My face was purple, my lips blue, my faculties suspended.
I neither saw nor heard. All notion of time had gone from my mind.
My muscles could not contract. I do not know how many hours
passed thus, but I was conscious of the agony that was coming over me.
I felt as if I was going to die. Suddenly I came to.
Some breaths of air penetrated my lungs. Had we risen to the surface
of the waves? Were we free of the iceberg? No! Ned and Conseil,
my two brave friends, were sacrificing themselves to save me.
Some particles of air still remained at the bottom of one apparatus.
Instead of using it, they had kept it for me, and, while they
were being suffocated, they gave me life, drop by drop.
I wanted to push back the thing; they held my hands,
and for some moments I breathed freely. I looked at the clock;
it was eleven in the morning. It ought to be the 28th of March.
The Nautilus went at a frightful pace, forty miles an hour. It literally
tore through the water. Where was Captain Nemo? Had he succumbed?
Were his companions dead with him? At the moment the manometer
indicated that we were not more than twenty feet from the surface.
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