The shutters closed on that dreadful sight, and the salon stayed dark. I went back to my room, where Ned and Conseil sat in silence. Captain Nemo filled me with horror. Whatever he had suffered at the hands of those men, he had no right to punish them like that. And he had made me a witness to his revenge.
The Nautilus fled north at a terrible speed, through the fogs of the northern seas. Where was it taking us? I could not tell. The clocks on board had stopped, and no one marked our position on the map any longer. I think this strange voyage lasted fifteen or twenty days. I saw nothing of Captain Nemo or of his crew. Ned, at the end of his strength and patience, stayed out of sight too, and Conseil watched over him, afraid that he might harm himself.
One morning Ned leaned over my bed and woke me.
“We’re leaving,” he said quietly.
“When?”
“Tonight. Nobody seems to watch the ship anymore. There’s land about thirty kilometers to the east. I don’t know what land, but we’ll go there. The sea is rough and the wind is strong, but thirty kilometers in the boat doesn’t scare me. I’ve hidden some food and water in it.”
“I will come with you.”
“And if they catch me, I’ll fight. I’ll make them kill me.”
“Then we will die together, Ned.”
That day was the longest of my life. I was afraid of meeting Captain Nemo, and yet a part of me wished to see him one last time. At half past six Ned came to my room.
“We won’t see each other again before we go,” he said. “At ten o’clock the moon won’t be up yet. Come to the boat. Conseil and I will be waiting.”
I went to the salon for the last time and looked at the treasures there, the paintings and the collections that would one day lie at the bottom of the sea with the man who had gathered them. Then I put on warm clothes and hid my notes inside them. At Captain Nemo’s door I heard footsteps. He was there, awake. At any moment I expected him to come in and ask me why I wanted to leave.
I lay down on my bed. In my mind I saw the whole voyage again: the hunt for the monster, the Torres Strait, the coral cemetery, Atlantis, the South Pole, the prison of ice, the giant squid, the storm, the Avenger, and the warship sinking with all its crew. Captain Nemo seemed to grow larger and larger. He was no longer a man like me, but the spirit of the sea.
At half past nine I heard the organ, very far away. It was sad music, like the cry of a soul that wants to break free of this world. Then a sudden thought frightened me. Captain Nemo was in the salon, and I had to cross the salon to reach the boat. He would see me. Perhaps he would speak to me. One word from him could keep me on board forever.
But it was nearly ten. I opened my door. It seemed to make a terrible noise, though perhaps only in my imagination. I crept along the dark corridor and opened the door of the salon. It was in complete darkness, and the organ was playing softly. Captain Nemo was there, but he did not see me. I crept across the carpet. It took me five minutes to reach the door of the library on the other side.
The door stood slightly open, and I was about to slip through when a sigh from Captain Nemo stopped me where I stood. He had risen. In the dim light from the library I could see him coming toward me in silence, his arms crossed, moving like a ghost. He was sobbing, and I heard him say these words, the last I ever heard from him:
“Almighty God! Enough! Enough!”
Was it his conscience speaking at last? I rushed through the library, up the central stairs, and climbed through the opening into the boat. My two companions were already inside.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” I cried.
“Right away!” said Ned.
He closed the opening in the hull of the Nautilus with a key he had got hold of, closed the opening of the boat, and began to loosen the bolts that still held us to the submarine. Suddenly we heard loud voices inside the ship. Had they discovered us? Ned put a knife into my hand.
“Yes,” I whispered, “we know how to die!”
Ned stopped working. But one word, repeated again and again, told us what had alarmed the crew. It was not us they were looking for.
“Maelstrom! Maelstrom!”
Could a more terrible word have reached our ears at a more terrible moment? We were off the dangerous coast of Norway. When the tide comes in there, the water rushes between the islands with such force that it forms a giant whirlpool, from which no ship has ever escaped. It pulls in ships, whales and even polar bears from many kilometers around. And Captain Nemo, whether he meant to or not, had taken the Nautilus straight into it.
The Nautilus was turning in circles that grew smaller and smaller, and our boat, still fixed to its side, turned with it at a dizzying speed. We were covered in cold sweat. Around us the water roared and crashed on the rocks below. The Nautilus fought like a living thing, and its steel body creaked and groaned.
“We must hold on,” said Ned, “and tighten the bolts again. We may still be saved if we stay with the Nautilus.”
He had not finished speaking when we heard a crash. The bolts gave way, and the boat was torn from its place and thrown like a stone into the middle of the whirlpool. My head struck against a piece of iron, and I lost consciousness.
How the boat escaped from the Maelstrom that night, how Ned, Conseil and I came out of it alive, I cannot tell. When I woke, I was lying in a fisherman’s hut on the Lofoten Islands. My two companions, safe and well, were beside me, holding my hands. We embraced warmly.
We cannot go back to France yet; a steamer comes only once a month from the far north of Norway. And so, among the kind people who took us in, I am reading my story once again. I have left nothing out and added nothing. Will anyone believe me? I do not know, and it does not really matter. I have the right to speak of these seas: under them I traveled twenty thousand leagues in less than eight months and saw so many wonders.
But what has become of the Nautilus? Did it survive the Maelstrom? Is Captain Nemo still alive? Does he still take his terrible revenge, or did he stop after that last day? Will the waves carry his manuscript to us one day? Will I ever know his name?
I hope so. And I hope that his ship has beaten the sea in its most terrible whirlpool. If Captain Nemo still lives in the ocean, the country he chose, may the hatred in his wild heart grow calm! May the sight of so many wonders end his thirst for revenge forever! May the judge disappear, and the scientist go on exploring the seas in peace! His fate is strange, but it is also great. I know, for I have lived that life myself.
And to the question that Ecclesiastes asked three thousand years ago, “That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?”, only two men now living have the right to answer:
Captain Nemo and myself.