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

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Today we'll be continuing 20,000 leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne chapter nine a vanished continent the next morning, the 19 February, I saw the Canadian enter my room.

I expected this visit.

He looked very disappointed.

Well, sir, said he.

Well, Ned, fortune was against us yesterday.

Yes, that captain must need stop exactly at the hour we intended leaving his vessel.

Yes, Ned, he had business at his bankers.

His bankers, or rather his banking house.

By that I mean the ocean, where its riches are safer than in the chests of the state.

I then related to the Canadian the incidents of the preceding night, hoping to bring him back to the idea of not abandoning the captain.

But my recital had no other result than an energetically expressed regret from Ned that he had not been able to take a walk on the battlefield of Vigo.

On his own account, however, said he, all is not ended.

It is only a blow of the harpoon lost.

Another time we must succeed, and tonight if necessary.

In what direction is the nautilus going?

I asked.

I do not know, replied Ned.

Well, at noon we shall see the point.

The Canadian returned to conceal.

As soon as I was dressed, I went into the saloon.

The compass was not reassuring.

The course of the nautilus was south southwest.

We were turning our backs on Europe.

I waited with some impatience till the ship's place was pricked on the chart.

At about 11:30 the reservoirs were emptied, and our vessel rose to the surface of the ocean.

I rushed towards the platform.

Ned land had preceded me.

No more land in sight.

Nothing but an immense sea.

Some sails on the horizon, doubtless as going to sand Roque in search of favorable winds for doubling the Cape of Good Hope.

The weather was cloudy.

A gale of wind was preparing.

Ned raved and tried to pierce the cloudy horizon.

He still hoped that behind all that fog stretched the land he so longed for.

At noon the sun showed itself.

For an instant, the second profited by this brightness to take its height.

Then the sea becoming more billowy, we descended and the panel closed.

An hour after, upon consulting the chart, I saw the position of the nautilus was marked at 16 degrees, 17 minutes longitude and 33 degrees, 22 minutes latitude.

At 150 leagues from the nearest coast, there was no means of flight.

And I leave you to imagine the rage of the Canadian.

When I informed him of our situation.

For myself, I was not particularly sorry.

I felt lightened of the load which had oppressed me, and was able to return with some degree of calmness to my accustomed work.

That night, about 11:00 I received a most unexpected visit from Captain Nemo.

He asked me very graciously if I felt fatigued from my watch of the preceding night.

I answered in the negative.

Then, Monsieur Aranax, I propose a curious excursion.

Propose, captain?

You have hitherto only visited the submarine depths by daylight, under the brightness of the sun.

Would it suit you to see them in the darkness of the night?

Most willingly.

I warn you, the way will be tiring.

We shall have far to walk and must climb a mountain.

The roads are not well kept.

What you say, captain, only heightens my curiosity.

I'm ready to follow you.

Come then, sir.

We will put on our diving dresses.

Arriving at the robing room, I saw that neither of my companions nor any of the ship's crew were to follow us on this excursion.

Captain Nemo had not even proposed my taking with me either net or conceal.

In a few moments, we had put on our diving dresses.

They placed on our backs the reservoirs abundantly filled with air, but no electric lamps were prepared.

I called the captain's attention to the fact.

They'll be useless, he replied.

I thought I had not heard him all right, but I could not repeat my observation, for the captain's head had already disappeared in its metal case.

I finished harnessing myself.

I felt them put an iron pointed stick into my hand, and some minutes later, after going through the usual form, we set foot on the bottom of the Atlantic at a depth of 150 fathoms.

Midnight was near.

The waters were profoundly dark, but Captain Nemo pointed out in the distance a reddish spot, a sort of large light shining brilliantly about 2 miles from the nautilus.

What this fire might be, what could feed it, why, and how it lit up the liquid mass, I could not say.

In any case, it did light our way vaguely, it is true, but I soon accustomed myself to the peculiar darkness, and I understood, under such circumstances, the uselessness of the rumcorp apparatus.

As we advanced, I heard a kind of pattering above my head, the noise redoubling, sometimes producing a continual shower.

I soon understood the cause.

It was rain, falling violently and crisping the surface of the waves.

Instinctively, the thought flashed across my mind that I should be wet through the water in the midst of the water.

I cannot help laughing at the od idea, but indeed, in the thick diving dress, the liquid element is no longer felt, and one only seems to be in an atmosphere somewhat denser than the terrestrial atmosphere, nothing more.

After half an hour's walk, the soil became stony.

Medusai, microscopic crustacea and penetools lit it slightly with their phosphorescent gleam.

