Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (22 page)

By any measure, Nemo was a man now, twenty years old according to his careful reckoning with the solar calendar and daily journal.
 
His hair had grown to his shoulders, though he hacked it off with a flint knife; his cheeks and chin were covered with a thickening dark beard.
 

Dragging out the glider-wings once again, he stood near the plateau cliff and looked behind him at the cone of the volcano.
 
For months, the earthquakes had been growing worse, striking with greater frequency.
 
At unpredictable times the ground heaved and bucked as if a subterranean beast were stirring in its sleep.
 
Something mysterious and unknown lay beneath his island, and Nemo wasn’t sure he wanted to know what it was.

Now, as he reattached the fabric to the glider frame, winds gusted up the slopes.
 
Another fine day for flying.
 
After the first risky test of the kite-wings, Nemo had modified and improved his design.
 
He’d added a small rudder, flaps, and cords to control his flight.
 
The craft allowed him to continue exploring the island’s wild parts, but he also enjoyed the pure exhilaration of flight.
 
Even after years ashore, Nemo had never allowed himself to become complacent.

The sky was clear to the ocean horizon.
 
Nemo had spent so many years in solitude that he no longer even
thought
about rescue.
 
Once he’d stopped tormenting himself with thoughts of Caroline and Jules, his misery decreased.

He’d left Nantes so long ago, yet he could still remember the smell of the Loire in summer, the bustling docks, the coarse bread and pungent cheese he and his father had shared during lunches together, their late-night card games.
 

He wondered if Verne had gone on to become a success.
 
His redheaded friend would be a lawyer by now.
 
Had Caroline married?
 
Probably.
 
She’d had such good prospects for a rich and well-connected husband.
 
Could she and Verne have married each other?

Rather than think of such things, Nemo finished the tight lashings on the glider kite.
 
Out of habit he gazed across the boundless sea -- and stood bolt upright.
 
He saw the distant silhouette of a large vessel with three masts approaching his island.

A ship!

Nemo weighted his glider down so the winds would not blow it away, then scrambled pell-mell along jungled paths until he reached the meadow overlooking the sheltered lagoon.
 
Here, he’d long ago piled mounds of dry wood for a signal fire.

Though the ship would still take hours to reach the island, he hurried, breathless and flushed with excitement.
 
Expert now, Nemo used his flint and steel to strike sparks, and within minutes, the bonfire was ablaze, a dazzling signal that raised smoke into the sky.
 
The ship
had
to see him.
 
He was saved!

For the first time in years, Nemo thought of rescue, of fellow human beings.
 
The young man didn’t even know if regular society would accept him anymore.
 
Some poor wretches -- such as William Dampier, the original inspiration for
Robinson Crusoe
-- had become more like animals than men after being stranded on desert islands.

But Nemo could learn again.
 
He had the imagination and the drive.
 
Once back to civilization, he could be cleaned up and dressed in finery.
 
He could return to France, give speeches, wave at the crowds, an adventurer and hero.
 
He would see Caroline again, and Jules.
 
Nemo hurried down the counter-weighted elevator into Granite House.
 
Oh, the stories he would tell!
 

Then the waiting began.
 
Hour after hour.
 
He found it agonizing.
 
All day, Nemo continued to feed his blazing bonfire in an unmistakable call for help.

By late afternoon, the strange ship had grown close, angling in from the west.
 
In the orange-tinted sky of sunset, the details of her three-masted form were clear enough in silhouette.
 

Nemo stared through his rockface window, using a crude spyglass he had constructed out of bamboo tubes, the lens from his magnifying glass and a second lens painstakingly ground from the bottom of a salvaged brandy bottle he’d found in the original jetsam that had washed ashore.
 
Now he realized with a growing cold sensation in his chest that he knew this ship.
 
Knew it too well.

The
Coralie.

Nemo could never forget the vessel on which he had become a seaman, where he’d learned the ways of rigging and sails and the currents of the seven seas.
 
There could be no mistake.
 
Led by the hideous Captain Noseless, the brigands must have taken the
Coralie
as their own, killing all crew aboard who refused to join them.
 
For years now, the marauders had used Captain Grant’s brig as if it were their own.

And now that pirate crew had arrived at the island.
 
His
island.
 

Thanks to the signal fire, they would know that some poor castaway lived here.
 
Now the pirates would come after
him
and take everything he’d managed to hoard for his survival.
 
Then they would delight in killing him.

Swallowing hard, knowing the enemy would come in with the morning tide, Nemo set about preparing his defenses.
 
This would be his chance to avenge what the pirates had done to him, to the
Coralie
crew, and to Captain Grant.

Maybe it would be worth all the suffering.

viii

On the clearing above the cliffs, he let his bonfire fade to embers, but it was already too late.

Engrossed in the slim possibility of rescue, he had never planned or built military defenses.
 
