Now rendered desperate, I rushed into the library, up the central staircase, and so gained the opening to the boat where my companions were awaiting me.  Quickly the panel through which we went was shut and bolted by means of a wrench which Ned Land had secured.  The opening of the boat was also quickly fastened after we had got inside, and the harpooner had begun to undo from the inside the screws that still fastened the boat to the Nautilus.  Suddenly a great noise was heard within the submarine.  We thought we had been discovered, and were prepared to die defending ourselves.  Ned Land stopped his work for the moment, and the noise grew louder.  It was a terrible word, twenty times repeated, that we heard.  “The Maelstrom!  The Maelstrom!” was what they were crying.  Was it to this, then, that the Nautilus had been driven, by accident or design, with such headlong speed?  We heard a roaring noise, and could feel ourselves whirled in spiral circles.  The steel muscles of the submarine were cracking, and at times in the awful churning of the whirlpool it seemed to stand on end.  “We must hold on,” cried Land, “and we may be saved if we can stick to the Nautilus.”

His anxiety now was to make fast the screws that bound the boat to the submarine, but he had scarcely finished speaking when, with a great crash, the bolts gave way, and the boat shot up, released from the larger vessel, into the midst of the whirlpool.  My head struck on its iron framework and with the violent shock I lost all consciousness.

How we escaped from that hideous gulf, where even whales of mighty strength have been tossed and battered to death, none of us will ever know!  But I was in a fisherman’s hut on the Lofoden Isles when I regained consciousness.  My two companions were by my side, safe and sound, and we all shook hands heartily.  There we had to wait for the steamer that runs twice a month to Cape North, and in the interval I occupied myself revising this record of our incredible expedition in an element previously considered inaccessible to man, but to which progress will one day open up a way.

I may be believed or not, but I know that I have made a journey of twenty thousand leagues under the sea.

Does the Nautilus still exist?  Is Captain Nemo still alive?  Was that awful night in the Maelstrom his last, or is he still pursuing a terrible vengeance?  Will the confessions of his life, which he told me he had written, and which the last survivor of his fellow-exiles was to cast into the sea in an air-tight case, ever be found?

This I know, that only two men could have a right to answer the question asked in the Ecclesiastes three thousand years ago:  “That which is far off and exceeding deep, who can find it out?” These two men are Captain Nemo and I.

* * * * *

HORACE WALPOLE

Castle of Otranto