but the room was in darkness,
and slowly I made my way across it to the library door. I had almost
opened this when a sigh from him made me pause.

He had risen from the organ, and, as some rays of light were now
admitted from the library, I could see him coming toward me with folded
arms, gliding like a ghost rather than walking. His breast heaved with
sobs, and I heard him murmur these words, the last of his I heard:
"Enough! O God, enough!" Was it remorse escaping thus from the
conscience of this mysterious being?

Had I not seen it begin with the tears in his eyes at the death of the
Englishman whom he had buried in the coral cemetery, and who was
doubtless a victim of one of his acts of destruction?

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.