with
the inhabited world; three long years have I passed in the depth of
the sea, the only place where I have found liberty! Who then can have
betrayed my secret?"

"A man who was bound to you by no tie, Captain Nemo, and who,
consequently, cannot be accused of treachery."

"The Frenchman who was cast on board my vessel by chance sixteen years
since?"

"The same."

"He and his two companions did not then perish in the maelstrom, in the
midst of which the 'Nautilus' was struggling?"

"They escaped, and a book has appeared under the title of 'Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,' which contains your history."

"The history of a few months only of my life!" interrupted the captain
impetuously.

"It is true," answered Cyrus Harding, "but a few months of that strange
life have sufficed to make you known."

"As a great criminal, doubtless!" said Captain Nemo, a haughty smile
curling his lips. "Yes, a rebel, perhaps an outlaw against humanity!"

The engineer was silent.

"Well, sir?"

"It is not for me to judge you, Captain Nemo," answered Cyrus Harding,
"at any rate as regards your past life. I am, with the rest of the
world, ignorant of the motives which induced you to adopt this strange
mode of existence, and I cannot judge of effects without knowing their
causes; but what I do know is, that a beneficent hand has constantly
protected us since our arrival on Lincoln Island, that we all owe our
lives to a good, generous, and powerful being, and that this being so
powerful, good and generous, Captain Nemo, is yourself!"

"It is I," answered the captain simply.

The engineer and the reporter rose. Their companions had drawn near, and
the gratitude with which their hearts were charged was about to express
itself in their gestures and words.

Captain Nemo stopped them by a sign, and in a voice which betrayed more
emotion than he doubtless intended to show.

"Wait till you have heard all," he said.

And the captain, in a few concise sentences, ran over the events of his
life.

His narrative was short, yet he was obliged to summon up his whole
remaining energy to arrive at the end. He was evidently contending
against extreme weakness. Several times Cyrus Harding entreated him to
repose for a while, but he shook his head as a man to whom the morrow
may never come, and when the reporter offered his assistance,--

"It is useless," he said; "my hours are numbered."

Captain Nemo was an Indian, the Prince Dak