Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (3 page)

Both Verne and Nemo were infatuated with Caroline, and both did everything possible to impress her.
 
André Nemo was the free-spirited son of a widowed shipbuilder, and Jules Verne was the oldest child of an established but dull country lawyer.
 
Neither had a chance to win her hand, if Madame Aronnax had any say in the matter.

“How long has André been down there?”
 
Caroline shaded her eyes against the sunlight and looked ready to wade in after Nemo.
 
Verne realized that he’d better add another reed, or his friend would drag the end of the breathing tube underwater.

“I don’t know, my -- my lovely lady.”
 
Verne stumbled over his words even as he tried to be as debonair as the heroes in dramas he had seen in the
Nantes
playhouse.
 
“When you come near me, all time seems to stop.”

Caroline endured the flattery with patient grace.
 
“Then perhaps you had better consult your pocket watch.”
 
She raised her eyebrows and indicated the end of the breathing reed, which tottered close to being submerged.

Embarrassed, Verne splashed into the water to seal on the next tube, getting sticky gum on his fingers.
 

Caroline knew full well that she’d captivated the hearts of both young men.
 
As she stood beside Verne, watching the breathing tubes disappear beneath the river, a smile emerged at the corners of her graceful mouth.
 
Seeing Nemo’s preposterous scheme of walking beneath the water, she said, “It is wonderful to see impossible dreams come to fruition.”

Verne nodded as he stood up to his ankles in the water.
 
“André never believes it when people tell him about difficulties.
 
He makes up his own mind and does things as he sees fit.”

“And I admire him for it.”

While he chattered about plans he and Nemo had made for exploring the hidden undersea world, Verne couldn’t help but see that she was more interested in what Nemo was doing than in the fictional stories he made up.

Looking across the water, Caroline said, “I doubt this is the last impossible task he will undertake for himself.”

ii

Underwater, Nemo felt the river current around him like a thick wind.
 
His feet sank into the bottom, meeting smooth rocks, slick mud, and loose sand.
 
The shimmering surface high above him filtered the sunlight as if it came through stained glass.

Each breath required all the strength of his diaphragm to fill his lungs.
 
He had to exhale as well, pushing the used air back through the exhaust valve.
 
Though the wine-sour helmet became stifling, he continued through the murky
Loire
.
 
Sweat ran like tears down his temples and cheeks.
 
In front of him, he could discern shadowy, barnacle-encrusted pilings.
 
River weeds curled like peacock feathers around boulders that floods had tossed downstream.
 

As he strode ahead, Nemo thought of Captain Cook journeying to uncharted islands, Lewis and Clark forging their way across North America, Willem Barents trapped all winter long in a wooden hut high in the
Arctic
.

And here he was, André Nemo, treading another new realm . . . a place where visitors to drowned Atlantis might have felt at home.
 
He wished Verne could have joined him.
 
It would have been simple enough to make two sets of the breathing apparatus, though he suspected his friend would find some excuse.
 
Verne’s imagination had always been greater than his desire for true adventure.
 

Determined, Nemo pushed on and fought to take breaths as the hollow tube stretched farther from fresh air.
 
The current turned colder and darker, but he pressed on.
 
Overhead, the curved gray shapes of hulls were like the shadows of floating whales.
 
Booming vibrations -- the pounding sounds of heavy work above -- echoed through the water.

He saw what must have been the underbelly of the
Cynthia
, flat-bottomed to increase the size of her hold.
 
Nemo’s father claimed the vessel boasted a cargo capacity of 1500 tons.
 
Her timbers were well caulked, the exterior waxed to deter barnacles and weeds.
 
Above the waterline, the bow was rounded and the stern squared for added stability on the stormy
Atlantic
; but underneath, the bow had a sharp edge to cut through the water with great speed.
 
By dropping two of the stones at his waist, Nemo could have floated up to the bottom keel -- where only a few hull planks would separate him from his father at work.

It had become too difficult to breathe, though.
 
Over the distance, the air line had begun to kink, and some of his seals had developed slow leaks.
 
Droplets of water spat into his helmet with each heavy breath.

Before he could turn back toward shore, the stifling air in his helmet forced him to drop his belt stones.
 
Nemo rose to the surface, fumbling to undo the seal at his neck.
 
Steam fogged the window glass.

As his head and shoulders bobbed above the water, Nemo tore off the bladder helmet, drew in a huge gulp of air, and blinked in the dazzling sunlight.
 
Since he hadn’t used his knife to cut it off, he could use the apparatus again.
 

Today he had accomplished an amazing thing.
 
He would return, of course.
 
But he would have to make modifications, widen the breathing hole, do
something
to improve air circulation.
 
The underwater world remained a grand mystery. . . .

He searched the shore and spotted Verne waving at him.
 
Then he noticed the lovely Caroline Aronnax beside his redheaded friend.
 
