Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

by Marie Sexton

  I was on the platform just then. After determining our position, the captain pronounced only these words, “It’s right here.”

  He went down the hatch. Had he seen that vessel change course and seemingly head towards us? I’m unable to say.

  I returned to the lounge. The hatch closed, and I heard water hissing in the ballast tanks. The Nautilus began to sink on a vertical line, because its propeller was in check and no longer furnished any forward motion.

  Some minutes later it stopped at a depth of eight-hundred and thirty-three metres and came to rest on the seafloor.

  The ceiling lights in the lounge then went out, the panels opened, and through the windows I saw, for a half-mile radius, the sea brightly lit by the beacon’s rays.

  I looked to port and saw nothing but the immenseness of these tranquil waters.

  To starboard, a prominent bulge on the sea bottom caught my attention. You would have thought it was some ruin enshrouded in a crust of whitened seashells, as if under a mantle of snow. Carefully examining this mass, I could identify the swollen outlines of a ship shorn of its masts, which must have sunk bow first. This casualty certainly dated from some far-off time. To be so caked with the limestone of these waters, this wreckage must have spent many a year on the ocean floor.

  What ship was this? Why had the Nautilus come to visit its grave? Was it something other than a maritime accident that had dragged this craft under the waters?

  I wasn’t sure what to think, but next to me I heard Captain Nemo’s voice slowly say,

  “Originally this ship was christened the Marseillais. It carried seventy-four cannons and was launched in 1762. On August 13, 1778, commanded by La Poype-Vertrieux, it fought valiantly against the Preston. On July 4, 1779, as a member of the squadron under Admiral d’Estaing, it assisted in the capture of the island of Grenada. On September 5, 1781, under the Count de Grasse, it took part in the Battle of Chesapeake Bay. In 1794 the new Republic of France changed the name of this ship. On April 16 of that same year, it joined the squadron at Brest under Rear Admiral Villaret de Joyeuse, who was entrusted with escorting a convoy of wheat coming from America under the command of Admiral Van Stabel. In this second year of the French Revolutionary Calendar, on the 11th and 12th days in the Month of Pasture, this squadron fought an encounter with English vessels. Sir, today is June 1, 1868, or the 13th day in the Month of Pasture. Seventy-four years ago to the day, at this very spot in latitude 47

  degrees 24’ and longitude 17 degrees 28’, this ship sank after a heroic battle, its three masts gone, water in its hold, a third of its crew out of action, it preferred to go to the bottom with its three-hundred and fifty-six seamen rather than surrender, and with its flag nailed up on the afterdeck, it disappeared beneath the waves to shouts of ‘Long live the Republic’.”

  “This is the Avenger.” I exclaimed.

  “Yes, sir. The Avenger. A splendid name,” Captain Nemo murmured, crossing his arms.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A Mass Execution

  The way he said this, the unexpectedness of this scene, first the biography of this patriotic ship, then the excitement with which this eccentric individual pronounced these last words—the name Avenger whose significance could not escape me—all this, taken together, had a profound impact on my mind. My eyes never left the captain. Hands outstretched towards the sea, he contemplated the proud wreck with blazing eyes. Perhaps I would never learn who he was, where he came from or where he was heading, but more and more I could see a distinction between the man and the scientist. It was no ordinary misanthropy that kept Captain Nemo and his companions sequestered inside the Nautilus’s plating, but a hate so monstrous or so sublime that the passing years could never weaken it.

  Did this hate also hunger for vengeance? Time would soon tell.

  Meanwhile the Nautilus rose slowly to the surface of the sea, and I watched the Avenger’s murky shape disappearing little by little. Soon a gentle rolling told me that we were afloat in the open air.

  Just then a hollow explosion was audible. I looked at the captain. The captain did not stir.

  “Captain?” I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  I left him and climbed onto the platform. Conseil and the Canadian were already there.

  “What caused that explosion?” I asked.

  “A cannon going off,” Ned Land replied.

  I stared in the direction of the ship I had spotted. It was heading towards the Nautilus, and you could tell it had put on steam. Six miles separated it from us.

  “What sort of craft is it, Ned?”

  “From its rigging and its low masts,” the Canadian replied, “I bet it’s a warship. Here’s hoping it pulls up and sinks this damned Nautilus.”

  “Ned my friend,” Conseil replied, “what harm could it do the Nautilus? Will it attack us under the waves? Will it cannonade us at the bottom of the sea?”

  “Tell me, Ned,” I asked, “can you make out the nationality of that craft?”

  Creasing his brow, lowering his lids, and puckering the corners of his eyes, the Canadian focused the full power of his gaze on the ship for a short while.

