I took a last look at the battleship, which was putting on steam.Then I rejoined Ned and Conseil.
"We'll escape!" I exclaimed.
"Good," Ned put in. "Where's that ship from?"
"I've no idea. But wherever it's from, it will sink before nightfall.In any event, it's better to perish with it than be accomplicesin some act of revenge whose merits we can't gauge."
"That's my feeling," Ned Land replied coolly. "Let's wait for nightfall."
Night fell. A profound silence reigned on board. The compassindicated that the Nautilus hadn't changed direction. I could hearthe beat of its propeller, churning the waves with steady speed.Staying on the surface of the water, it rolled gently, sometimes toone side, sometimes to the other.
My companions and I had decided to escape as soon as the vessel cameclose enough for us to be heard--or seen, because the moon would waxfull in three days and was shining brightly. Once we were aboardthat ship, if we couldn't ward off the blow that threatened it,at least we could do everything that circumstances permitted.Several times I thought the Nautilus was about to attack.But it was content to let its adversary approach, and then it wouldquickly resume its retreating ways.
Part of the night passed without incident. We kept watch for anopportunity to take action. We talked little, being too keyed up.Ned Land was all for jumping overboard. I forced him to wait.As I saw it, the Nautilus would attack the double-decker onthe surface of the waves, and then it would be not only possiblebut easy to escape.
At three o'clock in the morning, full of uneasiness,I climbed onto the platform. Captain Nemo hadn't left it.He stood in the bow next to his flag, which a mild breeze wasunfurling above his head. His eyes never left that vessel.The extraordinary intensity of his gaze seemed to attract it,beguile it, and draw it more surely than if he had it in tow!
The moon then passed its zenith. Jupiter was rising in the east.In the midst of this placid natural setting, sky and ocean competedwith each other in tranquility, and the sea offered the orb of nightthe loveliest mirror ever to reflect its image.
And when I compared this deep calm of the elements with all the furyseething inside the plating of this barely perceptible Nautilus, Ishivered all over.
The vessel was two miles off. It drew nearer, always moving towardthe phosphorescent glow that signaled the Nautilus's presence.I saw its green and red running lights, plus the white lantern hangingfrom the large stay of its foremast. Hazy flickerings were reflectedon its rigging and indicated that its furnaces were pushed to the limit.Showers of sparks and cinders of flaming coal escaped from its funnels,spangling the air with stars.
I stood there until six o'clock in the morning, Captain Nemonever seeming to notice me. The vessel lay a mile and a half off,and with the first glimmers of daylight, it resumed its cannonade.The time couldn't be far away when the Nautilus would attackits adversary, and my companions and I would leave forever thisman I dared not judge.
I was about to go below to alert them, when the chief officerclimbed onto the platform. Several seamen were with him.Captain Nemo didn't see them, or didn't want to see them.They carried out certain procedures that, on the Nautilus, you couldcall "clearing the decks for action." They were quite simple.The manropes that formed a handrail around the platform were lowered.Likewise the pilothouse and the beacon housing were withdrawninto the hull until they lay exactly flush with it. The surfaceof this long sheet-iron cigar no longer offered a single protrusionthat could hamper its maneuvers.
I returned to the lounge. The Nautilus still emerged abovethe surface. A few morning gleams infiltrated the liquid strata.Beneath the undulations of the billows, the windows were enlivenedby the blushing of the rising sun. That dreadful day of June2 had dawned.
At seven o'clock the log told me that the Nautilus had reduced speed.I realized that it was letting the warship approach.Moreover, the explosions grew more intensely audible.Shells furrowed the water around us, drilling through it with anodd hissing sound.
"My friends," I said, "it's time. Let's shake hands, and may Godbe with us!"
Ned Land was determined, Conseil calm, I myself nervous andbarely in control.
We went into the library. Just as I pushed open the door leadingto the well of the central companionway, I heard the hatchclose sharply overhead.
