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

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

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

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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.

Twelve some figures a moment after we.

Were seated on a divan in the.

Saloon smoking, the captain showed me a sketch that gave the plan, section, and elevation of the nautilus.

Then he began his description in these words.

Here, Monsieur Aranax, are the several dimensions of the boat you are in.

It is an elongated cylinder with conical ends.

It is very like a cigar in shape, a shape already adopted in London in several constructions of the same sort.

The length of this cylinder, from stem to stern, is exactly 232ft, and its maximum breadth is 26ft.

It is not built quite like your long voyage steamers, but its lines are sufficiently long and its curves prolonged enough to allow the water to slide off easily and oppose no obstacle to its passage.

These two dimensions enable you to obtain, by a simple calculation, the surface and cubic contents of the nautilus.

Its area measures 6032ft and its contents about 1500 cubic yards.

That is to say, when completely immersed, it displaces 50,000ft of water or weighs 1500 tons.

When I made the plans for the submarine vessel, I meant that nine tenths should be submerged.

Consequently, it ought only to displace nine tenths of its bulk, that is to say, only to weigh that number of tons.

I ought not, therefore, to have exceeded that weight, constructing it on the foresight dimensions.

The nautilus is composed of two holes, one inside, the other outside, joined by t shaped irons, which render it very strong indeed, owing to the cellular arrangement, it resists like a block, as if it were solid.

Its sides cannot yield.

It coheres spontaneously, and not by the closeness of its rivets.

And the homogeneity of its construction, due to the perfect union of the materials, enables it to defy the roughest seas.

These two holes are composed of steel plates whose density is from zero seven to zero eight, that of water.

The first is not less than two inches and a half thick and weighs 394 tons.

The second envelope, the keel, 20 inches high and ten thick, weighs alone 62 tons.

The engine, the ballast, the several accessories and apparatus appendages, the partitions and bulkheads weigh 961.62 tons.

Do you follow all this?

I do.

Then when the nautilus is afloat under these circumstances, one 10th is out of the water.

Now, if I've made reservoirs of a size equal to this 10th, are capable of holding 150 tons.

And if I fill them with water, the boat weighing then 1507 tons will be completely immersed.

That would happen, professor.

These reservoirs are in the lower part of the nautilus.

I turn on taps and they fill, and the vessel sinks.

That had just been level with the surface.

Well, captain, but now we come to the real difficulty.

I can understand your rising to the.

Surface, but diving below the surface does not your submarine contrivance encounter a pressure.

And consequently undergo an upward thrust of 1 atm for every 30ft of water.

Just about 15 pounds per square inch.

Just so, sir.

Then, unless you quite fill the nautilus, I do not see how you can.

Draw it down to those depths.

Professor, you must not confound statistics with dynamics, or you'll be exposed to grave errors.

There is very little labor spent in attaining the lower regions of the ocean, for all bodies have a tendency to sink.

When I wanted to find out the necessary increase of weight required to sink the nautilus, I had only to calculate the reduction of volume that seawater requires.

According to the depth that is evident now.

If water is not absolutely incomprehensible, it is at least capable of very slight compression.

Indeed, after the most recent calculations, this reduction is only 00436 of an atmosphere for each 30ft of depth.

If we wanted to sink 3000ft, I should keep account of the reduction of bulk under a pressure equal to that of a column of water of 1000ft.

The calculation is easily verified.

Now I have supplementary reservoirs capable of holding 100 tons.

Therefore, I can sink to a considerable depth.

When I wished to rise to the level of the sea, I only let off the water and empty all the reservoirs.

If I wanted the nautilus to emerge from the 10th part of her total.

Capacity, I had nothing to object to these reasonings.

I admit your calculations, captain, I replied.

I should be wrong to dispute them.

Since daily experience confirms them.

But I foresee a real difficulty in the way.

What, sir?

When you're about 1000ft deep, the walls of the nautilus bear a pressure of 100 atmospheres.

If then just now you were to empty the supplementary reservoirs, to lighten the vessel, and to go up to the.

Surface, the pumps must overcome the pressure.

Of 100 atmospheres, which is 1500 pounds per square inch.

From that, a power that electricity alone.

Can give, said the captain hastily.

I repeat, sir, that the dynamic power of my engines is almost infinite.

The pumps of the nautilus have an enormous power, as you must have observed when their jets of water burst like a torrent upon the Abraham Lincoln.

Besides, I use subsidiary reservoirs only to attain a mean depth of 750 to 1000 fathoms, and that with a view of managing my machines.

