A tour of the Nautilus

"Welcome, welcome!" Jules shouted, straightening his vest with a theatrical flourish. "Step inside the Nautilus, the only vessel where you can get seasick without ever seeing a wave."

We stood somewhat awkwardly in the metal corridor, where everything gleamed, ticked, hissed, or bubbled mysteriously. Copper pipes everywhere, gauges with needles that vibrated nervously, and levers that instinctively told you: I absolutely mustn't touch these.

"This," Jules said proudly, leaning against a gigantic lever, "is the depth control. If I pull it, we go down. If I push it, we go… down too. But with more conviction."

We laughed. He didn't.

He led us further to a huge dome with a glass window beyond which the ocean stretched out. Fish swam by as if they had subscribed to this view. Suddenly, a shadow with tentacles appeared in the distance.

"Ah yes," Jules said nonchalantly, "that's our neighbor. A modestly sized squid. He rang the doorbell last week to borrow sugar."

"And?" I asked cautiously.

"He didn't bring the bowl back."

We nodded in understanding. It happens to everyone.

In the engine room, a gigantic steam engine huffed as if it had just run a marathon. Jules tapped the metal affectionately. "Everything runs on imagination and a little bit of steam pressure. Mostly imagination."

My partner pointed to a button labeled "DO NOT PRESS."

"That," Jules said, raising his eyebrows, "is the button that absolutely must not be pressed. Unless you want adventure. Or pudding. Sometimes pudding comes out."

"Why pudding?"

He shrugged. "Science."

Suddenly, an alarm started ringing somewhere. Not loud, but one of those polite alarms that says: it might be time to panic a bit.

"Oh, that's nothing," Jules said reassuringly. "We're probably ascending accidentally. Or descending. Hard to tell without a compass. Has anyone seen the compass?"

We looked at each other. No one had seen a compass. They had, however, seen a tentacle against the window.

Jules clapped his hands enthusiastically. "And that, my friends, is exactly why I give tours. Adventure isn't experienced safely in an armchair—adventure is experienced under 300 meters of water, with a curious octopus and a slightly unreliable depth controller!"

He solemnly extended his hand.

"Next stop: the underwater library. There we only have books that haven't been written yet. You can choose one."

And as the Nautilus creaked softly, the gauges wobbled, and somewhere another alarm politely began to chime, we knew one thing for sure:

A tour with Jules is not an excursion.

It's a gentle immersion in pure, glorious chaos. 🚢