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 THE

LAST

WORDS

OF

CAPTAIN

NEMO.

247

scarcely see the various fish we passed; but it was not now a question of studying and classifying. In the evening we had crossed 200 leagues of the Atlantic. Evening came, and the sea would be dark till the moon rose. I regained my room. I could not sleep long, I suffered from nightmare. The horrible scene I had witnessed kept recurring to my mind. Who could now tell to what part of the North Atlantic Captain Nemo would take us. We still were travelling at speed, and, in the midst of northern fogs. Should we go up to Spitzbergen or Nova Zembla, or explore those unknown seas, viz., the White Sea, the Sea of Kara, the Gulf of Obi, the Archipelago of Liarroy, and the equally strange coasts of the Asiatic continent? I could not tell. The clocks on board had been stopped, so we could no longer judge the flight of time ; it seemed that day and night, as in polar regions, no longer followed in regular rotation. I felt I was being dragged into that wild region where the imagination can run riot as At each moment I in the mysterious tales of Edgar Poe. expected to see, like the fabulous Gordon Pym, that veiled figure, of a size exceeding all inhabitants of earth, thrown across the cataract that defends the approach to the Pole. I estimated (though, perhaps, I was mistaken) that this wild course of the /Vauiilus lasted fifteen or twenty days, and how much longer it might have continued I do not know, had not a catastrophe brought our voyage to a conNeither Captain Nemo, the mate, nor any of the clusion. sailors ever appeared now. The (Vazte/us was almost always beneath the water. When it did rise to the surfacc to replenish the air the panels opened automatically. The reckoning was no longer marked on the chart ; I could not tell

where we were. Moreover,

the Canadian, who had come

to an end of