20,000 Leagues Under the Sea Part 2 Chapter 5 Summary

Arabian Tunnel

  • Aronnax runs and tells Conseil and Ned about the tunnel as soon as he can. Ned is skeptical.
  • Conseil tells him to be a little more open-minded. Of course, Ned would be really pumped if the passage did exist—it'd get him to Europe that much faster.
  • Aronnax and company spot something a couple of days later, while chilling on the deck of the Nautilus.
  • Conseil thinks it's a mermaid, but Aronnax knows he's wrong.
  • It's a dugong, he tells them. What in the world is a dugong? Well, it's a manatee-looking thing with a forked tail. (Verne's version also sports some big, scary tusks.)
  • Ned gets all kinds of excited; he wants to harpoon this dugong really, really badly.
  • Nemo shows up and gives Ned permission. But he warns him that the dugong is a mean son of a gun and so he'd better get him on the first try.
  • Soon enough, Ned's in the dinghy, along with Aronnax, Conseil, and a bunch of crewmen.
  • Ned hits the dugong on the first throw, but he doesn't kill it. The animal swims away. Ned looses it and starts cussing his bloody head off.
  • After getting chased for an hour, the dugong decides to turn the tables on its hunters and come after their boat. It nearly sinks the dinghy, but Ned manages to harpoon it after all.
  • They eat well that night.
  • By the next day, they're pulling close to the Gulf of Suez, and that night, they pull into the tunnel.
  • Aronnax watches the spectacle from the Nautilus' cockpit. Twenty minutes pass and… boom. They're in the Mediterranean. Aw, yeah.