d, overcome
by disappointment at the destruction of all his vain hopes, a prey to
profound disgust for all human beings, filled with hatred of the
civilised world, he realised the wreck of his fortune, assembled some
score of his most faithful companions, and one day disappeared, leaving
no trace behind.

Where, then, did he seek that liberty denied him upon the inhabited
earth? Under the waves, in the depths of the ocean, where none could
follow.

The warrior became the man of science. Upon a deserted island of the
Pacific he established his dockyard, and there a submarine vessel was
constructed from his designs. By methods which will at some future day
be revealed he had rendered subservient the illimitable forces of
electricity, which, extracted from inexhaustible sources, was employed
for all the requirements of his floating equipage, as a moving,
lighting, and heating agent. The sea, with its countless treasures, its
myriads of fish, its numberless wrecks, its enormous mammalia, and not
only all that nature supplied, but also all that man had lost in its
depths, sufficed for every want of the prince and his crew--and thus was
his most ardent desire accomplished, never again to hold communication
with the earth. He named his submarine vessel the _Nautilus_, called
himself simply Captain Nemo, and disappeared beneath the seas.

During many years this strange being visited every ocean, from pole to
pole. Outcast of the inhabited earth in these unknown worlds he
gathered incalculable treasures. The millions lost in the Bay of Vigo,
in 1702, by the galleons of Spain, furnished him with a mine of
inexhaustible riches which he devoted always, anonymously, in favour of
those nations who fought for the independence of their country. [See
Note 2.]

For long, however, he had held no communication with his
fellow-creatures, when, during the night of the 6th of November, 1866,
three men were cast on board his vessel. They were a French professor,
his servant, and a Canadian fisherman. These three men had been hurled
overboard by a collision which had taken place between the _Nautilus_
and the United States frigate _Abraham Lincoln_, which had chased her.

Captain Nemo learnt from this professor that the _Nautilus_, taken now
for a gigantic mammal of the whale species, now for a submarine vessel
carrying a crew of pirates, was sought for in every sea.

He might have returned these three men to the ocean, from wh