Even from the shelter of Granite House, Nemo had no way to drive back a hundred armed and bloodthirsty pirates.
 
He’d already seen how these men fought, how they killed without compunction.
 
Not even Captain Grant, the brawny Ned Land, and the seasoned English sailors aboard the
Coralie
had been able to drive them back.
 

And Nemo was just one man.
 
How could he possibly succeed where the others had failed?

But he had time, and resources, and ingenuity on his side.
 
He would never run and hide.
 
He had to protect what he could and inflict all possible damage -- if only in honor of Captain Grant’s memory.

During the night he returned to the plateau and loosed his goats from the corral.
 
The pirates would slaughter any animals they found and take the meat back to their ship.
 
Bleating, the goats ran into the forest, where at least they had a chance to escape.
 
If he got through this, Nemo could round up most of them again.
 
He could not save his vegetable garden, nor the outdoor huts where he stored the supplies he’d accumulated over the years.

Nemo secured himself inside Granite House.
 
He drew up the ladders, severed the baskets of his elevator, and set fire to his bamboo stairway so that it fell off the cliffside in smoking cinders.
 
Safely isolated, he ate and drank his fill, then tried to doze.
 
He would need all of his energy the following day.

He meant to kill as many pirates as possible.
 
For Captain Grant.

A long passage in the rear of Granite House led through winding caves up to the mountainside.
 
The entire island was honeycombed with underground tunnels, covered by jungle-overgrown openings.
 
If forced to run, Nemo could hide in the wilderness. . . but if the pirates decided to set up a permanent base, he would have a long battle ahead of him.
 
Sooner or later, he intended to wipe them out.
 
They all deserved to die.

At dawn, he went to the cave opening and looked out to sea.
 
The
Coralie
had sailed into the lagoon with the tide and had anchored not far from shore.
 
Squinting through his spyglass, Nemo could just make out the hideous Captain Noseless standing on the quarterdeck and watching his crew.
 
Already, two longboats filled with men were being lowered over the sides.
 
Once in the water, the pirates rowed toward the base of the cliff where he had set his bonfire.

Anger simmered within Nemo as he remembered how this ferocious pirate had coldly executed Captain Grant.
 
Now he’d dispatched his henchmen to explore while he remained safe aboard the
Coralie
.
 
Apparently, Noseless would not venture into danger until he discovered who waited for them on this island.

The longboats came ashore where Nemo hoped they would, and he loosed his first desperate defense before the marauders expected anything.
 
For just a moment, he had the advantage of surprise.

Eight pirates climbed from each longboat and stood on the shore.
 
Two brigands pointed at the signs of habitation on the cliffside.
 
The men made their way toward a slope of broken rock jarred loose by recent seismic tremors.
 

From his southernmost window opening, Nemo pushed several boulders he had lined up.
 
The heavy rocks tumbled down the cliffs, striking more boulders on the steep slope, ricocheting and gaining momentum, carrying others along with them in a building avalanche.

The pirate shore party looked up as countless chunks of stone fell and bounced with a cracking, roaring sound.
 
The brigands scattered on the beach.
 
One boulder crushed a pirate like a cockroach under a bootheel; the rest of the rockfall plunged down the cliff, across the beach, and into the sea.
 
Several large stones splintered and sank one of the longboats.
 

Nemo had struck the first blow, and he found it very satisfying.

He looked over to see the
Coralie
’s gunports opening up.
 
So, the pirate captain had been watching.
 
He retreated deep into his caves as Captain Noseless launched a full broadside from the ship.
 
An instant after he heard the boom, cannonballs pounded the cliffside.
 
The front of Granite House splintered, and the main chamber filled with smoke and rock dust.
 
As the air cleared, Nemo saw that the cliff face had been blasted away, leaving him vulnerable.

Below, the shore party cheered, then ran howling as debris rained down from the cliffs above.
 
Noseless would be preparing a second broadside, and so Nemo ducked deeper into the back tunnels heading for escape onto the plateau.

The landing party, frustrated because Nemo had destroyed his stairs and ladders, ran along the beach, searching for a different way up.
 
From the
Coralie
, Noseless launched a third longboat, and more brigands swarmed ashore.

Panting, smeared with smoke and rock dust, Nemo tried to plan what to do next.
 
He was running for his life.

ix

The raiding parties landed at different points on the coast and crawled upland.
 
The marauders, enraged by his first attack, drew their cutlasses as they climbed the steep slopes, fought through the jungles -- and searched for Nemo.

He knew it had been years since this band had come to the island.
 
Did they know the terrain, or was this just an occasional stopping point?
 
Though jungle thickets might have hidden him better, he fled higher up the volcano’s slope.
 
He preferred room to move, a vantage from which he could see his enemies coming.
 
He had to outsmart them.