he Frenchman and his two companions had been miraculously cast
on shore, that the fishermen of the Lofoten Islands had rendered
them assistance, and that the professor, on his return to France, had
published that work in which seven months of the strange and eventful
navigation of the "Nautilus" were narrated and exposed to the curiosity
of the public.

For a long time after this, Captain Nemo continued to live thus,
traversing every sea. But one by one his companions died, and found
their last resting-place in their cemetery of coral, in the bed of the
Pacific. At last Captain Nemo remained the solitary survivor of all
those who had taken refuge with him in the depths of the ocean.

He was now sixty years of age. Although alone, he succeeded in
navigating the "Nautilus" towards one of those submarine caverns which
had sometimes served him as a harbor.

One of these ports was hollowed beneath Lincoln Island, and at this
moment furnished an asylum to the "Nautilus."

The captain had now remained there six years, navigating the ocean no
longer, but awaiting death, and that moment when he should rejoin his
former companions, when by chance he observed the descent of the balloon
which carried the prisoners of the Confederates. Clad in his diving
dress he was walking beneath the water at a few cables' length from the
shore of the island, when the engineer had been thrown into the sea.
Moved by a feeling of compassion the captain saved Cyrus Harding.

His first impulse was to fly from the vicinity of the five castaways;
but his harbor refuge was closed, for in consequence of an elevation of
the basalt, produced by the influence of volcanic action, he could
no longer pass through the entrance of the vault. Though there was
sufficient depth of water to allow a light craft to pass the bar,
there was not enough for the "Nautilus," whose draught of water was
considerable.

Captain Nemo was compelled, therefore, to remain. He observed these men
thrown without resources upon a desert island, but had no wish to be
himself discovered by them. By degrees he became interested in their
efforts when he saw them honest, energetic, and bound to each other by
the ties of friendship. As if despite his wishes, he penetrated all the
secrets of their existence. By means of the diving dress he could easily
reach the well in the interior of Granite House, and climbing by the
projections of rock to its upper orifice he heard the colonists as