Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (24 page)

As the terrified pirates stumbled across the beach, the trees behind them bent aside.
 
The bloodstained dinosaur pushed its way into the clearing, and its scarlet gaze locked onto the men crossing the swatch of sand.
 
The pirates beckoned for their captain to send help, to launch another longboat, but Noseless made no move to assist them.

One of the pirates fell to his knees in an abject expression of prayerful penitence, while the other raced out into the shallow water, sloshing up to his knees and then his waist, as if he could swim out to the
Coralie
in time.

The dinosaur stepped over the huddled form of the praying man, batting him to the sand with a powerful sweep of its tail, then lunged into the water and scooped down like a pelican catching a fish.
 
The swimming pirate wailed, only to fall abruptly silent as the creature crunched its jaws.
 
Next, the monster turned back to the beach, where it daintily bit the praying man in half.

Nemo watched from his hiding place, stunned by the cold-blooded attitude of Captain Noseless on board the ship.
 
Dozens of pirates remained on the
Coralie
, and all had refused to help their comrades.
 
The young man’s nostrils flared, and he grew angrier by the moment.
 

From the beach, the dinosaur stared at the ship, defiant, as if its tiny brain knew that its main enemy lay out there.
 
Its roar split the twilight.

In response, Captain Noseless’s command echoed across the water.
 
“Fire!”

The dinosaur roared again as a volley of blasts rang out.
 
Every cannon on the port side of the pirate ship fired.
 
Eight of the balls went wide, striking the rocks, the sand, or the jungle -- but five hammered into the beast, blasting huge wounds in its massive body.
 
The dinosaur was knocked backward, thrashing.

The remaining men on the
Coralie
surged to the port sides, cheering.
 

The monster staggered, wailing and honking.
 
Blood poured in gouts from mangled holes in its hide.
 
It clacked its huge shovel jaws together.
 
Two more cannons fired, and both balls struck, shattering the dinosaur’s spine and ribs.

At that moment Nemo saw his chance.
 
While Noseless concentrated on his extravagant destruction, the young man slipped into the water.
 
If ever he hoped for an opportunity to get aboard the ship, it was now while the pirates were cheering the dinosaur’s death throes.

The dying beast twitched, thrashed, and collapsed onto the bloodied sands.
 
Its monstrous primeval body had been ruined as easily as a defenseless cargo ship, another victim of the pirates.

As the tropical dusk darkened into night, Nemo stroked through the calm lagoon, crossing the distance without a splash.
 
He approached opposite from the gathered pirates and clung to the
Coralie
’s barnacled hull at the water line.
 

Using the stealth and meticulous care he had developed as a hunter on the island, Nemo climbed the side of the ship, finding footholds on the rough hull planks, pulling himself up by portholes and the hinged starboard gunports.

He hauled himself over the deck railing and crouched behind a tall coil of rope.
 
Tense and completely alert, he knelt on a bloodied grating, over which the pirate captain must have flogged his poorly disciplined crew.
 
A gunshot rang out, and Nemo ducked, sure that he’d been caught, ready to fight and make a full accounting of himself.
 
But then he heard the hooting laughter of the pirates celebrating their victory.

Most of them must be up on deck, celebrating, now that the cannons had ceased firing.
 
Without being seen, he scampered to a hatch and climbed down into the rank-smelling shadows.
 
A satisfied and confident smile stole across Nemo’s face as he calculated what he could do, how much damage he could cause.
 
The pirates would rue this day.

Experiencing an eerie déjà vu, he hurried down the ladder into the main hold.
 
He
knew
this ship, had lived aboard her for two years.
 
The
Coralie
had been his home as much as Ile Feydeau or his Granite House cave.
 
He remembered where his bunk had been, as well as those of the first mate, the carpenters, and sailmakers.
 
Most importantly, Nemo remembered where the gunpowder was stored, where kegs of explosive black powder were stacked in the heart of the ship, shielded from outside attack.

But the protected stores were not proof against an infiltrator like himself.

Saddened by what he found himself forced to do with Captain Grant’s fine ship, he cracked open one of the casks and spilled the sharp-smelling black grains over the decking and then ran a trail around the other barrels, so that all the kegs would ignite simultaneously.
 

Noseless kept a full storeroom of explosives.
 
With a bitter grimace, Nemo realized that a pirate ship needed to use its cannons far more often than a research vessel like Captain Grant’s.
 
The scarred captain’s additional stockpile would bring about the pirates’ doom.

He took a smaller cask of gunpowder and walked backward, leaving a long dark line all the way to the ladder.
 
He could still hear the pirates reveling up on deck; apparently none of them felt any grief for the loss of their devoured comrades, nor did they leave the ship to investigate the dinosaur’s carcass.

Kneeling, Nemo removed his flint and steel.
 
When he struck them against each other, the clinking sound rang out -- but the squeezeboxes and singing and laughter from three decks above were far too loud for any of the pirates to hear him.
 
Finally, a spark flew from the dagger blade and landed in the black powder.
 
