During the night the temperature of the water rose to one degree below zero. The injections could not carry it to a higher point. But as the congelation of the sea-water produces at least two degrees, I was at last reassured against the dangers of solidification. Sir, said I, no doubt you are ignorant of the discussions which have taken place concerning you in America and Europe. You do not know that divers accidents, caused by collisions with your submarine machine, have excited public feeling in the two continents. I omit the hypotheses without number by which it was sought to explain the inexplicable phenomenon of which you alone possess the secret. But you must understand that, in pursuing you over the high seas of the Pacific, the Abraham Lincoln believed itself to be chasing some powerful sea-monster, of which it was necessary to rid the ocean at any price. It leads to the small boat, he said. In the eighty-ninths genus of fishes, classed by Lacepede, belonging to the second lower class of bony, characterized by opercules and bronchial membranes, I remarked the scorp?na, the head of which is furnished with spikes, and which has but one dorsal fin; these creatures are covered or not, with little shells, according to the sub-class to which they belong. The second sub-class gives us specimens of didactyles fourteen or fifteen inches in length, with yellow rays, and heads of a most fantastic appearance. As to the first sub-class, it gives several specimens of that singular-looking fish appropriately called a 'sea-frog,' with large head, sometimes swollen with protuberances, bristling with spikes, and covered with tubercles; it has irregular and hideous horns; its body and tail are covered with callosities; its sting makes a dangerous wound; it is both repugnant and horrible to look at.
Certainly, said I, after close attention; I see something like a long black body on the top of the water. Had I unwittingly provoked this fit of anger? Did this incomprehensible person imagine that I had discovered some forbidden secret? No; I was not the object of this hatred, for he was not looking at me, his eye was steadily fixed upon the impenetrable point of the horizon. At last Captain Nemo recovered himself. His agitation subsided. He addressed some words in a foreign language to his lieutenant, then turned to me. M. Aronnax, he said, in rather an imperious tone, I require you to keep one of the conditions that bind you to me. Just so, sir. So, M. Aronnax, you really think that the Nautilus cannot disengage itself?
Well, sir, said Captain Nemo, you and your companions shall visit the Bank of Manaar, and if by chance some fisherman should be there, we shall see him at work. Look well, said Ned, there, on the starboard beam, about the height of the lantern! Do you not see a mass which seems to move? But, friend Ned, said Conseil, why do you not ask Captain Nemo's permission to chase them? At this moment a hard body struck me. I clung to it, then I felt that I was being drawn up, that I was brought to the surface of the water, that my chest collapsed: I fainted.