"Kindly follow this man."
"That's an offer I can't refuse!" the harpooner replied.
After being confined for over thirty hours, he and Conseil were finally out of this cell.
"And now, Professor Aronnax, our own breakfast is ready.
Allow me to lead the way."
"Yours to command, Captain."
I followed Captain Nemo, and as soon as I passed through the doorway, I went down a kind of electrically lit passageway that resembled a gangway on a ship.
After a stretch of some ten meters, a second door opened before me.
I then entered a dining room, decorated and furnished in austere good taste.
Inlaid with ebony trim, tall oaken sideboards stood at both ends of this room, and sparkling on their shelves were staggered rows of earthenware, porcelain, and glass of incalculable value.
There silver–plated dinnerware gleamed under rays pouring from light fixtures in the ceiling, whose glare was softened and tempered by delicately painted designs.
In the center of this room stood a table, richly spread.
Captain Nemo indicated the place I was to occupy.
"Be seated," he told me, "and eat like the famished man you must be."
Our breakfast consisted of several dishes whose contents were all supplied by the sea, and some foods whose nature and derivation were unknown to me.
They were good, I admit, but with a peculiar flavor to which I would soon grow accustomed.
These various food items seemed to be rich in phosphorous, and I thought that they, too, must have been of marine origin.
Captain Nemo stared at me.
I had asked him nothing, but he read my thoughts, and on his own he answered the questions I was itching to address him.
"Most of these dishes are new to you," he told me.
"But you can consume them without fear.
They're healthy and nourishing.
I renounced terrestrial foods long ago, and I'm none the worse for it.
My crew are strong and full of energy, and they eat what I eat."
"So," I said, "all these foods are products of the sea?"
"Yes, professor, the sea supplies all my needs.
Sometimes I cast my nets in our wake, and I pull them up ready to burst.
Sometimes I go hunting right in the midst of this element that has long seemed so far out of man's reach, and I corner the game that dwells in my underwater forests.
Like the flocks of old Proteus, King Neptune's shepherd, my herds graze without fear on the ocean's immense prairies.
There I own vast properties that I harvest myself, and which are forever sown by the hand of the Creator of All Things."
I stared at Captain Nemo in definite astonishment, and I answered him:
"Sir, I understand perfectly how your nets can furnish excellent fish for your table; I understand less how you can chase aquatic game in your underwater forests; but how a piece of red meat, no matter how small, can figure in your menu, that I don't understand at all."
"Nor I, sir," Captain Nemo answered me.
"I never touch the flesh of land animals."
"Nevertheless, this . . . ," I went on, pointing to a dish where some slices of loin were still left.
"What you believe to be red meat, professor, is nothing other than loin of sea turtle.
Similarly, here are some dolphin livers you might mistake for stewed pork.
My chef is a skillful food processor who excels at pickling and preserving these various exhibits from the ocean.
Feel free to sample all of these foods.
Here are some preserves of sea cucumber that a Malaysian would declare to be unrivaled in the entire world, here's cream from milk furnished by the udders of cetaceans, and sugar from the huge fucus plants in the North Sea; and finally, allow me to offer you some marmalade of sea anemone, equal to that from the tastiest fruits."
So I sampled away, more as a curiosity seeker than an epicure, while Captain Nemo delighted me with his incredible anecdotes.
"But this sea, Professor Aronnax," he told me, "this prodigious, inexhaustible wet nurse of a sea not only feeds me, she dresses me as well.
That fabric covering you was woven from the masses of filaments that anchor certain seashells; as the ancients were wont to do, it was dyed with purple ink from the murex snail and shaded with violet tints that I extract from a marine slug, the Mediterranean sea hare.
The perfumes you'll find on the washstand in your cabin were produced from the oozings of marine plants.
Your mattress was made from the ocean's softest eelgrass.
Your quill pen will be whalebone, your ink a juice secreted by cuttlefish or squid.
Everything comes to me from the sea, just as someday everything will return to it!"
"You love the sea, Captain."
"Yes, I love it!
The sea is the be all and end all!