Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (39 page)

The great Dumas stood outside a closed carriage, looking sullenly at a few baskets and sacks of possessions he had snatched from his estate.
 
The man’s generous lips were turned downward in an uncharacteristic frown.
 
He had no room to store anything else inside the overloaded vehicle.

“Monsieur Dumas!” Verne called in delight and relief.
 
The footman jumped, startled.
 
The broad-shouldered writer whirled, almost losing his balance as his girth swung around.
 
His broad face carried a look of dismay, as if he was ready to flee into the forests on the outskirts of Monte Cristo.
 

But when he saw Jules Verne, his face composed itself into a pale reminder of his former genial and welcoming expression.
 
“Oh, ho, my friend Jules!
 
Thank you for coming to see me, even in this dark hour.”

Verne found himself at a loss for words.
 
He had practiced the speech so many times, hoping to request work from Dumas.
 
Now that the opportunity was gone, he had little hope left in his heart.
 
“I . . . I am --”

“Well?”
 
The dark man rubbed his thick fingers together.
 
He had loaded them with more rings than Verne remembered having seen before.
 
“Did you pass your law exam?
 
You had a great deal riding on that test, if I recall.”

“Yes, sir,” Verne said with a groan.
 
“I’m now licensed to be a practicing attorney.”

“Delicious!”
 
Dumas laughed at himself.
 
“I myself could use a great deal of legal help.
 
However, I’m unable to pay for it, at present.”

“That’s what . . . what I was given to understand.
 
I’m sorry to hear about it, Monsieur.
 
I am afraid I have little experience and even fewer suggestions to offer you right now.
 
Your situation is . . . beyond me.”

“It is a good thing you have established your career.
 
Unlike me, you have a solid future ahead of you, mmm?”

“A
dreary
future,” Verne said bitterly.
 
He bent to pick up a heavy box and helped to load it into the carriage, which already looked so stuffed the axles might bow to the gravel in the road.
 
“I want to be a writer like you.”

Dumas rumbled a great belly laugh.
 
“Even now, when you see how my fortunes have fallen?
 
Oh, ho!”

“But I’ve read your work, Monsieur Dumas.
 
Surely your fiction has created a treasure for humanity far beyond” -- Verne gestured around the carriage house, but indicated the whole estate -- “beyond all this.”

Dumas frowned at him.
 
“At the moment, I’d gladly give up my novels if I could only retain possession of my home.”
 
The footman finished harnessing the horse and then climbed up to the buckboard.
 
The great writer’s single faithful employee would also drive the carriage.
 

Verne hung his head, astounded at the famous man’s misfortune.
 
His dreams for success had shattered into even smaller pieces.
 
“I just wish my own fictions were more in demand.
 
I haven’t managed to capture the excitement as you have.
 
My historical novels don’t have the spark of life or the sense of wonder that you portrayed in
The Three Musketeers
.”

Dumas beamed at hearing the praise, even at such a moment.
 
“Ho!
 
And I will continue to write books like that, mark my words -- though I may have to rely solely on my own imagination from now on, as it seems I’ll have considerable difficulty hiring other writers.”
 

The big man opened the carriage door.
 
“Every author is different, Jules.
 
I have a flair for portraying historical charm, but if I were to devote my talents to the sort of stories that come from the pens of Voltaire or Balzac, I would fail miserably.
 
Oh, ho!
 
Jules, you have been working too hard to do what
I
have done.
 
Perhaps historical adventure isn’t where your special ability lies.”

“Then what should I write about?” Verne said with an edge of desperation.
 
He still hadn’t heard any answers he could use.

“Write what you know, what you have learned, what you have lived.
 
Write what is in your heart.”
 
Dumas looked at one of the laden sacks on the floor of the carriage house.
 
With a grunt, he picked it up and tossed it onto the seat, the only clear spot wide enough for the writer’s enormous buttocks.

Verne drew a heavy sigh.
 
“But my life has been tedious and uninteresting.
 
No one would want to read about my experiences.
 
What am I to do?”

With great effort, Dumas heaved himself into the carriage, grabbed the heavy sack, and subsided into the seat with the sack on his lap.
 
Eager to help, Verne trotted across the dirt floor and opened the doors of the carriage house.
 
The footman flicked the reins, and the horse stamped, impatient to be off.
 

Dumas raised his eyebrows, looking out the carriage window.
 
“What about your friend Nemo?
 
When you told me about his adventures, there was excitement in your eyes -- a fire.
 
Delicious!
 
You have the journal from when he was stranded on his island, correct?
 
Certainly those are tales worth retelling?”

As if struck by a thunderbolt from the sky, Verne stepped back and his face lit up.
 
Of course!
 
He needed only to
tell
the adventures -- not necessarily experience them himself.
 

Dumas swung the carriage door shut.
 