The Canadian leaped up the steps, but I stopped him. A well-knownhissing told me that water was entering the ship's ballast tanks.Indeed, in a few moments the Nautilus had submerged some metersbelow the surface of the waves.
I understood this maneuver. It was too late to take action.The Nautilus wasn't going to strike the double-decker where itwas clad in impenetrable iron armor, but below its waterline,where the metal carapace no longer protected its planking.
We were prisoners once more, unwilling spectators at the performanceof this gruesome drama. But we barely had time to think. Taking refugein my stateroom, we stared at each other without pronouncing a word.My mind was in a total daze. My mental processes came to a dead stop.I hovered in that painful state that predominates duringthe period of anticipation before some frightful explosion.I waited, I listened, I lived only through my sense of hearing!
Meanwhile the Nautilus's speed had increased appreciably.So it was gathering momentum. Its entire hull was vibrating.
Suddenly I let out a yell. There had been a collision, but itwas comparatively mild. I could feel the penetrating forceof the steel spur. I could hear scratchings and scrapings.Carried away with its driving power, the Nautilus had passed throughthe vessel's mass like a sailmaker's needle through canvas!
I couldn't hold still. Frantic, going insane, I leaped out of mystateroom and rushed into the lounge.
Captain Nemo was there. Mute, gloomy, implacable, he was staringthrough the port panel.
An enormous mass was sinking beneath the waters, and the Nautilus,missing none of its death throes, was descending into the depths with it.Ten meters away, I could see its gaping hull, into which water was rushingwith a sound of thunder, then its double rows of cannons and railings.Its deck was covered with dark, quivering shadows.
The water was rising. Those poor men leaped up into the shrouds,clung to the masts, writhed beneath the waters. It was a humananthill that an invading sea had caught by surprise!
Paralyzed, rigid with anguish, my hair standing on end, my eyes poppingout of my head, short of breath, suffocating, speechless, I stared--I too! I was glued to the window by an irresistible allure!
The enormous vessel settled slowly. Following it down, the Nautiluskept watch on its every movement. Suddenly there was an eruption.The air compressed inside the craft sent its decks flying,as if the powder stores had been ignited. The thrust of the waterswas so great, the Nautilus swerved away.
The poor ship then sank more swiftly. Its mastheads appeared,laden with victims, then its crosstrees bending under clusters of men,finally the peak of its mainmast. Then the dark mass disappeared,and with it a crew of corpses dragged under by fearsome eddies. . . .
I turned to Captain Nemo. This dreadful executioner, this truearchangel of hate, was still staring. When it was all over,Captain Nemo headed to the door of his stateroom, opened it, and entered.I followed him with my eyes.
On the rear paneling, beneath the portraits of his heroes, I sawthe portrait of a still-youthful woman with two little children.Captain Nemo stared at them for a few moments, stretched out hisarms to them, sank to his knees, and melted into sobs.
CHAPTER 22
The Last Words of Captain Nemo
THE PANELS CLOSED over this frightful view, but the lights didn't goon in the lounge. Inside the Nautilus all was gloom and silence.It left this place of devastation with prodigious speed,100 feet beneath the waters. Where was it going? North or south?Where would the man flee after this horrible act of revenge?
I reentered my stateroom, where Ned and Conseil were waiting silently.Captain Nemo filled me with insurmountable horror.Whatever he
had once suffered at the hands of humanity,he had no right to mete out such punishment. He had made me,if not an accomplice, at least an eyewitness to his vengeance!Even this was intolerable.
At eleven o'clock the electric lights came back on. I went intothe lounge. It was deserted. I consulted the various instruments.The Nautilus was fleeing northward at a speed of twenty-five milesper hour, sometimes on the surface of the sea, sometimes thirtyfeet beneath it.
After our position had been marked on the chart, I saw that wewere passing into the mouth of the English Channel, that our headingwould take us to the northernmost seas with incomparable speed.
