I, Nemo by J. Dharma Windham

Author:J. Dharma Windham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 978-0-7867-5287-4
Publisher: Argo-Navis

(Lacuna begins)

Note: Mason does not speak of his actual departure from Panama City’s harbor. This may be because the actual towing of one ship by another out of a harbor, even when both were under steam, was considered routine. Of course this is mere conjecture at best.

(Lacuna ends)

It was that quality of blackness one sees between midnight and three am, and the Samson was three hundred yards ahead towing us out of the harbor. A thick cable ran tautly from her main mast through a freshly cut port in her transom to the mainmast of the Sea Phoenix. It would have been good if we could have run out with the tide but in view of our situation, I had thought it wise to weigh anchor and get underway at once. I was on the bridge half listening to the rhythmic huff and chuff of the engine, and the paddlewheels on either side of us slapping the black water into a white froth. It was as dark and dirty a night as I had ever seen with an on-shore wind filling our sails.

I consulted my Waltham pocket watch. It was one twenty in the morning. We were preceeding the outgoing tide by three hours.

Jacob was in command of the Samson. I was easy in my mind regarding his competence. I knew that he was equal to the task, and so he proved to be, as later events would demonstrate. I was in a dark and thoughtful mood. How much had we been compromised? I wondered. When I had gone to Belial Island, Great Britain was just a hair’s breadth away from declaring full support for the Confederacy. Now, they were apparently in league with the Union to the extent that they were sharing information about me. Had they tracked my pilgrims’ progress trek across Great Britain and Europe, noting the acquisition of the components I would need to assemble my Nautilus? Perhaps it had been the eyes of American agents I had felt on me in Europe.

The balance between triumph and ruin now rested with our ability to be gone before the Union warships arrived. Laden as heavily as we were there was no question of outrunning them. My heart was not light—it was an anchor in my chest, and I despaired of ever feeling it lift with joy at simply being alive and free. But my cool engineer’s mind was calm—it took refuge in infallible equations and the precise diagrams of my undersea craft; and the certain knowledge that once she was built and launched, we would be liberated forevermore from oppression. I would no longer fear my fellow man and the harm he could inflict upon me. He would fear me.

So I stood on the bridge with my legs braced wide, gripping the railing and staring ahead into the blackness, watching the cable, a grayish line in the dark and taut as a fiddle’s string, running from the Samson to my ship and I felt…exhilarated. My hand was now wrapped in a proper bandage but it ached mightily.

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