“I hope to see you again someday, Jules Verne,” he said through the window.
 
“But now I must be off on . . . pressing business as far away from here as I can get.”

“But how am I to find you?” Verne said.
 
“I’d like to send you a new manuscript.
 
I’m sure you’ll like it.”

Dumas leaned out the window of his carriage.
 
“My dear man, at the moment my object is
not
to be found.”
 
The footman snapped a whip at the horse, and the vehicle rattled onto the cobbled path and out a side driveway.
 
They fled toward a winding forest road that would eventually meet the main thoroughfare.
 

While his once-magnificent estate was ransacked, Dumas left Verne behind with his creditors . . . and his new ideas.

iv

Like a mythical air spirit robed in green, red, and blue, the immense balloon drifted across Africa for two more weeks.

Fergusson spent the daylight hours in scientific ecstasy, documenting swamps and forests, mountains and plains never before seen by an Englishman (or any other European, for that matter).
 
He considered himself a “geographical missionary” for the Royal Society.
 
On maps and charts, most of Africa’s interior remained blank, but this expedition could fill in a swath of new territory.
 
Caroline diligently sketched everything they observed.

Nemo tended the recondenser cylinder that controlled the exchange of hydrogen gas between the two balloons, which allowed him to raise or lower the
Victoria
through thick clouds and above storms.
 
In relaxed moments, Caroline withdrew her wooden flute and played quiet melodies, adding her songs to the African veldt.

Comfortable against the wicker side of the car, she and Nemo talked about their lives, their hopes and disappointments, as well as simple matters of daily existence.
 
“Did you ever think we’d end up here, in a place like this, André?”
 
Caroline’s fingers twitched, as if she wanted to take his hand, but didn’t dare.
 
Dr. Fergusson puttered with his instruments and his notes, oblivious to the attraction between them.

“I always hoped I would be with you . . . but sometimes wishes don’t come true the way you imagine.
 
Our lives haven’t gone the way we’d planned.”

She drew a deep breath.
 
“If only I had known you were still alive on the island, if only I could have --”

Nemo stopped her.
 
“Caroline, even if you had known, you would still have married Captain Hatteras, and he would still have sailed off to find the Northwest Passage . . . and we would still be here now, in this same balloon.”
 
He smiled.
 
“And there is nowhere I would rather be.”

Leaving the Serengeti Plain behind, the
Victoria
crossed over a huge lake, but Caroline could not find the prominent inland sea on any of her charts.
 
They gazed at the immense body of water, whose shore was dotted with small fishing villages like beads on a necklace.
 
In the shallows, islands hosted numerous flocks of birds.

“It’s large enough to be the source of the Nile,” Fergusson said with a touch of awe.
 
For a century, one expedition after another had searched in vain for the headwaters of the great river.
 
The Royal Society had given the mystery its greatest priority, but so far none of the conventional expeditions had found any answers.

Unfortunately, Nemo could choose only the balloon’s general direction of travel, and the body of water was so vast they would have needed to travel to the northern end to see if its waters drained in the proper direction.
 
“Someone else will have to verify it.”

“Mark it on the map with great care, Madame,” Fergusson said with a smile that made his huge mustache bristle.
 
“Indeed, if I may be so bold, I shall even name this lake -- for future cartographers, of course.”

Nemo had never sought credit for himself.
 
“That is your right, Monsieur, as the leader of our expedition.”

“Which name do you choose, Doctor?” Caroline asked.

Fergusson looked up at the magnificent balloon over their heads.
 
“Why not name it after the vessel that has carried us across such great distances and difficult terrain, eh?
 
We shall call it Lake Victoria.”

v

At noon on the nineteenth day, Nemo used a sextant to measure the altitude of the blazing yellow sun and, through trigonometry, determined their position.
 
“We’ve drifted north of the equator,” he said, pleased.
 

Caroline marked the spot on their charts. “As near as I can tell, we have traversed fourteen hundred miles -- almost two thirds of the way across Africa.”

“Indeed!”
 
Fergusson perked up.
 
“On foot it would have taken us a year to get this far, my friends . . . if we survived at all in such inhospitable terrain, eh?”

Caroline pointed out what the two men had not yet mentioned.
 
“By drifting northward, we are heading across the widest part of the African continent.
 
That will increase our time of travel.”

“We can still make it in five weeks, my friends.”
 

Nemo double-checked the
Victoria
’s inflation gauges.
 
“I hope so, since our hydrogen won’t last much longer than that.”

Caroline ran a finger across the blank, unexplored section of map just waiting for her notations and observations.
 
The balloon passed over rolling hills and then river lowlands as Nemo worked the recondenser, raising or lowering them to find an optimal stream of wind.
 
Finally they came upon a second huge lake surrounded by swampland and villages of huts built upon stilts.