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He read all through the night and well past dawn, astonished at the ordeals Nemo had undergone on the mysterious island. But the story came to an abrupt end after the pirate attack, without a resolution. Verne sat up, trembling, and wondered what had happened to his friend next.

viii

As the weird, unchanging days passed, Nemo lost track of how many times he slept or ate. Estimating as best he could, he marked notches on the mushroom logs to make a crude calendar. The endless twilight passed in a haze of monotony as he continued to drift across the underground sea.

The character of the sky began to change so subtly that Nemo failed to notice at first. But then he saw that the air overhead had acquired a swirling, oily color, as if the cavernous ceiling had trapped strange thunderclouds. To him, it looked like a manifestation of the brooding vengeance he’d held for so many years against Captain Noseless and the pirates. Fluid arcs of electricity danced about, fading and vanishing . . . not exactly lightning, but pulses of electric current, discharges from some mammoth dynamo.

He sat up on the swaying raft, feeling a strong metallic-smelling wind in his face. The placid water around him had become restless. In the distance ahead, where the flow was carrying him, he could make out the frothy choppiness of a brewing storm that increased in intensity. Nemo’s raft began to jostle and shake. Strange buzzing cracks stuttered through the air -- not quite thunder, but something more exotic.

Deep in the strangely thick water, he noticed the movement of large, shadowy shapes. Titanic silhouettes. Not far away, a slick form like the back of a whale breached the surface and then plunged down again. Nemo withdrew to the center of his raft, though it offered little protection, exposed as he was. From his brief glimpse, Nemo knew that what he had seen was no whale or cachalot.

Another jolt of eerie crackles around him was broken by the sound of a huge beast emerging from the water. Its mottled back was studded with fins and armored with overlapping scales. Icepick fangs filled its long, narrow snout, like some hideous nightmare that had been the precursor to crocodiles. Black eyes like impenetrable volcanic glass stared at him.

Nemo remembered sketches of fossils from Verne’s science magazines and noted that this creature was similar to an aquatic reptile called an Ichthyosaur. The hungry-looking beast swirled in the stormy water and approached his raft. Gritting his teeth, Nemo withdrew his pistols and made sure both were loaded. He also propped the long cutlass in front of him.

Before the crocodile-beast could attack, however, a second prehistoric monster burst above the water, its head long and sinuous. Its arms were wide flippers, like the rudders of a boat. Seeing its competitor, the new creature struck like an oceanic dragon. It was a sea monster reminiscent of maritime legends Nemo had heard on the docks in Nantes.

This ferocious sea serpent was by no means his rescuer, though. Nemo paddled frantically, doubting he had the strength to push his boat through choppy waters while these two titans battled. The sea serpent fell upon the first monster, striking with its snakelike neck and wide-open jaws. It bit deep into the dorsal flesh of the other, which snapped back until it tore a bloody shred from a flipper-fin.

Both aquatic dinosaurs chomped and hissed. The crocodile monster thrashed again, tearing a gash in the neck of the sea serpent. But the other monster was larger and more powerful, and as the two battled, the grayish water turned crimson. The sea serpent bit hard, using its unwounded flipper to roll the other dinosaur over so it could avoid the sharp, spiny fins on its enemy’s back. Then it bit deep into the soft, white underbelly.

The doomed creature squealed and splashed, but its long snout snapped on empty air. The sea serpent disemboweled it, ripping open the tough hide and spilling Ichthyosaur entrails into the stormy subterranean