ence chance
had brought them in contact with his mysterious existence. Instead of
doing this he kept them prisoners, and during seven months they were
enabled to behold all the wonders of a voyage of twenty thousand leagues
under the sea.

One day, the 22nd of June, 1867, these three men, who knew nothing of
the past history of Captain Nemo, succeeded in escaping in one of the
_Nautilus's_ boats. But as at this time the _Nautilus_ was drawn into
the vortex of the Maelstrom, off the coast of Norway, the captain
naturally believed that the fugitives, engulfed in that frightful
whirlpool, found their death at the bottom of the abyss. He was
ignorant that the Frenchman and his two companions had been miraculously
cast on shore, that the fishermen of the Loffoden Islands had rendered
them assistance, and that the professor, on his return to France, had
published that work in which seven months of the strange and eventful
navigation of the _Nautilus_ were narrated and exposed to the curiosity
of the public.

For a long time after this, Captain Nemo continued to live thus,
traversing every sea. But one by one his companions died, and found
their last resting-place in their cemetery of coral, in the bed of the
Pacific. At last Captain Nemo remained the solitary survivor of all
those who had taken refuge with him in the depths of the ocean.

He was now sixty years of age. Although alone, he succeeded in
navigating the _Nautilus_ towards one of those submarine caverns which
had sometimes served him as a harbour.

One of these ports was hollowed beneath Lincoln Island, and at this
moment furnished an asylum to the _Nautilus_.

The captain had now remained there six years, navigating the ocean no
longer, but awaiting death, and that moment when he should rejoin his
former companions, when by chance he observed the descent of the balloon
which carried the prisoners of the Confederates. Clad in his
diving-dress he was walking beneath the water at a few cables' length
from the shore of the island, when the engineer had been thrown into the
sea. Moved by a feeling of compassion the captain saved Cyrus Harding.

His first impulse was to fly from the vicinity of the five castaways;
but his harbour of refuge was closed, for in consequence of an elevation
of the basalt, produced by the influence of volcanic action, he could no
longer pass through the entrance of the vault. Though there was
sufficient depth of water to allow