Igniting with a fountain of gold flecks, the flame ate along the fuse line faster than a rapid walk.
 

Foregoing all pretense of caution or silence, Nemo scrambled up the ladder, past the second deck, then through the hatch into the open air.
 
He burst out between two drunken pirates, who reeled backward with a cry of astonishment.
 
Nemo took advantage of their disorientation and ducked past them, shoving with the flat of his hand.
 
One of the pirates grabbed his arm, but he whirled like a cobra and sank his teeth into the man’s knuckles like a vicious animal.
 
The pirate yelped and released him.
 

Standing at the quarterdeck, Noseless saw the young man.
 
“Get him!”
 
Only then did the brigand captain look over at the deck hatch, as if wondering what Nemo had been doing below, where a wisp of smoke curled up.
 
His cadaverous face changed, and his scarred visage held a look of horror.
 
“Down below!
 
Get to the powder storeroom.”
 
But the pirates didn’t understand his urgency.

As the raiders closed in, Nemo threw himself overboard.
 
It was a long drop to the sea, but he didn’t care.
 
He tumbled, landing feet first with a splash and sinking deep.
 
Then he swam underwater as far as he could; when he finally surfaced, several pirates stood on the deck, blasting with their pistols.
 
But their aim was off in the dark, and lead balls splashed all around him in the lagoon.

Nemo swam desperately to get away, mentally counting down.
 
He looked over his shoulder, wondering how much time remained.
 
Noseless stood on the
Coralie
’s deck in the same spot where Nemo had last seen Captain Grant.

Then all the powder kegs exploded.

The shockwave punched him like a gigantic fist, hurling Nemo through the water toward the shore.
 
The concussion knocked the wind out of him and made his ears ring, but still he thrashed closer to the shelter of the mangrove swamp.
 

Splintered wood showered the water like Roman candles.
 
He heard the wails and screams of dying men.
 
The
Coralie
burned, flames racing up the rigging and the sails -- a complete inferno.
 
The end of Captain Grant’s abused ship, the end of the pirates.

Shaky, battered, and nearly deaf, Nemo made his way into the thick mangrove swamps.
 
Panting as he held a knobby root, he watched the ship burn and sink.
 
In the flickering orange firelight, he saw no survivors, no men swimming for shore or clinging to flotsam and groaning for help.
 
The pirates had been taken by surprise, and they had paid the ultimate price.

The lack of mercy bothered Nemo not a bit.

He gradually got his breath back.
 
He had protected his home and his island, but most of all he was proud to have avenged the murder of Captain Grant.
 
For that, he was thankful.

xi

Over the following afternoon, Nemo assessed the damage the pirates had done to his home in only two days.

His storage sheds had been burned to the ground, the corral torn apart, his vegetable garden uprooted and trampled.
 
Using green vines as crude ropes, he lowered himself down the cliff face into the ruins of Granite House.
 
His caves had been gutted, everything breakable smashed to pieces.
 
Malicious vandalism, not because the pirates wanted anything of his.
 

Where he had hidden it in an alcove, he found the journal he had so diligently kept during his isolation.
 
With tears in his dark eyes, he flipped through the intact pages that described his daily tribulations.
 
It had taken him years to put everything together here. . . .
 

How he hated the pirates!

Later, Nemo sat by himself on the beach, knees drawn up to his chin.
 
With the first dinosaur attack, Noseless had retrieved the longboats from beach, stranding his own men on the island, and those boats had burned with the
Coralie
.
 

Nemo listened to the sighing water out by the sheltering reefs, and realized he simply did not have the heart to begin all over again.
 
He clutched the logbook to his chest, remembering how it had saved him from a sword thrust long ago.
 
The written words were all that remained of those years of his life, now that his home had been ruined.
 

Nemo retrieved enough food from his hidden supplies to make a meal for himself.
 
Then he spent hours just smelling the bitter odor of smoke and listening to the lonely wind as he contemplated what to do.

The
Coralie
had been destroyed.
 
He supposed a few surviving pirates might still be lost in the jungles, raiders who had survived the depredations of the dinosaur.
 
If they came after him, Nemo would fight.
 
But he would rather avoid the brigands altogether.

Once again, André Nemo was about to start clean with his life, just as when he had signed on aboard Captain Grant’s ship after the death of his father.
 
Now, though, without the driving juggernaut of vengeance in his heart, he felt empty, aimless.
 
He could do anything he desired now, without being tied down. . . .

The strange cavern that had opened up on the side of the volcano intrigued him.
 
Numerous caves and passages riddled the island, extending deep into the Earth -- but the huge dinosaur had emerged from that place.
 
What sort of subterranean world lurked beneath this island?

With the new morning, Nemo hiked up to the cave and stared at the wide opening.
 
From inside wafted strange and lush smells, humid air with a taint of sulfur, mixed with the freshness of thick vegetation.
 
Fog crept out of the cave mouth, and faint light came from a glow down the steep passage.