Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the seventeenth chapter of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!

Follow, rate, and review Bite at a Time Books where we read you your favorite classics, one bite at a time. Available wherever you listen to podcasts.

Check out our website, or join our Facebook Group!

Get exclusive Behind the Scenes content on our YouTube!

We are now part of the Bite at a Time Books Productions network!

If you ever wondered what inspired your favorite classic novelist to write their stories, what was happening in their lives or the world at the time, check out Bite at a Time Books Behind the Story wherever you listen to podcasts.

Follow us on all the socials: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook - TikTok

Follow Bree at: Instagram - Twitter - Facebook

San the book and let's see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter, one bite at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for word like by line.

One bite at a time.

My name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

If you want to know what's coming next and vote on upcoming books, sign up for our newsletter@byetatimebooks.com you'll also find our new t shirts in the shop, including podcast shirts and quote shirts from your favorite classic novels.

Be sure to follow my show on your favorite podcast platform so you get all the new episodes.

You can find most of our links in the show notes, but also our website, bytetimebooks.com includes all of the links for our show, including to our Patreon to support the show and YouTube, where we have special behind the narration of the episodes.

We're part of the Bite at a Time Books productions network.

If you'd also like to hear what inspired your favorite classic authors to write their novels and what was going on in the world at the time, check out the bite at a Time books behind the story podcast.

Wherever you listen to podcasts, please note, while we try to keep the text as close to the original as possible, some words have been changed to honor the marginalized communities who've identified the words as harmful and to stay in alignment with bite at a time book's brand values.

Today we'll be continuing 20,000 leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne chapter 17 4000 leagues under the Pacific the next morning, the 18 November, I had quite recovered from my fatigues of the day before, and I went up onto the platform just as the second lieutenant was uttering his daily phrase.

I was admiring the magnificent aspect of the ocean when Captain Nemo appeared.

He did not seem to be aware of my presence and began a series of astronomical observations.

Then, when he had finished, he went and leaned on the cage of the watchlight and gazed abstractly on the ocean.

In the meantime, a number of the sailors of the nautilus, all strong and healthy men, had come up onto the platform.

They came to drop the nets that had been late all night.

These sailors were evidently of different nations, although the european type was visible in all of them.

I recognized some unmistakable Irishmen, Frenchmen, some sclavs, and a greek or candyote.

They were civil and only used that odd language among themselves, the origin of which I could not guess.

Neither could I question them.

The nets were hauled in.

They were a large kind of chalice, like those on the Normandy coasts.

Great pockets that the waves and a chain fixed in the smaller meshes kept open.

These pockets, drawn by iron poles, swept through the water and gathered in everything in their way.

That day, they brought up curious specimens from those productive coasts.

I reckoned that the hall had brought in more than 900 weight of fish.

It was a fine haul, but not to be wondered at.

Indeed, the nets were let down for several hours and enclose in their meshes an infinite variety.

We had no lack of excellent food, and the rapidity of the nautilus and the attraction of the electric light could always renew our supply.

These several productions of the sea were immediately lowered through the panel to the steward's room, some to be eaten fresh and others pickled.

The fishing ended, the provision of air renewed.

I thought that the nautilus was about to continue its submarine excursion and was preparing to return to my room when, without further preamble, the captain turned to me, saying, professor, is not this ocean gifted with real life?

It has its tempers and its gentle moods.

Yesterday it slept as we did, and now it has woke after a quiet night.

Look, he continued, it wakes under the cresses of the sun.

It is going to renew its diurnal existence.

It is an interesting study to watch the play of its organization.

It has a pulse, arteries, spasms.

And I agree with the learned mori who discovered it in the circulation as real as the circulation of blood in animals.

Yes, the ocean has indeed circulation.

And to promote it, the crater has caused things to multiply in it chloric salt and animal culi.

When Captain Nemo spoke thus, he seemed altogether changed and aroused an extraordinary emotion in me.

Also, he added, true existence is there.

And I can imagine the foundations of nautical towns, clusters of submarine houses, which, like the Nautilus, would ascend every morning to breathe at the surface of the water.

Free towns, independent cities.

Yet who knows whether some despot.

Captain Nemo finished his sentence with a violent gesture.

Then, addressing me, as if to chase away some sorrowful thought.

Monsieur Aranax, he asked, do you know the depth of the ocean?

I only know, captain, what the principal surroundings have taught us.

Could you tell me them so that I can suit them to my purpose?

These are some, I replied, that I remember.

If I am not mistaken, a depth of 8000 yards has been found in the North Atlantic and 2500 yards in the Mediterranean.

The most remarkable soundings have been made in the south Atlantic, near the 35th parallel.

And they gave 12,000 yards.

14,000 yards.

And 15,000 yards.

To sum up all, it is reckoned that if the bottom of the sea were leveled, its mean depth would be about one and three quarter leagues.

Well, professor, replied the captain, we shall show you better than that, I hope.

As to the mean depth of this part of the Pacific, I tell you it is only 4000 yards.

