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As the raiders closed in, Nemo threw himself overboard. It was a long drop to the sea, but he didn’t care. He tumbled, landing feet first with a splash and sinking deep. Then he swam underwater as far as he could; when he finally surfaced, several pirates stood on the deck, blasting with their pistols. But their aim was off in the dark, and lead balls splashed all around him in the lagoon.

Nemo swam desperately to get away, mentally counting down. He looked over his shoulder, wondering how much time remained. Noseless stood on the Coralie’s deck in the same spot where Nemo had last seen Captain Grant.

Then all the powder kegs exploded.

The shockwave punched him like a gigantic fist, hurling Nemo through the water toward the shore. The concussion knocked the wind out of him and made his ears ring, but still he thrashed closer to the shelter of the mangrove swamp.

Splintered wood showered the water like Roman candles. He heard the wails and screams of dying men. The Coralie burned, flames racing up the rigging and the sails -- a complete inferno. The end of Captain Grant’s abused ship, the end of the pirates.

Shaky, battered, and nearly deaf, Nemo made his way into the thick mangrove swamps. Panting as he held a knobby root, he watched the ship burn and sink. In the flickering orange firelight, he saw no survivors, no men swimming for shore or clinging to flotsam and groaning for help. The pirates had been taken by surprise, and they had paid the ultimate price.

The lack of mercy bothered Nemo not a bit.

He gradually got his breath back. He had protected his home and his island, but most of all he was proud to have avenged the murder of Captain Grant. For that, he was thankful.

xi

Over the following afternoon, Nemo assessed the damage the pirates had done to his home in only two days.

His storage sheds had been burned to the ground, the corral torn apart, his vegetable garden uprooted and trampled. Using green vines as crude ropes, he lowered himself down the cliff face into the ruins of Granite House. His caves had been gutted, everything breakable smashed to pieces. Malicious vandalism, not because the pirates wanted anything of his.

Where he had hidden it in an alcove, he found the journal he had so diligently kept during his isolation. With tears in his dark eyes, he flipped through the intact pages that described his daily tribulations. It had taken him years to put everything together here. . . .

How he hated the pirates!

Later, Nemo sat by himself on the beach, knees drawn up to his chin. With the first dinosaur attack, Noseless had retrieved the longboats from beach, stranding his own men on the island, and those boats had burned with the Coralie.

Nemo listened to the sighing water out by the sheltering reefs, and realized he simply did not have the heart to begin all over again. He clutched the logbook to his chest, remembering how it had saved him from a sword thrust long ago. The written words were all that remained of those years of his life, now that his home had been ruined.

Nemo retrieved enough food from his hidden supplies to make a meal for himself. Then he spent hours just smelling the bitter odor of smoke and listening to the lonely wind as he contemplated what to do.

The Coralie had been destroyed. He supposed a few surviving pirates might still be lost in the jungles, raiders who had survived the depredations of the dinosaur. If they came after him, Nemo would fight. But he would rather avoid the brigands altogether.

Once again, André Nemo was about to start clean with his life, just as when he had signed on aboard Captain Grant’s ship after the death of his father. Now, though, without the driving juggernaut of vengeance in his heart, he felt empty, aimless. He could do anything he desired now, without being tied down. . . .

The strange cavern that had opened up on the side of the volcano intrigued him. Numerous caves and passages riddled the island, extending deep into the Earth -- but the huge dinosaur had emerged from that place.