Grinning and feeling just a bit cocky, Nemo waved back.

iii

The shops and merchant stalls on Ile Feydeau carried every imaginable item from every imaginable place: pearls and tropical birds from the Sandwich Islands, bananas, breadfruits, and papayas from Tahiti, wooden drums from the
Congo
, scrimshaw-carved walrus tusks made by eskimaux in the
Arctic
.
 
Potbellied merchants strolled beside ladies carrying parasols.
 
The smells of outdoor cooking curled like fog through the air, pungent, sweet, or savory.

While walking with the two young men who fawned over her, Caroline admired coral necklaces brought back from
South Sea islands
.
 
Both Verne and Nemo stumbled over themselves promising to obtain fabulous coral trinkets for her in the adventures they were sure to have sometime in the near future.

She laughed at their enthusiasm.
 
“Monsieurs, I will believe that promise as soon as I can hold it in my hand.
 
My mother warned me not to heed the sweet words of ambitious young men.”
 

“But you never listen to your mother,” Nemo said, and Caroline returned his smile.
 
Confident and happy, she hurried off for her daily lesson on the pianoforte.

Rue Kervegan, the main avenue in Ile Feydeau, stretched away from the bustling wharves, lined with elms and flanked by the offices of businessmen and tradesmen.
 
Cafes and restaurants served coffee from Sumatra, chocolat-chaud from
Mexico
, and black tea from
India
.

At the shipyards, Verne and Nemo watched workers string a cats’-cradle of rigging on the new vessel.
 
The
Cynthia
was a “packet” ship, designed to make good speed across the
Atlantic
, carrying passengers, mail, and cargo.
 
Previously, cargo ships would depart whenever they had a full load, and not before.
 
A packet ship, however, set sail on a specified date to
New York
harbor or
Chesapeake Bay
, regardless of whether her cargo hold was full or her passenger cabins inhabited, and she also returned on a set schedule.
 
A trip to
North America
took five weeks fighting the westerly winds, while the return journey required only three to four.

As Verne and Nemo walked down the quays, a figure on the deck of the
Cynthia
waved to them.
 
Jacques Nemo rapped a quick pattern with his hammer, a little rhythm he and his son had developed to recognize each other, because it was easier than shouting across the din.
 
André Nemo’s dark hair and Verne’s tousled red locks made them a distinctive enough pair even from a distance.
 
Nemo waved back at his father before the man went belowdecks.

“He’s gilding the aft passenger cabins today.
 
Gilding!”
 
Nemo shook his head.
 
“Considering all the sailing stories we’ve heard, I never imagined passengers would be so pampered.”

“Like a royal carriage,” Verne said, not that he’d ever ridden in one.
 
Someday
, he promised himself.
 

Muscular sailors used a rattling block-and-tackle to lower cannons through the hatches.
 
On the gun decks below, engineers rolled the cannons out to the open gunports, then chocked the wheels.
 
Though northern Atlantic waters were civilized for the most part, pirates still roamed the Caribbean and the southeastern coast of
America
.

A horse-drawn wagon brought kegs of gunpowder to the dock, where a line of workers passed the barrels down to a pallet on deck.
 
Straining at the main capstan and winch, sailors lowered the pallet and stored the kegs below in the powder magazine.

A month earlier, the
Cynthia
had been launched from drydock, then tied afloat so the masts could be fitted and the rigging run.
 
The flag of the
French
Republic
already flew high on her main mast.

Nemo stared at the ship’s lines.
 
“Last night when we were playing cards, my father said we’re invited to the christening ceremony.
 
We’ll be standing close enough to watch the mayor of
Nantes
break a bottle of champagne across the bow.”
 
He looked over at Verne.
 
“Tomorrow night at sunset.”

For the past few months, Verne and Nemo had made impromptu lunches of bread and cheese and cold meat aboard the
Cynthia
to listen as the shipbuilders chatted with each other.
 
The men sweated hard and labored from dawn until dusk, but Jacques Nemo enjoyed moments of relaxation with his son.
 
The carpenters told bawdy stories that Verne wouldn’t dare repeat to his family, though he couldn’t help enjoying the yarns.

Verne doubted he’d ever seen his father smile.
 
Certainly, Pierre Verne did not laugh with easy abandon the way Monsieur Nemo did.
 

“I can’t go to the christening,” he said with a sigh.
 
“I’ve got studies to do, and my family will go to a late
Mass.
”
 
Nemo did not look surprised.

Some wagging tongues around Ile Feydeau scolded Jacques Nemo for letting his son run wild in the streets, but Verne thought his friend was better adjusted to survival in the world than most of the spoiled residents of
Nantes
.
 
Once, in a surprising, angry outburst of temper, Nemo had bruised and bloodied a would-be tough who had sneered at him and insulted his father.

Nemo’s grandfather had been a sailor, lost in a typhoon off the China Sea, and his father had also spent his youth aboard tall ships, until he’d married and settled down in
Nantes
to build the vessels he loved so much.
 
Nemo’s mother, from whom he had gotten his dusky skin, was long in her grave, which forced a tighter bond between father and son.