meantime, accept a shake of the hand; I have nothing else to offer.”
“Monsieur has never been so generous,” said Conseil.
And the brave lad descended.
On the 2nd January we had made 11,340 miles, or 5,250 leagues from our starting-point in the Japanese seas. In front now extended the dangerous coral-reefs of the north-east coast of Australia. We skirted this wonderful bank (on which Cook’s vessels were lost in 1770) for a distance of many miles. The ship which carried Cook ran upon a rock, and that it did not sink was owing to the fact that a piece of coral, detached by the blow, remained fast in the hole it had made in the ship’s hull.
I wished very much to visit this reef, which is 360 leagues in length, and against which the sea, always rough, breaks with a roar like thunder. But at this moment the inclined planes of the Nautilus directed us to a very great depth, and I could see nothing of these high walls of coral. So I was obliged to content, myself with various specimens of fish, brought up in the nets. I remarked, amongst others, the germons, a sort of large scombre, as large as tunny-fish, with bluish sides, and striped transversely. These stripes faded at the death of the animal. These fish accompanied us by hundreds, and furnished us with excellent dishes. We caught, also, a large number of sparus vertor, tasting like a John Dory, and the flying pyrapeds, true sea-swallows, which, in dark nights, illuminate the air and water alternately with their phosphorescent glimmerings. Amongst the molluscs and the zoophytes I found in the meshes of the