  “No, sir,” he replied. “I can’t make out what nation it’s from. It’s flying no flag. But I’ll swear it’s a warship, because there’s a long pennant streaming from the peak of its mainmast.”

  For a quarter of an hour, we continued to watch the craft bearing down on us. But it was inconceivable to me that it had discovered the Nautilus at such a distance, still less that it knew what this underwater machine really was.

  Soon the Canadian announced that the craft was a big battleship, a double-decker ironclad complete with ram. Dark, dense smoke burst from its two funnels. Its furled sails merged with the lines of its yardarms. The gaff of its fore-and-aft sail flew no flag. Its distance still kept us from distinguishing the colours of its pennant, which was fluttering like a thin ribbon.

  It was coming on fast. If Captain Nemo let it approach, a chance for salvation might be available to us.

  “Sir,” Ned Land told me, “if that boat gets within a mile of us, I’m jumping overboard, and I beg you to follow suit.”

  I didn’t reply to the Canadian’s proposition but kept watching the ship, which was looming larger on the horizon. Whether it was English, French, American, or Russian, it would surely welcome us aboard if we could just get to it.

  “Master may recall,” Conseil then said, “that we have some experience with swimming.

  He can rely on me to tow him to that vessel, if he’s agreeable to going with our friend Ned.”

  Before I could reply, white smoke streamed from the battleship’s bow. Then, a few seconds later, the waters splashed astern of the Nautilus, disturbed by the fall of a heavy object. Soon after, an explosion struck my ears.

  “What’s this? They’re firing at us!” I exclaimed.

  “Good lads,” the Canadian muttered.

  “That means they don’t see us as castaways clinging to some wreckage.”

  “With all due respect to master—gracious,” Conseil put in, shaking off the water that had sprayed over him from another shell. “With all due respect to master, they’ve discovered the narwhale and they’re cannonading the same.”

  “But it must be clear to them,” I exclaimed, “that they’re dealing with human beings.”

  “Maybe that’s why,” Ned Land replied, staring hard at me.

  The full truth dawned on me. Undoubtedly people now knew where they stood on the existence of this so-called monster. Undoubtedly the latter’s encounter with the Abraham Lincoln, when the Canadian hit it with his harpoon, had led Commander Farragut to recognise the narwhale as actually an underwater boat, more dangerous than any unearthly cetacean.

  Yes, this had to be the case, and undoubtedly they were now chasing this dreadful engine of destruction on every sea.

  Dreadful indeed, if, as we could assume, Captain Nemo had been using the Nautilus in works of vengeance. Tha
t night in the middle of the Indian Ocean, when he imprisoned us in the cell, hadn’t he attacked some ship? That man now buried in the coral cemetery, wasn’t he the victim of some collision caused by the Nautilus? Yes, I repeat, this had to be the case. One part of Captain Nemo’s secret life had been unveiled. And now, even though his identity was still unknown, at least the nations allied against him knew they were no longer hunting some fairy-tale monster, but a man who had sworn an implacable hate towards them.

  This whole fearsome sequence of events appeared in my mind’s eye. Instead of encountering friends on this approaching ship, we would find only pitiless enemies.

  Meanwhile shells fell around us in increasing numbers. Some, meeting the liquid surface, would ricochet and vanish into the sea at considerable distances. But none of them reached the Nautilus.

  By then the ironclad was no more than three miles off. Despite its violent cannonade, Captain Nemo hadn’t appeared on the platform. And yet if one of those conical shells had scored a routine hit on the Nautilus’s hull, it could have been fatal to him.

  The Canadian came to me. He cupped my face in his hands and looked down at me with a terrible question in his eyes. “Pierre,” he said to me, using my given name for the first time in our acquaintance, “tell me you’re done with this madness. Tell me you’re coming with me.”

  I reached up to hold one of his strong, calloused hands against my cheek and met his piercing gaze. “I’m with you. Now and forever.”

  The relief these words brought him was clear. “Good,” he said, letting me go. “We’ve got to do everything we can to get out of this jam. Let’s signal them. Damnation! Maybe they’ll realise we’re decent people.”

  Ned Land pulled out his handkerchief to wave it in the air. But he had barely unfolded it when he was felled by an iron fist, and despite his great strength, he tumbled to the deck.

  “Scum,” the captain shouted. “Do you want to be nailed to the Nautilus’s spur before it charges that ship?”

  Dreadful to hear, Captain Nemo was even more dreadful to see. His face was pale from some spasm of his heart, which must have stopped beating for an instant. His pupils were hideously contracted. His voice was no longer speaking, it was bellowing. Bending from the waist, he shook the Canadian by the shoulders.

  Then, dropping Ned and turning to the battleship, whose shells were showering around him, “O ship of an accursed nation, you know who I am!” he shouted in his powerful voice. “And I don’t need your colours to recognise you! Look! I’ll show you mine!”

