"After all, what matters now?" he murmured; "I am dying!"
Cyrus Harding drew near the captain, and Gideon Spilett took his hand--
it was of a feverish heat. Ayrton, Pencroft, Herbert, and Neb, stood
respectfully apart in an angle of the magnificent saloon, whose
atmosphere was saturated with the electric fluid.
Meanwhile Captain Nemo withdrew his hand, and motioned the engineer and
the reporter to be seated.
All regarded him with profound emotion. Before them they beheld that
being whom they had styled the "genius of the island," the powerful
protector whose intervention, in so many circumstances, had been so
efficacious, the benefactor to whom they owed such a debt of gratitude!
Their eyes beheld a man only, and a man at the point of death, where
Pencroft and Neb had expected to find an almost supernatural being!
But how happened it that Cyrus Harding had recognised Captain Nemo? Why
had the latter so suddenly risen on hearing this name uttered, a name
which he had believed known to none?
The captain had resumed his position on the divan, and leaning on his
arm, he regarded the engineer, seated near him.
"You know the name I formerly bore, sir?" he asked.
"I do," answered Cyrus Harding, "and also that of this wonderful
submarine vessel--"
"The _Nautilus_?" said the captain, with a faint smile.
"The _Nautilus_!"
"But do you--do you know who I am?"
"I do."
"It is nevertheless many years since I have held any communication with
the inhabited world; three long years have I passed in the depths of the
sea, the only place where I have found liberty! Who then can have
betrayed my secret?"
"A man who was bound to you by no tie, Captain Nemo, and who,
consequently, cannot be accused of treachery."
"The Frenchman who was cast on board my vessel by chance sixteen years
since?"
"The same."
"He and his two companions did not then perish in the Maelstrom, in the
midst of which the _Nautilus_ was struggling."
"They escaped, and a book has appeared under the title of _Twenty
Thousand Leagues under the Sea_, which contains your history."
"The history of a few months only of my life!" interrupted the captain
impetuously.
"It is true," answered Cyrus Harding, "but a few months of that strange
life have sufficed to make you known--"
"As a great criminal, doubtless!" said Captain Nemo, a haughty smile
curling his lips. "Yes, a rebel, perhaps an outlaw against humanity!"
The engineer was silent.
"Well, sir?"
"It is not for me to judge you, Captain Nemo," answered Cyrus Harding,
"at any rate as regards your past life. I am, with the rest of the
world, ignorant of the motives which induced you to adopt this strange
mode of existence, and I cannot judge of effects without knowing their
causes; but what I _do_ know is, that a beneficent hand has constantly
protected us since our arrival on Lincoln Island, that we all owe our
lives to a good, generous, and powerful being, and that this being so
powerful, good and generous, Captain Nemo, is yourself!"
"It is I," answered the captain simply.
The engineer and reporter rose. Their companions had drawn near, and
the gratitude with which their hearts were charged was about to express
itself in their gestures and words.
Captain Nemo stopped them by a sign, and in a voice which betrayed more
emotion than he doubtless intended to show.
"Wait till you have heard all," he said. [See Note 1.]
And the captain, in a few concise sentences, ran over the events of his
life.
His narrative was short, yet he was obliged to summon up his whole
remaining energy to arrive at the end. He was evidently contending
against extreme weakness. Several times Cyrus Harding entreated him to
repose for a while, but he shook his head as a man to whom the morrow
may never come, and when the reporter offered his assistance--
"It is useless," he said; "my hours are numbered."
Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dakkar, son of a rajah of the
then independent territory of Bundelkund. His father sent him, when ten
years of age, to Europe, in order that he might receive an education in
all respects complete, and in the hopes that by his talents and
knowledge he might one day take a leading part in raising his long
degraded and heathen country to a level with the nations of Europe.
From the age of ten years to that of thirty Prince Dakkar, endowed by
Nature with her richest gifts of intellect, accumulated knowledge of
every kind, and in science, literature, and art his researches were
extensive and profound.
He travelled over the whole of Europe. His rank and fortune caused him
to be everywhere sought after; but the pleasures of the world had for
him no attractions. Though young and possessed of every personal
advantage, he was ever grave--sombre even--devoured by an unquenchable
thirst for knowledge, and cherishing in the recesses of his heart the
hope that he might become a great and powerful ruler of a free and
enlightened people.
Still, for long the love of science triumphed over all other feelings.
He became an artist deeply impressed by the marvels of art, a
philosopher to whom no one of the higher sciences was unknown, a
statesman versed in the policy of European courts. To the eyes of those
who observed him superficially he might have passed for one of those
cosmopolitans, curious of knowledge, but disdaining action; one of those
opulent travellers, haughty and cynical, who move incessantly from place
to place, and are of no country.
