Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne & Marie Sexton

Author:Jules Verne & Marie Sexton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Erotic Romance eBooks Erotica Total-E-Bound eBooks Books Romance
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

A New Proposition from Captain Nemo

On January 28, in latitude 9 degrees 4’ north, when the Nautilus returned at noon to the surface of the sea, it lay in sight of land some eight miles to the west. Right off, I observed a cluster of mountains about two-thousand feet high, whose shapes were very whimsically sculpted. After our position fix, I re-entered the lounge, and when our bearings were reported on the chart, I saw that we were off the island of Ceylon, that pearl dangling from the lower lobe of the Indian peninsula.

I went looking in the library for a book about this island, one of the most fertile in the world.

Just then Captain Nemo and his chief officer appeared.

The captain glanced at the chart. Then, turning to me, “The island of Ceylon,” he said,

“is famous for its pearl fisheries. Would you be interested, Professor Aronnax, in visiting one of those fisheries?”

“Certainly, Captain.”

“Fine. It’s easily done. Only, when we see the fisheries, we’ll see no fishermen. The annual harvest hasn’t yet begun. No matter. I’ll give orders to make for the Gulf of Mannar, and we’ll arrive there late tonight.”

The captain said a few words to his chief officer who went out immediately. Soon the Nautilus re-entered its liquid element, and the pressure gauge indicated that it was staying at a depth of thirty feet.

With the chart under my eyes, I looked for the Gulf of Mannar. I found it by the 9th parallel off the northwestern shores of Ceylon. It was formed by the long curve of little Mannar Island. To reach it we had to go all the way up Ceylon’s west coast.

“Professor,” Captain Nemo then told me, “there are pearl fisheries in the Bay of Bengal, the seas of the East Indies, the seas of China and Japan, plus those seas south of the United States, the Gulf of Panama and the Gulf of California, but it’s off Ceylon that such fishing reaps its richest rewards. No doubt we’ll be arriving a little early. Fishermen gather in the Gulf of Mannar only during the month of March, and for thirty days some three-hundred boats concentrate on the lucrative harvest of these treasures from the sea. Each boat is manned by ten oarsmen and ten fishermen. The latter divide into two groups, dive in rotation, and descend to a depth of twelve metres with the help of a heavy stone clutched between their feet and attached by a rope to their boat.”

“You mean,” I said, “that such primitive methods are still all that they use?”

“All,” Captain Nemo answered me, “although these fisheries belong to the most industrialised people in the world, the English, to whom the Treaty of Amiens granted them in 1802.”

“Yet it strikes me that diving suits like yours could perform yeoman service in such work.”

“Yes, since those poor fishermen can’t stay long underwater. On his voyage to Ceylon, the Englishman Percival made much of a Kaffir who stayed under five minutes without coming up to the surface, but I find that hard to believe.

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