The Eye of Neptune (25 page)

Authors: Jon Mayhew

BOOK: The Eye of Neptune

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‘Who can tell?’ Dakkar murmured, shaking his head.

The sea around the pier bubbled and Georgia gasped. Qualar clambered out of the water. Dakkar recognised Olszar. He had a wreath of red coral round his head.

‘Dakkar,’ he said, gripping the boy’s hand. ‘You’re safe! We searched for you as best we could but in all the confusion . . .’

‘You’re free from Cryptos now,’ Dakkar said, bowing to Olszar. ‘Will your people unite?’

Olszar gave what Dakkar took to be a shrug. ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Cryptos has tainted our people with his trickery. Mankind’s forays into the sea grow bolder every day, and once the ways of greed and avarice are learned they are hard to put aside.’

‘That is too true,’ Dakkar said. ‘Just remember that we aren’t all bad.’

‘You have a special place in our hearts, Prince Dakkar,’ Olszar said, raising his voice. He pointed to the coral wreath. ‘I, as Shoal Lord of Qualarium, recognise Prince Dakkar as a friend of our people. No Qualar shall turn him away or deny him assistance!’

The beach resounded with cheers and Dakkar stood amazed as heads popped up from the water.

‘You should stay here for a while,’ Olszar said. ‘We can get whatever you need.’

‘The
Nautilus
is ready to sail,’ Oginski said. ‘But I’m not sure about the
Liberty
.’

‘She’s always ready,’ Fulton laughed, slapping Oginski’s shoulder. ‘But we need supplies and rest.’

‘Wait a minute,’ Georgia butted in. ‘How come
they
get to take the big boat away?’

‘The
Liberty
is ours,’ Fulton said, putting his hands on his hips. ‘Oginski and Dakkar haven’t got their own craft.’

‘I’ll send full plans and descriptions of the
Nautilus
, Robert, you can be sure,’ Oginski laughed. ‘I won’t forget. Otherwise I think Georgia would swim across the ocean to remind me!’

The Qualar set up a camp on the beach made from things they rescued from the wreckage. Over the next few days, they dragged items and useful pieces of wood out of the sea and on to the sand.

Other men had escaped from the cavern and were refitting a small ship that was moored at the jetty. Lafitte fell in with them and took the role of captain upon himself before anyone could object.

‘We shall head for the Bay of Barataria,’ he told the men as they hammered and sawed at the planks, ‘land of beautiful women and mountains of treasure!’

Dakkar was also able to get to know the
Nautilus
. The ship handled differently to the little
Makara
and Oginski was loath to let Dakkar sail her.

‘Wait until we’re properly out to sea,’ he said, not meeting Dakkar’s eye.

The
Nautilus
looked very much like the
Liberty
inside, only the large space below deck was split into different cabins and storerooms. The captain’s cabin at the top was in the form of a tower, with viewing windows across the front.

‘The upper cabin doesn’t detach from the rest, like in the
Makara
,’ Dakkar said, pulling a face. ‘I think a smaller craft may be more useful sometimes.’

‘A good point,’ Oginski said. ‘I might look into that when we get home.’

What impressed Dakkar most was the hatch at the bottom of the ship. A hatch opened into a separate small chamber which could be sealed and filled with water once someone was inside.

‘It’s rather like the lock on a canal system,’ Fulton had explained. ‘It means that you can swim out of the sub without it having to surface.’

Finally, the
Nautilus
and
Liberty
were stocked with food and water. Georgia and Dakkar walked along the beach towards the pier. They had wandered in silence for some time. Dakkar listened to the hiss and splash of the waves. Somewhere above, a seagull cried as it flew.

‘I’m sorry for lying to you,’ Dakkar said at last.

‘You had to,’ Georgia murmured. ‘It’s the way of the world, it seems.’

‘I’d never actually have released those eels, you know,’ he said. ‘I just had to convince Cryptos I was on his side and I was fairly sure he still needed you alive.’

‘Fairly sure?’ Georgia said, raising her eyebrows and pouting her lip. ‘That’s comforting to know!’

‘Well, certain then!’ Dakkar declared.

‘That sounds better.’ She smiled.

‘But thank you for saving my life,’ Dakkar added.

‘Um, which time are you thanking me for?’ Georgia said, wrinkling her nose.

‘All of them,’ Dakkar said. ‘Maybe I should make a long-winded, pompous speech about how much I owe you and how the people of Bundelkhand will be forever grateful to you for saving Prince Dakkar!’

‘It’s all right,’ Georgia replied. ‘I get the idea.’

‘Will you keep in touch?’ Dakkar asked. ‘And let me know what you’re doing?’

‘Sure,’ Georgia said. ‘And I bet it won’t be long before we meet up again.’

‘I don’t know,’ Dakkar said, kicking a pebble into the waves. ‘I’m not sure if I should go back to my father.’

‘Your father wants you to learn how to be a good leader, right?’ Georgia said, stopping on the sand and touching Dakkar’s arm.

