The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Page 8

  The men studiously paid no attention to the thunderous violent pounding and roars emanating from the vessel's bowels. The scraping of hard claws sounded like sharp fingernails on a slate board, the snarling like that of a trapped animal. The hammering came like a black-smith's sledge against a sturdy anvil. Some of the inhuman snarls began to sound like threats, English words forming colorful and creative curses.

  The Nautilus crewmen hurried down the corridors. Ishmael frowned and went back to his post…

  Inside the cabin Nemo had assigned to her, Mina Harker continued unpacking for the voyage. Her narrow shelves, the top of the bureau, the sink, even her narrow bunk were already cluttered with the tools of chemistry, the apparatus of her expertise: vials, rubber tubing, glass pipettes, atomizers, and test tubes.

  As she unpacked more equipment, Mina muttered to herself, bothered by Allan Quatermains' annoyingly quaint and old-fashioned objections to her participation in the mission. She mimicked his voice, though no one could hear her. "This hunt's too dangerous for a woman. Even one such as you. Leave it to me, the incredibly brave and strong male."

  Then a thunderous bang shook the walls, as if the Nautilus had rammed into an iceberg. As her cabin shelves shook, a rack of Mina's test tubes crashed to the deck, and she let out a long and definitely unladylike string of curses…

  Inside his private cabin down the narrow corridor, Dorian Gray plucked his eyebrows with a fine pair of tweezers. The pounding and howling was quite a distraction, and the mirror rattled so much that Gray couldn't finish his task. Annoyed, he tossed the tweezers down onto his vanity surface and went to investigate.

  He wasn't the only one incensed. He converged with Mina Harker and the grossly made-up Skinner at an intersection of corridors. "Heh! The Great White Hunter must have bagged his prize," said the invisible man. "Maybe we can all get together for tea. I think he must be just your sort of man, Mrs. Harker."

  "I think not," both Gray and Mina said simultaneously.

  They hurried toward the escalating sound of chaos. Up ahead, one of Nemo's uniformed crewmen flew out of the ice room doorway, struck the bulkhead wall, and lay groaning on the floor.

  "Perhaps instead the prize bagged our hunter," Gray said with a superior smile.

  "Boys and their adventures," Mina said.

  The trio entered the thick-walled ice room and stopped at the hatchway, gaping, as the gigantic, hairy creature — some sort of hybrid between man and primate— hurled himself against the thick shackles that bound his hands and neck to the wall of the chamber. The manacles attached to the chains were already bloodied from the beast's unceasing exertions.

  Oddly enough, the captive monsters swollen and inhuman form was clad in the tatters of prim gentleman's clothing: trousers, a waistcoat, a starched-collared shirt which was now split apart at his tree-trunk neck.

  Quatermain, Sawyer, and Nemo stood at a safe distance, clearly not knowing what to do next. "Henry, you've got to calm yourself," Quatermain said, trying to be reasonable with the monster. "Think pleasant—"

  "I'm Edward Hyde!" the beast roared, spraying spittle and sending out waves of foul breath. "Not that worm Jekyll!" The chains clanked again, rivets groaning on the wall. But the shackles seemed secure enough, for now.

  Gray, Skinner, and Mina approached with varying degrees of trepidation.

  "Stay back if you value your life." Quatermain held out a cautionary hand.

  Hyde lunged at them and was brought to an abrupt halt by the manacles and the cuff around his thick neck. With bloodshot eyes, he leered brazenly at Mina. She merely cocked a brow at him.

  Skinner was startled, and he stumbled. With no more politeness than if he was picking up a scrap of litter, Dorian Gray grabbed the invisible man.

  "Ow, you scratched me," Skinner whined.

  "Better me than him," Gray said, letting go of the thieves sleeve. "Look at those claws." He studied the captive monster and said sarcastically, "Well, this is nice."

  "I was about to suggest music," Mina said. "Soothing the savage beast and all that."

  "Debussy," said the beast-man. The League reacted with surprise to the cultured suggestion, all except Quatermain, who seemed to have expected it. Hyde continued, "That is, if you want to get on my good side. Debussy usually works, though Jekyll prefers Mozart. Sissy music."

  "I could play my mouth harp," Sawyer suggested.

