Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (15 page)

Nemo backed away, crouching and looking dangerous.
 
He couldn’t catch his breath, or focus his thoughts.
 
The deafening sounds of battle faded to a mere background hum as he concentrated on staying alive.
 
Nemo took out his long knife to defend himself against the bearded pirate.

When he stepped on a fallen sword with a clatter, he bent to pick it up.
 
His own two pistols were spent, so he threw them like metal cudgels at the pirate’s face.
 
But Redbeard ducked from one side to the other, grinning.
 
Nemo breathed hard, inhaling fire with each breath, hating the pirates, hating their thirst for mayhem and slaughter.
 
He wanted to kill them all.

Near the bow, Ned Land fired a final shot from his rifle, blowing a pirate completely off the deck.
 
Then the burly quartermaster grabbed the long barrel and flailed the rifle like a steel club.
 
The oak stock splintered as he brought it down on the face of a charging pirate, smashing the man’s nose.
 
A spray of blood, mucous, and teeth spewed from the pirate’s broken head.
 

Ned Land thrashed the rifle from side to side, biceps bulging, until the splintered wooden stock broke off . . . and a swarm of angry pirates converged on him.
 
With dismay, Nemo saw the Canadian quartermaster go down under a flurry of long knives and sword thrusts.
 

Concentrating on his bearded attacker, Nemo backed against the deck rail with nowhere to go but the debris-filled ocean.
 
Intent on venting his anger against this one opponent, dismayed at what had just happened to Ned Land, he thrust his sword toward Redbeard, but the pirate clashed his own sword against it.
 
The jarring impact numbed the young man’s arm all the way up to the elbow, and the sword clattered from his throbbing grip.
 
Nemo had only the long dagger in the other hand.
 

Redbeard raised his sword for the killing blow.
 
Nemo glared at him, ready to jump and fight with his teeth and fingernails, if necessary.
 
He wouldn’t give up, certainly not now.

Then a singularly loud pistol shot cracked over the din.
 
Crimson splashed from a new hole beneath the bearded pirate’s breast.
 
The marauder grunted and stopped, holding his sword high, still preparing for the thrust.
 

Nemo looked wildly to one side and saw that Captain Grant had fired his last shot.
 
The captain, his mentor, had aimed and hit the murderous pirate to save the life of his cabin boy.
 

Before Nemo could react, the noseless pirate leader strode up to Captain Grant and brought the pommel of his dripping cutlass down on the captain’s head, driving him to the deck.
 
A gasp of shame and despair rose like a banshee’s cry from the survivors of the
Coralie
.

“No!” Nemo cried.

Mortally wounded, Redbeard took one more staggering step forward, as if in death he meant to embrace the young man.
 
He collapsed like an avalanche on top of Nemo, knocking him into the rail, which shattered.
 
Both of them tumbled backward into the waves. . . .

In the water, Nemo struggled to take refuge in the scattered wreckage.
 
A fan of red murk oozed from Redbeard’s body, and Nemo kicked his way free, pummeling the pirate’s lifeless body.
 
Already the marauder sloop and the damaged
Coralie
were drifting away.
 
Out in the open sea, a dazed Nemo had to tread water before trying to swim back toward the ships.

All the remaining pirates had swarmed from the sloop over to the
Coralie
.
 
With the battle won, some went about extinguishing fires and minimizing further damage to the brig.
 

Nemo looked up from the water.
 
At the tall quarterdeck, he watched the disfigured pirate leader haul Captain Grant to his feet.
 
Noseless marched the stunned man to the tallest point, where everyone could see.
 
By now, many of the
Coralie
survivors were surrendering to whatever fate awaited them.

Nemo’s ears were ringing, and he couldn’t make out the exact words that Noseless spoke -- but he knew the speech was about Captain Grant, who stood reeling and barely conscious, still struggling to maintain his dignity.
 
But he felt helpless, needing to do something.
 
He swam harder, stroking toward the ships that continued to drift farther and farther from him.

Then the pirate leader pointed a pistol at Captain Grant’s chest and fired.
 
The blast knocked the captain to the deck.
 
Nemo gave a wordless shout that went unheard in the remaining din of the takeover.
 
He choked on water that splashed into his gasping mouth.
 
He swam harder, tears stinging his eyes with the saltwater from the sea.

Without ceremony, a pair of pirates picked up the captain’s body, swung him twice, then heaved him overboard.
 
Captain Grant, Nemo’s friend and teacher who had shown him the ways of the sea and the ways of science, fell dead into the water, among the other floating debris.

The pirates had taken complete control of the
Coralie
now, retying sails, regaining the brig’s maneuverability.
 
Because it was far more powerful and more impressive than their sloop, they would no doubt repair the three-masted ship and make it one of their own vessels.

As the ships sailed away from him, Nemo knew he could never catch up, no matter how fast he swam.
 
Devastated now, still reeling from the horror he had seen but now yet acknowledging the even worse straits in which he now found himself, Nemo clung to the wreckage that had spilled from the
Coralie
’s cargo hold.
 

He screamed after the pirates, but they either did not hear him, or ignored his pitiful shouts.
 
But Captain Grant had taught him to be resourceful.
 
