Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (30 page)

At any moment he expected to find himself in the gullet of the sea monster, crushed in those jaws.
 
He struggled to a floating toadstool cap and hung on with one hand.
 
The enormous sea serpent rose beneath him, its head brushing against Nemo’s legs.
 
Out of instinct and fury, he swung with the cutlass and struck a deep gash across the beast’s snout.
 

The sea serpent withdrew, and Nemo hauled himself into the bowl of the buoyant mushroom cap.
 
The storm had turned into an electrical gale, and liquid lightning sparked through the air all around.
 
The mushroom cap twirled and bobbed, nauseating him.
 
He could see no way out of the crisis.

The serpent lurched up again, dripping blood from minor wounds.
 
It looked straight down at Nemo -- yet it came no closer, turning its head uneasily.
 

Gripping the puny cutlass, Nemo waited for the killing blow, tensing to make a final thrust.
 
He planned to die fighting, never giving up.
 
Instead, the dinosaur’s serpentine head dipped beneath the water and vanished from sight.

Knowing it was sure to attack again, Nemo clung to the frilled sides of the mushroom lifeboat.
 
But when he heard a change in the storm, he looked around to pinpoint the source of the growing din -- and beheld a natural force awesome enough to frighten away even the sea serpent.

An enormous funnel bore down on him, howling and buzzing like a million souls in pain.
 
The pillar of wind and water extended from the sea at the center of the Earth, high up out of sight to the distant cavern ceiling: a waterspout with all the titanic strength of the greatest cyclone.
 
It came churning across the sea -- and drew Nemo inexorably toward it.

The mushroom cap spun around.
 
Nemo clung to its sides as the waves churned, and whitecaps splashed over the rim.
 
More fluid lightning skittered through the air.
 
Nemo hung on for his life as he stared in awe.

The whirlpool hurled him around as if in an aquatic game of crack-the-whip.
 
The waterspout drew him into its core like a grain of sand sucked into a hollow reed.
 
He felt as if the wet skin was being torn off his bones.
 
His eyelids were drawn open, his lips stretched back by centrifugal force.
 

The mushroom boat whirled and spun, and Nemo barely managed to hang on.
 
Suffocation from the surrounding spray and the crushing weight of gravity filled him with black unconsciousness.
 
He had no way to fight this.

He let out a long wordless cry of defiance, but even that sound was torn from him by the fury of the cyclone. . . .

ix

Alexandre Dumas had designed his “Monte Cristo” chateau to resemble a fairy-tale castle, complete with turrets and Gothic towers.
 
Across the expansive grounds, elm trees surrounded the main buildings and bordered artificial lakes that looked like sapphires.
 
Swans drifted in the water, and raucous peacocks strutted across the manicured lawns.
 
Topiary hedges and exquisite flowers added a filigree of colors to the landscape.
 

It all seemed like a fantasy to Jules Verne, which was no doubt the impression the great author wanted to cultivate.

Inside the main building, the writer’s kitchen was immense (as was Dumas himself).
 
The heavyset man waited for Verne, already wearing an apron; he held out another for his guest.
 
Every imaginable cooking instrument lay strewn across an oak table, along with tomes of recipes that Dumas had compiled from all over the world.
 

Verne took deep breaths to calm himself in the face of such extravagance.
 
He had never cooked in such a kitchen before; in fact, he’d made little more than cabbage soup for a long time.
 
He had lost sleep for days -- first out of amazement from reading Nemo’s incredible journal, and now terrified that he might make a poor impression on the literary master.
 
Too much was happening at once, and his studies were beginning to suffer.

If he ruined this family-recipe omelet he had bragged about, Verne might as well maroon himself on a deserted island.

But when he began cooking, he relaxed, cracking four eggs into the hot pan.
 
With a smile on his face, he took out the secret packet of herbs he’d compiled in his room.
 
He did not intend to show Dumas the exact ingredients, since he wanted to maintain a mysterious air.
 
The enormous writer seemed amused by the pretense and brushed his thick, ring-heavy fingers on his apron strings, watching the preparations carefully.

Verne finished his fluffy creation and, beaming with pride, served it on a plain white plate.
 
Despite his worries, the omelet neither stuck to the pan nor turned brown, nor did it break when his shaking hands used a spatula to remove it.
 
He had added just the right amount of butter, sliced the mushrooms perfectly, added the precise dash of pungent herbs.
 

With minimal conversation, Dumas and Verne shared the omelet at a small servant’s table inside the kitchen.
 
Then the big man insisted Verne cook him a second one, which he devoured by himself.
 
“Delicious!”

Later, Dumas showed the aspiring author around the chateau buildings and across the grounds.
 
Verne grinned with delight, absorbing every detail, already promising himself that he, too, would live in a similar chateau someday (when he was a literary master as well).
 
