The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (33 page)

“May I ask the shepherd’s name?”

“Collectively we are the One World League, Captain. My name is Walker.”

“Walker, the oil baron?” Ludovico Divenchy said.

The American smiled. “You’ve heard of me, how gratifying,” he said. “Soon, my friend, I shall be President Walker of the World, thanks to you. The League has been planning this venture for some time, but we lacked one key ingredient for success: the means of limitless wealth. You, Mr Divenchy, provided that.”

Suddenly the meaning of the strange flag on the ship came to me: a diamond surrounded by gold and green, which is the colour of American currency . . . the flag itself symbolized wealth!

Pistols or no, Ludovico Divenchy looked as though he was going to lunge for the man, but his brother prevented him by placing a hand on his arm. Then he stepped forward and said: “I have but one question for you, Mr Walker, for which I demand an answer: are you the men who killed my wife, my children?”

“I know nothing of that,” Walker answered. “There are a lot of bad men out there, Captain, but we are not among them. Our goal is noble. We will bring order to a chaotic world, and said world will thank us.”

“You will annihilate the world,” Captain Nemo charged. “The transmutation of iron into gold releases a dangerous amount of energy. I suggest you burn whatever notes you took from my father and forget you ever heard of the process.”

“Oh, why, yes, of course!” Walker said with a hearty laugh. “Sure, we’ll just throw this miracle away and simply forget about the possibility of creating our own wealth and power. Good god, Captain, you would do better to tell a rooster to ignore a henhouse!”

“What is your plan for us?” Ludovico demanded.

“Treat you as guests, of course,” Walker replied, “for a while. Our workers are now inside the volcano on this island, preparing to make the first transmutation. You, gentlemen, will be privileged to watch. Until then, however, you will be held in the brig, for everyone’s safety. Take them away.”

Guards took us to a tiny cell in another part of the ship and locked us in. The captain sat quietly and I sat frightened, but Ludovico paced as best he could in the small quarters. “Why could not Father have left well enough alone?” he raged. “We would not
be
in here if he had never made that discovery.”

“Neither would we be here if you had been able to keep quiet about it,” the captain rejoined. “Since the ability to achieve a great discovery at the exact moment the world is ready for is a matter of chance, not genius, I can forgive Father.”

“So I am to blame for this? I, who nearly lost my life aboard that damned iron barrel of yours?”

“I have lost more because of you and your reckless tongue than you will ever know, Ludovico!”

For a moment I feared the two men would come to blows, but after a few tense and hot moments, both slumped down. “What’s done is done,” the captain conceded. “We must direct our energies toward finding a solution.”

“There is only one solution, Cesaré, you know that,” Ludovico replied. “Let them conduct the experiment and blow themselves into oblivion.”

“And what of us?” I asked, but neither had an answer.

None of us slept that night. Shortly after dawn, Walker and two of his crew appeared to open the doors of the cell and free us — at least as free as one can be with pistols directed at their hearts. We were led to a lifeboat, lowered and rowed to the edge of Rakata Island and then marched up to an entrance to what looked like a small tunnel in the side of the volcanic cone. Walker lit a lantern and entered first, and the guards beckoned us to follow.

After squeezing inside, we descended over an incline of roughly two metres and landed on a natural trail, which we followed downward through heat and closeness that increased with each step. Eventually we came to a gigantic natural chamber inside the cone, on the floor of which was a solid, white hot, steaming line — a crack in the surface of the earth, through which could be seen the magma flow! Saldana and a gathering of workmen were already down there, as close to the crack as they dared get, sweltering, some even staggering, in heavy protective outfits that in some measure resembled diving suits. Surrounding them were hundreds of bars of pure iron. “They are attempting too much, far too much,” the captain uttered. “Neither Father nor I ever attempted more than a few ounces at a time, and that offered danger enough.”

Marching past us now came the other members of the One World League, each one holding a small box, which they lowered down to the workmen. “What are the boxes holding?” I asked.

“It can only be an element called
cerilium,
Louis,” Captain Nemo replied. “Its molecular structure is highly unstable. It is the trigger for the transmutation.”
[Editor: 
There is no such element as cerilium, but in the interests of safety, the true name and nature of the element used to transmute iron into gold is being withheld from this record.
]

Walker gave the signal to begin, and Saldana instructed the workmen to edge the iron bars closer to the crack in the earth, which was steaming like a locomotive engine, making the air almost too sultry to breathe. The members of the League looked on intently as the bars and began to soften and glow red, then white. Then in an instant, the iron melted completely, creating a pool of molten metal. With a gasp, I watched as the pool actually caught fire!

Now the heat inside the volcano was almost too intense to bear. “It is time!”, Walker shouted. “Throw on the cerilium!” Beside me, Captain Nemo tensed. Under his breath, he said: “The first concussion will likely result in total chaos and that will be our chance to flee and escape ... providing we survive the blast.”

We did not have long to wait. One workman opened his box and threw the contents into the pool of molten iron, and what happened next I can only describe in terms of abject horror. An explosion shook the very walls of the cone and a pillar of fire — for that is the only way to describe it — rose up from the floor and consumed two of the workmen, reducing them to bones in seconds, and within another second reduced the bones to ashes. The remaining workmen

leapt back in terror, as did Walker and the members of the League. “Now!” Captain Nemo shouted, and the three of us turned and ran back up the trail to the tunnel opening. The path was slick and ashy, making it hard to climb, though I was spurred on by the memory of the workmen’s annihilation. Ludovico, the strongest of us, had the least problem, and once we had reached the steep incline leading out, was able to push the captain and I upwards to safety, after which the two of us hauled him through the opening from the outside.

