“To return, captain!” answered Pencroft quickly.

“To return, Pencroft?” said the captain, with a smile.  “I know, it is true, your love for this island.  You have helped to make it what it now is, and it seems to you a paradise!”

“Our project, captain,” interposed Cyrus Harding, “is to annex it to the United States, and to establish for our shipping a port so fortunately situated in this part of the Pacific.”

“Your thoughts are with your country, gentlemen,” continued the captain; “your toils are for her prosperity and glory.  You are right.  One’s native land!—­there should one live! there die!  And I die far from all I loved!”

“You have some last wish to transmit,” said the engineer with emotion, “some souvenir to send to those friends you have left in the mountains of India?”

“No, Captain Harding; no friends remain to me!  I am the last of my race, and to all whom I have known I have long been as are the dead.—­But to return to yourselves.  Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.  I die of having thought it possible to live alone!  You should, therefore, dare all in the attempt to leave Lincoln Island, and see once more the land of your birth.  I am aware that those wretches have destroyed the vessel you have built.”

“We propose to construct a vessel,” said Gideon Spilett, “sufficiently large to convey us to the nearest land; but if we should succeed, sooner or later we shall return to Lincoln Island.  We are attached to it by too many recollections ever to forget it.”

“It is here that we have known Captain Nemo,” said Cyrus Harding.

“It is here only that we can make our home!” added Herbert.

“And here shall I sleep the sleep of eternity, if—­” replied the captain.

He paused for a moment, and, instead of completing the sentence, said simply,—­

“Mr. Harding, I wish to speak with you—­alone!”

The engineer’s companions, respecting the wish, retired.

Cyrus Harding remained but a few minutes alone with Captain Nemo, and soon recalled his companions; but he said nothing to them of the private matters which the dying man had confided to him.

Gideon Spilett now watched the captain with extreme care.  It was evident that he was no longer sustained by his moral energy, which had lost the power of reaction against his physical weakness.

The day closed without change.  The colonists did not quit the “Nautilus” for a moment.  Night arrived, although it was impossible to distinguish it from day in the cavern.

Captain Nemo suffered no pain, but he was visibly sinking.  His noble features, paled by the approach of death, were perfectly calm.  Inaudible words escaped at intervals from his lips, bearing upon various incidents of his checkered career.  Life was evidently ebbing slowly and his extremities were already cold.

Once or twice more he spoke to the colonists who stood around him, and smiled on them with that last smile which continues after death.