Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [10]
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 candleflame 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