Servants worked in the various buildings, performing their never-ending tasks.

Dumas took him in a small boat out to an isolated island in the center of the estate’s largest artificial pond.
 
“Here, my friend, is where I do my writing, where no one can disturb me.
 
I require complete silence to do my work.”

Verne could see at a glance that the large gazebo was designed for creating literary masterpieces.
 
Dumas stood at the doorway to his writing abode.
 
“I must have concentration, you see.
 
I’ve produced over four hundred short stories, plays, and novels in the last twenty years.
 
I have a reputation to maintain -- as well as my momentum!”

Dumas had been called a “fiction factory,” and in order to maintain his prodigious output, he hired other writers to complete many scenes in his books.
 
He concocted the stories and the characters himself, but sometimes, he needed others to bother with the details.

“I admire you, Monsieur Dumas.”
 
Verne raised his chin.
 
“I study law at my father’s insistence, but I have literary ambitions of my own.
 
Someday, I hope to be as successful as you are.
 
I will work very hard at it.”

Dumas laughed, dark chins jiggling.
 
His chuckles echoed across the placid water.
 
One of the swans stirred, then settled down as if it had heard the booming laughter many times before.
 
“Oh, ho!
 
I respect a young man with ambition and drive.”
 
Dumas raised eyebrows on a dusky forehead.
 
“But do you have the necessary discipline and persistence, mmm?”

“I do,” Verne said, then surprised himself with his own brazenness.
 
“Would you help me, Monsieur?
 
Would you show me how to become a great writer like yourself?”

Dumas laughed again, but looked more seriously at his guest.
 
“That remains to be seen, my friend.
 
Many novices make the same request, but few are willing to do the necessary hard work.”

“Oh, I
will
work.
 
I’ve already completed two major historical plays and one comedy.”
 
He chastised himself for not having brought them along, for just such an opportunity.

“Oh, ho!
 
Then I should like to read them.”
 

Verne couldn’t tell if the huge author truly meant it, or if he had simply expressed the sentiment out of a perceived obligation to his guest.
 
He hoped for some advice -- or better yet, connections.
 
Dumas had it in his power to introduce him to the important publishers in Paris.
 
Verne prayed the famous man might even hire him to help draft some of his scenes.

Verne looked around the isolated island study surrounded by beautiful trees, well-maintained gardens, and the fancifully decorated buildings of Monte Cristo.
 
He longed for such fame and fortune.
 
How could he ever hope for such luxury as a . . . as a country lawyer?
 

Many had aspired to similar success, but as he looked into the sepia eyes of the “fiction factory” himself, Verne also knew that he was different from all those others.
 
He
would
work hard enough.
 
He
would
be disciplined so that one day he could make a living by writing stories and plays.
 

The thought excited him vastly more than the prospect of an unending future as a small-town attorney, no matter what his father said.
 
Verne vowed to stay close to Alexandre Dumas and learn everything he could from the master.

x

With the force of trapped pressure from below, the steam vent blasted Nemo into open air like a geyser.
 
Stunned but protected inside the tough mushroom cap, Nemo was hurled high into the sky -- a
blue sky
studded with real clouds -- only to tumble down in a shower of sulfurous-smelling rain.
 

Around him, like a stark dream, he saw rough lava rocks and the curved wall of a volcanic crater.
 
And snow . . . snow everywhere.

Then he slammed into the ground with an impact that knocked the wind out of him and drove all the senses from his brain.

#

Nemo awoke to find himself sprawled in a desolate caldera among the chunks of his shattered fungus lifeboat.
 
At least the spongy mushroom flesh had cushioned his fall.
 

Groggy, he raised his head and looked at his surroundings, a rocky wasteland frosted with ice and snow.
 
Brimstone-smelling fumaroles hissed from the inner walls of the volcanic crater.

When he sat up, shaking his head to clear the fuzziness of pain and unconsciousness, he was startled to see a man dressed in warm clothes standing behind him up the slope.
 
The man, with spectacles and a neat white beard, furrowed his brow in perplexity as he appraised this strange and unexpected offering from the volcano.

He spoke in a nasal, looping language that Nemo did not understand.
 
The young man shook his head, and the stranger spoke again in a different language, one he recognized as German.
 
When finally the man attempted French, Nemo understood him.
 
“I certainly hope you can explain your presence, Monsieur,” the stranger said.
 
“I am most curious.”

These were the first friendly words Nemo had heard in more than seven years -- since the day he had climbed to the lookout post of the
Coralie
under Captain Grant’s orders and saw a pirate ship approaching.

“I . . . can explain myself.”
 
His little-used voice sounded rusty and hoarse in his throat.
 
“But I don’t know if you’ll believe me.”

xi

Disappointingly, Alexandre Dumas found both of Verne’s historical plays -- his “serious work” -- to be forced and tedious.
 
Without promise.