noon
From the heart of the waters : jets of liquid rising like hundreds of magnificent bouquets . Far off , like a sleeping cetacean : the Nautilus . Behind us to the south and east : an immense shore , a chaotic heap of rocks and ice whose limits we could n't see . Arriving at the summit of this peak , Captain Nemo carefully determined its elevation by means of his barometer , since he had to take this factor into account in his noon sights . At 11:45 the sun , by then seen only by refraction , looked like a golden disk , dispersing its last rays over this deserted continent and down to these seas not yet plowed by the ships of man . Captain Nemo had brought a spyglass with a reticular eyepiece , which corrected the sun 's refraction by means of a mirror , and he used it to observe the orb sinking little by little along a very extended diagonal that reached below the horizon . I held the chronometer .