In this locality there gaped the mouth of a magnificent cave. My companions and I took great pleasure in stretching out on its fine-grained sand. Fire had polished the sparkling enamel of its inner walls, sprinkled all over with mica-rich dust. Ned Land tapped these walls and tried to probe their thickness. I couldn’t help smiling. Our conversation then turned to his everlasting escape plans, and without going too far, I felt I could offer him this hope: Captain Nemo had gone down south only to replenish his sodium supplies. So I hoped he would now hug the coasts of Europe and America, which would allow the Canadian to try again with a greater chance of success. We were stretched out in this delightful cave for an hour. Our conversation, lively at the outset, then languished. A definite drowsiness overcame us. Since I saw no good reason to resist the call of sleep, I fell into a heavy doze. I dreamed—one doesn’t choose his dreams—that my life had been reduced to the vegetating existence of a simple mollusk. It seemed to me that this cave made up my double-valved shell. . . . Suddenly Conseil’s voice startled me awake. “Get up! Get up!” shouted the fine lad. “What is it?” I asked, in a sitting position. “The water’s coming up to us!” I got back on my feet. Like a torrent the sea was rushing into our retreat, and since we definitely were not mollusks, we had to clear out. In a few seconds we were safe on top of the cave. “What happened?” Conseil asked. “Some new phenomenon?” “Not quite, my friends!” I replied. “It was the tide, merely the tide, which wellnigh caught us by surprise just as it did Sir Walter Scott’s hero! The ocean outside is rising, and by a perfectly natural law of balance, the level of this lake is also rising. We’ve gotten off with a mild dunking. Let’s go change clothes on the Nautilus.” Three-quarters of an hour later, we had completed our circular stroll and were back on board. Just then the crewmen finished loading the sodium supplies, and the Nautilus could have departed immediately. But Captain Nemo gave no orders. Would he wait for nightfall and exit through his underwater passageway in secrecy? Perhaps. Be that as it may, by the next day the Nautilus had left its home port and was navigating well out from any shore, a few meters beneath the waves of the Atlantic. CHAPTER 11 The Sargasso Sea THE NAUTILUS didn’t change direction. For the time being, then, we had to set aside any hope of returning to European seas. Captain Nemo kept his prow pointing south. Where was he taking us? I was afraid to guess.