  And in the bow of the platform, Captain Nemo unfurled a black flag, like the one he had left planted at the South Pole.

  Just then a shell hit the Nautilus’s hull obliquely, failed to breach it, ricocheted near the captain, and vanished into the sea.

  Captain Nemo shrugged his shoulders. Then, addressing me, “Go below,” he told me in a curt tone. “You and your companions, go below.”

  “Sir,” I exclaimed, “are you going to attack this ship?”

  “Sir, I’m going to sink it.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “I will,” Captain Nemo replied icily. “You’re ill-advised to pass judgement on me, sir.

  Fate has shown you what you weren’t meant to see. The attack has come. Our reply will be dreadful. Get back inside.”

  “From what country is that ship?”

  “You don’t know? Fine, so much the better. At least its nationality will remain a secret to you. Go below!”

  The Canadian, Conseil, and I could only obey. Some fifteen of the Nautilus’s seamen surrounded their captain and stared with a feeling of implacable hate at the ship bearing down on them. You could feel the same spirit of vengeance enkindling their every soul.

  I went below just as another projectile scraped the Nautilus’s hull, and I heard the captain exclaim, “Shoot, you demented vessel. Shower your futile shells. You won’t escape the Nautilus’s spur. But this isn’t the place where you’ll perish. I don’t want your wreckage mingling with that of the Avenger.”

  I repaired to my stateroom with Ned. The captain and his chief officer stayed on the platform. The propeller was set in motion. The Nautilus swiftly retreated, putting us outside the range of the vessel’s shells. But the chase continued, and Captain Nemo was content to keep his distance.

  Near four o’clock in the afternoon, unable to control the impatience and uneasiness devouring me, I went back to the central companionway. The hatch was open. I ventured onto the platform. The captain was still strolling there, his steps agitated. He stared at the ship, which stayed to his leeward five or six miles off. He was circling it like a wild beast, drawing it eastward, letting it chase after him. Yet he didn’t attack. Was he, perhaps, still undecided?

  I tried to intervene one last time. But I had barely queried Captain Nemo when the latter silenced me with, “I’m the law, I’m the tribunal. I’m the oppressed, and there are my oppressors. Thanks to them, I’ve witnessed the destruction of everything I loved, cherished, and venerated—homeland, wife, children, father, and mother. There lies everything I hate.

  Not another word out of you.”

  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, squeezing my hand. “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 accomplices in 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 compass indicated that the Nautilus hadn’t changed direction. I could hear the beat of its propeller, churning the waves with steady speed. Staying on the surface of the water, it rolled gently, sometimes to one side, sometimes to the other.

  My companions and I had decided to escape as soon as the vessel came close enough for us to be heard—or seen, because the moon would wax full in three days and was shining brightly. Once we were aboard that 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 would quickly resume its retreating ways.

  Part of the night passed without incident. We kept watch for an opportunity 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 on the surface of the waves, and then it would be not only possible but 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 was unfurling 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 competed with each other in tranquility, and the sea offered the orb of night the loveliest mirror ever to reflect its image.

  And when I compared this deep calm of the elements with all the fury seething inside the plating of this barely perceptible Nautilus, I shivered all over.

  The vessel was two miles off. It drew nearer, always moving towards the phosphorescent glow that signalled the Nautilus’s presence. I saw its green and red running lights, plus the white lantern hanging from the large stay of its foremast. Hazy flickerings were reflected on 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 Nemo never 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 attack its adversary, and my companions and I would leave forever this man I dared not judge.

  I was about to go below to alert them, when the chief officer climbed 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 could call “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 withdrawn into the hull until they lay exactly flush with it. The surface of this long sheet-iron cigar no longer offered a single protrusion that could hamper its manoeuvres.

  I returned to the lounge. The Nautilus still emerged above the surface. A few morning gleams infiltrated the liquid strata. Beneath the undulations of the billows, the windows were enlivened by the blushing of the rising sun. That dreadful day of June 2 had dawned.

  At seven o’clock the log told me that the Nautilus had reduced speed. I realised that it was letting the warship approach. Moreover, the explosions grew more intensely audible.

  Shells furrowed the water around us, drilling through it with an odd hissing sound.

  “My friends,” I said, “it’s time. Let’s shake hands, and may God be with us.”

  Ned Land was determined, Conseil calm, I myself nervous and barely in control.

  We went into the library. Just as I pushed open the door leading to the well of the central companionway, I heard the hatch close sharply overhead.

  The Canadian leapt up the steps, but I stopped him. A well-known hissing told me that water was entering the ship’s ballast tanks. Indeed, in a few moments the Nautilus had submerged some metres below the surface of the waves.