Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

The Nautilus crosses the Mediterranean quickly; Arronax gets the feeling that Nemo is keen to return to the “open ocean” as soon as possible. The submarine is moving so fast that all hope of escape has been crushed, and Ned is severely disappointed. They pass over a bank of sand, and Conseil comments that this reef is like a “real isthmus joining Europe to Africa.” Arronax mentions that active volcanoes are diminishing, and that the Earth itself is cooling, to the point that it will one day be a “cold corpse beyond the power of artificial reviving.” At this point, everything on the planet will die out and it will become devoid of life, like the moon. Arronax notes that this will happen in “some hundreds of thousands of years.”

On February 18, the Nautilus reaches the Straits of Gibraltar. It speeds along a counter-current, and Arronax very briefly catches a glimpse of the ruins of the temple of Hercules. Only moments later, however, the submarine emerges into the calm waters of the Atlantic.