Early in the morning on November 11, fresh air poured through the Nautilus’s interior, informing me that we had returned to the surface of the ocean to renew our oxygen supply. I headed for the central companionway and climbed onto the platform. It was six o’clock. I found the weather overcast, the sea gray but calm. Hardly a billow. I hoped to encounter Captain Nemo there—would he come? I saw only the helmsman imprisoned in his glass-windowed pilothouse. Seated on the ledge furnished by the hull of the skiff, I inhaled the sea’s salty aroma with great pleasure. Little by little, the mists were dispersed under the action of the sun’s rays. The radiant orb cleared the eastern horizon. Under its gaze, the sea caught on fire like a trail of gunpowder. Scattered on high, the clouds were colored in bright, wonderfully shaded hues, and numerous “ladyfingers” warned of daylong winds.* *Author’s Note: “Ladyfingers” are small, thin, white clouds with ragged edges. But what were mere winds to this Nautilus, which no storms could intimidate! So I was marveling at this delightful sunrise, so life-giving and cheerful, when I heard someone climbing onto the platform. I was prepared to greet Captain Nemo, but it was his chief officer who appeared—whom I had already met during our first visit with the captain. He advanced over the platform, not seeming to notice my presence. A powerful spyglass to his eye, he scrutinized every point of the horizon with the utmost care. Then, his examination over, he approached the hatch and pronounced a phrase whose exact wording follows below. I remember it because, every morning, it was repeated under the same circumstances. It ran like this: “Nautron respoc lorni virch.” What it meant I was unable to say. These words pronounced, the chief officer went below again. I thought the Nautilus was about to resume its underwater navigating. So I went down the hatch and back through the gangways to my stateroom. Five days passed in this way with no change in our situation. Every morning I climbed onto the platform. The same phrase was pronounced by the same individual. Captain Nemo did not appear. I was pursuing the policy that we had seen the last of him, when on November 16, while reentering my stateroom with Ned and Conseil, I found a note addressed to me on the table. I opened it impatiently. It was written in a script that was clear and neat but a bit “Old English” in style, its characters reminding me of German calligraphy. The note was worded as follows: Professor Aronnax Aboard the Nautilus November 16, 1867 Captain Nemo invites Professor Aronnax on a hunting trip that will take place tomorrow morning in his Crespo Island forests. He hopes nothing will prevent the professor from attending, and he looks forward with pleasure to the professor’s companions joining him. CAPTAIN NEMO, Commander of the Nautilus. “A hunting trip!” Ned exclaimed.