Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (26 page)

Caroline watched them, feeling strangely invisible.
 
Streamers and confetti fell around her, clustering in damp wads on the dock planks or floating waterlogged in the river.
 
The crowd jostled her, talking loudly, laughing.
 
She dried her eyes.

Such a large ship.
 
So many sailors.
 
Caroline thought of all the warm clothes and supplies the men had squirreled away in the cargo holds.
 
Before long, they would be facing a frozen white wasteland, searching for a passage that had already killed many other explorers in the past.
 
Did the
Forward
have any better chance of succeeding?

As the ship entered the current, she watched the silhouette of proud Captain Hatteras at the wheel, facing westward.
 
Finally, as an afterthought, he turned toward her and gave a brief salute before returning to his duty.
 

Caroline waved farewell, but she never knew whether he had seen her.

ii

Following his instincts and knowing he might never see daylight again, Nemo trudged downhill into the newly opened cave.
 
The tunnels wound deep into the Earth, knotted and twisted like malformed worm burrows.

And still he kept going.

The Earth itself seemed to breathe, drawing air from above to fill the caverns below.
 
Noting the direction of the torch flame, he followed the air currents.
 
That was what Captain Grant would have done.

Many of the catacombs dead-ended.
 
At times, the eerie light from glittering crystals and phosphorescent algaes faded inside the still passageways.
 
He lit one of his precious torches and continued to explore, making marks on the walls at turning points with soft, chalky stones he picked up from the floor.

The existence of the predatory dinosaur that had emerged from the cave proved that some new world must lay hidden: a living, lush environment, separate from the mysterious island above.
 
And if these tunnels did lead into the bowels of the Earth, they might also let Nemo travel beneath the ocean’s crust.
 
He might emerge in a different place . . . perhaps one closer to civilization.

Nemo kept trudging downward, always downward.
 

When his first torch finally gave out, instead of lighting another, he realized that the phosphorescence now provided enough delicate illumination.
 
Over the hours, his pupils widened to gather every scrap of light.
 
He also became more adept at finding his way through the blurred shadows by listening to the echoes that came back to him as he walked.

When he was too tired to continue, Nemo sat down and drank a sip from his waterskin, ate dried dinosaur meat, and then slept, his sleep haunted by questions and impossibilities, and memories of lost friends.
 
When he awoke refreshed, he continued his plodding journey downward, ever deeper.

On the next “day,” he found a trickling stream that emerged from a crack in the granite wall, a warm spring far beneath the Earth.
 
When Nemo tasted it, the flavor was rich with minerals, and so he refilled his water skin.
 
If he ate sparingly, the dried meat and other supplies in his pack would last him for many days.
 
Though he had only two more torches, he continued long past the point where he could be confident of returning.
 
Nemo had decided to risk everything and did not regret the direction he had taken.

He followed the stream as it chose the path of least resistance through the sloping stone floor until the warm water, joined by other springs and trickles, became a roiling creek that ran along one side of the tunnel.

Nemo jogged down the steepening slope, picking up speed until the stream hooked to the left and disappeared under a shoulder-high arch eroded through the stone wall.
 
The water was like a heated bath on his feet.
 
He splashed along, ducking under the low arch.
 
After wading through, Nemo emerged into a chamber so vast that he windmilled his arms to maintain his balance.
 

The warm aquifer gushed through the wall opening and plunged over a precipice into a thundering waterfall.
 
Spray washed up, echoing within the vaulted grotto like music in the nave of a cathedral.
 
The cavern reflected soundwaves back at him with such intensity that he could not guess its boundaries.
 
The bottomless pit in front of him was an open mouth greedily drinking of the water.
 

Nemo made his precarious way along a narrow rock ledge to a forest of dripping stalactites, which he grasped in order to steady himself.
 
Removing one of the unlit torches from his pack, he worked with flint and steel to light it.
 
He held his breath as the blaze took hold around the firebrand, then he raised it up.

Dancing light spread through a grotto filled with more wonders than he had ever imagined.
 
Immense faceted crystals jutted from the stone walls, dripped like tears from the ceiling, and flashed in the firelight: a treasure more breathtaking than the combined wealth of Pirate Roberts, Captain Kidd, and Blackbeard.
 
On the side nearest him, a waterfall of stone kept timeless pace with the pouring cascade of mineralized water that had led Nemo through the arch.

He shouted with delight, and the noise echoed back at him, refracted by the crystals and stalactites, so that it sounded as if an entire chorus of wide-eyed young men had expressed their amazement.
 
If only Caroline could be here.

He drank in the splendor for minutes, until he remembered he had few torches remaining.
 
Then he extinguished the fire and sat waiting until his eyes adjusted.
 
A brighter patch of the pale glow appeared from below.
 
He would use the staggered flow of stalactites as a staircase to reach the bottom of the pit.

Nemo made his way, grasping with both hands, feeling with his feet.
 
The stalactites were slick and damp.
 
Every inch was accomplished at the risk of falling to his death, but he continued, undaunted.
 
