About seven o'clock in the evening
The 27th of January , at the entrance of the vast Bay of Bengal , we met repeatedly a forbidding spectacle , dead bodies floating on the surface of the water . They were the dead of the Indian villages , carried by the Ganges to the level of the sea , and which the vultures , the only undertakers of the country , had not been able to devour . But the sharks did not fail to help them at their funeral work . About seven o'clock in the evening , the Nautilus , half-immersed , was sailing in a sea of milk . At first sight the ocean seemed lactified . Was it the effect of the lunar rays ? No ; for the moon , scarcely two days old , was still lying hidden under the horizon in the rays of the sun .