‘Yes,’ Dakkar nodded, frowning.

‘And is Oginski teaching you that?’ she asked.

‘Yes, but . . .’

‘Well, you know what to do,’ Georgia cut in, and carried on walking.

‘I’ll miss you, Georgia Fulton,’ Dakkar said, bowing.

Georgia laughed and curtseyed. ‘Why, thank you, your highness!’

Olszar stood on the jetty, waiting for them to board. Fulton and Oginski gripped each other’s hands.

‘I’ll race you to Florida,’ Fulton said, and clambered into the
Liberty
.

‘I think we might win!’ Oginski called after him, and climbed into the
Nautilus
.

Dakkar gave a final wave to Georgia and followed Oginski. The
Nautilus
hummed with power as they submerged.

‘So, what’s it to be?’ Oginski murmured once the open sea rocked the sub. ‘India or England?’

‘You’ve taught me a lot, Oginski,’ Dakkar said, staring out of the porthole at the quivering pattern of sunlight through the waves.

‘This has probably been your most interesting lesson so far,’ Oginski said, smiling briefly. ‘But there’s a lot more to learn.’

‘Then set a course for England, Count Oginski.’ Dakkar grinned. ‘And here’s to an adventurous education!’

A Note from the Author

Captain Nemo

Prince Dakkar grew up to become Captain Nemo, the tormented anti-hero. I first met Captain Nemo when I was about eight or nine years old and, I have to confess, it wasn’t in the book but in the 1950s Disney film
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
. I was mesmerised by the adventure, the giant squid attacks, the underwater cities, the
Nautilus
and everything about it! Another film that popped up on Saturday afternoon television was
The Mysterious Island
, which also featured Captain Nemo. (That one had a giant crab in it.)

A copy of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne lurked around the house, and here’s another confession: I really struggled reading it at that age. But Captain Nemo captured my imagination and has haunted me ever since.

He’s a man who has turned his back on the world, vowing never to set foot on dry land ever again. He’s a genius, an engineer, an artist, an athlete, sometimes a pacifist, sometimes a righter of wrongs. He hates colonialism and he invents the
Nautilus
. I always wondered how Nemo learned all these things, and how he came to be so disenchanted with the world.

Some critics say the strength of Jules Verne’s work lies in his inventiveness and his inclusion of what was, at the time, cutting-edge science. His were some of the earliest works of what we now call science fiction. Detractors often dismiss his stories from the point of view of plot or character. It is true that some of Verne’s characters are stereotypes and one-dimensional, but nobody could say that about Captain Nemo!

The Call of the Sea! (Or Not)

I grew up on a peninsula and so the sea was never very far away. Add this to the fact that my father and brothers were always messing about in boats and it’s small wonder I was fascinated by the sea. Or at least the
idea
of the sea. I was a terrible swimmer and didn’t like getting cold and wet (what a wimp!). But I loved reading about monsters of the deep and submarines either in books or comics. My first ambition was to be an underwater archaeologist. I didn’t know then if such people actually existed but I wanted to be one.

Research

And so, forty years later, I found myself trying to think what I would like to write next for Bloomsbury. Something historical and under the sea . . . underwater archaeology . . . Captain Nemo resurfaced and the research that I did threw up some interesting surprises!

The first thing I had to do was work out when Nemo was born and what would have been happening in the world when he was growing up. This proved a little more complicated than I first imagined.

Jules Verne’s
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
and
The Mysterious Island
follow each other in terms of events. In the first, we meet Nemo and his amazing submarine, the
Nautilus
. But somehow the dates in the two books had become confused. So, in
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
, a hale and hearty Nemo is charging around the undersea world between 1866 and 1868. In
The Mysterious Island
Verne says that after the events of
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
, Nemo docks the
Nautilus
under a volcanic island for six years, awaiting his death, and that he died on 15th October 1868. Obviously the dates don’t add up here! Scholars have blamed Verne’s editors for the confusion as the great man himself was a stickler for detail.

However, Verne does say that Nemo was sixty when he decided to stop sailing and await death. He waited six years, so he would have been sixty-six when he died in 1868. The year of his birth was therefore 1802. I’ve taken the liberty of being a little flexible with Nemo’s age. He is around thirteen – or maybe an ‘old’ twelve – in 1814 in my story. I hope readers will forgive this flagrant disregard for the dates!

Two of the characters, Robert Fulton and Jean Lafitte, aren’t fictional. Robert Fulton was an American inventor and is credited with creating the first working submarine in 1800, which he called . . . the
Nautilus
! He also invented the floating steam battery.

Jean Lafitte was a French privateer who operated out of Grand Terre Island off the coast of Louisiana. He became something of a hero when he helped the Americans defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans.

Also by Jon Mayhew

Mortlock

The Demon Collector

The Bonehill Curse

Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney

First published in Great Britain in May 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

This electronic edition published in May 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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