I could barely glimpse the swift passing of longnose sharks,hammerhead sharks, spotted dogfish that frequent these waters,big eagle rays, swarms of seahorse looking like knights on a chessboard,eels quivering like fireworks serpents, armies of crab that fledobliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces,finally schools of porpoise that held contests of speed withthe Nautilus. But by this point observing, studying, and classifyingwere out of the question.
By evening we had cleared 200 leagues up the Atlantic. Shadows gatheredand gloom overran the sea until the moon came up.
I repaired to my stateroom. I couldn't sleep. I was assaultedby nightmares. That horrible scene of destruction kept repeatingin my mind's eye.
From that day forward, who knows where the Nautilus took usin the north Atlantic basin? Always at incalculable speed!Always amid the High Arctic mists! Did it call at the capesof Spitzbergen or the shores of Novaya Zemlya? Did it visit suchuncharted seas as the White Sea, the Kara Sea, the Gulf of Ob,the Lyakhov Islands, or those unknown beaches on the Siberian coast?I'm unable to say. I lost track of the passing hours. Time wasin abeyance on the ship's clocks. As happens in the polar regions,it seemed that night and day no longer followed their normal sequence.I felt myself being drawn into that strange domain wherethe overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe was at home.Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment to seethat "shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportionsthan any dweller among men," thrown across the cataract that protectsthe outskirts of the pole!
I estimate--but perhaps I'm mistaken--that the Nautilus's haphazardcourse continued for fifteen or twenty days, and I'm not surehow long this would have gone on without the catastrophe that endedour voyage. As for Captain Nemo, he was no longer in the picture.As for his chief officer, the same applied. Not one crewmanwas visible for a single instant. The Nautilus cruised beneaththe waters almost continuously. When it rose briefly to the surfaceto renew our air, the hatches opened and closed as if automated.No more positions were reported on the world map. I didn't knowwhere we were.
I'll also mention that the Canadian, at the end of his strengthand patience, made no further appearances. Conseil couldn't coaxa single word out of him and feared that, in a fit of delirium whileunder the sway of a ghastly homesickness, Ned would kill himself.So he kept a devoted watch on his friend every instant.
You can appreciate that under these conditions, our situationhad become untenable.
One morning--whose date I'm unable to specify--I was slumberingnear the first hours of daylight, a painful, sickly slumber.Waking up, I saw Ned Land leaning over me, and I heard him tell mein a low voice:
"We're going to escape!"
I sat up.
"When?" I asked.
"Tonight. There doesn't seem to be any supervision left onthe Nautilus. You'd think a total daze was reigning on board.Will you be ready, sir?"
"Yes. Where are we?"
"In sight of land. I saw it through the mists just this morning,twenty miles to the east."
"What land is it?"
"I've no idea, but whatever it is, there we'll take refuge."
"Yes, Ned! We'll escape tonight even if the sea swallows us up!"
"The sea's rough, the wind's blowing hard, but a twenty-milerun in the Nautilus's nimble longboat doesn't scare me.Unknown to the crew, I've stowed some food and flasks of water inside."
"I'm with you."
"What's more," the Canadian added, "if they catch me, I'll defend myself,I'll fight to the death."
"Then we'll die together, Ned my friend."
My mind was made up. The Canadian left me. I went out on the platform,where I could barely stand upright against the jolts of the billows.The skies were threatening, but land lay inside those dense mists,and we had to escape. Not a single day, or even a single hour,could we afford to lose.
I returned to the lounge, dreading yet desiring an encounterwith Captain Nemo, wanting yet not wanting to see him.What would I say to him? How could I hide the involuntary horrorhe inspired in me? No! It was best not to meet him face to face!Best to try and forget him! And yet . . . !
How long that day seemed, the last I would spend aboardthe Nautilus! I was left to myself. Ned Land and Conseil avoidedspeaking to me, afraid they would give themselves away.
At six o'clock I ate supper, but I had no appetite. Despite my revulsion,I forced it down, wanting to keep my strength up.
At 6:30 Ned Land entered my stateroom. He told me:
"We won't see each other again before we go. At ten o'clockthe moon won't be up yet. We'll take advantage of the darkness.Come to the skiff. Conseil and I will be inside waiting for you."
