CHAPTER 22

The Last Words of Captain Nemo

THE PANELS CLOSED over this frightful view, but the lights didn’t go

on 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 into the

lounge. It was deserted. I consulted the various instruments. The

Nautilus was fleeing northward at a speed of twenty-five miles per

hour, sometimes on the surface of the sea, sometimes thirty feet

beneath it.

After our position had been marked on the chart, I saw that we were

passing into the mouth of the English Channel, that our heading would

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 fled

obliquely by crossing their pincers over their carapaces, finally

schools of porpoise that held contests of speed with the Nautilus. But

by this point observing, studying, and classifying were out of the

question.

By evening we had cleared 200 leagues up the Atlantic. Shadows

gathered and gloom overran the sea until the moon came up.

I repaired to my stateroom. I couldn’t sleep. I was assaulted by

nightmares. That horrible scene of destruction kept repeating in my

mind’s eye.

From that day forward, who knows where the Nautilus took us in the

north Atlantic basin? Always at incalculable speed! Always amid the

High Arctic mists! Did it call at the capes of Spitzbergen or the

shores of Novaya Zemlya? Did it visit such uncharted 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 was in 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 where the overwrought imagination of Edgar Allan Poe

was at home. Like his fabled Arthur Gordon Pym, I expected any moment

to see that “shrouded human figure, very far larger in its proportions

than any dweller among men,” thrown across the cataract that protects

the outskirts of the pole!

I estimate—but perhaps I’m mistaken—that the Nautilus’s haphazard

course continued for fifteen or twenty days, and I’m not sure how long

this would have gone on without the catastrophe that ended our

voyage. As for Captain Nemo, he was no longer in the picture. As for

his chief officer, the same applied. Not one crewman was visible for a

single instant. The Nautilus cruised beneath the waters almost

continuously. When it rose briefly to the surface to renew our air,

the hatches opened and closed as if automated. No more positions were

reported on the world map. I didn’t know where we were.

I’ll also mention that the Canadian, at the end of his strength and

patience, made no further appearances. Conseil couldn’t coax a single

word out of him and feared that, in a fit of delirium while under 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 situation had

become untenable.

One morning—whose date I’m unable to specify—I was slumbering near the

first hours of daylight, a painful, sickly slumber. Waking up, I saw

Ned Land leaning over me, and I heard him tell me in a low voice:

“We’re going to escape!”

I sat up.

“When?” I asked.

“Tonight. There doesn’t seem to be any supervision left on the

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-mile run 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 encounter with

Captain Nemo, wanting yet not wanting to see him. What would I say to

him? How could I hide the involuntary horror he 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 aboard the Nautilus!

I was left to myself. Ned Land and Conseil avoided speaking 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’clock the 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 treasures

amassed in the museum, this unrivaled collection doomed to perish

someday 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 and

packed them tenderly about my person. My heart was pounding

mightily. I couldn’t curb its pulsations. My anxiety and agitation

would certainly 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 would appear

and ask me why I wanted to escape! I felt in a perpetual state of

alarm. My imagination magnified this sensation. The feeling became so

acute, I wondered whether it wouldn’t be better 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 myself and 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 I went 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 scene of the vessel sinking with its crew

. . . ! All these events passed before 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 Spirit of the Seas.

By then it was 9:30. I held my head in both hands to keep it from

bursting. I closed my eyes. I no longer wanted to think. A half hour

still to wait! A half hour of nightmares that could drive me insane!

Just then I heard indistinct chords from the organ, melancholy

harmonies from some undefinable hymn, actual pleadings from a soul

trying to sever its earthly ties. I listened with all my senses at

once, barely breathing, immersed like Captain Nemo in this musical

trance that 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 leave my

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 after

each 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 organ were

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 noise might

give me away. It took me five minutes to reach the door at the far

end, which led into the library.

I was about to open it when a gasp from Captain Nemo nailed me to the

spot. I realized that he was standing up. I even got a glimpse of him

because some rays of light from the 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 murmur these words, the last of his to reach my ears:

“O almighty God! Enough! Enough!”

Was it a vow of repentance that had just escaped from this man’s

conscience . . . ?

Frantic, I rushed into the library. I climbed the central

companionway, and going along the upper gangway, I arrived at the

skiff. I went through the opening that had already given access to my

two companions.

“Let’s go, let’s go!” I exclaimed.

“Right away!” the Canadian replied.

First, Ned Land closed and bolted the opening cut into the Nautilus’s

sheet iron, using the monkey wrench he had with him. After likewise

closing the opening in the skiff, the Canadian began to unscrew the

nuts still bolting us to the underwater boat.

Suddenly a noise from the ship’s interior became audible. Voices were

answering each other hurriedly. What was it? Had they spotted our

escape? I felt Ned Land sliding a dagger into my hand.

“Yes,” I muttered, “we know how to die!”

The Canadian paused in his work. But one word twenty times repeated,

one dreadful word, told me the reason for the agitation spreading

aboard the Nautilus. We weren’t the cause of the crew’s concern.

“Maelstrom! Maelstrom!” they were shouting.

The Maelstrom! Could a more frightening name have rung in our ears

under more frightening circumstances? Were we lying in the dangerous

waterways off the Norwegian coast? Was the Nautilus being dragged into

this whirlpool just as the skiff was about to detach from its plating?

As you know, at the turn of the tide, the waters confined between the

Faroe and Lofoten Islands rush out with irresistible violence. They

form a vortex from which no ship has ever been able to

escape. Monstrous waves race together from every point of the

horizon. They form a whirlpool aptly called “the ocean’s navel,” whose

attracting power extends a distance of fifteen kilometers. It can suck

down not only ships but whales, and even polar bears from the

northernmost regions.

This was where the Nautilus had been sent accidentally—or perhaps

deliberately—by its captain. It was sweeping around in a spiral whose

radius kept growing smaller and smaller. The skiff, still attached to

the ship’s plating, was likewise carried around at dizzying speed. I

could feel us whirling. I was experiencing that accompanying nausea

that follows such continuous spinning motions. We were in dread, in

the last stages of sheer horror, our blood frozen in our veins, our

nerves numb, drenched in cold sweat as if from the throes of dying!

And what a noise around our frail skiff! What roars echoing from

several miles away! What crashes from the waters breaking against

sharp rocks on the seafloor, where the hardest objects are smashed,

where tree trunks are worn down and worked into “a shaggy fur,” as

Norwegians express it!

What a predicament! We were rocking frightfully. The Nautilus defended

itself like a human being. Its steel muscles were cracking. Sometimes

it stood on end, the three of us along with it!

“We’ve got to hold on tight,” Ned said, “and screw the nuts down

again! If we can stay attached to the Nautilus, we can still make it

. . . !”

He hadn’t finished speaking when a cracking sound occurred. The nuts

gave way, and ripped out of its socket, the skiff was hurled like a

stone from a sling into the midst of the vortex.

My head struck against an iron timber, and with this violent shock I

lost consciousness.