, in the North Pacific Ocean.  We were told to make a hearty breakfast, as the jaunt would be a long one.  This we did, for we had soon become accustomed to the strange food, every item of which was produced by the sea.

For our submarine excursion we were furnished with diving dresses of seamless india-rubber, fitted on the shoulders with a reservoir of stored air, its tubes opening into the great copper helmet.  We even had powerful air-guns and electric bullets, which proved weapons of deadly precision.  When inside our diving dresses, we could not move our feet on account of the enormous leaden soles, so that we had to be pushed into a compartment at the bottom of the vessel, and the iron doors secured behind us.  Water was then pumped in, and we could feel it rising around us, until the compartment was full, when an outer door opened and we stepped on to the floor of the sea.

For some considerable distance we walked along sands of the most perfect smoothness, and then had to make our way over slimy rocks and treacherous masses of seaweed, before we reached the fairy-like forest under the sea, where all the branches of the marvellous growths ascended perpendicularly.

It was indeed a rare experience for me, who had written “The Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds,” thus to see, at first hand, the life which I had only been able to speculate on before.  We captured many rare specimens, and shot a fine sea-otter, the only known quadruped that inhabits the rocky depths of the Pacific.  It was five feet long, and its skin was worth a hundred pounds.

IV.—­Captain Nemo and the Avenger

So constantly was I enchanted with the wonders of our journey that day succeeded day without my taking note of them; but Captain Nemo, for all his kindness, still remained as mysterious as the Sphinx.  One day he became violently agitated after looking through the glass at a point indicated by his lieutenant, and I and my companions were immediately imprisoned in darkness, as we had been when first taken into the Nautilus.  When I awoke next morning the captain took me to see a wounded Englishman whose head had been shattered, and on my stating that the man could not live for two hours, the dark eyes of the captain seemed to fill with tears.  I thought that night I heard sounds of a funeral hymn, and next day I was taken to a submarine forest of coral, where they buried the man.  This was really a little cemetery beneath the sea, as I gathered from the coral cross which had been erected there.  Ned Land, unlike me, was soon satisfied with what he had seen of the submarine world, and had now but one thought of escape.  We were sailing up the eastern coast of South America, and by May 17 were some five hundred miles from Heart’s Content.  There I saw, at a depth of more than fifteen hundred fathoms, the great electric cable lying at the bottom of the ocean.  The restlessness of poor Ned Land was at its height when he had a glimpse of the American shore; but Captain Nemo bent his course towards Ireland, and then southward, passing within sight of Land’s End on May 30.