This artist, this philosopher, this man was, however, still cherishing
the hope instilled into him from his earliest days.
Prince Dakkar returned to Bundelkund in the year 1849. He married a
noble Indian lady, who was imbued with an ambition not less ardent than
that by which he was inspired. Two children were born to them, whom
they tenderly loved. But domestic happiness did not prevent him from
seeking to carry out the object at which he aimed. He waited an
opportunity. At length, as he vainly fancied, it presented itself.
Instigated by princes equally ambitious and less sagacious and more
unscrupulous than he was, the people of India were persuaded that they
might successfully rise against their English rulers, who had brought
them out of a state of anarchy and constant warfare and misery, and had
established peace and prosperity in their country. Their ignorance and
gross superstition made them the facile tools of their designing chiefs.
In 1857 the great sepoy revolt broke out. Prince Dakkar, under the
belief that he should thereby have the opportunity of attaining the
object of his long-cherished ambition, was easily drawn into it. He
forthwith devoted his talents and wealth to the service of this cause.
He aided it in person; he fought in the front ranks; he risked his life
equally with the humblest of the wretched and misguided fanatics; he was
ten times wounded in twenty engagements, seeking death but finding it
not, when at length the sanguinary rebels were utterly defeated, and the
atrocious mutiny was brought to an end.
Never before had the British power in India been exposed to such danger,
and if, as they had hoped, the sepoys had received assistance from
without, the influence and supremacy in Asia of the United Kingdom would
have been a thing of the past.
The name of Prince Dakkar was at that time well-known. He had fought
openly and without concealment. A price was set upon his head, but he
managed to escape from his pursuers.
Civilisation never recedes; the law of necessity ever forces it onwards.
The sepoys were vanquished, and the land of the rajahs of old fell
again under the rule of England.
Prince Dakkar, unable to find that death he courted, returned to the
mountain fastnesses of Bundelkund. There, alone in the world, overcome
by disappointment at the destruction of all his vain hopes, a prey to
profound disgust for all human beings, filled with hatred of the
civilised world, he realised the wreck of his fortune, assembled some
score of his most faithful companions, and one day disappeared, leaving
no trace behind.
Where, then, did he seek that liberty denied him upon the inhabited
earth? Under the waves, in the depths of the ocean, where none could
follow.
The warrior became the man of science. Upon a deserted island of the
Pacific he established his dockyard, and there a submarine vessel was
constructed from his designs. By methods which will at some future day
be revealed he had rendered subservient the illimitable forces of
electricity, which, extracted from inexhaustible sources, was employed
for all the requirements of his floating equipage, as a moving,
lighting, and heating agent. The sea, with its countless treasures, its
myriads of fish, its numberless wrecks, its enormous mammalia, and not
only all that nature supplied, but also all that man had lost in its
depths, sufficed for every want of the prince and his crew--and thus was
his most ardent desire accomplished, never again to hold communication
with the earth. He named his submarine vessel the _Nautilus_, called
himself simply Captain Nemo, and disappeared beneath the seas.
During many years this strange being visited every ocean, from pole to
pole. Outcast of the inhabited earth in these unknown worlds he
gathered incalculable treasures. The millions lost in the Bay of Vigo,
in 1702, by the galleons of Spain, furnished him with a mine of
inexhaustible riches which he devoted always, anonymously, in favour of
those nations who fought for the independence of their country. [See
Note 2.]
For long, however, he had held no communication with his
fellow-creatures, when, during the night of the 6th of November, 1866,
three men were cast on board his vessel. They were a French professor,
his servant, and a Canadian fisherman. These three men had been hurled
overboard by a collision which had taken place between the _Nautilus_
and the United States frigate _Abraham Lincoln_, which had chased her.
Captain Nemo learnt from this professor that the _Nautilus_, taken now
for a gigantic mammal of the whale species, now for a submarine vessel
carrying a crew of pirates, was sought for in every sea.
He might have returned these three men to the ocean, from whence chance
had brought them in contact with his mysterious existence. Instead of
doing this he kept them prisoners, and during seven months they were
enabled to behold all the wonders of a voyage of twenty thousand leagues
under the sea.