  Quatermain stepped up and looked Hyde square in the bloodshot eyes. The creatures swollen red lips could barely cover his crooked teeth. "Mr. Edward Hyde, you've done terrible things in England. So terrible that you were forced to flee the country."

  Hyde laughed wickedly, proudly.

  Quatermain continued, relaying the message M had given him at the outset. "I'm ashamed to say that Her Majesty's Government is willing to offer you amnesty in return for your services on this particular mission. Would you like to go home?"

  "Home is where the heart is, that's what they say. I've ripped out a few hearts in my time. Tough to chew." His lips worked, but a mistiness came to his eyes. "Ah, the stink of the Thames, all the people coughing with tuberculosis, the hopelessness, the desperate poor. And they never did catch the Ripper, did they? Outdid even my best work — must have come straight from Hell, and then gone back there."

  Hyde shifted about like a caged tiger, brooding. "I have been missing London after all. Its sorrow is as sweet to me as rare wine." He offered the League members a Cheshire cat smile and slumped cooperatively against the metal wall. The chains fell slack. "I'm yours." He turned to Mina. "By the by, call me a beast again, Miss. Please? I'm liable to become overly affectionate." He smiled slyly to everyone. "Aww, don't be scared."

  "Hey, who said we're scared?" Tom Sawyer said.

  "You do!" Playfully, it seemed, Hyde lunged, pulling a chain clean out of the wall, as if he could have done it at any time. He lashed it through the air, and Sawyer and Quatermain ducked to avoid it. The Nautilus crewmen shouted, scrambling to grab their weapons. Nemo crouched, ready to fight with his bare hands.

  Hyde didn't advance on them, though. He sniffed the air, then let out a guffaw like breaking rocks. "You stink of fear."

  "Quite the parlor trick," said Gray, unnerved but still pretending to be uninterested.

  Suddenly the monstrously muscled Hyde winced as if he had swallowed acid. The pain immediately escalated, rippling through his chest and shoulders. "You call it a parlor trick?" He gasped for breath, his throat convulsing. "Wait until you see my next one." Hyde clutched his stomach and doubled over. "Abracadabra."

  He thrashed against his remaining chains, screaming and howling as his hairy body distorted. His muscles contracted, his skin tightened, tissues distended. Bones cracked and reshaped as his body transformed.

  He slammed against the chamber wall, back and forth, shrieking and howling, agonized as the metamorphosis wracked his body. The band around his neck snapped clean off, and he broke the remaining shackle on his left wrist. But escape was the last thing on his mind at the moment.

  Hyde fell to the floor, still flailing in his fearsome seizure. None of the others approached him, wary for their lives.

  Little by little Edward Hyde shrank into a smaller person. His coarse, unruly hair and thick black nails receded until finally, the beast was entirely gone. Another man lay there on the deck, awash in the monster's sour sweat.

  "At least he fits those clothes better now," the invisible man pointed out, unhelpfully.

  Shaking with weakness and personal misery, the scrawny stranger arose, blinking his nervous, saucer-wide eyes. He was a slight man who easily slipped his entire hand out of Hyde's wrist shackles, leaving the torn chains on the floor. His ashen face reflected his ordeal. His large Adam's apple bobbed up and down as he gulped.

  "Henry Jekyll, at your service. And I would very much like to earn my pardon and return to London." He swallowed hard. "May I have a glass of water, please?"

  "So the League is set," Quatermain said when the seven membe
rs gathered later inside the plush parlor of the submarine boat. Nemo had offered them all yellowish homemade cigars fashioned from a rare nicotine-containing seaweed. Quatermain drew a long puff, expecting to dislike the cigar, but found it rather pleasant. "Now we can finally be about our work."

  Hearing a chatter of machinery, Nemo went to tear an incoming ticker tape from a wall unit. He skimmed down the punched words. "And so is the time and precise location for the conference. We have three days."

  "Three days to get all the way to Italy? Goodness!" said Tom Sawyer. "Can this canoe do it?"

  "Do not underestimate the Nautilus." Nemo went to stare out at the swirling undersea view. The ship cut through the waters at incredible speed, her long, lean lines demonstrating the accuracy of her nickname, Sword of the Ocean.

