“Just this, captain. In going toward the ocean’s lower strata, we know that vegetable life disappears more quickly than animal life. We know that moving creatures can still be encountered where water plants no longer grow. We know that oysters and pilgrim scallops live in 2,000 meters of water, and that Admiral McClintock, England’s hero of the polar seas, pulled in a live sea star from a depth of 2,500 meters. We know that the crew of the Royal Navy’s Bulldog fished up a starfish from 2,620 fathoms, hence from a depth of more than one vertical league. Would you still say, Captain Nemo, that we really know nothing?” “No, professor,” the captain replied, “I wouldn’t be so discourteous. Yet I’ll ask you to explain how these creatures can live at such depths?” “I explain it on two grounds,” I replied. “In the first place, because vertical currents, which are caused by differences in the water’s salinity and density, can produce enough motion to sustain the rudimentary lifestyles of sea lilies and starfish.” “True,” the captain put in. “In the second place, because oxygen is the basis of life, and we know that the amount of oxygen dissolved in salt water increases rather than decreases with depth, that the pressure in these lower strata helps to concentrate their oxygen content.” “Oho! We know that, do we?” Captain Nemo replied in a tone of mild surprise. “Well, professor, we have good reason to know it because it’s the truth. I might add, in fact, that the air bladders of fish contain more nitrogen than oxygen when these animals are caught at the surface of the water, and conversely, more oxygen than nitrogen when they’re pulled up from the lower depths. Which bears out your formulation. But let’s continue our observations.” My eyes flew back to the pressure gauge. The instrument indicated a depth of 6,000 meters. Our submergence had been going on for an hour. The Nautilus slid downward on its slanting fins, still sinking. These deserted waters were wonderfully clear, with a transparency impossible to convey. An hour later we were at 13,000 meters—about three and a quarter vertical leagues—and the ocean floor was nowhere in sight. However, at 14,000 meters I saw blackish peaks rising in the midst of the waters. But these summits could have belonged to mountains as high or even higher than the Himalayas or Mt. Blanc, and the extent of these depths remained incalculable. Despite the powerful pressures it was undergoing, the Nautilus sank still deeper. I could feel its sheet-iron plates trembling down to their riveted joins; metal bars arched; bulkheads groaned; the lounge windows seemed to be warping inward under the water’s pressure. And this whole sturdy mechanism would surely have given way, if, as its captain had said, it weren’t capable of resisting like a solid block.