All the next day the vessel seemed to be making a series of circular movements, in some endeavour to locate a particular spot, and the captain was gloomier than I had ever seen him, having no word for me.  The following day, which was beautifully clear, we could make out, some eight miles to the eastward, a large steam vessel flying no flag.  Suddenly, after using his sextant, the captain exclaimed:  “It is here!”

Presently the Nautilus sank to the bottom of the sea.  When at rest the lights were put out and the sliding panels opened.  We could now see on our starboard the remains of a sunken vessel, so encrusted with shells that it must have lain there a great many years.  As I stood there wondering what might be Captain Nemo’s reason for his manoeuvres, he came to my side and, speaking slowly, said: 

“That was the Marseillais, launched in 1772.  It carried seventy-four guns, and fought gallantly against the Preston, was in action again at the siege of Granada, and in Chesapeake Bay.  Then in 1794 the French Republic changed the vessel’s name, and it joined a squadron at Brest to escort a cargo of corn coming from America.  The squadron fell in with an English man-o’-war, and seventy-two years ago to this very day, on this very spot, after fighting heroically, until its masts were shot away, its hold full of water, and a third of its crew disabled, this vessel preferred sinking, with its 356 sailors, to surrendering.  Nailing its colours to the mast, it sank beneath the waves to the cry of ’Long live the Republic!’”

“The Avenger!” I exclaimed.

“Yes, the Avenger.  A good name!” said the captain, with a strange seriousness, as he crossed his arms.

I was deeply impressed with his whole bearing while he recalled these facts.  It was clearly no common spite against his fellow-men that had shut up Captain Nemo and his crew in the Nautilus.

Already we were ascending, fast leaving the grave of the old Avenger.  When we had reached the surface we could see the other vessel steaming towards us.  A low boom greeted the Nautilus as its upper part showed above the water.  Ned Land, aflame once more with hope of escape, made out the vessel to be a two-decker ram, but she showed no flag at her mizzen.  It seemed for a moment there might just be some chance of escape for us three prisoners, and Ned declared he would jump into the sea if the man-o’-war came within a mile of us.  Just then another gun boomed out.  She was firing at us.

It flashed across my mind at that moment that as those on board the Abraham Lincoln, having once seen the effect of Ned Land’s harpoon when it struck the Nautilus, could not but have concluded their enemy was no monster of the deep—­though indeed a monster of man’s contriving—­the warships of all nations would now be on the look-out for the Nautilus, and we on board it could scarcely hope for mercy.