[00:00.72]Chapter 7.
[00:02.08]Trapped.
[00:04.98]The Nautilus sailed from the Indian Ocean into the Southern Ocean,
[00:10.52]and our underwater landscape changed quickly.
[00:14.44]Icebergs drifted by the window,
[00:18.87]shining ghostly white.
[00:22.79]Was Nemo mad enough to be heading for the South Pole?
[00:29.95]Many ships had sunk attempting to reach the pole.
[00:36.96]For several weeks, my friends and I had argued about Nemo.
[00:46.65]But one thing is sure, I said.
[00:51.10]Nemo is an amazing man, and he knows more about the sea than anyone in the world.
[01:02.10]He's clever, all right, Ned agreed,
[01:08.66]but he's also as cold as the icebergs we're sailing past.
[01:17.09]The following morning at 3:00,
[01:21.34]the Nautilus rocked violently,
[01:26.11]and I was thrown from my bed.
[01:29.95]Have we had an accident?
[01:33.70]I asked Nemo.
[01:36.61]Yes, he answered shortly.
[01:41.78]An iceberg has turned over and fallen on us.
[01:48.37]Has it done any damage?
[01:51.64]I asked.
[01:57.78]It has trapped us, Nemo said.
[02:04.78]It struck the Nautilus as it fell, and then it floated back up and pinned us under a sheet of ice.
[02:16.31]Ned and Conseil, also shaken from their beds, joined us in the saloon.
[02:24.56]We are floating in a box of ice, Nemo said.
[02:32.16]We could see the four ice walls through the observation window.
[02:39.08]The electric light from the Nautilus made the white surfaces dazzlingly bright.
[02:49.28]Gentlemen, Nemo said calmly,
[02:58.04]we face two ways of dying.
[03:03.94]One, we may be crushed by the ice,
[03:11.86]or two, we may suffocate.
[03:17.38]We only have 48 hours of air left in the tanks.
[03:27.03]Can we escape within 48 hours?
[03:30.74]I asked.
[03:33.89]We are going to try and break through the thinnest wall of ice, which lies below us, Nemo said.
[03:44.56]10 meters of ice separated the Nautilus from clear water below.
[03:55.22]Nemo calculated that we needed to dig out 600 cubic meters to make a hole large enough for the Nautilus to get through.
[04:11.42]The crew set to work straight away.
[04:17.26]Wearing specially padded diving suits, they drilled into the ice, and then attacked it with their pickaxes.
[04:29.63]Chips of ice floated off into the water as the crew worked.
[04:37.73]All of us took a turn in the water with a pickaxe.
[04:43.88]Our lives depended on it.
[04:50.53]We worked two hour shifts at a time.
[04:56.77]When I came back to the Nautilus, I noticed a difference between the pure air of the diving tanks and the poor air in the Nautilus.
[05:11.36]On board, we were slowly being poisoned.
[05:19.79]After 12 hours, we had only dug out 1 meter of ice.
[05:27.56]At that rate, it would take five nights and four days to break out, but we only had enough air for two more days.
[05:43.51]On my next shift, I noticed that the three walls we were not digging into seemed to be getting nearer.
[05:53.82]The ice was closing in on the Nautilus.
[05:58.88]The three walls were growing thicker, and would soon crush the submarine like glass.
[06:09.98]Our only chance is to dig quicker than the walls freeze up, Nemo said.
[06:19.70]Soon, the air aboard the Nautilus became so bad that we all looked forward to going out to work and breathing the pure air of our diving tanks.
[06:34.75]That evening, the trench was 1 meter deeper,
[06:40.74]but the side walls of the ice box had also grown a lot thicker.
[06:47.49]We weren't going to make it before the ice closed in.
[06:54.65]Nemo paced the saloon.
[06:59.23]We must stop the other walls from freezing up, he said.
[07:08.48]Then an idea struck him.
[07:14.56]Boiling water, he muttered.
[07:20.32]Boiling water?
[07:23.35]I cried.
[07:28.92]Yes, Professor.
[07:34.79]Jets of boiling water fired at the walls will stop them from freezing so quickly.
[07:43.81]Of course, I agreed.
[07:52.48]During the night, the Nautilus pumped out boiling water into the sea around us.
[07:59.63]The temperature rose enough to stop the walls of ice closing in any further.
[08:08.83]6 meters of ice had been cleared by morning.
[08:14.62]Only 4 meters were left, but we only had one more day of air left.
[08:25.74]Towards the end of the day, my lungs panted as they struggled for oxygen.
[08:34.40]The air aboard the Nautilus was almost finished,
[08:40.14]and there were still 2 meters of ice to break through.
[08:46.93]The air that was left was kept for the workers.
[08:52.70]Not a breath of it was pumped into the Nautilus.
[09:00.24]When I returned from my shift, I gasped for breath, and my head was dizzy with pain.
[09:11.64]Captain Nemo knew that we would never make it in time.
[09:18.41]We could not work fast enough with the pickaxes.
[09:25.33]There was only one small last chance.
[09:34.17]Nemo decided to try and ram the Nautilus through the rest of the layer of ice.
[09:43.07]His face stern, Nemo revved the engines and dived to the bottom of the trench at full speed.
[09:55.13]We hit the ice where we had been digging like a sledgehammer.
[10:01.99]There was a terrible cracking, tearing sound, and the Nautilus shuddered like a live creature
[10:13.71]and floated free.
[10:18.04]We're going to do it!
[10:21.31]Conseil cried in delight.
[10:25.75]But I lay suffocating slowly.
[10:31.78]My face was purple, and my lips turned blue.
[10:37.75]I could not think.
[10:41.52]I drifted for a few moments,
[10:48.52]and then everything went black.
[10:54.84]A rush of air revived me.
[10:59.47]Had we risen to the surface already?
[11:05.80]No, it was Ned and Conseil.
[11:13.07]A scrap of air was left in one of the diving tanks.
[11:19.35]Instead of using it for themselves, they had kept it for me.
[11:29.29]While they were being suffocated, they gave me life drop by drop.
[11:42.42]I tried to push the tank away, but I was too weak, and for some moments I breathed freely.
[11:57.51]Seconds later, the diving instruments of the Nautilus told us we were 10 meters from the surface.
[12:07.80]Only a thin crust of ice separated us from the open air.
[12:18.35]Again, the Nautilus attacked the ice sheet like a huge battering ram, only this time from beneath.
[12:31.06]There was a shattering, crunching sound as it broke through, shooting forwards and upwards, and then crushing the ice beneath it as it landed.
[12:46.86]Oxygen flowed into everyone's lungs.
[12:52.31]We were saved.
[12:58.46]Everybody aboard cheered with their first gulps of fresh, pure air.
[13:11.50]We had worked together as a team, and I felt more a part of the Nautilus crew than ever.
[13:23.69]But if it wasn't for Nemo, we wouldn't have been trapped in the first place, Ned argued.
[13:34.00]When will you see sense, professor?
[13:38.94]What good will your science do you when you're dead?
[13:46.71]The sensible part of me agreed with Ned.
[13:53.94]At first, Nemo had seemed calm and in control,
[14:01.83]but now he was behaving more and more strangely.
[14:08.39]Time and time again, he was putting us in danger.
[14:18.95]But another part of me didn't want to agree with Ned.
[14:24.46]I wanted to follow Nemo, and I wanted to make the scientific discoveries that only he could show me.