I caught a glimpse of pieces of stone covered with millions of zoophytes and masses of seaweed.

My feet often slipped upon the sticky carpet of seaweed, and without my iron tip stick, I should have fallen.

More than once.

In turning round, I could still see the whitish lantern of the nautilus beginning to pale in the distance.

But the rosy light which guided us increased and lit up the horizon.

The presence of this fire underwater puzzled me in the highest degree.

Was I going towards a natural phenomenon as yet unknown to the savants of the earth?

Or even for this thought crossed my brain, had the hand of man ought to do with this conflagration?

Had he fanned this flame?

Was I to meet in these depths companions and friends of Captain Nemo, whom he was going to visit, and who, like him, led this strange existence?

Should I find down there a whole colony of exiles who, weary of the miseries of this earth, had sought and found independence in the deep ocean?

All these foolish and unreasonable ideas pursued me, and in this condition of mind, overexcited by the succession of wonders, continually passing before my eyes.

I should not have been surprised to meet at the bottom of the sea, one of those submarine towns of which Captain Nemo dreamed.

Our road grew lighter and lighter.

The white glimmer came in rays from the summit of a mountain about 800ft high.

What I saw was simply a reflection developed by the clearness of the waters.

The source of this inexplicable light was a fire on the opposite side of the mountain, in the midst of the stony maze furrowing the bottom of the Atlantic, Captain Nemo advanced without hesitation.

He knew this dreary road.

Doubtless he had often traveled over it and could not lose himself.

I followed him with unshaken confidence.

He seemed to me like a genie of the sea.

And as he walked before me, I could not help admiring his stature, which was outlined in black on the luminous horizon.

It was one in the morning when we arrived at the first slopes of the mountain.

But to gain access to them, we must venture through the difficult paths of the vast cops.

Yes, the cops of dead trees without leaves, without SAP, trees petrified by the action of the water, and here and there, overtopped by gigantic pines.

It was like a coal pit, still standing, holding by the roots to the broken soil, and whose branches, like fine black paper cuttings, showed distinctly on the watery ceiling.

Picture to yourself a forest in the hearts hanging onto the sides of the mountain, but a forest swallowed up.

The paths were encumbered with seaweed and fuchus, between which graveled a whole world of crustacea.

I went along, climbing the rocks, striding over extended trunks, breaking the sea bindweed which hung from one tree to the other, and frightening the fishes, which flew from branch to branch, pressing onward.

I felt no fatigue.

I followed my guide, who was never tired.

What a spectacle.

How can I express it?

How?

Paint the aspect of those woods and rocks in this medium, their underparts dark and wild, the upper colored with red tents.

By that light, which the reflecting powers of the waters doubled, we climbed rocks which fell directly after with gigantic bounds and the low growling of an avalanche.

To right and left ran long, dark galleries where sight was lost.

Here opened vast glades which the hand of man seemed to have worked.

And I sometimes asked myself if some inhabitant of these submarine regions would not suddenly appear to me.

But Captain Nemo was still mounting.

I could not stay behind.

I followed boldly.

My stick gave me good help.

A false step would have been dangerous on the narrow passes sloping down to the sides of the gulfs.

But I walked with firm step, without feeling any giddiness.

Now I jumped a crevice, the depth of which would have made me hesitate had it been among the glaciers on the land.

Now I ventured on the unsteady trunk of a tree, thrown across from one abyss to the other without looking under my feet, having only eyes to admire the wild sights of this region.

Their monumental rocks, leaning on their regularly cut bases, seemed to defy all laws of equilibrium.

From between their stony knees, trees sprang like a jet under heavy pressure, and upheld others which upheld them.

Natural towers, large scarps cut perpendicularly like a curtain, inclined at angle, which the laws of gravitation could never have tolerated in terrestrial regions.

2 hours after quitting the nautilus, we had crossed the line of trees, and a hundred feet above our heads rose the top of the mountain, which cast a shadow on the brilliant radiation of the opposite slope.

Some petrified shrubs ran fantastically here and there.

Fishes got up under our feet like birds in the long grass.

The massive rocks were rent with impenetrable fractures, deep grottos and unfathomable holes, at the bottom of which formidable creatures might be heard moving.

My blood curdled when I saw enormous antennae blocking my road, or some frightful claw closing with a noise.

In the shadow of some cavity, millions of luminous spots shone brightly.

In the midst of the darkness, there were the eyes of giant crustacea crouched in their holes, giant lobsters, setting themselves up like halbadiers and moving their claws with the clicking sound of pinchers.