Having said this, Captain Nemo went towards the panel and disappeared down the ladder.

I followed him and went into the large drawing room.

The screw was immediately put in motion, and the log gave 20 miles an hour.

During the days and weeks that passed, Captain Nemo was very sparing of his visits.

I seldom saw him.

The lieutenant pricked the ship's course regularly on the chart, so I could always tell exactly the route of the Nautilus.

Nearly every day for some time, the panels of the drawing room were opened, and we were never tired of penetrating the mysteries of the submarine world.

The general direction of the Nautilus was southeast, and it kept between 100 and 150 yards of depth.

One day, however, I do not know why.

Being drawn diagonally by means of the inclined planes, it touched the bed of the sea.

The thermometer indicated a temperature of 4.25 cent, a temperature that at this depth seemed common to all latitudes.

00 in the morning of the 26 November, the nautilus crossed the Tropic of Cancer at 172 degrees long.

On 27th instant, it cited the Sandwich Islands, where Cook died February 14, 1779.

We had then gone 4860 leagues from our starting point.

In the morning, when I went on the platform, I saw 2 miles to windward Hawai, the largest of the seven islands that formed the group.

I saw clearly the cultivated ranges and the several mountain chains that run parallel with the side, and the volcanoes that overtop Mount array, which rise 5000 yards above the level of the sea.

Besides other things the nets brought up were several flabarelli and graceful polypy that are peculiar to that part of the ocean.

The direction of the nautilus was still to the southeast.

It crossed the equator December 1 in 142 degrees long.

And on the fourth of the same month, after crossing rapidly and without anything in particular occurring, we sighted the marquesaws group.

I saw 3 miles off Martin's peak in nokajiva, the largest of the group that belongs to France.

I only saw the woody mountains against the horizon because Captain Nemo did not wish to bring the ship to the wind.

There, the nets brought up beautiful specimens of fish, some with azure fins and tails like gold, the flesh of which is unrivaled, some nearly destitute of scales, but of exquisite flavor, others with bony jaws and yellow tinged gills as good as bonitos.

All fish that would be of use to us after leaving these charming islands, protected by the french flag.

From the fourth to the 11 December, the nautilus sailed over about 2000 miles.

During the daytime of the 11 December, I was busy reading in the large drawing room.

Ned land and conceal watched the luminous water through the half open panels.

The nautilus was immovable.

While its reservoirs were filled, it kept at a depth of 1000 yards, a region rarely visited in the ocean and in which large fish were seldom seen.

I was then reading a charming book by Gene Mays, the slaves of the stomach, and I was learning some valuable lessons from it when conceal interrupted me.

Will master come here a moment?

He said in a curious voice.

What is the matter, conceal?

I want master to look.

I rose, went and leaned on my elbows before the panes, and watched.

In a full electric light.

An enormous black mass, quite immovable, was suspended in the midst of the waters.

I watched it attentively, seeking to find out the nature of this gigantic cetacean.

But a sudden thought crossed my mind.

A vessel, I said half aloud.

Yes, replied the Canadian.

A disabled ship that has sunk perpendicularly.

Nedland was right.

We were close to a vessel of which the tattered shrouds still hung from their chains.

The keel seemed to be in good order, and it had been wrecked, at most some few hours.

Three stumps of masts, broken off about 2ft above the bridge, showed that the vessel had had to sacrifice its masts.

But lying on its side, it had filled and it was healing over to port.

This skeleton of what it had once been was a sad spectacle as it lay lost under the waves.

But sadder still was the side of the bridge, where some corpses bound with robes were still lying.

I counted five.

Four men, one of whom was standing at the helm, and a woman standing by the poop, holding an infant in her arms.

She was quite young.

I could distinguish her features, which the water had not decomposed by the brilliant light from the nautilus.

In one despairing effort, she had raised her infant above her head.

Poor little thing whose arms encircled its mother's neck.

The attitude of the four sailors was frightful, distorted as they were by their convulsive movements, whilst making a last effort to free themselves from the cords that bound them to the vessel.

The steersman, alone, calm, with a grave, clear face, his gray hair glued to his forehead, and his hand clutching the wheel of the helm, seemed even then to be guiding the three broken masts through the depths of the ocean.

What a scene.

We were dumb.

Our hearts beat fast before this shipwreck, taken as it were, from life and photographed in its last moments.

And I saw already coming towards it with hungry eyes, enormous sharks attracted by the human flesh.

However, the nautilus, turning, went round the submerged vessel and in one instant I read on the stern, the Florida Sunderland.

Thank you for joining bite at a.

Time books today while we read a.

Bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and.

I hope you come back tomorrow for.

The next bite of 20,000 leagues under the sea.

Don't forget to sign up for our newsletter@bytetimebooks.com, and check out the shop.

You can check out the show notes or our website, byteatimebooks.com, for the rest of the links for our show.

We'd love to hear from you on social media as well.

What we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter, one at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word forward, line by line, one by time close.