My companions showed the same symptoms.
Some of the crew had rattling in the throat.
On that day, the sixth of our imprisonment, Captain Nemo,
finding the pickaxes work too slowly, resolved to crush
the ice-bed that still separated us from the liquid sheet.
This man's coolness and energy never forsook him. He subdued his
physical pains by moral force.
By his orders the vessel was lightened, that is to say,
raised from the ice-bed by a change of specific gravity.
When it floated they towed it so as to bring it above
the immense trench made on the level of the water-line. Then,
filling his reservoirs of water, he descended and shut himself up
in the hole.
Just then all the crew came on board, and the double door of communication
was shut. The Nautilus then rested on the bed of ice, which was not one
yard thick, and which the sounding leads had perforated in a thousand places.
The taps of the reservoirs were then opened, and a hundred cubic yards
of water was let in, increasing the weight of the Nautilus to 1,800 tons.
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