Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (25 page)

Nemo knew that he must investigate this place.
 
It was what Captain Grant would have done, to see, to explore, to learn.

From the tales he and Jules Verne had told each other during their imaginative musings, the theories they had read, as well as discussions he’d had aboard the
Coralie
, Nemo was no stranger to the idea that the Earth might be hollow, that a new world lay waiting to be explored beneath the crust.
 
To explain the magnetic phenomena of the Earth’s poles, the renowned astronomer Edmund Halley had hypothesized a hollow world composed of concentric spheres rotating like a dynamo around a small central sun, and the American soldier John Cleves Symmes had recently repopularized the idea.

Now Nemo had a chance to test it for himself.
 
He didn’t know where these tunnels might take him, whether they led to passages extending beneath the ocean floor . . . or even to the center of the Earth.
 

He did not undertake such a journey lightly.
 
He secured every useful item he could bring, found a scrap of rope from the ship wreckage and even retrieved two cutlasses and a brace of pistols that the pirates had dropped during their flight from the dinosaur.
 

He stitched together a satchel made of burnt scraps of sailcloth that had washed ashore from the wreck of the
Coralie
.
 
He would carry torches coated with sulfur and dried resin, though he could not bring enough to guide his way for long.
 
He hoped that the greenish underground illumination would remain steady enough for him to find his way.

Nemo sliced flesh from the fallen dinosaur’s carcass, cooked and tasted the meat.
 
Although it was bitter, the flesh seemed nourishing enough and in plentiful supply.
 
Anxious to go, he didn’t want to take the time to hunt other game, so he built a green, smoky fire and cured strips of the reptile meat, which he wrapped in fresh leaves and packed in his satchel.

His final and most important task was to tear out the writing-covered pages from his journal.
 
He rolled them into a tight tube, which he then inserted into the empty brandy bottle he had kept for so long.
 
He added a note instructing whoever found this message to deliver it to his friend Jules Verne in Nantes, France.
 
He sealed the bottle and went to the end of the lagoon.
 

When the strongest current of the tide went out, he gripped the bottle, knowing there was virtually no chance in all the vast oceans that this message would ever see its intended reader.
 
But he had beaten the odds before.

He hurled the bottle into the waves, watched it bob on the surface for some minutes and float away.
 
He hoped it would drift into the shipping lanes.
 
For a long time he’d clung to nothing more than hope. . . but hope had served him well enough over the years.

Taking his satchel, Nemo climbed the volcanic slopes to the intriguing cave opening.
 
He took one last look around him at the shores that had encompassed his world for so long, and then he turned toward the mystery ahead.
 

Nemo ventured into the cave, not knowing if he would ever come back.

Part IV

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE

i

Nantes, 1848

Caroline Aronnax stood at the head of the crowd on the docks, wearing her best silk gown, her finest lace cuffs, and her proudest expression.
 
Her whalebone corset was laced up so that she stood as straight as the masts on the exploration ship about to depart.
 
On the street beside the quays, a band played lively patriotic tunes.
 
Spectators cheered and howled for Captain Hatteras.
 

“I am so happy for you, my dear,” Madame Aronnax said, touching her daughter’s shoulder.
 
“You must be very proud of your captain.”

Marie stood apart from Caroline in the crowd, craning her neck to get a better view; Madame Aronnax insisted it would be unseemly for a mere maid to wait too closely beside her mistress on this momentous occasion.
 
Caroline had to wish her new husband farewell with all due decorum.

Tied up to the dock, the freshly painted
Forward
creaked in the afternoon breeze.
 
Her copper-plated hull would provide greater durability for crashing through layers of polar ice.
 
A gangplank extended to the dock, but the crew had already boarded.
 
The previous days had been busy as deck workers loaded crates of supplies.

As was his custom, the Mayor of Nantes arrived in a spectacular carriage drawn by four white horses.
 
White-clad coachmen drove the omnibus, and a postilion (also dressed in white) sat astride the front left horse.
 
While rattling across the paving stones, the turning wheels actuated an internal music box that sent out tinkling chimes.
 
These extravagant contraptions, called ‘White Ladies,’ reminded her of something Jules Verne might have imagined for his amusing stories.

Investors and newspapermen stood beneath crepe streamers, lecturing on the potential of this voyage of discovery.
 
Some voiced proud optimism that Captain Hatteras, of all men, would find the fabled Northwest Passage.

The uninspired but enthusiastic band played the French national anthem.
 
Standing in the crowd, Caroline wished she were at her pianoforte instead, composing an original piece for the
Forward
’s departure, a grand explorers’ march.
 
At the moment, though, her job was simply to remain visible and look beautiful -- nothing more.
 
Once Hatteras departed, she could reshape her life and accomplish more than she’d been able to do under her mother’s thumb.

She was the fresh young bride of the great captain.
 
Her parents stood with her, the successful merchant and his wife, beaming with pride as they stared at the well-provisioned ship.
 