  FOURTEEN

  The Nautilus

  The League gathered in the amazing vessel's conning tower as the submarine boat cruised the surface of the Atlantic off the coast of Portugal. A white wake curled from the bow as the beautifully ornamented vessel glided ahead. The salty air was as refreshing as the bright daylight.

  "This is a whole lot different from riding a paddle-boat," Tom Sawyer said.

  Beside him, the famous hunter cleaned his big elephant gun in silence. Sawyer watched him, unable to keep silent. "So, you named your gun, Mr. Quatermain?"

  "Matilda."

  "Who's Matilda?" The young agent seemed eager for conversation. "Somebody special?"

  "My gun." The old hunter sighted the gun out to sea, past where Mina Harker and Dorian Gray stood together on the far side of the Nautilus's deck.

  Gray smiled curiously as he looked at the woman in her formal blue dress, white scarf, and long gloves, all of which were certainly inappropriate for standing outside on the open deck of a submarine vessel racing across the water. He had witnessed the terrible changes in her, knew the demonic creature that lurked half-hidden beneath her perfect exterior. Just like himself. He edged closer. "Mina — rediscovering you… Ah, the mullahs of Arabia would call it kismet."

  Mina did not find the moment quite so magical. "Don't get any ideas, Dorian. Our past is just and only that."

  "Did I hurt you so?" His thin patrician lips formed a pained expression, which had no effect on the pale, beautiful woman.

  "Don't flatter yourself. Until M mentioned your name, I'd all but forgotten you existed." She sniffed. "You were always strange, Dorian. Until the incident in your library, watching you riddled with bullets and remaining completely unaffected… I just didn't realize how strange."

  "Strange? I prefer 'timeless."

  "At least your appearance finally makes sense to me. Quatermam knew you as a grown man when he was just a boy? Even before, when we were together, I wasn't naive enough to think that your 'youth' was due to clean living. You haven't aged a day."

  "Its an overrated practice. And you yourself don't appear a moment older."

  "I have an excuse."

  "So do I."

  As she turned away from Gray and started toward the conning tower's hatch, Sawyer watched the beautiful woman with obvious admiration.

  Quatermain continued to study his elephant gun, gazing through the sight and never taking his eyes away, but still he sensed Sawyers fascination with Mina Harker. "She's out of your league, boy."

  With good-natured American cockiness, Sawyer said, "Fortune rewards the bold, Mr. Quatermain." He stepped forward with his disarming grin, intending to be a gentleman and open the hatch for Mina. "If you require any help during the voyage, Mrs. Harker, let me know."

  Mina let him work the heavy hatch. "Help? I'm curious as to how you think you could assist me, Agent Sawyer."

  The young man struggled with the wheel, still grinning. "Oh, heavy lifting. Light banter. Whatever you need. I'm a useful guy."

  "Not to me," Mina said as he finally hauled open the hatch. "You're sweet and young, Mr. Sawyer. Neither of which are traits I hold in high regard."

  Sawyer managed to keep a straight face as Mina descended into the confues of the Nautilus. "Well, you're sure to the point, Ma'am. I'll give you that."

  Gray followed a moment later with a smug smirk, enjoying a moment of amusement at the young agent's expense. Sawyer stayed outside on the upper deck, not sure what to do next.

  As he stared across the open, peaceful waves, Captain Nemo received a message from Ishmael. He called to the others still on the conning tower. "We will be diving in a moment. Please come back inside."

  "Good," said Sawyer, humiliated. He glanced back at Quatermain, who remained farthest from the hatchway.

  Their eyes locked as the old hunter cracked open the gun and ejected shells.

  Only a few minutes later, the Nautilus dove beneath the waves, slowly descending like a leviathan. Turbines churned, propellers cut the water, and a great belch of ballast bubbles boiled upward.

  The golden statues on the conning tower and the bow stood against the brine, as if resisting the depths to the last moment, and then they too sank deep beneath the waves.

  FIFTEEN

  The Bridge of the Nautilus

  Nemo sat in his scrolled captains chair, using nautical logs of his own design to plot their best course to the northeastern coast of Italy. Lead scribing pencils and protractors lay spread out on the chart table.

  Outside, schools of silver fish swirled about, attracted by the submarines dazzling running lights, but fleeing from the swift approach of the armor-plated vessel.