The Canadian left without giving me time to answer him.
I wanted to verify the Nautilus's heading. I made my way to the lounge.We were racing north-northeast with frightful speed, fifty meters down.
I took one last look at the natural wonders and artistic treasuresamassed in the museum, this unrivaled collection doomed to perishsomeday in the depths of the seas, together with its curator.I wanted to establish one supreme impression in my mind.I stayed there an hour, basking in the aura of the ceiling lights,passing in review the treasures shining in their glass cases.Then I returned to my stateroom.
There I dressed in sturdy seafaring clothes. I gathered my notes andpacked them tenderly about my person. My heart was pounding mightily.I couldn't curb its pulsations. My anxiety and agitation wouldcertainly have given me away if Captain Nemo had seen me.
What was he doing just then? I listened at the door to his stateroom.I heard the sound of footsteps. Captain Nemo was inside.He hadn't gone to bed. With his every movement I imagined he wouldappear and ask me why I wanted to escape! I felt in a perpetualstate of alarm. My imagination magnified this sensation.The feeling became so acute, I wondered whether it wouldn't bebetter to enter the captain's stateroom, dare him face to face,brave it out with word and deed!
It was an insane idea. Fortunately I controlled myselfand stretched out on the bed to soothe my bodily agitation.My nerves calmed a little, but with my brain so aroused,I did a swift review of my whole existence aboard the Nautilus,every pleasant or unpleasant incident that had crossed my path since Iwent overboard from the Abraham Lincoln: the underwater hunting trip,the Torres Strait, our running aground, the savages of Papua,the coral cemetery, the Suez passageway, the island of Santorini,the Cretan diver, the Bay of Vigo, Atlantis, the Ice Bank, the South Pole,our imprisonment in the ice, the battle with the devilfish,the storm in the Gulf Stream, the Avenger, and that horrible sceneof the vessel sinking with its crew . . . ! All these events passedbefore my eyes like backdrops unrolling upstage in a theater.In this strange setting Captain Nemo then grew fantastically.His features were accentuated, taking on superhuman proportions.He was no longer my equal, he was the Man of the Waters, the Spiritof the Seas.
By then it was 9:30. I held my head in both hands to keep itfrom bursting. I closed my eyes. I no longer wanted to think.A half hour still to wait! A half hour of nightmares that coulddrive me insane!
Just then I heard indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy harmoniesfrom some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul tryingto sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at once,barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical trancethat was
drawing him beyond the bounds of this world.
Then a sudden thought terrified me. Captain Nemo had left his stateroom.He was in the same lounge I had to cross in order to escape.There I would encounter him one last time. He would see me,perhaps speak to me! One gesture from him could obliterate me,a single word shackle me to his vessel!
Even so, ten o'clock was about to strike. It was time to leavemy stateroom and rejoin my companions.
I dared not hesitate, even if Captain Nemo stood before me.I opened the door cautiously, but as it swung on its hinges,it seemed to make a frightful noise. This noise existed, perhaps,only in my imagination!
I crept forward through the Nautilus's dark gangways, pausing aftereach step to curb the pounding of my heart.
I arrived at the corner door of the lounge. I opened it gently.The lounge was plunged in profound darkness. Chords from the organwere reverberating faintly. Captain Nemo was there. He didn't see me.Even in broad daylight I doubt that he would have noticed me,so completely was he immersed in his trance.
I inched over the carpet, avoiding the tiniest bump whose noisemight give me away. It took me five minutes to reach the doorat the far end, which led into the library.
I was about to open it when a gasp from Captain Nemo nailedme to the spot. I realized that he was standing up.I even got a glimpse of him because some rays of light fromthe library had filtered into the lounge. He was coming toward me,arms crossed, silent, not walking but gliding like a ghost.His chest was heaving, swelling with sobs. And I heard him murmurthese words, the last of his to reach my ears: