"Your thoughts are with your country, gentlemen," continued the captain; "your toils are for her prosperity and glory. You are right. One's native land!—there should one live! there die! And I! I die far from all I loved!"
"You have some last wish to transmit," said the engineer with emotion, "some souvenir to send to those friends you have left in the mountains of India?
"No, Captain Harding; no friends remain to me! I am the last of my race, and to all whom I have known I have long been as are the dead.—But to return to yourselves. Solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance. I die of having thought it possible to live alone! You should, therefore, dare all in the attempt to see once more the land of your birth. I am aware that those wretches destroyed the vessel you had built."
"We propose to construct a vessel," said Gideon Spilett, "sufficiently large to convey us to the nearest land; but if we should succeed, sooner or later we shall return to Lincoln Island. We are attached to it by too many recollections ever to forget it."
"It is here that we have known Captain Nemo," said Cyrus Harding.
"Here only can we make our home!" added Herbert.
"And here shall I sleep the sleep of eternity, if———" replied the captain.
He paused and, instead of completing the sentence, said simply, "Mr. Harding, I wish to speak with you—alone!"
The engineer's companions, respecting the wish of the dying man, retired. Cyrus Harding remained but a few minutes alone with Captain Nemo, and soon recalled his companions; but he said nothing to them of the private matters which the dying man had confided to him.
Gideon Spilett now watched the captain with extreme care. It was evident that he was no longer sustained by his moral energy, which had lost the power of reaction against his physical weakness.
The day closed without change. The colonists did not quit the Nautilus for a moment. Night arrived, although it was impossible to distinguish it from day in the cavern.
Captain Nemo suffered no pain, but he was visibly sinking. His noble features, paled by the approach of death, were perfectly calm. Inaudible words escaped at intervals
