"But my companions and I would be willing to safeguard this manuscript, and if you give us back our freedom—"
"Your freedom!"
Captain Nemo put in, standing up.
"Yes, sir, and that's the subject on which I wanted to confer with you.
For seven months we've been aboard your vessel, and I ask you today, in the name of my companions as well as myself, if you intend to keep us here forever."
"Professor Aronnax," Captain Nemo said,
"I'll answer you today just as I did seven months ago: whomever boards the Nautilus must never leave it."
"What you're inflicting on us is outright slavery!"
"Call it anything you like."
"But every slave has the right to recover his freedom!
By any worthwhile, available means!"
"Who has denied you that right?"
Captain Nemo replied.
"Did I ever try to bind you with your word of honor?"
The captain stared at me, crossing his arms.
"Sir," I told him, "to take up this subject a second time would be distasteful to both of us.
So let's finish what we've started.
I repeat: it isn't just for myself that I raise this issue.
To me, research is a relief, a potent diversion, an enticement, a passion that can make me forget everything else.
Like you, I'm a man neglected and unknown, living in the faint hope that someday I can pass on to future generations the fruits of my labors—figuratively speaking, by means of some contrivance left to the luck of winds and waves.
In short, I can admire you and comfortably go with you while playing a role I only partly understand; but I still catch glimpses of other aspects of your life that are surrounded by involvements and secrets that, alone on board, my companions and I can't share.
And even when our hearts could beat with yours, moved by some of your griefs or stirred by your deeds of courage and genius, we've had to stifle even the slightest token of that sympathy that arises at the sight of something fine and good, whether it comes from friend or enemy.
All right then!
It's this feeling of being alien to your deepest concerns that makes our situation unacceptable, impossible, even impossible for me but especially for Ned Land.
Every man, by virtue of his very humanity, deserves fair treatment.
Have you considered how a love of freedom and hatred of slavery could lead to plans of vengeance in a temperament like the Canadian's, what he might think, attempt, endeavor . . . ?"
I fell silent.
Captain Nemo stood up.
"Ned Land can think, attempt, or endeavor anything he wants, what difference is it to me?
I didn't go looking for him!
I don't keep him on board for my pleasure!
As for you, Professor Aronnax, you're a man able to understand anything, even silence.
I have nothing more to say to you.
Let this first time you've come to discuss this subject also be the last, because a second time I won't even listen."
I withdrew.
From that day forward our position was very strained.
I reported this conversation to my two companions.
"Now we know," Ned said, "that we can't expect a thing from this man.
The Nautilus is nearing Long Island.
We'll escape, no matter what the weather."
But the skies became more and more threatening.
There were conspicuous signs of a hurricane on the way.
The atmosphere was turning white and milky.
Slender sheaves of cirrus clouds were followed on the horizon by layers of nimbocumulus.
Other low clouds fled swiftly.
The sea grew towering, inflated by long swells.
Every bird had disappeared except a few petrels, friends of the storms.
The barometer fell significantly, indicating a tremendous tension in the surrounding haze.
The mixture in our stormglass decomposed under the influence of the electricity charging the air.
A struggle of the elements was approaching.