Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 5.djvu/306

278 "We must hold on," said Ned, "and look after the bolts. We may still be saved if we stick to the Nautilus—"

He had not finished the words when we heard a crashing noise, the bolts gave way, and the boat, torn from its groove, was hurled like a stone from a sling into the midst of the whirlpool.

My head struck on a piece of iron, and with the violent shock I lost all consciousness. CHAPTER XXIII CONCLUSION ends the voyage under the seas. What passed during that night—how the boat escaped from the eddies of the maëlstrom, how Ned Land, Conseil, and myself ever came out of the gulf—I cannot tell. But when I returned to consciousness, I was lying in a fisherman's hut, on the Loffoden Isles. My two companions, safe and sound, were near me holding my hands. We embraced each other heartily.

At that moment we could not think of returning to France. The means of communication between the north of Norway and the south are rare, and I was therefore obliged to wait for the steamboat running monthly from Cape North.

And among the worthy people who have so kindly received us I revise my record of these adventures once more. Not a fact has been omitted, not a detail exaggerated. It is a faithful narrative of this incredible expedition in an element inaccessible to man, but to which Progress will one day open a road.

Shall I be believed? I do not know. And it matters little, after all. What I now affirm is, that I have a right to speak of these seas, under which, in less than ten months, I have crossed 20,000 leagues in that submarine tour of the world which has revealed so many wonders.

But what has become of the Nautilus? Did it resist the pressure of the maëlstrom? Does Captain Nemo still live? And does he still follow under the ocean those frightful retaliations? Or did he stop after that last hecatomb?

Will the waves one day carry to him this manuscript