Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius (4 page)

The two played cards, laughed and sang, they read to each other.
 
Nemo’s father told him stories by firelight, while Nemo did the household work.
 
Though poor, the father and son never seemed to have a moment of unhappiness together.
 
Verne often found himself wishing that he and his own father got along half as well.
 
Since they did not, he contented himself with sharing the warmth and comradeship of the Nemos.

Walking down to the docks where the boats unloaded their cargo, Verne and Nemo saw toothless men with wiry muscles.
 
The old faces were weathered from salt wind and tropical sunlight; many bore scars from badly healed cutlass slashes.
 
The sailors loved to sit on crates and tell stories for their attentive listeners while munching on coarse loaves of bread or overripe fruit.

In front of a weather-beaten barge that had come up the estuary from Paimboeuf, the seaport at the mouth of the Loire, they spotted a veteran with six tattoos on his arm, one for each time he had crossed the equator.
 
Though most of the sailor’s scraggly gray hair had fallen out, he’d tied a few strands into a limp braid like the tail of a wharf rat.
 
His eyes gleamed as he leaned forward, pointing at his eager listeners.

Verne drew back, noting that two of the man’s fingers were gone.
 
The sailor cackled and held up his hand to display the jagged stumps.
 
“‘Twere bitten off by a shark.
 
And a shipmate o’ mine was swallowed whole.
 
Reached down the monster’s gullet, I did, to pull ‘im back out.
 
But them jaws, they clamped shut and gobbled up me mate.
 
Lucky I only lost this much.”
 

Behind them at the barge, men hauled on hemp ropes to raise crates of animal skins, botanical specimens, and mineralogical samples.

“We sailed down and up the Ivory Coast o’ Africa, the Gold Coast to the Bight o’ Benin, saw men there blacker ‘n coal, with fangs as long as yer fingers.
 
Aye, it’s true.
 
Those demons’ll strike ye dead just by looking at ye -- and then rush up and chew the flesh off yer bones.
 
Cannibals!”

“If they could strike you dead just by looking at you, then how did you see them and survive?” Nemo asked with a skeptical frown.

“Pah!
 
Tweren’t hungry that day.”
 
The old sailor spoke in a rough but convincing voice, waving his three-fingered hand for emphasis.
 
He told them stories about Prester John’s kingdom, with its fountain of youth and a throne cut from an enormous diamond coughed up out of the gullet of a giant whale.
 
Isolated from the rest of Christianity, Prester John defended
Europe
against Poseidon’s followers, who lived in underwater cities such as sunken Atlantis.

Verne and Nemo soaked up details about colorful lands, fabulous treasures, strange peoples.
 
They learned about
New Zealand
, the Canary Islands, even Tierra del Fuego at the tip of
South America
.
 
They heard of bloodthirsty pirates, whirlpools big enough to swallow four-masted barks, and sea monsters that could rip the hull out of even the largest ships.

Before the weathered man could finish his tale, though, an explosion echoed through the shipyards like a cannon salute for the king.
 
Everyone in the market and on the docks turned to look.
 
Black smoke gushed like a geyser from the
Cynthia.
 

Nemo gave a strangled cry as he leaped to his feet.
 
“My father!”

The fingerless sailor swore out loud.
 
“One o’ them tar-pot fires must ‘a caught ‘n the powder magazine.”

The explosion had blasted out the starboard side of the new hull.
 
The
Cynthia
, once a graceful cathedral of masts and rigging and furled sails, now shuddered and twisted, its backbone broken.
 
Buckets of varnish and turpentine blazed hot, spreading fires across the deck.

A second explosion rumbled as another keg of gunpowder caught fire.
 
Pots of boiling tar sprayed black liquid like dark blood.
 
Carpenters and sailors dove overboard into the river, some with their breeches on fire.

Nemo sprinted down the dock, dodging crates and excited onlookers.
 
A crowd clogged the narrow ways so that even firemen could not get through.
 
He shouldered aside two ladies dressed in enormous crinoline gowns, ignoring their indignant glares.
 
Following him, Verne excused his friend and squirmed to the water’s edge.

Scorched or smeared with soot, shipbuilders climbed out of the water on the river’s edge, panting and trembling.
 
All turned in horrified awe to watch the
Cynthia
groan and tip.
 
The bow rolled over on its side, while the stern upended itself before plunging into the water.
 
As if drowning, the painted figurehead -- “Cynthia” herself -- stared skyward before rolling into the oily current.

“Where is my father?” Nemo said to anyone who could hear him.
 
“Jacques Nemo.
 
Where is he?”
 
The hubbub, accompanied by the crackling inferno of the doomed ship, was so loud that no one heard him.
 
As several spectators hauled another exhausted man onto a dock, Nemo recognized him and rushed forward.
 
“My father!
 
Did he get off?
 
Where is he?”

The survivor’s wild eyes focused on the dark-haired young man.
 
“André?”
 
He put his soggy arm around Nemo in an awkward embrace.
 
“Jacques . . . your father . . . trapped in one of the passenger cabins.”
 
The man pointed a big hand at the flaming wreck as the stern sank into the deep channel.
 
He shook his head.
 
“Underwater by now.”

Nemo yanked hard on Verne’s arm.
 
