250
THE
LAST
WORDS
OF
CAPTAIN
NEA.
my notes and secured them carefully about my person. heart beat loudly; I could not help it. My trouble
agitation would
certainly
have
betrayed
me
to
My and
Captain
Nemo. What was he doing at that moment? JI listened at the door of his room ; I could hear footsteps. Captain Nemo was there, and had not retired to rest. At every movement
it seemed to me as if he were about to appear and ask me why I was going to escape. I was nervously sensitive. My imagination magnified everything around me. This impression became so vivid that I began to think whether it would not be better to go into the captain’s room, see him face to face, and “ beard the lion in his den.”
This was madness; fortunately I restrained myself, and lay down on my bed to cool my agitation. My nerves became more calm by degrees, but my brain was at work, and I seemed to see all over again the pleasant and unpleasant incidents that had happened since our disappearance from the Adraham Lincoln—the submarine shooting-party, Torres’ Strait, the Papuan savages, our stranding, the coral cemetery, the Suez passage, the island of Sautorin, the
Cretan
diver, Vigo
Bay,
Atlantis,
the iceberg,
the South
Pole, the imprisonment in the ice, the octopus-fight, the tempest in the Gulf Stream, the Avenger, and the last horrible scene of the vessel sent to the bottom with all hands. All these events passed before my mental vision like the scenes at a theatre. Then Captain Nemo seemed to increase in size tremendously in this strange medley. His
apparition forced itself in, and took superhuman proportions. He was no longer my equal, he was the man of the waters—the genius of the seas. It was then half-past nine. I held my head between my hands to still its throbbing. I shut my eyes, and tried