Also, when I have a mind to visit the depths of the ocean five or 6 miles below the surface, I make use of slower but not less infallible means.

What are they, captain?

That involves my telling you how the nautiluses worked.

I'm impatient to learn to steer this.

Boat to starboard or port.

To turn, in a word, following a horizontal plan, I use an ordinary rudder fixed on the back of the stern post, and with one wheel and some tackled steerby.

But I can also make the nautilus rise and sink and sink and rise by a vertical movement, by means of two inclined planes fastened to its sides opposite the center of rotation.

Planes that move in every direction and that are worked by powerful levers from the interior.

If the planes are kept parallel with.

The boat, it moves horizontally.

If slanted, the nautilus, according to this inclination and under the influence of the screw, either sinks diagonally or rises diagonally, as it suits me.

And even if I wish to rise more quickly to the surface, I ship the screw, and the pressure of the water causes the nautilus to rise vertically, like a balloon.

Filled with hydrogen.

Bravo, captain.

But how can the steersman follow the route?

In the middle of the waters, the steersman is placed in a glazed box that is raised about the whole of the nautilus and furnished with lenses.

Are these lenses capable of resisting such pressure?

Perfectly.

Glass which breaks at a blow is nevertheless capable of offering considerable resistance.

During some experiments of fishing by electric light in 1864 in the northern seas, we saw plates less than a third of an inch thick resist a pressure of 16 atmospheres.

Now, the glass that I use is not less than 30 times thicker.

Granted.

But after all, in order to see.

The light must exceed the darkness.

And in the midst of the darkness in the water, how can you see?

Behind the steersman's cage is placed a powerful electric reflector, the rays from which light up the sea for half a mile in front.

Ah, bravo.

Bravo, captain.

Now I can account for this phosphorescence in the supposed narwhal that puzzled us.

Though I now ask you if the.

Boarding of the Nautilus and of the.

Scotia that has made such a noise has been the result of a chance Rakotra?

Quite accidental, sir.

I was sailing only one fathom below the surface of the water when the shock came.

And it had no bad result?

None, sir.

But now, about your Rakotra with the.

Abraham Lincoln professor, I'm sorry for one of the best vessels in the american navy, but they attacked me, and I was bound to defend myself.

I contented myself, however, with putting the frigate or the combat.

She will not have any difficulty in getting repaired at the next port.

Commander, your Nautilus is certainly a marvelous boat.

Yes, professor, and I love it as if it were part of myself.

If danger threatens one of your vessels on the ocean, the first impression is the feeling of an abyss above and below.

On the Nautilus, men's hearts never fail them.

No defects to be afraid of, for the double shell is as firm as iron.

No rigging to attend to, no sails for the wind to carry away, no boilers to burst, no fire to fear, for the vessel is made of iron, not of wood.

No coal to run short for.

Electricity is the only mechanical agent.

No collision to fear, for it alone swims in deep water, no tempest to brave, for when it dives below the water, it reaches absolute tranquility.

There, sir, that is the perfection of vessels.

And if it is true that the engineer has more confidence in the vessel than the builder and the builder than the captain himself, you understand the trust I repose in my Nautilus, for I am at once captain builder and engineer.

But how could you construct this wonderful Nautilus in secret?

Each separate portion, Monsieur Aranax, was brought from different parts of the globe.

The keel was forged at Croissant, the shaft of the screw at Pen and Co's, London, the iron plates of the hole at Lairds of Liverpool, the screw itself at Scots at Glasgow.

The reservoirs are made by Kaling Co.

At Paris, the engine by Krupp in Prussia, its beak in Motala's workshop in Sweden, its mathematical instruments by Hart Brothers.

Of New York, etc.

And each of these people had my.

Orders under different names, but these parts had to be put together and arranged.

Professor, I had set up my workshops upon a desert island in the ocean.

They're my workmen.

That is to say, the brave men that I instructed and educated and myself have put together our Nautilus.

Then, when the work was finished, fire destroyed all trace of our proceedings on this island that I could have jumped over if I had liked.

Then the cost of this vessel is great.

Monster Aranax, an iron vessel, costs 145 pounds per ton.

Now, the Nautilus weighed 1500.

It came, therefore, to 67,500 pounds and 80,000 more pounds for fitting it up, and about 200,000 pounds with the works of art in the collections it contains.

One last question, Captain Nemo.

Ask it, professor.

You are rich.

Immensely rich, sir.

And I could, without missing it, pay the national debt of France.

I stared at the singular person who spoke thus.

Was he playing upon my credulity.

The future would decide that.

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.

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