covered with millions of zoophytes and alg. My foot often slipped upon the viscous carpet of varech, and had it not been for my ddfon I should have fallen more than once. When I turned round I could see the white lamp of the Nautilus, though paling a little, in the distance.
These stony heaps of which I have spoken were disposed at the bottom of the ocean with a degree of regularity which I could not explain. I saw gigantic furrows which lost themselves in the obscurity, and whose length exceeded all computation, Other curious experiences presented themselves. It appeared to me that my heavy leaden soles crushed a litter of bony fragments which cracked with aloud noise. What was this vast plain which I was treading? I should have liked to ask the captain, but his language of signs, which permitted communication with his companions when they accompanied him in his submarine excursions, was utterly incomprehensible to me.
Meanwhile, the flame which guided us increased, and lighted up the horizon. The existence of this fire beneath the ocean puzzled me considerably. Was it electric? Was I about to become acquainted with a natural phenomenon hitherto unknown? Or had the power of man aught to do with this? Were men fanning this flame? Was I about to meet in these depths friends and companions of Captain Nemo, living like him this strange life, and whom he was about to visit? Should we find here below a colony of exiles, who, tired of earth and its troubles, had sought and
found independence in the lowest depths of the ocean? These foolish and utterly absurd ideas pressed upon me, and in my condition of mind, over-excited by the wonders beheld at every step, I should not have been very much astonished to enter, at the bottom of this ocean, one of those submarine towns ot which Captain Nemo dreamed,
