I’ll skip over the Canadian’s complaints. He had good grounds for an outburst. I didn’t answer him back, letting him blow off all the steam he wanted. We had been left to ourselves for twenty minutes, trying to detect the tiniest noises inside the Nautilus, when Captain Nemo entered. He didn’t seem to see us. His facial features, usually so emotionless, revealed a certain uneasiness. He studied the compass and pressure gauge in silence, then went and put his finger on the world map at a spot in the sector depicting the southernmost seas. I hesitated to interrupt him. But some moments later, when he turned to me, I threw back at him a phrase he had used in the Torres Strait: “An incident, captain?” “No, sir,” he replied, “this time an accident.” “Serious?” “Perhaps.” “Is there any immediate danger?” “No.” “The Nautilus has run aground?” “Yes.” “And this accident came about . . . ?” “Through nature’s unpredictability, not man’s incapacity. No errors were committed in our maneuvers. Nevertheless, we can’t prevent a loss of balance from taking its toll. One may defy human laws, but no one can withstand the laws of nature.” Captain Nemo had picked an odd time to philosophize. All in all, this reply told me nothing. “May I learn, sir,” I asked him, “what caused this accident?” “An enormous block of ice, an entire mountain, has toppled over,” he answered me. “When an iceberg is eroded at the base by warmer waters or by repeated collisions, its center of gravity rises. Then it somersaults, it turns completely upside down. That’s what happened here. When it overturned, one of these blocks hit the Nautilus as it was cruising under the waters. Sliding under our hull, this block then raised us with irresistible power, lifting us into less congested strata where we now lie on our side.” “But can’t we float the Nautilus clear by emptying its ballast tanks, to regain our balance?” “That, sir, is being done right now. You can hear the pumps working. Look at the needle on the pressure gauge. It indicates that the Nautilus is rising, but this block of ice is rising with us, and until some obstacle halts its upward movement, our position won’t change.” Indeed, the Nautilus kept the same heel to starboard. No doubt it would straighten up once the block came to a halt. But before that happened, who knew if we might not hit the underbelly of the Ice Bank and be hideously squeezed between two frozen surfaces? I mused on all the consequences of this situation. Captain Nemo didn’t stop studying the pressure gauge. Since the toppling of this iceberg, the Nautilus had risen about 150 feet, but it still stayed at the same angle to the perpendicular.