The Other Log of Phileas Fogg

15

Fogg told Nemo to wait a few minutes before the truce arrangements were put into effect. This delay would upset Nemo, who would wonder what Fogg was up to. Fogg did not worry about this. He only wanted time for another inspection of the corpse.

Being a very tidy man, he cleaned up the blood on the floor with a piece of canvas. Later, he would use sea water to remove all traces of blood from the floor and water and lemon juice to cleanse the sword. The latter he would put back in its scabbard under the captain’s bed. Fogg wished to leave the ship much as he had found it.

He stripped the body, felt the clothes, and then ripped them open with his jackknife. He found nothing in them. The boots were taken apart, but these revealed nothing. Head seemed to have all his original teeth; there were no caps concealing hollows in which objects could be kept. With some repugnance, he probed the anal cavity but found it to be only as nature intended it.

Possibly, the skin bore schematics or writing in some type of invisible ink. He had no means to bring these out. Should he drop the body into the sea or take it back to the General Grant for more tests? There was bound to be a hullabaloo because of the three series of clangings, and when these sounded for the fourth time, announcing his arrival, more uproar would ensue. Every cabin might be searched, and it would be more than embarrassing to try to explain Head’s corpse.

Before finishing his examination, he pulled on the corpse’s hair again to make sure that a shaved head with a code on it was not below a wig. Head’s hair seemed to be his own.

Fogg arose and went to the doorway. He declared that he was ready to start disarmament proceedings. Passepartout thoroughly frisked Nemo while Nemo held his revolver at Passepartout’s head. The Frenchman announced that Nemo seemed not to have concealed any weapons since the inspection on the General Grant.

Nemo frisked Passepartout with the same results.

Passepartout then moved away, stopping when he came to the railing.

Nemo grasped the barrel of his Colt in his right hand, which retained enough strength for this task. He prepared to eject the cartridges from the magazine. Fogg threw the sword and jackknife and Head’s knife outside. He stood in the doorway, holding his revolver by the barrel. Together, as Passepartout slowly counted, the two got rid of their cartridges.

Fogg stepped outside onto the deck, his cartridges in one hand. Nemo backed away until he was by the starboard railing. Fogg backed away to the port railing. At a signal from Passepartout, both men, one by one, in unison, tossed their cartridges into the sea. Fogg had removed his coat and shirt before coming out of the deckhouse to ensure that he would not be able to palm any cartridges. This was unnecessary, since the cartridges could be seen sailing away over and into the sea.

Passepartout threw the knives into the ocean. Nemo had permitted the Frenchman to do this because he did not think he was in a condition to hurt him even if Passepartout did come at him with a knife.

Nemo had wanted the sword to go overboard, too, but Fogg had insisted that all articles aboard were to be restored to their original positions, except for Head, of course.

This was a ticklish moment. Nemo could make a dash for the sword. If Passepartout picked it up first, Nemo thought he could dodge the first feeble slash and close in with Passepartout. Even if Passepartout threw it overboard, Nemo would have the others at a disadvantage. Wounded though he was, and still suffering a strong headache from the two blows on his head, he felt that he was physically superior to the combination of the others.

It was then that Fogg reminded him that Aouda was waiting at the other end with the cyanide expeller. She had orders to use it if Nemo appeared alone.

Despite all this, Nemo suddenly decided that he would attempt to overpower them. If he could get Fogg over the railing and into the sea, he could deal easily enough with the Frenchman. He would not kill him, because he might need him to transmit the proper code to Aouda. But there were many ways to make him yield that information. And if Passepartout should somehow refuse, or die, then he would send a message to the man from China. The fellow surely must be listening by now. Or, if that failed, he would turn the ship around toward the east again and hope that another ship would sight the Mary Celeste.

It was at this moment that Nemo was stricken with a fit of shaking. Whether it was the first time or not, we do not know. Fogg was startled, because he had not observed anything like this while serving under Nemo. From later accounts by another Briton, the fits became more numerous and one phase of them became permanent. What the nature of the disease was, no one knows. Perhaps his neural charges, restrained too long, damped a part of his brain.

In any event, on this occasion Nemo began shaking violently all over. This lasted for about a minute, after which he seemed to regain a partial control. Now only his head, with the face thrust forward, oscillated in a curiously snake-like fashion. This, with his high domed forehead and the large widely spaced eyes, made him look like a king cobra.

After perhaps sixty seconds, the nervous motion ceased. He had become even paler, and he looked very weary. He passed his hands over his eyes and groaned loudly enough for Passepartout to hear him.

“Great God! Enough! Enough!”

Then he said, “I can’t do it!”

