Captain Nemo Read online

  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.

  Jamming the broken dagger back into his belt, he wrestled with the door as he used the last
air in his lungs. His vision turned red, but he refused to back away. He could hold his breath for a few moments longer, though now he didn’t know if he could last long enough to reach the surface.

  With his continued onslaught, a crack opened in the wood, and air bubbles spurted out with greater velocity. Water poured inside.

  Nemo pounded and pummeled. Foul river water inside his helmet spilled past his chin into his lips, and he inhaled great breaths through his nose. He wrestled until he broke part of the board free—but it was nowhere near wide enough for his father to get through.

  Bubbles surged to the top of the door as the stateroom filled completely. The man inside struggled and tugged. Finally, all he could do was push his fingers through the small hole.

  Nemo grasped his father’s hand. As the last air escaped from the submerged room, the trapped man struggled and thrashed. But somehow Jacques Nemo kept his grip on his son’s hand, love passing between them.

  And then water filled Nemo’s bladder-hood. He couldn’t breathe anymore. The leaking water covered his nose, and he had already emptied his lungs. Blackness floated around him. He would drown, too, down here beside his father. He wanted to scream, but he had no more air.

  His father’s fingers clenched one more time and then fell slack. Unable even to sob or cry out because of the water in his helmet, Nemo struggled away from the sunken ship. He realized how close he was to death, and a candle flame of survival burned brighter even than his grief.

  But the heavy stones in his pockets held him down, as leaden as his heart. He couldn’t surface, now that he wanted to. With jerking fingers Nemo attempted to yank the rocks free, but got only a few of them out. He couldn’t see because his vision was dimmed, but also because river water now covered the inside of the viewing plate.

  With a violent wrench he yanked the breathing tube from his helmet and snapped it in his hands, since it hindered his freedom of movement. His lungs burned, his chest ached—and his heart wanted to explode with anger and despair. But still he wanted to live, to breathe fresh air again, to feel the sunlight on his skin. He tore at the belt sealed around his neck, and finally used the broken end of his dagger to slash the bladder free and tear it from his head.

  As he swam toward the surface, fighting and kicking, greenish light beckoned like angels from above. Rigging ropes and pulleys dangled around him like a poacher’s net, but he fought his way through them.

  Nemo choked in a mouthful of water in a desperate attempt to breathe like a fish, but his body convulsed. He couldn’t last for a second longer—but he would not let himself be defeated.

  His head popped above the river surface like a champagne cork. Wooden debris from the Cynthia drifted all around. Barely conscious, he grasped one of the floating cross-stays and sucked in great breaths of air, sobbing and coughing. But he could not clear the water from his eyes, because his tears blinded him.

  Below, the Cynthia came to its final rest, taking with it Nemo’s father and his future.

  IV

  Inside the house, the lawyer Pierre Verne kept a telescope pointed through an upstairs window toward the clock face of a distant monastery, so he could always know what time it was.

  The family Verne lived in the most desirable section of Nantes, in the heart of Ile Feydeau’s old town. Their narrow four-story house stood on rue Olivier de Clisson, named after a fourteenth-century French commander who fought against the English in the Hundred Years War.

  The low tables in their sitting room displayed the weekly Parisian publication Le Magasin Pittoresque. The elder Verne encouraged his two sons to read illustrated geographical stories about foreign places and explanatory articles on scientific subjects. As a Christmas gift, Jules had even received a model telegraph, a toy that was all the rage across France.

  When the family sat down to a formal evening dinner, Pierre Verne insisted on proper etiquette. Verne’s two sisters changed into lacy silk and crepe de chine dresses complete with constricting whalebone corsets, while Jules wore an embroidered waistcoat and cravat, as did his ten-year-old brother Paul. They sat at a long, dark table made in a style that imitated the great French masters. Meals were served on fine china that had been part of his mother’s dowry when she’d married Pierre.

  Now, several days after the tragedy of the Cynthia, Jules found this particular dinner and this conversation more maddening than usual. His mother had broiled small squabs for each of them, three for his father, accompanied by buttered peas and delightful onion pastries (a secret family recipe she had tried to teach her elder son, though thus far Jules had mastered only her special omelet).

  With linen napkins folded in their laps, the family solemnly prayed. Verne’s father then opened the bottle of Bordeaux, poured a goblet for himself and his wife, and then watered some wine for each of the children. Pierre was a gaunt man with long sideburns and dark hair, without the slightest twinkle in his eye or an appreciation of the humor his elder son displayed.

