noon
As for fish , they were numerous and often remarkable . Here are the ones that the Nautilus 's nets most frequently hauled on board : rays , including spotted rays that were oval in shape and brick red in color , their bodies strewn with erratic blue speckles and identifiable by their jagged double stings , silver-backed skates , common stingrays with stippled tails , butterfly rays that looked like huge two-meter cloaks flapping at middepth , toothless guitarfish that were a type of cartilaginous fish closer to the shark , trunkfish known as dromedaries that were one and a half feet long and had humps ending in backward-curving stings , serpentine moray eels with silver tails and bluish backs plus brown pectorals trimmed in gray piping , a species of butterfish called the fiatola decked out in thin gold stripes and the three colors of the French flag , Montague blennies four decimeters long , superb jacks handsomely embellished by seven black crosswise streaks with blue and yellow fins plus gold and silver scales , snooks , standard mullet with yellow heads , parrotfish , wrasse , triggerfish , gobies , etc. , plus a thousand other fish common to the oceans we had already crossed . On February 9 the Nautilus cruised in the widest part of the Red Sea , measuring 190 miles straight across from Suakin on the west coast to Qunfidha on the east coast . At noon that day after our position fix , Captain Nemo climbed onto the platform , where I happened to be . I vowed not to let him go below again without at least sounding him out on his future plans . As soon as he saw me , he came over , graciously offered me a cigar , and said to me : `` Well , professor , are you pleased with this Red Sea ? Have you seen enough of its hidden wonders , its fish and zoophytes , its gardens of sponges and forests of coral ?