It was a week before I saw Captain Nemo again. Every morning, I noticed fresh air coming into the rooms and I knew that the Nautilus had surfaced(浮出水面). I would go out and see the sunrise.
Then I received a note from Captain Nemo. He invited me and my friends to go hunting with him in the forests of Crespo Island. Ned was excited because he thought there he could find a chance to escape. When I saw Captain Nemo the next day, I asked him why he was so interested in Crespo Island. "I thought you preferred the sea to being on land."
"I do," replied the Captain. "But these forests are under the sea." During breakfast, he explained that he had made diving suits(潜水服) that used special air tanks. These tanks would allow us to stay under the water for ten hours. He had also made lights that worked in electric batteries. When Ned realized that we were not going onto land for our hunting trip, he decided not to come at all.
Conseil and I put on our diving suits, and so did Captain Nemo and one of his men. We stepped into a room and closed the door. The room was filled with water, and another door opened. We must go through it, and we were in the sea floor. It was an amazing experience.
We were about ten metres under the water. The light from the sun reached us. Everything looked very colourful. We walked over the fine sand and enjoyed the colours of the shells, fish and seaweed. Conseil and I followed Captain Nemo and his man as they crossed a large grassy area. We were going deeper and deeper. Two hours later, we were a hundred metres under the water. The suits worked very well, and it was easy to walk and breathe.
At one hundred metres deep, we could still see quite well, and Captain Nemo stopped and pointed to some dark shapes. This was the forest. The "trees" in the forest were giant seaweed, and all their branches were vertical(垂直的). We could not stop looking at them. Fish swam around the branches like birds in a forest. Small shrubs(灌木) grew under the large seaweed trees. Some of them had flowers.
We walked through this forest for about an hour, and then we lay down to rest. I was not hungry, but I was very sleepy. We all slept, and when we woke up, we walked further.
(Adapted fromTwentyThousandLeaguesUnderTheSea)