  They ate under an imposed silence broken only by the sound of silverware clinking against china, the gurgle of wine as his father refilled his goblet, the delicate chewing and prying of meat from small pigeon carcasses.

  Verne and his siblings waited for their father to begin the evening’s conversation, usually when he was half finished with his main course, always before the dessert. As a lawyer, Pierre Verne was a man of rigid habits who adhered to schedules, written and unwritten.

  Sometimes he would challenge his children with word games or round-robin poetry, having each of them make up verses—a pastime at which Jules excelled. Other evenings, they waited until after the meal, when his sisters would demonstrate their prowess on the heirloom pianoforte.

  Tonight, however, with grim face and ill temper, the lawyer chose Verne’s least favorite activity: a discussion of current events and local matters. Pierre Verne held strong opinions; thus, the family did not have a dinner discussion so much as a lecture in which Pierre instructed his family on what they should think about the matters of the day.

  Before his father spoke, Verne already knew the issue that concerned him. “Since the burning of the Cynthia, there’ll be work coming into the office. When you get older, Jules, I intend to have you as my assistant, but for now I must hire help to draw up papers, submit forms and claims. It is an unconscionable mess.”

  The lawyer drew a deep breath as if this all made him very important. He dabbed the corner of his mouth with a napkin. “Lawsuits will be filed on the part of the ship’s investors. The carpenter who caused the disaster lost his life in the explosion, unfortunately, so there can be no seeking restitution from him.”

  “And not against his family, I hope,” Verne’s mother, Sophie, said.

  “Family?” The lawyer frowned. “The man was a sailor and shipbuilder.” He said, as if the profession were an insult. “It hardly seemed worthwhile to go looking for any family.” Jules was stung by his father’s callous dismissal of everyone like André Nemo, whose father had also died in the wreck.

  Reading her son’s distress, Sophie Verne looked at him with compassion and understanding. “Do you know what your friend will do now, Jules?”

  He smiled at her in gratitude. He hadn’t realized his mother knew the extent of his friendship with Nemo. “I suppose he’ll be able to survive for a while. André is a very resourceful young man.”

  “He’s going to have to be.” Pierre Verne looked up in surprise, interrupted in his thoughts and puzzled for a moment. “That young man’s father had no money. He was bankrupt. All wasted on gambling and liquor, no doubt.”

  “Pierre!” Sophie snapped, but her husband didn’t back down.

  “What do you mean he has no money?” Verne said. “Monsieur Nemo just finished building a ship and had a bonus coming. He worked every day.”

  “The man left no inheritance for his son, mark my words. I’ve already seen repossession paperwork come through. That young man is in trouble.”

  Verne could barely speak, daun
ted by his father’s lack of sympathy. “But what . . . what is he going to do?”

  “He’ll be thrown into the streets, I expect.”

  Verne looked across his dinner plate and for the first time assessed Pierre Verne as a person, not simply as his ever-present father. The man took care of local matters in his tedious law practice, though he had never set foot in court nor spoken with eloquence at a dramatic trial. Pierre handled little more than property deeds and standard contracts. Only at a time like this, after a horrible tragedy, did he show any excitement in picking up the pieces.

  “Perhaps André can go into an orphanage,” Sophie said.

  “Too old,” Pierre answered with a dismissive wave of his left hand, which still clutched the now-soiled napkin. “No orphanage would take a young man of working age. Maybe we should hope those idiots in Paris get us into another war, and then Nemo can join the fighting and take a soldier’s pay.”

  Sophie spoke in an artificially sweet voice. “And which idiots are those, dear? The monarchists, the Republicans, or the Bonapartists? I can’t remember from week to week.”

  “I shall let you know after I read tonight’s paper,” her husband said. Then he looked over at his son, as if expecting his words to carry some kind of comfort. “You’re lucky you aren’t in that young man’s situation, Jules. You have prospects, a secure place in town, and a job with me in the law office.”

  Sick to his stomach, Verne pushed himself away from the table. “I need to be excused, Father.” He hurried up the narrow stairs to the room he shared with his younger brother.

  He opened the shutters to let in the moist air. Outside his window, the tall masts of sailing ships in port rose like towering trees. How could his father be so dismissive of other people’s lives? Verne felt trapped at home. He looked out toward the empty dock that had held the unfinished Cynthia; now nothing remained except a few protruding boards from her sunken hull, burn marks, and soot.

  Despite his father’s confidence, Verne’s life appeared to be a dead-end path. He would never leave France, never have adventures and explore the world as his fictional heroes did. And now, André Nemo—who had always shared his enthusiasm, creativity, and energy with Verne—had lost everything. Where would he go? How would his friend survive?