I listened for footsteps in the stateroom adjoining mine.
Not a sound reached my ear.
His stateroom had to be deserted.
Then I began to wonder if this eccentric individual was even on board.
Since that night when the skiff had left the Nautilus on some mysterious mission, my ideas about him had subtly changed.
In spite of everything, I thought that Captain Nemo must have kept up some type of relationship with the shore.
Did he himself never leave the Nautilus?
Whole weeks had often gone by without my encountering him.
What was he doing all the while?
During all those times I'd thought he was convalescing in the grip of some misanthropic fit, was he instead far away from the ship, involved in some secret activity whose nature still eluded me?
All these ideas and a thousand others assaulted me at the same time.
In these strange circumstances the scope for conjecture was unlimited.
I felt an unbearable queasiness.
This day of waiting seemed endless.
The hours struck too slowly to keep up with my impatience.
As usual, dinner was served me in my stateroom.
Full of anxiety, I ate little.
I left the table at seven o'clock.
120 minutes—I was keeping track of them—still separated me from the moment I was to rejoin Ned Land.
My agitation increased.
My pulse was throbbing violently.
I couldn't stand still.
I walked up and down, hoping to calm my troubled mind with movement.
The possibility of perishing in our reckless undertaking was the least of my worries; my heart was pounding at the thought that our plans might be discovered before we had left the Nautilus, at the thought of being hauled in front of Captain Nemo and finding him angered, or worse, saddened by my deserting him.
I wanted to see the lounge one last time.
I went down the gangways and arrived at the museum where I had spent so many pleasant and productive hours.
I stared at all its wealth, all its treasures, like a man on the eve of his eternal exile, a man departing to return no more.
For so many days now, these natural wonders and artistic masterworks had been central to my life, and I was about to leave them behind forever.
I wanted to plunge my eyes through the lounge window and into these Atlantic waters; but the panels were hermetically sealed, and a mantle of sheet iron separated me from this ocean with which I was still unfamiliar.
Crossing through the lounge, I arrived at the door, contrived in one of the canted corners, that opened into the captain's stateroom.
Much to my astonishment, this door was ajar.
I instinctively recoiled.
If Captain Nemo was in his stateroom, he might see me.
But, not hearing any sounds, I approached.
The stateroom was deserted.
I pushed the door open.
I took a few steps inside.
Still the same austere, monastic appearance.
Just then my eye was caught by some etchings hanging on the wall, which I hadn't noticed during my first visit.
They were portraits of great men of history who had spent their lives in perpetual devotion to a great human ideal: Thaddeus Kosciusko, the hero whose dying words had been Finis Poloniae;* Markos Botzaris, for modern Greece the reincarnation of Sparta's King Leonidas; Daniel O'Connell, Ireland's defender; George Washington, founder of the American Union; Daniele Manin, the Italian patriot; Abraham Lincoln, dead from the bullet of a believer in slavery; and finally, that martyr for the redemption of the black race, John Brown, hanging from his gallows as Victor Hugo's pencil has so terrifyingly depicted.
*Latin:
"Save Poland's borders."
Ed.
What was the bond between these heroic souls and the soul of Captain Nemo?
From this collection of portraits could I finally unravel the mystery of his existence?
Was he a fighter for oppressed peoples, a liberator of enslaved races?
Had he figured in the recent political or social upheavals of this century?
Was he a hero of that dreadful civil war in America, a war lamentable yet forever glorious . . . ?
Suddenly the clock struck eight.
The first stroke of its hammer on the chime snapped me out of my musings.