• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Without thinking, heedless of the blood on his own hand, Nemo dropped to his belly and snatched the wooden pole back out of the water. He dared not lose his only weapon. The shark flailed about in pain, bleeding into the water.

Just then the other sharks converged on it, sensing more food. Smelling fresh blood.

Shuddering with adrenaline and exhaustion, Nemo watched five of the predators tear the wounded shark into strips of meat, devouring it alive. Nemo huddled on the raft without moving, clutching his spear as if it were a religious artifact. Even with his ordeal, though, he had enough presence of mind to press part of his torn shirt against the cuts on his palm, slowing the blood, keeping it from dripping into the water, which would send the sharks into a greater frenzy. He sat for so long his joints seized up and his muscles cramped until the turmoil in the reddened water faded away.

He didn’t move for the rest of that afternoon. After many drawn-out hours, the ocean became quiet and empty again. The sharks had gone, every scrap of food consumed.

And Nemo was more alone than ever.

#

The vast blue sea stretched forever around him, for days and miles. He had no maps, no idea of his position. The nearest land could be just over the horizon, or it could be a thousand miles away. Nemo had no way of knowing. On his voyage with Captain Grant, he had already seen the immensity of the Earth.

The sun went down, and the sky was as empty as the sea. Curling his fingers in the water, Nemo caught a few scraps of floating seaweed. He chewed on it, but the leaves tasted bitter. Later, he endured abdominal cramps that could have come from the seaweed, or just from deep hunger.

He thought of how the sharks had fed and wished that he had managed to rip some scraps of meat from the shark he had injured. He deserved some of the spoils of his hunt, but the other predators had consumed the entire carcass.

Nemo looked in vain over the edge of his raft. He trailed the empty chicken cage like a sieve, trying to catch an unlucky, curious fish. He ended up with only a few more strips of seaweed and one tiny crab, which he ate in an eyeblink, crunching the shell and swallowing before he could taste anything.

Desperately thirsty, still huddled under the canvas, he finally spotted a line of clouds at the horizon. He sat up sluggishly, shading his eyes. Over hours, he realized this was no illusion, that he was indeed seeing a blurry line. A circling bird high overhead reassured him that he must indeed be close to land.

His weary heart swelled. With a glimmer of hope, he realized he had to set course for this distant strip of dry ground. He planted his wooden spear in the crack between the crates and threaded the tattered canvas onto the pole like a crude sail. He tugged on one side, using his weight and shifting position until he managed to catch a few breaths of wind. Though he couldn’t see any change in his position, Nemo knew he had begun to move. Toward the island, he hoped. He tilted the makeshift raft, used the sail to tack in the proper direction, and aimed for the misty gray clouds and the land that seemed infinitely far away.

Now that he had a goal, he could focus his being. Nemo lost all sense of time. The sun passed in a parabola overhead from an undistinguished horizon in the east, hovering overhead with pounding rays, and then falling toward the west. All the while, Nemo grasped the shreds of the sail in his raw fingers and rode the raft onward behind whatever power the wind could give him.

The clouds gradually thickened, rising taller in the air. At first, Nemo took great delight in recognizing that he was moving closer to the land mass. Then he also realized that the clouds were getting larger. Darker.

Before long, the wind began gusting, and the sea grew choppier. With the sky so dark, he could no longer see the distant island. When the clouds finally burst, Nemo stared into the downpour, turning his face toward the sky in ecstasy as cool water poured onto his cracked lips,