“Come on.”
 
Seeing the furious determination on his flushed face, the crowd parted as Nemo elbowed his way out, dragging Jules Verne behind him.
 
The two slipped and slid down a muddy bank beneath one of the docks to where they had stored the bladder helmet, breathing tubes, and reeds.

“I have to go out there.
 
If my father’s under water, maybe the room was sealed.
 
He may still have air.”
 
Seeing Nemo cling to hope and desperation, Verne didn’t voice his doubts.

Nemo dug muddy rocks from the riverbank and thrust them into his pockets for weight while Verne connected the breathing reeds.
 
Nemo secured his dagger, tugged the bladder over his head, and adjusted the viewing glass so he could see.
 
“Hurry, Jules!”

Not far away, the
Cynthia
smoldered and groaned.
 
Its timbers cracked like thunder as it sank.
 
The crowd continued to gather, both horrified and curious.
 
Firemen threw water on the flames, but they knew the unchristened ship was doomed, and no one could do anything about it.

Before Verne finished attaching three reeds to Nemo’s helmet, the dark-haired young man had cinched the bladder against his neck.
 
He strode into the river without hesitation, submerging himself.
 
Verne hurried, but the cold pitch did not seal well.
 
He grabbed another reed and tried to attach it, rather than yelling for his friend to wait.
 
Nemo did not dare move any slower.

Fighting the current’s resistance, Nemo pushed toward the roiling disaster, picturing his father’s crisis, his panic, his need for rescue.
 
The rocks in his pockets held him to the soft riverbottom.
 
Bubbles and orange reflections of flame flickered from the wreckage.

Scarecrowish bodies drifted about.
 
One nudged him.
 
He pushed the corpse away, relieved that it wasn’t his father.
 
Nemo didn’t remember the man’s name, but thought he recognized him: someone who’d played a squeezebox, squeaking out impromptu melodies while the sailors danced and pounded their heels on the deckboards. . . .

Nemo didn’t have time to mourn, thinking of only one thing.
 
He pushed forward, trying to breathe against the growing ache and dread in his chest, trying not to sob as he saw the stern of the
Cynthia
completely submerged, the poop deck under water.
 
Through filtered light from above, he discerned cracked boards and gaping holes in the crew chambers.

His faceplate steamed up, and a few dribbles of water came through the breathing tube.
 
He hoped Verne could keep up the pace on the bank, that the connected reeds would remain sealed together.
 
His heart pounded, his lungs felt hot.
 
He struggled forward through the muck, but didn’t for a moment consider turning back.

Nemo struggled across the splintered stumps of the
Cynthia
’s masts.
 
The logs themselves floated on the surface of the
Loire
, while rigging pulleys and tackle dangled beneath like a giant spider’s web.
 
Fish swam about like underwater spectators in a drama they could not understand.

As he made his way to the lower deck aft, Nemo passed ornately paneled chambers.
 
Open doors flopped in the current, showing walls of exotic wood embellished with gold leaf for first-class passengers; now only river fish would enjoy the lavish accommodations.
 
He found another body wedged in a door jamb, but saw the man’s wooden peg-leg and dismissed him . . . not the person he sought.
 
He wished he could call out.

Nemo drew his knife and tugged against the restraining stiffness of the long airtube that trailed behind him.
 
He wheezed and sucked in a deep breath, angry at fate.
 
He’d never intended to go this far.
 
He couldn’t get enough oxygen, but even dizzy as he was, he continued.
 
His father might be dying down here.

Around him, muffled booming and rumbling sounds surged through the water as the
Cynthia
continued her death throes.

A few chambers remained sealed, their doors shut.
 
Nemo clung to hope. Bubbles trickled from one of the closed rooms.
 
As the ship continued to sink and twist and shift, the door opened a crack, and air boiled out.

Nemo swam there, trying to see if his father had sought refuge inside, but no one came out as he yanked the door open.
 
He thumped at the second sealed door but heard no response from his father, no pounding, no return vibration.
 
Where?
 
The underwater dimness made details and options murky around him.

Quickly he moved to a third stateroom door, tilted with a heavy beam wedged across it.
 
A line of bubbles frothed and surged from the bottom of the door, where water must be flooding into the small room.
 

Nemo hammered with the hilt of the dagger, hoping to detect something through the water.
 
Just when he was about to give up, he heard a slap, a flat palm thudding against the wall.

Nemo pounded four times, and the other slapped back four more times -- the code rhythm Jacques Nemo used to signal his son -- then hammered repeatedly to get out.
 
Half-afloat and half-balanced, Nemo wrenched at the thick beam that jammed the opening, but dizzy from lack of air, he could not budge it.
 

The air bubbles continued to creep higher as the chamber filled.
 
The sounds of response inside the sealed room became more frantic.

His blood burning with desperation, Nemo dug with the point of his dagger, wedging it like a prybar.
 
With a great twist, he tried to lever a board free, but the dagger snapped in half.
 
He screamed in furious dismay, but no one could hear him through his helmet.
 
He went wild, hammering and pounding on the wood with his fists, shouting for his father . . . utterly helpless.
 
As his head and shoulders jerked, one of the hollow reeds loosened.
 
River water dribbled into his bladder helmet.