One day, the 22nd of June, 1867, these three men, who knew nothing of
the past history of Captain Nemo, succeeded in escaping in one of the
_Nautilus's_ boats. But as at this time the _Nautilus_ was drawn into
the vortex of the Maelstrom, off the coast of Norway, the captain
naturally believed that the fugitives, engulfed in that frightful
whirlpool, found their death at the bottom of the abyss. He was
ignorant that the Frenchman and his two companions had been miraculously
cast on shore, that the fishermen of the Loffoden Islands had rendered
them assistance, and that the professor, on his return to France, had
published that work in which seven months of the strange and eventful
navigation of the _Nautilus_ were narrated and exposed to the curiosity
of the public.
For a long time after this, Captain Nemo continued to live thus,
traversing every sea. But one by one his companions died, and found
their last resting-place in their cemetery of coral, in the bed of the
Pacific. At last Captain Nemo remained the solitary survivor of all
those who had taken refuge with him in the depths of the ocean.
He was now sixty years of age. Although alone, he succeeded in
navigating the _Nautilus_ towards one of those submarine caverns which
had sometimes served him as a harbour.
One of these ports was hollowed beneath Lincoln Island, and at this
moment furnished an asylum to the _Nautilus_.
The captain had now remained there six years, navigating the ocean no
longer, but awaiting death, and that moment when he should rejoin his
former companions, when by chance he observed the descent of the balloon
which carried the prisoners of the Confederates. Clad in his
diving-dress he was walking beneath the water at a few cables' length
from the shore of the island, when the engineer had been thrown into the
sea. Moved by a feeling of compassion the captain saved Cyrus Harding.
His first impulse was to fly from the vicinity of the five castaways;
but his harbour of refuge was closed, for in consequence of an elevation
of the basalt, produced by the influence of volcanic action, he could no
longer pass through the entrance of the vault. Though there was
sufficient depth of water to allow a light craft to pass the bar, there
was not enough for the _Nautilus_, whose draught of water was
considerable.
Captain Nemo was compelled, therefore, to remain. He observed these men
thrown without resources upon a desert island, but had no wish to be
himself discovered by them. By degrees he became interested in their
efforts when he saw them honest, energetic, and bound to each other by
the ties of friendship. As if despite his wishes, he penetrated all the
secrets of their existence. By means of the diving-dress he could
easily reach the well in the interior of Granite House, and climbing by
the projections of rock to its upper orifice he heard the colonists as
they recounted the past, and studied the present and future. He learnt
from them the tremendous conflict of America with America itself, for
the abolition of slavery. Yes, these men were worthy to reconcile
Captain Nemo with that humanity which they represented so nobly in the
island.
Captain Nemo had saved Cyrus Harding. It was he also who had brought
back the dog to the Chimneys, who rescued Top from the waters of the
lake, who caused to fall at Flotsam Point the case containing so many
things useful to the colonists, who conveyed the canoe back into the
stream of the Mercy, who cast the cord from the top of Granite House at
the time of the attack by the baboons, who made known the presence of
Ayrton upon Tabor Island, by means of the document enclosed in the
bottle, who caused the explosion of the brig by the shock of a torpedo
placed at the bottom of the canal, who saved Herbert from a certain
death by bringing the sulphate of quinine; and finally, it was he who
had killed the convicts with the electric balls, of which he possessed
the secret, and which he employed in the chase of submarine creatures.
Thus were explained so many apparently supernatural occurrences, and
which all proved the generosity and power of the captain.
Nevertheless, this noble misanthrope longed to benefit his _proteges_
still further. There yet remained much useful advice to give them, and,
his heart being softened by the approach of death, he invited, as we are
aware, the colonists of Granite House to visit the _Nautilus_, by means
of a wire which connected it with the corral. Possibly he would not
have done this had he been aware that Cyrus Harding was sufficiently
acquainted with his history to address him by the name of Nemo.
The captain concluded the narrative of his life. Cyrus Harding then
spoke; he recalled all the incidents which had exercised so beneficent
an influence upon the colony, and in the names of his companions and
himself thanked the generous being to whom they owed so much.
But Captain Nemo paid little attention; his mind appeared to be absorbed
by one idea, and without taking the proffered hand of the engineer--
"Now, sir," said he, "now that you know my history, your judgment!"
In saying this, the captain evidently alluded to an important incident
witnessed by the three strangers thrown on board his vessel, and which
the French professor had related in his work, causing a profound and
terrible sensation. Some days previous to the flight of the professor
and his two companions, the _Nautilus_, being chased by a frigate in the
north of the Atlantic, had hurled herself as a ram upon this frigate,
and sunk her without mercy.
Cyrus Harding understood the captain's allusion, and was silent.
"It was an enemy's frigate," exclaimed Captain Nemo, transformed for an
instant into the Prince Dakkar, "an enemy's frigate! It was she who
attacked me--I was in a narrow and shallow bay--the frigate barred my
way--and I sank her!"