This man stood, resting one hand upon the divan, from which he had risen. One could see that a slow disease had broken him down, but his voice was still powerful, when he said in English, and in a tone of extreme surprise:—— “I have no name, sir!” “I know you!” answered Smith. Captain Nemo looked at the engineer as if he would have annihilated him. Then, falling back upon the cushions, he murmured:—— “After all, what does it matter; I am dying!” Smith approached Captain Nemo, and Spilett took his hand, which was hot with fever. The others stood respectfully in a corner of the superb saloon, which was flooded with light. Captain Nemo withdrew his hand, and signed to Smith and the reporter to be seated. All looked at him with lively emotion. Here was the being whom they had called the “genius of the island,” the being whose intervention had been so efficacious, the benefactor to whom they owed so much. Before their eyes, here where Pencroff and Neb had expected to find some godlike creature, was only a man-a dying man! But how did Smith know Captain Nemo? Why had the latter sprung up on hearing that name pronounced? The Captain had taken his seat upon the divan, and, leaning upon his arm, he regarded the engineer, who was seated near him. “You know the name I bore?” he asked. “I know it as well as I know the name of this admirable submarine apparatus.” “The Nautilus,” said the Captain, with a half smile. “The Nautilus.” “But do you know-do you know, who I am?” “I do.” “For thirty years I have had no communication with the inhabited world, for thirty years have I lived in the depths of the sea, the only place where I have found freedom! Who, now, has betrayed my secret?” “A man who never pledged you his word, Captain Nemo, one who, therefore, cannot be accused of betraying you.” “The Frenchman whom chance threw in my way?” “The same.” “Then this man and his companions did not perish in the maelstrom into which the Nautilus had been drawn?” “They did not, and there has appeared under the title of _Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea_, a work which contains your history.” “The history of but a few months of my life, sir,” answered the Captain, quickly. “True,” replied Smith, “but a few months of that strange life sufficed to make you known—” “As a great criminal, doubtless,” said Captain Nemo, smiling disdainfully. “Yes, a revolutionist, a scourge to humanity.” The engineer did not answer. “Well, sir?” “I am unable to judge Captain Nemo,” said Smith, “at least in what concerns his past life. I, like the world at large, am ignorant of the motives for this strange existence, and I am unable to judge of the effects without knowing the causes, but what I do know is that a beneficent hand has been constantly extended to us since our arrival here, that we owe everything to a being good, generous, and powerful, and that this being, powerful, generous, and good, is you, Captain Nemo!” “It is I,” answered the captain, quietly.