Salt air never smelled so welcoming!

As we raced for the boat to take us off the island, a cloud of steam rose from the volcano. We leapt into the boat and Ludovico took the oars, rowing like a madman until we reached the
Argonaut.
Behind us, a white plume of smoke — this one shaped like a toadstool — emerged from the volcano. “They will not be emerging,” Captain Nemo said, climbing on to the deck of the
Argonaut.

Ludovico went into the submersible first and I followed next. No sooner had I set foot on the bottom when I heard the crack of a gunshot and saw Captain Nemo plummet through the hatch and crash to the floor below! “Captain!” I cried, attempting to sit him up, and discovering with horror the spreading bloodstain on the back of his jacket.

“The damnable cowards!” Ludovico cried, climbing back on deck, while I attended to the wounded captain. I heard another gun retort, followed by a mighty curse from Ludovico. He sprang back down into the
Argonaut
bleeding from his shoulder.

“There is still a man on board that damned ship!” he cried, fingering his wound, which was but superficial. Then looking at his brother, he asked: “How is he?”

“I’m afraid . . .” was all I could get out.

Captain Nemo opened his eyes and looked at Ludovico. “A brother shall die for a brother,” he uttered. “It is the law of the
Nautilus.”
With his eyes still on Ludovico, he smiled wanly . . . then he breathed his last. Cesaré Divenchy, scion of the house of da Vinci, alias Captain Nemo, lay dead.

Ludovico appeared at first to be in a state of shock. Then he rose with a look of determination so fierce that it made my skin turn cold. “How do you operate this bucket?” he demanded.

I led him to the control instruments in the captain’s cabin and attempted to explain their operation, as best I could. At a glance he absorbed their workings, and immediately took charge of
Argonaut,
pushing it into full speed. “Hold on to something, boy,” was all he said, and, sensing what he was about to do, secured myself as best I could.

Seconds later we rammed into the hull of the schooner, and despite my best efforts, the impact knocked me to the floor. Ludovico reversed direction enough to turn the submersible around, travelled back to where he had started, and then charged and rammed the ship again. It took three punishing impacts before the schooner of the One World League had a hole in its hull large enough to send it, and whoever remained on board, to the bottom.

When he had finished, he ordered me to take over control of the
Argonaut.
“Where do you wish to go?” I asked, tentatively.

“First, back to the
Nautilus,”
he said. “Then you may drop me off on land anywhere, and do with this ship as you wish.”

“I believe the captain would have wanted you to take it.”

“The sea holds no interest for me,” Ludovico Divenchy said. “I look upwards into the clouds. It is there I wish to be, and now it appears that I must.”

“You must?”

“What if some of these wretches survived? What if this blasted League of theirs still exists somewhere else in the world? What if they once more attempt to use my Father’s discovery? The world may never be ready for this knowledge. Cesaré was correct in blaming me. I
am
responsible for this business, so it is now up to me to end it. I must patrol the earth, looking for signs of its misuse. I may have to visit every volcano on the planet to make certain this does not happen again. But for now I must rest. Let me know when we have arrived at the
Nautilus.”
He strode into the closest cabin — the one that had been occupied by Willett — and I did not see nor hear from him again for nearly two days.

When we had reached the site of the
Nautilus,
I alerted him, and he emerged from the cabin, asking, “Where is he?” I had placed the body of Captain Nemo in his study, and told Ludovico so. “Get us beside the
Nautilus,
so close that I can step from one deck to the other,” he instructed, as he went into the study. Once I had so positioned the
Argonaut,
Ludovico Divenchy reappeared carrying the body of his brother in his arms. He refused any help in lifting the body through the hatch of the
Argonaut
and down into the
Nautilus,
where he lay Captain Nemo down to rest with their father. He then opened the reservoirs’ stopcocks and sent the
Nautilus
back to the realm for which it was designed for the last time, a uniquely fitting sarcophagus for its creator. From there we travelled to the coast of New Guinea, where Ludovico Divenchy muttered a terse goodbye to me and strode out on to land without so much as a backwards glance. I never saw him again.

The
Argonaut
was now mine, and even though I grew more experienced in its operation, I began to long for life once more on land. I decided to retire the submersible permanently near the Samoan Islands, and after a brief stay there, took a conventional ship back to Scotland (a journey paid for through the discovery of Captain Nemo’s treasury). Years later I returned to Samoa, and it is from here that I write this history.

The world at large continues to endure chaos, strife and war, but remains innocently ignorant of the devilish plot of “President” Walker and his One World League to “solve” the problems. Some years after this adventure, however, the world most definitely heard about the isle of Rakata, which in 1883 was virtually wiped from the map through the violent explosion of its primary volcano, Krakatau. Whether this globe-affecting event was an act of nature, a whim of the Almighty, or the effect of the remaining quantities of cerilium finally reaching that pool of molten iron, I have no clue. All I can state with certainty is that not long after Krakatau’s eruption, the world began to hear reports of an amazing man flying about in a “cloud clipper.” No one knew the true identity of the mysterious genius who called himself Captain Robur . . . no one except me.

I conclude this testimony in the hopes that, for the sake of mankind, this self-professed “conqueror” will be successful in his mission. It is unlikely I will ever know for certain for even now, as I pen these words in my beloved paradise, surrounded by loved ones, I can feel the night coming. I am spending my remaining time in prayer, not for my own soul, but for that of the blustery genius who was the brother of the most remarkable man I have ever known.

Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill.

The sailor is indeed home, though the hunter will maintain his vigil over the hills. I pray the hunt be successful.

DOCTOR BULL’S INTERVENTION by Keith Brooke