Neither of the Eridaneans knew what he meant by this, but we may deduce that he had planned a final attack on them but now realized that he could not carry it out.

Passepartout took the sword to the captain’s cabin, cleaned it as required by Fogg, and put it back in its scabbard under the bed. When he returned, he found that neither Fogg nor Nemo had moved.

The next step was to dispose of Head’s corpse and clothing. Nemo had recovered enough to assist with this. While Fogg held the feet of the body, Nemo supported the other end with one arm. He failed to let loose of the corpse at the same time as Fogg, and, for a second or so, his hand passed over Head’s face. Fogg thought nothing of this incident except that it indicated Nemo’s sickness and consequent lack of coordination.

The fo’c’sle was cleaned up so that no traces of blood remained. Fogg brought an open box from the lazaret. He placed it upside-down on the deck. This was near the opening in the port rail left by its removal for access of the yawl. Its underside held the distorter, set for transmit in three minutes.

The three crowded upon the box and linked arms. Fogg was counting on either the roll of the ship sending it into the water after the weight on it was relieved or heavy seas carrying it off. He hoped that the transmission would take place before the three men were precipitated off the box by the ship’s rolling. He had given Aouda more instructions, and she, using the watch which Fogg had purchased for her in Hong Kong, timed the action exactly right. She turned her distorter on about six seconds before Fogg’s began operation. The three, accompanied by the ear-paining clangings, appeared on top of the table in Aouda’s cabin.

Aouda had thrust the end of the expeller up toward Nemo’s face. He made no motion until told by Fogg that he could leave. He looked slightly surprised, as if he had expected that, now he was outnumbered, he would be taken prisoner again. Certainly, if the situation had been reversed, he would have taken advantage of it. He bowed and walked out of the cabin into a crowd of near-hysterical passengers.

Since they could not hear yet, Fogg and Aouda communicated with pencil and paper.

Yes, Aouda wrote, there had been much running about and screaming. After a while, most of the passengers, chattering loudly but over their panic, had returned to their cabins. Some had stayed on deck; some had repaired to the bar, which was opened at their insistence.

The two series of clangings which had followed Fogg’s activation of the distorter to fool the Capelleans had brought everybody boiling onto the decks again. Some passengers had insisted that the center of the noise was in the cabins near Aouda’s. Yes, a passenger check had been made, and an officer had talked with her through the door. Yes, she had overheard the discovery of the shattered lock on Fogg’s door, and crewmen had been searching for him. But in this turmoil, who could find whom? The broken lock could be attributed to the efforts of a thief to get into Fogg’s cabin while the panic was on.

Fogg thought that it was unfortunate that this could not be kept out of the newspapers. Both Capelleans and Eridaneans, reading of the mysterious bell-like noises on the General Grant would know that the distorters had been used. They would be watching the ship when it discharged its passengers.

The reader is doubtless wondering why Verne did not describe the mysterious noises. The answer is that he would have if Fogg had been in any way connected with them by the authorities. Or, if there had been a logical explanation for the noises, Verne might have included them. But since the bell-like sounds were only one more of the many mysteries of the sea, Verne, as a disciplined novelist, did not see why he should include the incident. If he had included every interesting, but irrelevant, event, Around The World in Eighty Days would have been twice as long.

It is also possible that Verne never even heard about the clangings.

Late the next day, Passepartout met Mr. Fix on the promenade of the forward deck. Though somewhat pale and shaky, Fix had regained most of his strength. Nemo had told him all that had happened. Fix, Nemo said, was to continue to play innocent. He must say nothing of his sickness to Passepartout, who would guess that was why Fix had not accompanied Nemo.

Fix told Passepartout that he had been sleeping peacefully until the first of those terrible belling noises awakened him. What did Mr. Passepartout know about these?

The Frenchman said he knew no more than anybody else. After some small talk and some large drinks, he returned to Fogg. Perhaps, he said, Fix was only a detective.

Fogg replied that could well be. And now, would he sit down with Miss Jejeebhoy and hear what Fogg knew about Nemo? There was no sense in keeping it secret any longer, if, indeed, there had ever been any sense in it. They should understand what sort of man they were up against.

In 1865, Fogg had been summoned by the chief to a secret meeting. He, Fogg, had been on a long mission in the eastern Mediterranean. But he had been replaced by another and told to hurry to London. That he was to have a tête-à-tête with the chief and not get his orders via cards or other means indicated the seriousness of the situation. On a train to Paris, Fogg was surprised to see the chief enter his compartment. The chief said he had reason to believe that the proposed meeting place was under Capellean surveillance. So he had intercepted Fogg in France.