Nemo looked around at the splintered wood, the broken spars, and the few casks and crates of supplies.
 
Perhaps he could construct some sort of a temporary raft.
 
But he had to act quickly, for every moment the flotsam dispersed more and more.
 
He could not lose vital resources now.
 
Every scrap might make the difference between his survival or his death.

All around, the water was stained purplish from spilled blood.
 
Corpses floated facedown like tiny islands, their gaping wounds washed clean by sea water.
 
Somewhere in the distance, the body of Captain Grant lay among them.

The two ships dwindled to tiny specks, farther and farther away, until there was nothing else but the sea.
 
Nemo was adrift and alone, lost and helpless.

Soon, the sharks would come.

vi

Even before the still-smoking
Coralie
and the pirates’ sloop disappeared into the distance, Nemo realized how alone he was out in the South China Sea.
 
To stand even the slimmest chance of surviving, he would have to rely on his own wits and everything he had learned.
 
He thought of Captain Grant -- and then Jules Verne, and Caroline Aronnax, and he strove for some way to keep himself alive.

Alert for the circling razor fins of sharks, Nemo paddled toward the nearest crate.
 
If he could assemble the drifting junk, he might find enough worthwhile components.
 
Kicking hard with sore and exhausted legs, he pushed it closer to one of the others.
 
Then, with the tangled end of a burned rigging line, he lashed them together into a crude raft.
 
Next, breathless but refusing to think about his exhaustion or fear, he swam over to fetch a barrel bobbing in the waves.
 
Hoping it would contain water or beer, he was dismayed to find that the keg held only damp black powder.

He did find a dead chicken, drowned inside its cage, already planning for when he would need food.
 
Not knowing how long he might remain adrift, or what items he might require, he grabbed a waterlogged scrap of canvas from a torn sail, a long piece of wooden rail with a splintered end, a tangled mass of rigging rope, and someone’s bloodstained shirt.
 
He still had the waterlogged journal that had saved his life from the pirate captain’s sword thrust, and he even kept the battered cage from the drowned chicken.
 
Anything might prove invaluable.

Soon, he saw shark fins cutting the surface, circling and approaching the floating bodies.
 
Many of the fresh corpses were slain pirates, and he wanted nothing more than to see them devoured by the aquatic predators.
 
But other human forms floating here -- like Captain Grant himself -- had been his mates aboard the
Coralie
.
 
These brave men, his friends, his teachers, were now nothing more than fish food.
 
Nemo hoped they gave the sharks indigestion. . . .

With so many sharks in the water, he didn’t dare leave his meager refuge on the tilted crates.
 
Using a broken slat of wood, he paddled his cumbersome raft away from the scene of carnage.
 
For hours, he watched as the voracious sharks fought over the floating casualties of the battle.
 
Standing above the water, he shouted his rage and helplessness at them, but they ignored him. . . .

All that night Nemo huddled on the raft, knees drawn up against his chest in a darkness lit with silver light from the southern constellations Captain Grant had taught him.
 
In the quiet darkness, he heard only the sounds of water lapping against his makeshift raft, and the ferocious tearing and splashing of sharks devouring the last scraps of human meat.

He sat and listened and thought about his boyhood in Nantes, his days exploring the world in his imagination with young Jules Verne . . . and flirting with Caroline Aronnax.
 
Nemo kept seeing the face of kindly Captain Grant, thinking of how the man had used his last pistol shot to save
him
before falling prey to Captain Noseless.
 

Nemo spent the entire night wide awake in grief and despair.
 
He faced the overwhelming fear that clamored to rule his consciousness, and by dawn he had come through the worst of it.
 
After much contemplation, Nemo decided to live.
 
Somehow

#

During the worst heat of the blistering day, Nemo covered himself with the wet canvas and curled up under it.
 

Sometime during the second day he devoured the dead chicken raw.
 
Hunger and weakness drove back his natural reluctance to eat the uncooked meat, since his survival was more important than his preferences.
 
Before long, the chicken would rot and do him no good.
 
So he sucked every drop of moisture from the flesh, chewed the fat for every scrap of energy it could provide.
 

Finished, he made the mistake of tossing the entrails over the side, which attracted the sharks again.
 
One persistent shark circled, sensing more food atop the lashed crates.
 
Its fin traced a spiral, coming closer and closer.
 
Looking into the water, Nemo could see its sleek torpedo form; it reminded him of what Captain Grant had told him about Robert Fulton’s sub-marine boat, which had been designed to move underwater like an armor-plated fish.

The shark finally grew tired or impatient -- and rammed Nemo’s rickety raft.
 
Hastily knotted ropes strained as the crates lurched.

The impact nearly threw Nemo overboard, but he grabbed the rough ropes to keep his balance.
 
His left foot splashed into the water, but he yanked it back onto the wooden raft.
 
The shark returned for another lunge, its soulless black eyes filled with obsession and hunger.

The shark rammed again, cracking some of the boards.
 
Knowing the crates wouldn’t last long under such an onslaught, Nemo spread his feet apart on the uneven surface and snatched up the splintered wooden pole.
 
It wasn’t much of a spear, but it was the only weapon he had.