Life–sustaining air reached our lungs!
We could breathe!
We could breathe!
And yet nobody prolonged his underwater work beyond the time allotted him.
His shift over, each man surrendered to a gasping companion the air tank that would revive him.
Captain Nemo set the example and was foremost in submitting to this strict discipline.
When his time was up, he yielded his equipment to another and reentered the foul air on board, always calm, unflinching, and uncomplaining.
That day the usual work was accomplished with even greater energy.
Over the whole surface area, only two meters were left to be removed.
Only two meters separated us from the open sea.
But the ship's air tanks were nearly empty.
The little air that remained had to be saved for the workmen.
Not an atom for the Nautilus!
When I returned on board, I felt half suffocated.
What a night!
I'm unable to depict it.
Such sufferings are indescribable.
The next day I was short–winded.
Headaches and staggering fits of dizziness made me reel like a drunk.
My companions were experiencing the same symptoms.
Some crewmen were at their last gasp.
That day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo concluded that picks and mattocks were too slow to deal with the ice layer still separating us from open water—and he decided to crush this layer.
The man had kept his energy and composure.
He had subdued physical pain with moral strength.
He could still think, plan, and act.
At his orders the craft was eased off, in other words, it was raised from its icy bed by a change in its specific gravity.
When it was afloat, the crew towed it, leading it right above the immense trench outlined to match the ship's waterline.
Next the ballast tanks filled with water, the boat sank, and was fitted into its socket.
Just then the whole crew returned on board, and the double outside door was closed.
By this point the Nautilus was resting on a bed of ice only one meter thick and drilled by bores in a thousand places.
The stopcocks of the ballast tanks were then opened wide, and 100 cubic meters of water rushed in, increasing the Nautilus's weight by 100,000 kilograms.
We waited, we listened, we forgot our sufferings, we hoped once more.
We had staked our salvation on this one last gamble.
Despite the buzzing in my head, I soon could hear vibrations under the Nautilus's hull.
We tilted.
The ice cracked with an odd ripping sound, like paper tearing, and the Nautilus began settling downward.
"We're going through!"
Conseil muttered in my ear.
I couldn't answer him.
I clutched his hand.
I squeezed it in an involuntary convulsion.
All at once, carried away by its frightful excess load, the Nautilus sank into the waters like a cannonball, in other words, dropping as if in a vacuum!
Our full electric power was then put on the pumps, which instantly began to expel water from the ballast tanks.
After a few minutes we had checked our fall.
The pressure gauge soon indicated an ascending movement.
Brought to full speed, the propeller made the sheet–iron hull tremble down to its rivets, and we sped northward.
But how long would it take to navigate under the Ice Bank to the open sea?
Another day?
I would be dead first!
Half lying on a couch in the library, I was suffocating.