h, extracted from inexhaustible sources, was employed
for all the requirements of his floating equipage, as a moving,
lighting, and heating agent. The sea, with its countless treasures, its
myriads of fish, its numberless wrecks, its enormous mammalia, and not
only all that nature supplied, but also all that man had lost in its
depths, sufficed for every want of the prince and his crew--and thus was
his most ardent desire accomplished, never again to hold communication
with the earth. He named his submarine vessel the "Nautilus," called
himself simply Captain Nemo, and disappeared beneath the seas.

During many years this strange being visited every ocean, from pole to
pole. Outcast of the inhabited earth in these unknown worlds he gathered
incalculable treasures. The millions lost in the Bay of Vigo, in 1702,
by the galleons of Spain, furnished him with a mine of inexhaustible
riches which he devoted always, anonymously, in favor of those nations
who fought for the independence of their country.

(This refers to the resurrection of the Candiotes, who were, in
fact, largely assisted by Captain Nemo.)

For long, however, he had held no communication with his
fellow-creatures, when, during the night of the 6th of November, 1866,
three men were cast on board his vessel. They were a French professor,
his servant, and a Canadian fisherman. These three men had been hurled
overboard by a collision which had taken place between the "Nautilus"
and the United States frigate "Abraham Lincoln," which had chased her.

Captain Nemo learned from this professor that the "Nautilus," taken now
for a gigantic mammal of the whale species, now for a submarine vessel
carrying a crew of pirates, was sought for in every sea.

He might have returned these three men to the ocean, from whence 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 unaware
that t