***

The chief had learned that the man called Nemo (no one knew his true name) was about to launch a very disturbing project. The word “launch” was used in a double sense, since this project involved a submersible vessel. After the vessel had been built, it would venture onto the seas on a pirating expedition.

“Ah, the Nautilus!” Passepartout said. He, like most of the world, had read in 1869 Professor Pierre Arronax’s narrative, edited and agented by the everbusy Jules Verne.

Fogg continued. “This Nemo has an inventive genius which is, alas, not dedicated to the world’s good. It has been devoted to the good of the Capelleans, of course, who rationalized that the goal justifies the means.

“Nemo had almost completed the submersible vessel, which was far beyond anything else in its scientific advances. Part of the ingenious devices which enabled it to operate derived from knowledge handed down by the Old Ones. The rest was due to Nemo’s almost superhuman intelligence. The submersible would bring in an enormous amount of wealth, both from looting ships and recovering sunken treasure. With this at their disposal, the Capelleans could make much more effective war on us. For one thing, they could hire great numbers of criminals to use against us. These, of course, would not know the ultimate identity of their employers, but they would not need to do so.”

“I never suspected that the Nautilus was of Capellean origin!” Passepartout cried. “But Arronax’s account makes him out to be a hero!”

“Yes, for those who have not read the account carefully,” Fogg said. “A close reading soon evaporates the clouds of the Byronic hero which Nemo managed to gather about himself. He was, to put it simply, a pirate. A bloodthirsty money-hungry pirate who sent hundreds of the innocent to a watery grave. It is evident that he kept Professor Arronax, his valet, Conseil, and the harpooner, Ned Land, alive only because of his need for intellectual companionship and to feed his ego. Conseil and Land were not his mental equals, but if Nemo had killed them, Arronax would have refused to talk to him.

“Nemo, as I said, is a mathematical and engineering genius. But even he, if he were only an Earthling, could not have designed and built the motors to drive the Nautilus at fifty miles per hour or have created the metal alloys to withstand the pressure of the ocean at forty-eight-thousand feet. He told Arronax that it was electricity which propelled the submersible. Was it this or the power of the atom itself that he used? In either case, he must have had access to some information handed down by the Capellean Old Ones. From this he deduced the rest, though it took a great genius to do that.

“One of our spies learned of the orders Nemo had placed with various industries all over the civilized world, including the States. After all, the Americans, whatever their other deficiencies, are splendid engineers. Nemo was bringing these specially made parts to a remote island and putting them together there. Our chief told me to get admitted into Nemo’s confidence and to sabotage the vessel. I obeyed the first and expected to be able to do the second. Through certain channels, I learned that Nemo was recruiting a crew from different countries. Most of these, poor deluded fellows, were patriots. They came from countries which lay under the heels of oppressors. Nemo told them that he would be waging a deadly war against the oppressors. He hinted that he himself came from a land which was suffering under British rule. To make it appear that he was an Asiatic Indian, he wore glass lenses which gave his eyes a black color, and he often talked as if he had been exiled from his native country after an unsuccessful revolt against the British.

“He even had a common ship’s language which he taught the crew to master enough to obey commands in this tongue. This, I believe, was the dialect of Bundelcund. Nemo had spent much time in Bundelcund, a good part of it as the aide to the rajah before the rajah became a traitor to the Capelleans. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn that Nemo had talked the rajah into becoming a renegade. Nemo’s motto should be, not Mobilis in mobili, the swift among the swift, but Aut Nemo aut nemo. Either Nemo or nobody.

“Be that as it may, I was enlisted as Patrick M’Guire, an Irishman who hated the English. I was part of the crew that terrorized the seas from 1866 through 1868. I was equally guilty of sinking all those ships, since I had to play out my role. I told myself that these would have been sunk anyway. I had to cooperate in this so that I could sooner or later stop Nemo’s nefariousness. In fact, without me aboard, the Nautilus might operate for decades. Nevertheless, I felt guilty.

“And imagine my state when I learned, after the affair was over, that I had participated in sinking a vessel on which my own father was a passenger. I was guilty of patricide.”

At this point, Aouda, tears coursing down her cheeks, put her hand on Fogg’s. He did not seem to notice it. At least, he did not withdraw his hand.

“That it was not intentional did not ease my conscience one bit.

“From the time that the Nautilus plunged into the sea on her maiden cruise, I looked for an opportunity to sink her and with her its commander. But in those crowded quarters, where a dozen eyes are always on you, I had no chance. After we rammed the U.S. Abraham Lincoln, we picked up Arronax and his companions. Events went much as the professor described them, though much happened of which he was ignorant.

