“There you go again, Conseil my friend!” the impatient Canadian shot back. “You never allow yourself any displays of bile or attacks of nerves! You’re everlastingly calm! You’d say your after-meal grace even if you didn’t get any food for your before-meal blessing—and you’d starve to death rather than complain!” “What good would it do?” Conseil asked. “Complaining doesn’t have to do good, it just feels good! And if these pirates—I say pirates out of consideration for the professor’s feelings, since he doesn’t want us to call them cannibals—if these pirates think they’re going to smother me in this cage without hearing what cusswords spice up my outbursts, they’ve got another think coming! Look here, Professor Aronnax, speak frankly. How long do you figure they’ll keep us in this iron box?” “To tell the truth, friend Land, I know little more about it than you do.” “But in a nutshell, what do you suppose is going on?” “My supposition is that sheer chance has made us privy to an important secret. Now then, if the crew of this underwater boat have a personal interest in keeping that secret, and if their personal interest is more important than the lives of three men, I believe that our very existence is in jeopardy. If such is not the case, then at the first available opportunity, this monster that has swallowed us will return us to the world inhabited by our own kind.” “Unless they recruit us to serve on the crew,” Conseil said, “and keep us here—” “Till the moment,” Ned Land answered, “when some frigate that’s faster or smarter than the Abraham Lincoln captures this den of buccaneers, then hangs all of us by the neck from the tip of a mainmast yardarm!” “Well thought out, Mr. Land,” I replied. “But as yet, I don’t believe we’ve been tendered any enlistment offers. Consequently, it’s pointless to argue about what tactics we should pursue in such a case. I repeat: let’s wait, let’s be guided by events, and let’s do nothing, since right now there’s nothing we can do.” “On the contrary, professor,” the harpooner replied, not wanting to give in. “There is something we can do.” “Oh? And what, Mr. Land?” “Break out of here!” “Breaking out of a prison on shore is difficult enough, but with an underwater prison, it strikes me as completely unworkable.” “Come now, Ned my friend,” Conseil asked, “how would you answer master’s objection? I refuse to believe that an American is at the end of his tether.” Visibly baffled, the harpooner said nothing. Under the conditions in which fate had left us, it was absolutely impossible to escape. But a Canadian’s wit is half French, and Mr. Ned Land made this clear in his reply. “So, Professor Aronnax,” he went on after thinking for a few moments, “you haven’t figured out what people do when they can’t escape from their prison?” “No, my friend.” “Easy. They fix things so they stay there.”