So I had to give up any notions of questioning them.
The nets were hauled on board.
They were a breed of trawl resembling those used off the Normandy coast, huge pouches held half open by a floating pole and a chain laced through the lower meshes.
Trailing in this way from these iron glove makers, the resulting receptacles scoured the ocean floor and collected every marine exhibit in their path.
That day they gathered up some unusual specimens from these fish–filled waterways: anglerfish whose comical movements qualify them for the epithet "clowns," black Commerson anglers equipped with their antennas, undulating triggerfish encircled by little red bands, bloated puffers whose venom is extremely insidious, some olive–hued lampreys, snipefish covered with silver scales, cutlass fish whose electrocuting power equals that of the electric eel and the electric ray, scaly featherbacks with brown crosswise bands, greenish codfish, several varieties of goby, etc.; finally, some fish of larger proportions: a one–meter jack with a prominent head, several fine bonito from the genus Scomber decked out in the colors blue and silver, and three magnificent tuna whose high speeds couldn't save them from our trawl.
I estimate that this cast of the net brought in more than 1,000 pounds of fish.
It was a fine catch but not surprising.
In essence, these nets stayed in our wake for several hours, incarcerating an entire aquatic world in prisons made of thread.
So we were never lacking in provisions of the highest quality, which the Nautilus's speed and the allure of its electric light could continually replenish.
These various exhibits from the sea were immediately lowered down the hatch in the direction of the storage lockers, some to be eaten fresh, others to be preserved.
After its fishing was finished and its air supply renewed, I thought the Nautilus would resume its underwater excursion, and I was getting ready to return to my stateroom, when Captain Nemo turned to me and said without further preamble:
"Look at this ocean, professor!
Doesn't it have the actual gift of life?
Doesn't it experience both anger and affection?
Last evening it went to sleep just as we did, and there it is, waking up after a peaceful night!"
No hellos or good mornings for this gent!
You would have thought this eccentric individual was simply continuing a conversation we'd already started!
"See!" he went on.
"It's waking up under the sun's caresses!
It's going to relive its daily existence!
What a fascinating field of study lies in watching the play of its organism.
It owns a pulse and arteries, it has spasms, and I side with the scholarly Commander Maury, who discovered that it has a circulation as real as the circulation of blood in animals."
I'm sure that Captain Nemo expected no replies from me, and it seemed pointless to pitch in with
"Ah yes,"
"Exactly," or
"How right you are!"
Rather, he was simply talking to himself, with long pauses between sentences.
He was meditating out loud.
"Yes," he said, "the ocean owns a genuine circulation, and to start it going, the Creator of All Things has only to increase its heat, salt, and microscopic animal life.
In essence, heat creates the different densities that lead to currents and countercurrents.
Evaporation, which is nil in the High Arctic regions and very active in equatorial zones, brings about a constant interchange of tropical and polar waters.
What's more, I've detected those falling and rising currents that make up the ocean's true breathing.
I've seen a molecule of salt water heat up at the surface, sink into the depths, reach maximum density at –2° centigrade, then cool off, grow lighter, and rise again.
At the poles you'll see the consequences of this phenomenon, and through this law of farseeing nature, you'll understand why water can freeze only at the surface!"
As the captain was finishing his sentence, I said to myself:
"The pole!
Is this brazen individual claiming he'll take us even to that location?"
Meanwhile the captain fell silent and stared at the element he had studied so thoroughly and unceasingly.
Then, going on:
"Salts," he said, "fill the sea in considerable quantities, professor, and if you removed all its dissolved saline content, you'd create a mass measuring 4,500,000 cubic leagues, which if it were spread all over the globe, would form a layer more than ten meters high.
And don't think that the presence of these salts is due merely to some whim of nature.
No.
They make ocean water less open to evaporation and prevent winds from carrying off excessive amounts of steam, which, when condensing, would submerge the temperate zones.
Salts play a leading role, the role of stabilizer for the general ecology of the globe!"
Captain Nemo stopped, straightened up, took a few steps along the platform, and returned to me:
"As for those billions of tiny animals," he went on, "those infusoria that live by the millions in one droplet of water, 800,000 of which are needed to weigh one milligram, their role is no less important.
They absorb the marine salts, they assimilate the solid elements in the water, and since they create coral and madrepores, they're the true builders of limestone continents!
And so, after they've finished depriving our water drop of its mineral nutrients, the droplet gets lighter, rises to the surface, there absorbs more salts left behind through evaporation, gets heavier, sinks again, and brings those tiny animals new elements to absorb.
The outcome: a double current, rising and falling, constant movement, constant life!
More intense than on land, more abundant, more infinite, such life blooms in every part of this ocean, an element fatal to man, they say, but vital to myriads of animals—and to me!"