“And then we were pulled into the maelstrom off the Lofoten Islands. Even that mighty whirlpool might not have defeated us if I had not had my first chance to act. While the others were occupied at their posts, and frozen with the terror of the maelstrom, I destroyed the circuits which controlled the steering.”

“Ah, then it was you who was responsible for sinking that accursed submersible!” Passepartout said.

He had completely abandoned his original concept of Nemo as a battler against evil, a tortured and lonely genius whose only mission in life was revenge against the oppressor.

“Yes. But I should have blown it up long before that, even though it meant that I, too, should die. Arronax, Conseil, and Land, as you know, escaped. So did I. So did Nemo. Perhaps others did. I do not know. I thought at the time that I was the only survivor. Several months later, I was back in London. The chief and I assumed that Nemo had died. Then I saw him on the second of October in the shade of that doorway near the Reform Club.”

“But,” Passepartout said, “is this man all bad? What about the portrait of the woman and two children which Arronax said hung on the wall of Nemo’s cabin? Did not the good professor see Nemo stretch out his arms to the portrait, kneel before it, and sob deeply? Does a man with no heart behave so?

“He undoubtedly does not lack all sentiment,” Fogg said. “It has been established that even the most hardened criminal may love his mother, his wife, his children, or his dog. I do not know the history of his familial connections. To tell the truth, I was surprised to learn that he had a wife and children. But I do not think that his marriage could have lasted long. His intellect is so lofty that he regards all others, man or woman, as mental pygmies. And he is an excessively imperious and moody man. Perhaps his wife left him, taking the children with her. That may be why he wept. His self-image was bruised; if anyone were to leave, it should be he.

“At any event, he did not always have the portrait on the wall. You may have noticed, in Arronax’s account, that he himself observed the portrait only after being on the Nautilus almost a year and a half. Surely, if he had seen it before, he would have commented on it? Now I, who was aboard from the beginning, only saw it put up twice. Both times were on July second; it was a second of July when Arronax witnessed the sad scene. This date must have some significance to Nemo, but of what only he knows.”

“Then, sir, if I understand you aright,” Passepartout said, “Nemo was not an Indian patriot who gathered a crew from all over the world to fight oppressors. He was a pirate.”

“Most of his crew were patriots, yes. But Nemo was using them. They believed that he was turning his treasures over to underground organizations to finance their revolutions. No such thing. Most of the wealth went either to the Capellean exchequer or into his own bank accounts.

“As for the portrait, the woman and children looked very European; they looked far more English than Hindu.”

“But Aouda looks European.”

“She could pass for a Provençal or an Italian, true.”

“Pardon me, if I persist, sir,” Passepartout said. “What about the professor’s final scene with Captain Nemo? Did he not hear Nemo sobbing, were not his last words, ‘God Omnipotent! Enough! Enough!’ Did not Arronax wonder if this was an outburst of sorrow or a confession of remorse?”

“You observed the fit suffered by Nemo while we were disarming on the Mary Celeste? Nemo looks, and is, a giant in stature and strength. And he has, like all Capelleans, the elixir which should enable him to live to a thousand years. This, as you know, increases resistance to disease. But it does not make us invulnerable to disease. I am certain from my observations that Nemo is doomed to last no longer than most men. He is inflicted with some sort of nervous malady. Its effects have been few so far. But they will increase. And part of this affliction is an infrequent but blinding and sickening headache. Perhaps this is caused by a tumor, though I suspect that damage caused by undischarged traumas is responsible. But when he was crying out ‘Enough! Enough!’, he was, I believe, calling for a cessation of his pain. That he, a zealous atheist, called on God indicates the extent of his torture. And that he spoke English in this painful moment, when a man is likely to revert to his native language, is significant.”

“He did not speak in French? But Arronax…”

“Failed to mention that it was in English. No, Nemo is a native of some English-speaking land, most probably of Ireland. He could speak Gaelic fluently when talking to one of his Irish crewmen, though it was evident that it was not the speech he learned from his parents. I, though, posing as an Irishman, claimed to be from Dublin and ignorant of all but a few phrases of the Celtic.”

“Poor man!” Aouda said. “To be suffering so and thus doomed to die early when he could live to a thousand years! Indeed, the elixir will only prolong his agonies. Without it, he would die in a few years, his sufferings mercifully ended.”

“Do not waste sympathy on him,” Fogg said. “Nor allow his sickness to cause you to underestimate him. We must be on guard the rest of our voyage on this ship. I do not trust him not to break his oath to us to keep the peace until we land at San Francisco.”