Caroline had married her sea captain only the day before and had seen him for no more than ten minutes this entire morning.
 
They had spent their wedding night together, and once again Caroline had performed to the expectations that others forced upon her, but she still did not know this man who was now her husband.
 
She wouldn’t miss Hatteras a hundredth as much as she missed her long-lost André Nemo.

Hatteras had graying hair, mutton-chop sideburns, and a face weathered from years facing the salty wind -- but worst of all, she did not
know
him.
 
Other than her father’s records of his business dealings, Caroline had discovered little about her new husband’s past.
 
According to M. Aronnax, the good captain’s accomplishments and glories should have made any young woman proud.
 
But Hatteras was twenty-five years her senior.
 
He’d been married twice before, and both wives had died from fever while he was away at sea.
 
She didn’t know his sense of humor or his personality, had never even asked if the man liked
music
.

Caroline wouldn’t get an opportunity to know him either, not for a long time.
 
Hatteras would take his ship out with the afternoon’s outgoing tide.
 
Even given the most favorable winds and the best weather possible, she would not see her husband again for at least two years, probably more than that.
 

No doubt Captain Hatteras had women in other ports, as was traditional for seafarers who sailed around the world, but he seemed little interested in romance.
 
His entire life focused upon finding a trade route around the north pole.
 
Perhaps his heart was as cold as the arctic seas he intended to explore.

Yet Caroline had married him.
 
She had spoken the vows before God, and before witnesses.
 
Years ago, she had made promises to Nemo, and she had meant them at the time -- but Nemo was gone, and her life would never be the same.
 
She had to accept his loss.
 
Hatteras was her husband now.
 

She had slept with him in a strange bed, in a strange house.
 
An unfamiliar man in the darkness, he had been businesslike and oddly passionless for a man with a new young bride.
 
Caroline had closed her eyes, tried to imagine being with Nemo instead of Captain Hatteras, but that did not help.
 
The feelings were disappointing, and she did not want to diminish the fantasy lover in her mind.
 
And so she found their marriage consummated, herself no longer a virgin, the wife of a sea captain who would be gone for months or years at a time.

Caroline’s path had been set, regardless of her private dreams and ambitions -- impossible fantasies for a woman of her social standing in this place, in this time.
 
She would be expected to remain home and while away the hours, as a good wife should.
 
But she had other plans.

It would have made her miserable, had she meekly accepted society’s expectations.
 
But Caroline Aronnax had always made her own expectations, and she had learned from Nemo never to listen to the impossible.
 
Nemo had insisted that she could do whatever she set her mind to.

Married, but with her husband far away, Caroline thought her new situation might offer her a freedom that she’d never experienced before.
 
As wife and head of the household, she controlled the captain’s finances -- enough money to make her wealthy.
 
She would live in Hatteras’s home on rue Kervegan, where she could spend every day in her own pursuits.
 
She’d hire private tutors, not only for music and art (neither of which would raise eyebrows), but also to study business.
 
In particular, she wanted to learn about shipping manifests and accounting practices so she could help her overworked father at his merchant offices.

Yes, as far as she was concerned, Captain Hatteras could stay away from Nantes for as long as he wished.
 
What could have become a trap for other women, Caroline considered to be an
opportunity
.

Cannons blasted as Captain Hatteras and his first mate strode in full naval attire down the docks and up the gangplank.
 
The gruff captain waved to the assembled spectators before tipping his broad black hat toward where Caroline stood waiting for him.
 
She even managed to show some tears, though they were not for Hatteras, but for a young man gone long ago . . . gone along with so many shared dreams.
 
With an eerie sense of disorientation, she wondered if her husband even recognized who she was. . . .

Caroline thought of her younger years, of the wild childhood dreams she had shared with André Nemo and Jules Verne . . . and especially of that special night that had changed her forever, the enthusiastic promises she and Nemo had exchanged.
 
Together, the three of them had bolstered each other’s optimism, made it seem that she truly could write her own music or run her father’s shipping business, that Verne could become a famous writer, that Nemo could sail the uncharted seas.

But they had drifted apart, and they had each failed their own fantasies.

Though Caroline wished Jules Verne could have been here, the young redhead had already gone off to Paris to begin training for his law degree.
 
She understood why the lovestruck young man had wanted to make himself scarce during her wedding.
 
She felt sorry for Verne, and promised herself that she would do everything in her power to help him achieve his dreams.
 
With Nemo lost at sea, Jules Verne was the only kindred spirit she had left. . . .

The mayor of Nantes stepped up to a hastily erected podium and extended his ponderous congratulations and well wishes (as he had no doubt been paid to do by the
Forward
’s investors).
 
Accompanied by more cheering, dock workers cast off the ropes, and the copper-plated
Forward
drifted into the current.
 
Crew members pressed against the deck rails and waved back at the citizens of Nantes as the ship began to descend the Loire.