At the far end stood a fourth watertight bulkhead, separating the crew's quarters from the engine room.
A door opened, and I stood in the compartment where Captain Nemo, indisputably a world–class engineer, had set up his locomotive equipment.
Brightly lit, the engine room measured at least 20 meters in length.
It was divided, by function, into two parts: the first contained the cells for generating electricity, the second that mechanism transmitting movement to the propeller.
Right off, I detected an odor permeating the compartment that was sui generis.* Captain Nemo noticed the negative impression it made on me.
*Latin: "in a class by itself."
Ed.
"That," he told me, "is a gaseous discharge caused by our use of sodium, but it's only a mild inconvenience.
In any event, every morning we sanitize the ship by ventilating it in the open air."
Meanwhile I examined the Nautilus's engine with a fascination easy to imagine.
"You observe," Captain Nemo told me, "that I use Bunsen cells, not Ruhmkorff cells.
The latter would be ineffectual.
One uses fewer Bunsen cells, but they're big and strong, and experience has proven their superiority.
The electricity generated here makes its way to the stern, where electromagnets of huge size activate a special system of levers and gears that transmit movement to the propeller's shaft.
The latter has a diameter of 6 meters, a pitch of 7.5 meters, and can do up to 120 revolutions per minute."
"And that gives you?"
"A speed of fifty miles per hour."
There lay a mystery, but I didn't insist on exploring it.
How could electricity work with such power?
Where did this nearly unlimited energy originate?
Was it in the extraordinary voltage obtained from some new kind of induction coil?
Could its transmission have been immeasurably increased by some unknown system of levers?* This was the point I couldn't grasp.
*Author's Note: And sure enough, there's now talk of such a discovery, in which a new set of levers generates considerable power.
Did its inventor meet up with Captain Nemo?
"Captain Nemo," I said,
"I'll vouch for the results and not try to explain them.
I've seen the Nautilus at work out in front of the Abraham Lincoln, and I know where I stand on its speed.
But it isn't enough just to move, we have to see where we're going!
We must be able to steer right or left, up or down!
How do you reach the lower depths, where you meet an increasing resistance that's assessed in hundreds of atmospheres?
How do you rise back to the surface of the ocean?
Finally, how do you keep your ship at whatever level suits you?
Am I indiscreet in asking you all these things?"
"Not at all, professor," the Captain answered me after a slight hesitation, "since you'll never leave this underwater boat.
Come into the lounge.
It's actually our work room, and there you'll learn the full story about the Nautilus!"
Chapter 13 Some Figures
A MOMENT LATER we were seated on a couch in the lounge, cigars between our lips.
The Captain placed before my eyes a working drawing that gave the ground plan, cross section, and side view of the Nautilus.
Then he began his description as follows:
"Here, Professor Aronnax, are the different dimensions of this boat now transporting you.
It's a very long cylinder with conical ends.
It noticeably takes the shape of a cigar, a shape already adopted in London for several projects of the same kind.
The length of this cylinder from end to end is exactly seventy meters, and its maximum breadth of beam is eight meters.
So it isn't quite built on the ten–to–one ratio of your high–speed steamers; but its lines are sufficiently long, and their tapering gradual enough, so that the displaced water easily slips past and poses no obstacle to the ship's movements.
"These two dimensions allow you to obtain, via a simple calculation, the surface area and volume of the Nautilus.
Its surface area totals 1,011.45 square meters, its volume 1,507.2 cubic meters—which is tantamount to saying that when it's completely submerged, it displaces 1,500 cubic meters of water, or weighs 1,500 metric tons.
"In drawing up plans for a ship meant to navigate underwater, I wanted it, when floating on the waves, to lie nine–tenths below the surface and to emerge only one–tenth.
Consequently, under these conditions it needed to displace only nine–tenths of its volume, hence 1,356.48 cubic meters; in other words, it was to weigh only that same number of metric tons.
So I was obliged not to exceed this weight while building it to the aforesaid dimensions.