SECOND PART
CHAPTER 21: A Mass Execution
(continued)
I was about to go below to alert them, when the chief officer
climbed onto the platform. Several seamen were with him.
Captain Nemo didn't see them, or didn't want to see them.
They carried out certain procedures that, on the Nautilus, you could
call "clearing the decks for action." They were quite simple.
The manropes that formed a handrail around the platform were lowered.
Likewise the pilothouse and the beacon housing were withdrawn
into the hull until they lay exactly flush with it. The surface
of this long sheet-iron cigar no longer offered a single protrusion
that could hamper its maneuvers.
I returned to the lounge. The Nautilus still emerged above
the surface. A few morning gleams infiltrated the liquid strata.
Beneath the undulations of the billows, the windows were enlivened
by the blushing of the rising sun. That dreadful day of June
2 had dawned.
At seven o'clock the log told me that the Nautilus had reduced speed.
I realized that it was letting the warship approach.
Moreover, the explosions grew more intensely audible.
Shells furrowed the water around us, drilling through it with an
odd hissing sound.
"My friends," I said, "it's time. Let's shake hands, and may God
be with us!"
Ned Land was determined, Conseil calm, I myself nervous and
barely in control.
We went into the library. Just as I pushed open the door leading
to the well of the central companionway, I heard the hatch
close sharply overhead.
The Canadian leaped up the steps, but I stopped him. A well-known
hissing told me that water was entering the ship's ballast tanks.
Indeed, in a few moments the Nautilus had submerged some meters
below the surface of the waves.
I understood this maneuver. It was too late to take action.
The Nautilus wasn't going to strike the double-decker where it
was clad in impenetrable iron armor, but below its waterline,
where the metal carapace no longer protected its planking.
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