Captain Nemo_ The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius - Kevin J Anderson [55]
Then the waiting began. Hour after hour. He found it agonizing. All day, Nemo continued to feed his blazing bonfire in an unmistakable call for help.
By late afternoon, the strange ship had grown close, angling in from the west. In the orange-tinted sky of sunset, the details of her three-masted form were clear enough in silhouette.
Nemo stared through his rockface window, using a crude spyglass he had constructed out of bamboo tubes, the lens from his magnifying glass and a second lens painstakingly ground from the bottom of a salvaged brandy bottle he’d found in the original jetsam that had washed ashore. Now he realized with a growing cold sensation in his chest that he knew this ship. Knew it too well.
The Coralie.
Nemo could never forget the vessel on which he had become a seaman, where he’d learned the ways of rigging and sails and the currents of the seven seas. There could be no mistake. Led by the hideous Captain Noseless, the brigands must have taken the Coralie as their own, killing all crew aboard who refused to join them. For years now, the marauders had used Captain Grant’s brig as if it were their own.
And now that pirate crew had arrived at the island. His island.
Thanks to the signal fire, they would know that some poor castaway lived here. Now the pirates would come after him and take everything he’d managed to hoard for his survival. Then they would delight in killing him.
Swallowing hard, knowing the enemy would come in with the morning tide, Nemo set about preparing his defenses. This would be his chance to avenge what the pirates had done to him, to the Coralie crew, and to Captain Grant.
Maybe it would be worth all the suffering.
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On the clearing above the cliffs, he let his bonfire fade to embers, but it was already too late.
Engrossed in the slim possibility of rescue, he had never planned or built military defenses. Even from the shelter of Granite House, Nemo had no way to drive back a hundred armed and bloodthirsty pirates. He’d already seen how these men fought, how they killed without compunction. Not even Captain Grant, the brawny Ned Land, and the seasoned English sailors aboard the Coralie had been able to drive them back.
And Nemo was just one man. How could he possibly succeed where the others had failed?
But he had time, and resources, and ingenuity on his side. He would never run and hide. He had to protect what he could and inflict all possible damage -- if only in honor of Captain Grant’s memory.
During the night he returned to the plateau and loosed his goats from the corral. The pirates would slaughter any animals they found and take the meat back to their ship. Bleating, the goats ran into the forest, where at least they had a chance to escape. If he got through this, Nemo could round up most of them again. He could not save his vegetable garden, nor the outdoor huts where he stored the supplies he’d accumulated over the years.
Nemo secured himself inside Granite House. He drew up the ladders, severed the baskets of his elevator, and set fire to his bamboo stairway so that it fell off the cliffside in smoking cinders. Safely isolated, he ate and drank his fill, then tried to doze. He would need all of his energy the following day.
He meant to kill as many pirates as possible. For Captain Grant.
A long passage in the rear of Granite House led through winding caves up to the mountainside. The entire island was honeycombed with underground tunnels, covered by jungle-overgrown openings. If forced to run, Nemo could hide in the wilderness. . . but if the pirates decided to set up a permanent base, he would have a long battle ahead of him. Sooner or later, he intended to wipe them out. They all deserved to die.
At dawn, he went to the cave opening and looked out to sea. The Coralie had sailed into the lagoon with the tide and had anchored not far from shore. Squinting through his spyglass, Nemo could just make out the hideous