He knew there must be an easier path somewhere, for the dinosaur could never have toiled up through this treacherous labyrinth.
 
For Nemo, though, any path that continued to lead forward was as good as any other.

Halfway down, he found a wide ledge, where he curled up and slept again.
 
Some hours later, he woke, drank some mineralized water that had pooled in a depression on one of the rocks, and set off once more.

When he reached the bottom, he fell to his knees on the cold, hard stone.
 
After he caught his breath, he walked toward the brightening light.
 
He emerged into a second grotto, even more vast than the first, and Nemo knew he had stepped into another world -- a fairyland beyond even the wildest theories of modern science.
 

The ground was soft and crumbly, and the air smelled of mulch.
 
All around him, as far as he could see, stood immense fungi, mushrooms as tall as trees.
 
The mushroom caps were white, each ringed with a golden frill.
 
Some were the size of dining chairs, others grew four times as tall as a man.
 
Wreaths of mist crept around the gigantic toadstools, and dripping strands of moss clung to the rocks.
 
A greenish, cold light filled the chamber as if it oozed from the rock walls.

Far in the distance, obscured by the humid air, Nemo heard a raucous cry from a bird whose species he could not determine.
 
It sounded immense, louder and stranger than any bird he had encountered in his travels.

He walked into the forest of mushrooms like a lost wanderer and stood under them as if seeking refuge beneath Herculean garden umbrellas.
 
They made him think of the parasols Caroline carried when she strolled out in the sun dressed in her finest clothes.
 
Her mother had seen to it that she had the finest accouterments, but Caroline held them awkwardly, daydreaming, letting her parasol droop to the mud as her attention wandered to other things.
 

Nemo shook that thought from his mind and continued.

He rapped his knuckles against the stiff stem -- or was it the trunk? -- of a mushroom.
 
It was softer than wood, but still firm and thick.
 
When he pushed harder, a rain of dusty spores showered from the broad mushroom cap.
 
They covered him like sawdust as he coughed and sneezed, but he laughed and knocked the mushroom again, setting off another shower.
 
He ran through the mushroom forest, bumping the pallid stems and unleashing a torrent of spores.

He climbed one of the mushroom trunks and used his pirate cutlass to hack off a chunk of the soft fungus.
 
He chewed on it, finding the delicate flesh a wonderful accompaniment to his preserved dinosaur meat.

Nemo wandered through the mushroom forest, always continuing toward the brightening light.
 
When at last he passed beyond the mammoth toadstools, Nemo looked ahead into a steaming primeval jungle filled with prehistoric plant life.
 
He could lose himself in its wonders and mystery for months without end.

Just then Nemo heard the ominous sounds of large creatures crashing toward him through the dense underbrush.

iii

Paris, ah Paris!
 

Leaving his backwater town behind, Jules Verne felt as if he had stepped into a color-filled painting by one of the great masters.
 
The buildings, cafes, cathedrals, street performers -- the
culture
-- were all so different from home.
 
The Seine!
 
The Louvre!
 
Notre Dame!
 
It was like a fantastic world from the stories of Marco Polo or the romances of Sir Walter Scott.
 
Paris was indeed the center of France, its heart and its mind.
 
And Verne reveled in being here.

He had at first been fearful of the political turmoil: bloody uprisings, gunfire in the streets, worker barricades, revolutionary fervor.
 
His father had been concerned, and his mother had gnawed her fingernails in worry.
 
Verne, though, wrote from his narrow room to reassure them that he was having a fine time.
 
And, of course, learning much.

He reached Paris in July, just after a long string of violence that had plagued the capitol since February.
 
Though Pierre Verne was a staunch conservative and had raised his son to hold similar opinions, the younger Verne now found it confusing enough just to keep track of who was running which portion of the country during any given week.
 
Politics made him dizzy.

Two years of bad wheat and potato harvests had sent prices soaring, and peasants began looting bakeries and food storehouses, demanding their due.
 
When factories closed, unemployed workers took to the streets.
 
The government refused to institute changes, and during a protest march in February, a frightened army patrol had fired into the crowd, triggering a riot.
 

The incident united the dissatisfied people behind barricades, and even the National Guard joined the rebels after ransacking armories for weapons.
 
Within days they had ousted numerous officials from the government, then marched on King Louis Philippe himself, who abdicated and fled to England.
 
In his wake, the French people declared a new Republic.
 
Elections were held on April 23, and in the following months the government struggled to assert itself.
 
The bloodiest battles took place in June -- the Archbishop of Paris had been killed while trying to negotiate peace with a pocket of rebels.
 

A month later, when Verne entered the city with little spending money and an avid curiosity, he explored the alleys and byways, careful to stay clear of any danger.
 
He saw the cluttered barricades thrown up in the streets -- carts, barrels, ladders, and crates stacked on top of furniture to block the military guard.
 
He tried to imagine the bravery, the sacrifices, the heroes and traitors.
 
It took his breath away . . . so long as he didn’t have to be counted among the participants.