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

lungs burned, his chest ached -- and his heart wanted to explode with anger and despair.   But still he wanted to live, to breathe fresh air again, to feel the sunlight on his skin.   He tore at the belt sealed around his neck, and finally used the broken end of his dagger to slash the bladder free and tear it from his head.  
    As he swam toward the surface, fighting and kicking, greenish light beckoned like angels from above.   Rigging ropes and pulleys dangled around him like a poacher’s net, but he fought his way through them.  
    Nemo choked in a mouthful of water in a desperate attempt to breathe like a fish, but his body convulsed.   He couldn’t last for a second longer -- but he would not let himself be defeated.
    His head popped above the river surface like a champagne cork.   Wooden debris from the Cynthia drifted all around.   Barely conscious, he grasped one of the floating cross-stays and sucked in great breaths of air, sobbing and coughing.   But he could not clear the water from his eyes, because his tears blinded him.
    Below, the Cynthia came to its final rest, taking with it Nemo’s father and his future.
     
    iv
     
    Inside the house, the lawyer Pierre Verne kept a telescope pointed through an upstairs window toward the clock face of a distant monastery, so he could always know what time it was.  
    The family Verne lived in the most desirable section of Nantes , in the heart of Ile Feydeau’s old town.   Their narrow four-story house stood on rue Olivier de Clisson, named after a fourteenth-century French commander who fought against the English in the Hundred Years War.
    The low tables in their sitting room displayed the weekly Parisian publication Le Magasin Pittoresque .   The elder Verne encouraged his two sons to read illustrated geographical stories about foreign places and explanatory articles on scientific subjects.   As a Christmas gift, Jules had even received a model telegraph, a toy that was all the rage across France.
    When the family sat down to a formal evening dinner, Pierre Verne insisted on proper etiquette.   Verne’s two sisters changed into lacy silk and chiné dresses complete with constricting whalebone corsets, while Jules wore an embroidered waistcoat and cravat, as did his ten-year-old brother Paul.   They sat at a long, dark table made in a style that imitated the great French masters.   Meals were served on fine china that had been part of his mother’s dowry when she’d married Pierre.
    Now, several days after the tragedy of the Cynthia , Jules found this particular dinner and this conversation more maddening than usual.   His mother had broiled small squabs for each of them, three for his father, accompanied by buttered peas and delightful onion pastries (a secret family recipe she had tried to teach her elder son, though thus far Jules had mastered only her special omelet).
    With linen napkins folded in their laps, the family solemnly prayed.   Verne’s father then opened the bottle of Bordeaux, poured a goblet for himself and his wife, and then watered some wine for each of the children.   Pierre was a gaunt man with long sideburns and dark hair, without the slightest twinkle in his eye or an appreciation of the humor his elder son displayed.  
    They ate under an imposed silence broken only by the sound of silverware clinking against china, the gurgle of wine as his father refilled his goblet, the delicate chewing and prying of meat from small pigeon carcasses.
    Verne and his siblings waited for their father to begin the evening’s conversation, usually when he was half finished with his main course, always before the dessert.   As a lawyer, Pierre Verne was a man of rigid habits who adhered to schedules, written and unwritten.
    Sometimes he would challenge his children with word games or round-robin poetry, having each of them make up verses -- a pastime at which Jules excelled.   Other evenings, they waited until after the meal, when his sisters