r
about four hours, this marvellous excursion came to an end. A wall of
superb rocks, in an imposing mass, rose before us, a heap of gigantic
blocks, an enormous, steep granite shore, forming dark grottos, but
which presented no practicable slope; it was the prop of the Island of
Crespo. It was the earth! Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. A gesture
of his brought us all to a halt; and, however desirous I might be to
scale the wall, I was obliged to stop. Here ended Captain Nemo's
domains. And he would not go beyond them. Further on was a portion of
the globe he might not trample upon.

The return began. Captain Nemo had returned to the head of his little
band, directing their course without hesitation. I thought we were not
following the same road to return to the Nautilus. The new road was
very steep, and consequently very painful. We approached the surface
of the sea rapidly. But this return to the upper strata was not so
sudden as to cause relief from the pressure too rapidly, which might
have produced serious disorder in our organisation, and brought on
internal lesions, so fatal to divers. Very soon light reappeared and
grew, and, the sun being low on the horizon, the refraction edged the
different objects with a spectral ring. At ten yards and a half deep,
we walked amidst a shoal of little fishes of all kinds, more numerous
than the birds of the air, and also more agile; but no aquatic game
worthy of a shot had as yet met our gaze, when at that moment I saw the
Captain shoulder his gun quickly, and follow a moving object into the
shrubs. He fired; I heard a slight hissing, and a creature fell
stunned at some distance from us. It was a magnificent sea-otter, an
enhydrus, the only exclusively marine quadruped. This otter was five
feet long, and must have been very valuable. Its skin, chestnut-brown
above and silvery underneath, would have made one of those beautiful
furs so sought after in the Russian and Chinese markets: the fineness
and the lustre of its coat would certainly fetch L80. I admired this
curious mammal, with its rounded head ornamented with short ears, its
round eyes, and white whiskers like those of a cat, with webbed feet
and nails, and tufted tail. This precious animal, hunted and tracked
by fishermen, has now become very rare, and taken refuge chiefly in the
northern parts of the Pacific, or probably its race would soon become
extinct.

Captain Nemo's companion took the beast,