Titanic crabs pointed like a gun on its carriage, and frightful looking pulps interweaving their tentacles like a living nest of serpents.

We had now arrived on the first platform, where other surprises awaited me.

Before us lay some picturesque ruins which betrayed the hand of man and not that of the creator.

There were vast heaps of stone, amongst which might be traced the vague and shadowy forms of castles and temples, clothed with a world of blossoming zoophites, and over which, instead of ivy, seaweed, and fuchus, threw a thick vegetable mantle.

But what was this portion of the globe which had been swallowed by cataclysms, who had placed those rocks and stones like cromlex of prehistoric times?

Where was I?

Whither had Captain Nemo's fancy hurried me?

I would feign, if asked him.

Not being able to, I stopped him.

I seized his arm, but shaking his head and pointing to the highest point of the mountain, he seemed to say, come.

Come along, come higher.

I followed, and in a few minutes I had climbed to the top, which, for a circle of ten yards commanded the whole massive rock.

I looked down the side we had just climbed.

The mountain did not rise more than seven or 800ft above the level of the plain, but on the opposite side it commanded from twice that height the depths of this part of the Atlantic.

My eyes ranged far over a large space lit by a violent fulguration.

In fact, the mountain was a volcano.

At 50ft above the peak, in the midst of a rain of stones and scori, a large crater was vomiting forth torrents of lava, which fell in a cascade of fire into the bosom of the liquid mass.

Thus situated, this volcano lit the lower plain like an immense torch, even to the extreme limits of the horizon.

I said that the submarine crater threw up lava, but no flames.

Flames require the oxygen of the air to feed upon and cannot be developed underwater.

But streams of lava, having in themselves the principles of their incandescence, can attain a white heat, fight vigorously against the liquid element and turn it to vapor by contact.

Rapid currents sparing all these gases and diffusion and torrents of lava slid to the bottom of the mountain like an eruption of Vesuvius on another terra del Grico.

There, indeed, under my eyes, ruined, destroyed, lay a town, its roofs opened to the sky, its temples fallen, its arches dislocated, its columns lying on the ground from which one would still recognize the massive character of tuscan architecture.

Further on, some remains of a gigantic aqueduct.

Here, the high base of an acropolis, with the floating outline of a parthenon.

There, traces of a quay, as if ancient port had formerly abutted on the borders of the ocean and disappeared with its merchant vessels and its war galleys.

Farther on again, long lines of sunken walls and broad, deserted streets.

A perfect Pompeii escaped beneath the waters.

Such was the sight that Captain Nemo brought before my eyes.

Where was I?

Where was I?

I must know.

At any cost.

I tried to speak, but Captain Nemo stopped me by a gesture and, picking up a piece of chalkstone, advanced to a rock of black basalt and traced the one word Atlantis.

What a light shot through my mind.

Atlantis, the Atlantis of Plato, that continent denied by origin, and Humboldt, who placed its disappearance amongst the legendary tales.

I had it there now before my eyes, bearing upon it the unexceptionable testimony of its catastrophe.

The region thus engulfed was beyond Europe, Asia and Libya, beyond the columns of Hercules, where those powerful people, the Atlantides, lived, against whom the first wars of ancient Greeks were waged.

Thus, led by the strangest destiny, I was treading underfoot.

The mountains of this continent, touching with my hand those ruins, a thousand generations old and contemporary with the geological epics.

I was walking on the very spot where the contemporaries of the first man had walked, whilst I was trying to fix in my mind every detail of this grand landscape.

Captain Nemo remained motionless, as if petrified, in mute ecstasy, leaning on a mossy stone.

Was he dreaming of those generations long since disappeared?

Was he asking them the secret of human destiny?

Was it here this strange man came to steep himself in historical recollections and live again this ancient life, he who wanted no modern one?

What would I not have given to know his thoughts, to share them, to understand them?

We remained for an hour at this place, contemplating the vast plains under the brightness of the lava, which was sometimes wonderfully intense.

Rapid tremblings ran along the mountain, caused by internal bubblings.

Deep noise, distinctly transmitted through the liquid medium, were echoed with majestic grandeur.

At this moment the moon appeared through the massive waters and through her pale rays on the buried continent.

It was but a gleam, but what an indescribable effect.

The captain rose, cast one last look on the immense plain, and then bade me follow him.

We descended the mountain rapidly in the mineral forest.

Once passed, I saw the lantern of the nautilus shining like a star.

The captain walked straight to it, and we got on board as the first rays of light whitened the surface of the ocean.

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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