I could easily distinguish objects 100 meters away.
Farther on, the bottom was tinted with fine shades of ultramarine; then, off in the distance, it turned blue and faded in the midst of a hazy darkness.
Truly, this water surrounding me was just a kind of air, denser than the atmosphere on land but almost as transparent.
Above me I could see the calm surface of the ocean.
We were walking on sand that was fine–grained and smooth, not wrinkled like beach sand, which preserves the impressions left by the waves.
This dazzling carpet was a real mirror, throwing back the sun's rays with startling intensity.
The outcome: an immense vista of reflections that penetrated every liquid molecule.
Will anyone believe me if I assert that at this thirty–foot depth, I could see as if it was broad daylight?
For a quarter of an hour, I trod this blazing sand, which was strewn with tiny crumbs of seashell.
Looming like a long reef, the Nautilus's hull disappeared little by little, but when night fell in the midst of the waters, the ship's beacon would surely facilitate our return on board, since its rays carried with perfect distinctness.
This effect is difficult to understand for anyone who has never seen light beams so sharply defined on shore.
There the dust that saturates the air gives such rays the appearance of a luminous fog; but above water as well as underwater, shafts of electric light are transmitted with incomparable clarity.
Meanwhile we went ever onward, and these vast plains of sand seemed endless.
My hands parted liquid curtains that closed again behind me, and my footprints faded swiftly under the water's pressure.
Soon, scarcely blurred by their distance from us, the forms of some objects took shape before my eyes.
I recognized the lower slopes of some magnificent rocks carpeted by the finest zoophyte specimens, and right off, I was struck by an effect unique to this medium.
By then it was ten o'clock in the morning.
The sun's rays hit the surface of the waves at a fairly oblique angle, decomposing by refraction as though passing through a prism; and when this light came in contact with flowers, rocks, buds, seashells, and polyps, the edges of these objects were shaded with all seven hues of the solar spectrum.
This riot of rainbow tints was a wonder, a feast for the eyes: a genuine kaleidoscope of red, green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue; in short, the whole palette of a color–happy painter!
If only I had been able to share with Conseil the intense sensations rising in my brain, competing with him in exclamations of wonderment!
If only I had known, like Captain Nemo and his companion, how to exchange thoughts by means of prearranged signals!
So, for lack of anything better, I talked to myself: I declaimed inside this copper box that topped my head, spending more air on empty words than was perhaps advisable.
Conseil, like me, had stopped before this splendid sight.
Obviously, in the presence of these zoophyte and mollusk specimens, the fine lad was classifying his head off.
Polyps and echinoderms abounded on the seafloor: various isis coral, cornularian coral living in isolation, tufts of virginal genus Oculina formerly known by the name "white coral," prickly fungus coral in the shape of mushrooms, sea anemone holding on by their muscular disks, providing a literal flowerbed adorned by jellyfish from the genus Porpita wearing collars of azure tentacles, and starfish that spangled the sand, including veinlike feather stars from the genus Asterophyton that were like fine lace embroidered by the hands of water nymphs, their festoons swaying to the faint undulations caused by our walking.
It filled me with real chagrin to crush underfoot the gleaming mollusk samples that littered the seafloor by the thousands: concentric comb shells, hammer shells, coquina (seashells that actually hop around), top–shell snails, red helmet shells, angel–wing conchs, sea hares, and so many other exhibits from this inexhaustible ocean.
But we had to keep walking, and we went forward while overhead there scudded schools of Portuguese men–of–war that let their ultramarine tentacles drift in their wakes, medusas whose milky white or dainty pink parasols were festooned with azure tassels and shaded us from the sun's rays, plus jellyfish of the species Pelagia panopyra that, in the dark, would have strewn our path with phosphorescent glimmers!
All these wonders I glimpsed in the space of a quarter of a mile, barely pausing, following Captain Nemo whose gestures kept beckoning me onward.
Soon the nature of the seafloor changed.
The plains of sand were followed by a bed of that viscous slime Americans call "ooze," which is composed exclusively of seashells rich in limestone or silica.
Then we crossed a prairie of algae, open–sea plants that the waters hadn't yet torn loose, whose vegetation grew in wild profusion.
Soft to the foot, these densely textured lawns would have rivaled the most luxuriant carpets woven by the hand of man.
But while this greenery was sprawling under our steps, it didn't neglect us overhead.
The surface of the water was crisscrossed by a floating arbor of marine plants belonging to that superabundant algae family that numbers more than 2,000 known species.
I saw long ribbons of fucus drifting above me, some globular, others tubular: Laurencia, Cladostephus with the slenderest foliage, Rhodymenia palmata resembling the fan shapes of cactus.
I observed that green–colored plants kept closer to the surface of the sea, while reds occupied a medium depth, which left blacks and browns in charge of designing gardens and flowerbeds in the ocean's lower strata.
These algae are a genuine prodigy of creation, one of the wonders of world flora.
This family produces both the biggest and smallest vegetables in the world.
Because, just as 40,000 near–invisible buds have been counted in one five–square–millimeter space, so also have fucus plants been gathered that were over 500 meters long!
We had been gone from the Nautilus for about an hour and a half.
It was almost noon.
I spotted this fact in the perpendicularity of the sun's rays, which were no longer refracted.
The magic of these solar colors disappeared little by little, with emerald and sapphire shades vanishing from our surroundings altogether.
We walked with steady steps that rang on the seafloor with astonishing intensity.
The tiniest sounds were transmitted with a speed to which the ear is unaccustomed on shore.
In fact, water is a better conductor of sound than air, and under the waves noises carry four times as fast.
Just then the seafloor began to slope sharply downward.
The light took on a uniform hue.
We reached a depth of 100 meters, by which point we were undergoing a pressure of ten atmospheres.
But my diving clothes were built along such lines that I never suffered from this pressure.