After changing clothes, I climbed onto the platform, and in the grip of dreadfully obsessive thoughts, I sat next to the beacon. Captain Nemo rejoined me. I stood up and said to him: “So, as I predicted, that man died during the night?” “Yes, Professor Aronnax,” Captain Nemo replied. “And now he rests beside his companions in that coral cemetery?” “Yes, forgotten by the world but not by us! We dig the graves, then entrust the polyps with sealing away our dead for eternity!” And with a sudden gesture, the captain hid his face in his clenched fists, vainly trying to hold back a sob. Then he added: “There lies our peaceful cemetery, hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the waves!” “At least, captain, your dead can sleep serenely there, out of the reach of sharks!” “Yes, sir,” Captain Nemo replied solemnly, “of sharks and men!” END OF THE FIRST PART SECOND PART CHAPTER 1 The Indian Ocean NOW WE BEGIN the second part of this voyage under the seas. The first ended in that moving scene at the coral cemetery, which left a profound impression on my mind. And so Captain Nemo would live out his life entirely in the heart of this immense sea, and even his grave lay ready in its impenetrable depths. There the last sleep of the Nautilus’s occupants, friends bound together in death as in life, would be disturbed by no monster of the deep! “No man either!” the captain had added. Always that same fierce, implacable defiance of human society! As for me, I was no longer content with the hypotheses that satisfied Conseil. That fine lad persisted in seeing the Nautilus’s commander as merely one of those unappreciated scientists who repay humanity’s indifference with contempt. For Conseil, the captain was still a misunderstood genius who, tired of the world’s deceptions, had been driven to take refuge in this inaccessible environment where he was free to follow his instincts. But to my mind, this hypothesis explained only one side of Captain Nemo. In fact, the mystery of that last afternoon when we were locked in prison and put to sleep, the captain’s violent precaution of snatching from my grasp a spyglass poised to scour the horizon, and the fatal wound given that man during some unexplained collision suffered by the Nautilus, all led me down a plain trail. No! Captain Nemo wasn’t content simply to avoid humanity! His fearsome submersible served not only his quest for freedom, but also, perhaps, it was used in lord-knows-what schemes of dreadful revenge. Right now, nothing is clear to me, I still glimpse only glimmers in the dark, and I must limit my pen, as it were, to taking dictation from events.