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XII . The South Pole The Nautilus kept going south , and I began to wonder whether the captain wanted to reach the Pole . That seemed like madness , because every attempt to reach it had failed . On the fourteenth of March we saw the first pieces of floating ice , and soon we were among huge icebergs which shone green , blue and violet in the sun . Some of them looked like towns of marble , with towers and churches . Captain Nemo found narrow passages between the blocks and slipped through them . When the ice closed in front of us , he drove the Nautilus against it with terrible force , and the steel spur split the ice like a wedge . But on the eighteenth of March we were stopped at last . In front of us stood a wall of ice mountains frozen together , which no ship could break , and behind us every passage had closed . Fresh ice was already forming around the ship . “ Well , Professor , what do you think of our situation ? ” asked the captain . “ I think that we are caught , Captain . ” “ You always see only difficulties . I tell you that the Nautilus will not only get free , but go further . It shall go to the Pole . ” “ To the Pole ! But how ? Over these mountains of ice ? ” “ Not over them , Professor , ” he said quietly . “ Under them . ” Then I understood . For every foot of an iceberg above the water there are about three below it , so if these mountains rose three hundred feet above the sea , they went no deeper than nine hundred feet , which was nothing to the Nautilus . We would have to stay under the ice for several days without fresh air , but the tanks could store enough air for that , and if the sea at the Pole was frozen , the steel spur could break the ice from below . I became so excited that the captain smiled . “ After making so many objections to my plan , Professor , you are now crushing me with arguments in its favour ! ” The pumps filled the tanks with air , and the Nautilus dived . At nine hundred feet we passed under the bottom of the ice , and then we went on to four hundred fathoms , where the water was quiet and almost warm . All night the ship hurried south . The next morning it tried several times to rise , but each time it struck the ice above us . Hour after hour the ice became thinner . Then , at six o’clock in the morning of the nineteenth of March , the door of the saloon opened , and Captain Nemo appeared .
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