Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [168]
Maintaining a wounded silence, the Nautilus cruised aimlessly until Nemo found a private reef studded with waving seaweeds and beautiful shells. He and several of his men suited up in underwater garments and cycled through the airlock. Verne declined to accompany them, feeling that it wasn’t his place. Instead, he went to the salon and watched through the broad windows.
The funeral procession plodded in slow motion through the waters, carrying their wrapped burden. Verne’s heart grew heavy watching the poignant march as the Nautilus crew -- men without a country -- laid their slain comrade to rest.
Moving like a machine, Nemo helped pile undersea rocks in a cairn over the body, leaving a watery grave that no other man could ever visit. They built a second mound in honor of the lost Englishman. . . .
When they returned to the vessel, Cyrus Harding piloted the Nautilus, while Nemo isolated himself in his private cabin to mourn. He didn’t emerge for an entire day. Finally he came out to speak with Verne.
“I must take you back now, Jules,” he said, his expression dark and his voice grim. “It was a mistake to bring you here. This is no picaresque journey, no amusing adventure for a starry-eyed dreamer. I have no time for sightseers.”
#
The Nautilus dropped Verne off late at night on the coast of France, north of Paimboeuf. Afire with enthusiasm, his journal full of ideas from Nemo’s stories, he watched the armored sub-marine sink beneath the water, cutting a wake out into the ocean.
Verne waved farewell, and headed back toward home, thoroughly inspired to write further books.
iv
For most of his life, whenever Jules Verne had an opportunity to see Caroline Hatteras, he leaped at the chance . . . and dreaded it at the same time. She still made him tongue-tied and light-headed, and he still imagined a life with her, though that fantasy was even more unrealistic than his strangest extraordinary voyages.
Caroline and he always had much to discuss, old-time reminiscences and shared experiences. Though Verne had already been married for eleven years now (and Caroline, ostensibly, for twenty-one) the thought of being alone in a room with her, face to face, still gave him chills.
Before leaving his flat on a blustery day, Verne told Honorine that he had a “business luncheon,” such as he often scheduled with his publisher Hetzel. In spite of the many years that had passed, he’d never talked about Caroline with his wife, had never confessed how the fiery-blond woman still haunted his dreams with lost opportunities.
A similar reticence kept Verne from telling Caroline about Nemo and his sub-marine vessel. Nemo had strongly hinted that he preferred for her to continue believing him dead, now that he could never come back to her. He wanted Caroline to make her own life, without him -- but Verne knew she never would.
Now, the prospect of explaining that her long-lost love was still alive, against all odds (as usual), raised a morass of unresolved emotions in him. Five years had passed since his voyage aboard the Nautilus. Caroline divided her time between Paris and Nantes, yet Verne had not gone out of his way to see her. He had stewed over the secret long and hard, and had decided that she must know.
Though Verne had kept his distance from her over the years, not trusting himself, he had also kept track of Caroline’s successes. Madame Hatteras’s rivals resented the fact that a powerful, outspoken woman managed such an important business concern, but customers who admired her verve and ingenuity trusted her to take risks that more conservative merchants would not consider.
The sleek ships of ‘Aronnax, Merchant’ often brought commodities to port weeks sooner than those of her competitors. Caroline was willing to consider new designs for faster clippers, and she investigated alternate sea routes. Her childhood fascination with geography had served her