Tarana and the island of immortality - Michel Montecrossa

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sound lost its unsettling character as it was regularly accompanied by a many-shaded “shocking!”

      I was also no longer shocked by the fact that Margaret and Lady Swine disappeared to the deck nearly every evening to smoke a cigar. I only hoped that our stately Captain Thunderbolt with his impressive moustache, his decorated uniform, his bear’s voice and his sparkling eyes was also a real captain and that Professor Pickering, the inventor of the diving sphere with which one could admire the wonders of the ocean, hopefully knew what it was he had invented.

      As we all met in the salon they all seemed perfectly noble, scientific and reliable in their snobbiness, thank God, so that I was able to regain my confidence.

      We had a few days to get to know one another and get fired up about the moment when the diving sphere would go into action; after all I was not the only one who was ever-and-again tiptoeing around the dully shimmering wonder of science with an uneasy feeling, on the one hand excited, on the other, terrified.

      I often ran into the well-to-do Scottish pair, the McCormics, who for reasons unknown wished to involve themselves in deep sea investments – they would suddenly stop talking and we would exchange awkward smiles as if they had not just been inspecting the diving sphere. And also Lord Dunhill with his French girlfriend – supposedly of royal decent – or Mr. Bankroft from the insurance company bearing the same name were regularly in the vicinity of the diving sphere.

      Yet the experiences within the closed society of landlubbers was, thank God, not the only occurrence on our journey to the Sargasso Sea. After we had already sighted whales, we were joined on the third day by an enchanting school of dolphins which expressed such a beauty of movement and perfection in their jumps that I came to realize how wrong our civilized and weak bodies have become. Margaret, who was enjoying the moment with me, held her face into the salty breeze with her eyes closed and said, “their jumps are like a language and the shimmer of their bodies like music.”

      Then she turned and looked at me with a smile through her wind-tossed hair: “We merely think that we are the pinnacle of the creation. I believe that a lot of animals are much more developed than we are and are just waiting for us to become less primitive.”

      “But,” I wanted to begin a sentence.

      “Just look at them yourself,” she interrupted, knowing well that I intended to take off on a theoretical flight, the sort of flight she was accustomed to bring back to earth.

      “You have to look, my dear. Look and stop constantly thinking. Thinking makes one blind.”

      What can one say to an emotion-realist? I suddenly felt boring and dry and I noticed that during the entire course of our one-sided conversation I had no longer seen the dolphins.

      It gave me a lot to think about.

      And so we both looked out in silence, dreamily and deep in thought, upon the endless variation of the ocean’s surface and the golden-pink shimmer on the towering cumulus clouds on the horizon. The blue of the sky was saturated with turquoise as the sun descended towards the endless sea.

      I became more quiet and decided to finally learn from Margaret.

      “The secrets of nature cannot be discerned through an analysis of their processes or through external observation of their various forms; what is required, rather, is a total, respectful feeling and sensing of the deep and eternal love in all created things.”

      Those were the words I wrote down late into the night.

      Chapter 2

      WONDERFULLY SAVED

      On the seventh day of our journey we reached the Sargasso Sea, and our Captain, Thunderbolt, called all of us together to discuss our situation and to inform us that thanks to fine weather and calm seas we should begin on the following day with the first diving attempts.

      On this evening the ship’s salon was filled with a special tension which takes hold of our hearts, when we are shortly to fulfill a long planned adventure.

      Margaret and I had strangely enough, as the others, made ourselves quite dapper for this evening, as if we were going off to a ball or an official visit and yet we were merely preparing ourselves to visit a world in a narrow diving sphere, hardly any calls for a celebrity or a torrid mood.

      So it seemed, but human beings are different, especially when they don’t exactly know what awaits them – which is indeed most often the case.

      We became more or less simultaneously aware of this strange mechanism of feelings when we entered the salon.

      I had to hold myself together and Margaret raised her eyebrows in her, “what is this all about?”-way, shrugged her shoulders and then we both assumed our improperly proper positions.

      We sat down to table, and Mr. Upperpretty requested our attention for a small speech regarding coming events.

      “Ladies and gentlemen,” he raised his voice which had a certain unctuous tone as if he were counting money not with his fingers but with his vocal cords, “well – hm – as you know, tomorrow shall be a historical day for the modern sciences. Since we all know the importance of this event and since it is nevertheless impossible that we should all here get our place in the diving sphere in order to take part at the first diving expedition, I suggest, that we draw today in order to determine, who shall join in which expedition.”

      A chatty applause went through the crowd.

      “I like this Upperpretty,” said Margaret while she found a way with her napkin to give the penetrating smoke of McCormick’s pipe to Yvette Blanc, the girlfriend of Lord Downhill.

      “He really thought in time to avoid a wild fight in order to secure the first place.”

      Somehow I had a feeling to have to say something and so I stood up and put my finest suit in form.

      “In my days in the Boy Scouts I learned how to conduct such a drawing using matches, and I assume that Mr. McCormick will be happy to help us with his.”

      I had a pleasure indeed to tap a miserly Scot, though I knew of course that Lady Swine was a cigar smoker.

      Margaret suppressed a laughing fit and pushed me her elbow in the side. “The story with the Boy Scouts was not really proper, you unworldly writer, but the Scottish joke – that was directed.”

      These words she whispered quickly to me as she got up to bend with a choice ironic smile to the totally flabbergasted Mr. McCormick and to say so that everyone could hear it:

      “Your matches, please, Mr. McCormick.”

      This demand even a Scot could not deny and so we could start the drawing.

      I took a number of matches corresponding to the participants and made two of them shorter, for in the diving sphere there was only an off-space of two persons. Then I held the matches in my hands in such a way that they made a row, in which each match seemed of the same length and so each could pull one match. Who pulled out the two short pieces, had found his place in the diving sphere.

      And so in this way we had soon determined the order for the participation at the coming adventure.

      Naturally Professor Pickering and Captain Thunderbolt would perform the first expedition; they were followed by Lady Swine and Mademoiselle Blanc, Lord Downhill and Mr. Upperpretty, Lord Snowdown and Mr. McCormick, Mrs. McCormick and Mr. Bancroft, and then Margaret and myself, last but not least.

      I was really pleased, that fate had let us together, not knowing what was to arrive to us.

      The morning arrived in red glory and a few clouds on the horizon. The sea was not as quiet as expected, and yet the waves were acceptable enough so that Captain Thunderbolt and Professor Pickering after an extensive examination of the weather gave the command to bring the submarine in the place on the especially constructed crane in diving position.

      The

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