"Do not excite yourself, Ned," I said to the harpooner, "and do not compromise us by useless violence. Who knows that they will not listen to us? Let us rather try to find out where we are."
I groped about. In five steps I came to an iron wall, made of plates bolted together. Then turning back I struck against a wooden table, near which were ranged several stools. The boards of this prison were concealed under a thick mat of flax, which deadened the noise of the feet. The bare walls revealed no trace of window or door. Conseil, going round the reverse way, met me, and we went back to the middle of the cabin, which measured about, twenty feet by ten. As to its height, Ned Land, in spite of his own great height, could not measure it.
Half an hour had already passed without our situation being bettered, when the dense darkness suddenly gave way to extreme light. Our prison was suddenly lighted—that is to say, it became filled with a luminous matter, so strong that I could not bear it at first. In its whiteness and intensity I recognized that electric light which played round the submarine boat like a magnificent phenomenon of phosphorescence. After shutting my eyes involuntarily, I opened them and saw that this luminous agent came from a half-globe, unpolished, placed in the roof of the cabin.
"At last one can see," cried Ned Land, who, knife in hand, stood on the defensive.
"Yes," said I; "but we are still in the dark about ourselves."
"Let master have patience," said the imperturbable Conseil.
The sudden lighting of the cabin enabled me to examine it minutely. It only contained a table and five stools. The invisible door might be hermetically sealed. No noise was heard. All seemed dead in the interior of this boat. Did it move, did it float on the surface of the ocean, or did it dive into its depths? I could not guess.
A noise of bolts was now heard, the door opened and two men appeared.
One was short, very muscular, broad-shouldered, with robust limbs, strong head, an abundance of black hair, thick mustache, a quick, penetrating look, and the vivacity which characterizes the population of Southern France.
