Ah! my brave Ned, do you know how many square inches you carry on the surface of your body ?" "I have no idea, Mr.Aronnax." "About 6,500; and as in reality the atmospheric pressure is about 15 lb.

to the square inch, your 6,500 square inches bear at this moment a pressure of 97,500 lb." "Without my perceiving it ?" "Without your perceiving it.

And if you are not crushed by such a pressure, it is because the air penetrates the interior of your body with equal pressure.

Hence perfect equilibrium between the interior and exterior pressure, which thus neutralise each other, and which allows you to bear it without inconvenience.

But in the water it is another thing." "Yes, I understand," replied Ned, becoming more attentive; "because the water surrounds me, but does not penetrate." "Precisely, Ned: so that at 32 feet beneath the surface of the sea you would undergo a pressure of 97,500 lb.; at 320 feet, ten times that pressure; at 3,200 feet, a hundred times that pressure; lastly, at 32,000 feet, a thousand times that pressure would be 97,500,000 lb .-- that is to say, that you would be flattened as if you had been drawn from the plates of a hydraulic machine!" "The devil!" exclaimed Ned.
"Very well, my worthy harpooner, if some vertebrate, several hundred yards long, and large in proportion, can maintain itself in such depths--of those whose surface is represented by millions of square inches, that is by tens of millions of pounds, we must estimate the pressure they undergo.