The End of the Voyage

Chapter Forty-Six — The End of the Voyage

What happened that night, how our little boat came out of the maelstrom alive, I cannot tell. I do not know how Ned, Conseil, and I escaped that terrible whirlpool.

When I woke, I was lying in a fisherman's hut on the Lofoten Islands, off the coast of Norway. My two friends were beside me, safe, holding my hands. We hugged each other with full hearts.

We could not go home to France at once. Ships from the far north of Norway are rare. We had to wait for the boat that comes only once a month from Cape North.

While I wait among these kind people, I have gone through my story once more. I have left out nothing and added nothing. It is a true account of our journey through a world that no man had entered before — though one day, I think, people will find a way.

Will anyone believe me? I do not know, and it does not matter much. This one thing I know for certain: in less than ten months I crossed twenty thousand leagues under the sea. I saw wonders that few will ever see.

But what became of the Nautilus? Did it survive the pull of the maelstrom? Is Captain Nemo still alive? Does he still sail the deep, still taking his revenge? Or has he stopped at last? I cannot say.

Will the waves ever carry his book to the world? Will I ever learn his real name? Perhaps the sunken warship will one day tell us his country. I do not know.

I hope the Nautilus lived where so many ships have died. And I hope that Nemo's hatred has faded. Perhaps all those wonders of the sea will soften his heart, and the judge in him will give way to the quiet student of the ocean. His fate is strange, but it is also grand. Have I not lived ten months of that strange life myself?

An old book asks a question from three thousand years ago: "That which is far off and very deep — who can find it out?" Of all the people alive today, only two can answer. Captain Nemo, and myself.