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Aronnax; the Nautilus comes to me."

"By your orders?"

"By my orders. An electric thread connects us. I telegraph to it,
and that is enough."

"Really," I said, astonished at these marvels, "nothing can
be more simple."

After having passed by the cage of the staircase that led to the platform,
I saw a cabin six feet long, in which Conseil and Ned Land,
enchanted with their repast, were devouring it with avidity.
Then a door opened into a kitchen nine feet long, situated between
the large store-rooms. There electricity, better than gas itself,
did all the cooking. The streams under the furnaces gave out to the
sponges of platina a heat which was regularly kept up and distributed.
They also heated a distilling apparatus, which, by evaporation,
furnished excellent drinkable water. Near this kitchen was a bathroom
comfortably furnished, with hot and cold water taps.

Next to the kitchen was the berth-room of the vessel, sixteen feet long.
But the door was shut, and I could not see the management of it,
which might have given me an idea of the number of men employed on
board the Nautilus.

At the bottom was a fourth partition that separated this
office from the engine-room. A door opened, and I found myself
in the compartment where Captain Nemo--certainly an engineer
of a very high order--had arranged his locomotive machinery.
This engine-room, clearly lighted, did not measure less than
sixty-five feet in length. It was divided into two parts;
the first contained the materials for producing electricity,
and the second the machinery that connected it with the screw.
I examined it with great interest, in order to understand the
machinery of the Nautilus.

"You see," said the Captain, "I use Bunsen's contrivances,
not Ruhmkorff's. Those would not have been powerful enough.
Bunsen's are fewer in number, but strong and large, which experience
proves to be the best. The electricity produced passes forward,
where it works, by electro-magnets of great size, on a system of levers
and cog-wheels that transmit the movement to the axle of the screw.
This one, the diameter of which is nineteen feet, and the thread
twenty-three feet, performs about 120 revolutions in a second.

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