Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius Read Online Free PDF Page A

hope. Bubbles trickled from one of the closed rooms.   As the ship continued to sink and twist and shift, the door opened a crack, and air boiled out.
    Nemo swam there, trying to see if his father had sought refuge inside, but no one came out as he yanked the door open.   He thumped at the second sealed door but heard no response from his father, no pounding, no return vibration.   Where?   The underwater dimness made details and options murky around him.
    Quickly he moved to a third stateroom door, tilted with a heavy beam wedged across it.   A line of bubbles frothed and surged from the bottom of the door, where water must be flooding into the small room.  
    Nemo hammered with the hilt of the dagger, hoping to detect something through the water.   Just when he was about to give up, he heard a slap, a flat palm thudding against the wall.
    Nemo pounded four times, and the other slapped back four more times -- the code rhythm Jacques Nemo used to signal his son -- then hammered repeatedly to get out.   Half-afloat and half-balanced, Nemo wrenched at the thick beam that jammed the opening, but dizzy from lack of air, he could not budge it.  
    The air bubbles continued to creep higher as the chamber filled.   The sounds of response inside the sealed room became more frantic.
    His blood burning with desperation, Nemo dug with the point of his dagger, wedging it like a prybar.   With a great twist, he tried to lever a board free, but the dagger snapped in half.   He screamed in furious dismay, but no one could hear him through his helmet.   He went wild, hammering and pounding on the wood with his fists, shouting for his father . . . utterly helpless.   As his head and shoulders jerked, one of the hollow reeds loosened.   River water dribbled into his bladder helmet.
    Jamming the broken dagger back into his belt, he wrestled with the door as he used the last air in his lungs.   His vision turned red, but he refused to back away.   He could hold his breath for a few moments longer, though now he didn’t know if he could last long enough to reach the surface.  
    With his continued onslaught, a crack opened in the wood, and air bubbles spurted out with greater velocity.   Water poured inside.  
    Nemo pounded and pummeled.   Foul river water inside his helmet spilled past his chin into his lips, and he inhaled great breaths through his nose.   He wrestled until he broke part of the board free -- but it was nowhere near wide enough for his father to get through.
    Bubbles surged to the top of the door as the stateroom filled completely.   The man inside struggled and tugged.   Finally, all he could do was push his fingers through the small hole.
    Nemo grasped his father’s hand.   As the last air escaped from the submerged room, the trapped man struggled and thrashed.   But somehow Jacques Nemo kept his grip on his son’s hand, love passing between them.
    And then water filled Nemo’s bladder-hood.   He couldn’t breathe anymore.   The leaking water covered his nose, and he had already emptied his lungs.   Blackness floated around him.   He would drown, too, down here beside his father.   He wanted to scream, but he had no more air.
    His father’s fingers clenched one more time and then fell slack.   Unable even to sob or cry out because of the water in his helmet, Nemo struggled away from the sunken ship.   He realized how close he was to death, and a candleflame of survival burned brighter even than his grief.
    But the heavy stones in his pockets held him down, as leaden as his heart.   He couldn’t surface, now that he wanted to.   With jerking fingers Nemo attempted to yank the rocks free, but got only a few of them out.   He couldn’t see because his vision was dimmed, but also because river water now covered the inside of the viewing plate.  
    With a violent wrench he yanked the breathing tube from his helmet and snapped it in his hands, since it hindered his freedom of movement.   His