  So far they had traveled down the Thames and out of London, across the English Channel and along the French coast to the Seine, which they had followed to Paris. They had navigated back out to the Atlantic, keeping to the deep waters around the Iberian Peninsula, and passed through the Strait of Gibraltar into the calm, blue Mediterranean on their way to Italy.

  Not bad for little more than a day's sailing.

  When a low whistle signal sounded from the galley, Nemo looked at the ticking enclosed clock in its alcove on the bridge. He rose from his labors, stretched, and turned to the apparently unoccupied room. "Dinner is imminent, Mr. Skinner. Put some clothes on, there's a good fellow."

  He walked off the bridge, leaving it empty, save for the silent invisible man. Skinner coughed, as if disappointed that the captain had remembered his presence there…

  Hearing Nemo approach, Quatermain stepped quickly out of his cabin, nearly bumping into the Nautilus captain as he passed by. "Dinner is served, Quatermain. I can offer you a jacket, if you require one."

  "Thank you, no. I've lived in Africa too long to stand on stuffy old ceremony like that." The adventurer paused, wrestling with words that weighed heavily on his mind, while Nemo looked at him, waiting. "I wanted to thank you for your contribution so far, Captain. I may have been overly rude earlier when I called you a… pirate."

  Nemo responded with the merest hint of a smile. "And I may have been overly charitable when I said I wasn't one." He stroked his thick black beard. "In my philosophy I try to live in the 'now'—where the ghosts of old wrongs do not abide. I have plenty of scars, and memories, but I would accomplish little if I allowed myself to be shackled by them. What of you?"

  "I don't believe in ghosts. Although I've seen my share of them."

  "Your past haunts you," Nemo observed.

  "Vanity. Pride. Mistakes that cost me someone dear. It's an old story."

  "So now you throw yourself in harm's way?"

  Quatermain tried to think of an analogy the submarine captain might understand. "Old tigers, sensing the end, are at their most fierce. They go down fighting."

  Bounding out of his cabin, Agent Tom Sawyer appeared, oblivious to the conversation. "Say, where's your dining room, Nemo?" He rubbed his stomach. "I could eat a mule."

  When they reached the submarine's richly appointed room, however, they saw a server removing plates from the table, under the somber watchful eye of First Mate Ishmael.

  The table had been laid extravagantly, with gold-trimmed china, finely wo
ven napkins, and a startling centerpiece made from a shark's head ringed with frilly kelp and colorful shells. From a side serving table, a savory, fishy aroma wafted up from a tureen of chowder. Plates of iced shellfish were waiting to be served.

  In spite of these elaborate preparations, a server took away many of the place settings that had been set out for the members of the League.

  "Where are the others?" Nemo frowned, affronted. "Did they not receive the summons to dine?"

  "I checked with them personally, Captain," Ishmael said, scratching his cheek. He did not look pleased. "They all asked to eat in their cabins."

  "We may be a League, but we're sure not a team." Sawyer, at least, seemed extremely interested in the mouth-watering smells of the food. "My Aunt Polly always said the best efforts of gluing a family together were usually done at the dinner table."

  "Team or not, there's work to be done," Quatermain said angrily. "Maybe the others are being particularly dedicated to their preparations."

  "Or just not very sociable," Sawyer said.

  Nemo regarded them. "If you two gentlemen would care to join me in my cabin, we can look at certain plans in my possession. It will help us formulate our next move."

  "As long as we can eat while we do it." Sawyer's stomach rumbled audibly. "Say, are those oysters?"

  Nemo nodded silent instructions to Ishmael, then led the other two men to his cabin.

  SIXTEEN

  The Nautilus

  While Nemo and Quatermain paid little attention to their meals, intent on the plans and discussions for their arrival in Venice, Tom Sawyer finished off two bowls of chowder, a dozen oysters—"Just like the ones I used to eat back home in Missouri!" — and a grilled shark steak. He munched on salted fried sardines fresh from the sea, then licked his fingers. He was careful not to get grease on the fragile papers the turbaned captain was displaying for them.

  In the bright light of his cabin, Nemo gently leafed through a large book of aged drawings until he came to the particular page he had wanted to show them. "The plans the Fantom stole from the Bank of England. These are copies… to my knowledge, possibly the only ones in existence."