midnight
I 'm not sure that Conseil heeded my recommendation , because he seemed to be deep in thought , no doubt trying to calculate how many one-fifths of a millimeter are found in forty square miles . As for me , I continued to observe this phenomenon . For several hours the Nautilus 's spur sliced through these whitish waves , and I watched it glide noiselessly over this soapy water , as if it were cruising through those foaming eddies that a bay 's currents and countercurrents sometimes leave between each other . Near midnight the sea suddenly resumed its usual hue , but behind us all the way to the horizon , the skies kept mirroring the whiteness of those waves and for a good while seemed imbued with the hazy glow of an aurora borealis . A New Proposition from Captain Nemo ON JANUARY 28 , in latitude 9 degrees 4 ' north , when the Nautilus returned at noon to the surface of the sea , it lay in sight of land some eight miles to the west . Right off , I observed a cluster of mountains about 2,000 feet high , whose shapes were very whimsically sculpted . After our position fix , I reentered the lounge , and when our bearings were reported on the chart , I saw that we were off the island of Ceylon , that pearl dangling from the lower lobe of the Indian peninsula .