1868

The year 1868 is the decisive terminal year of the voyage chronicled in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, the period in which the Nautilus completes its most extreme polar exploration, suffers its most harrowing internal crisis, commits its most terrible act of vengeance, and finally loses its three involuntary passengers. It is the year in which Captain Nemo's dual nature—scientist and avenger—reaches its breaking point, and the year the narrative's central mystery collapses into the silence of the Maelstrom.

Return from the South Pole and the Crisis of Command

After claiming the South Pole on March 21, 1868, Captain Nemo and the Nautilus immediately began the return journey northward. The triumph of reaching 90° south was followed almost at once by a catastrophic accident: an enormous iceberg toppled over, trapping the submersible in a frozen prison beneath the Ice Bank. For six days, from March 22 to March 28, the Nautilus lay immobilized under hundreds of meters of ice, its crew digging frantically while the air supply dwindled. The ordeal pushed the ship to the limits of its endurance; the crew worked in shifts, and the Canadian harpooner Ned Land and the servant Conseil sacrificed their own remaining oxygen to save the life of Professor Pierre Aronnax. The Nautilus finally broke free by using its weight to crack the ice, rising to the surface on March 28. The experience left Captain Nemo visibly changed—gloomier, more withdrawn, and increasingly absent from the daily life of the ship.

The Battle with the Giant Squid and the Loss of a Crewman

On April 20, 1868, while cruising through the Caribbean waters near the Bahamas, the Nautilus encountered a school of colossal squid. One of the creatures jammed the ship's propeller, forcing Captain Nemo to order a surface battle. Armed with axes, the crew fought the monsters on the platform. During the struggle, a giant squid seized a seaman and dragged him under the waves. The man cried out in French, revealing to Aronnax that a fellow countryman was among the crew. Captain Nemo, despite hacking off several tentacles, could not save him. After the battle, the captain wept openly—a rare display of emotion—and the Nautilus drifted aimlessly for ten days, its commander sunk in grief. This event deepened the tension between Nemo and his captives, as Ned Land's desire to escape grew more desperate.

The Sinking of the Warship and the Revelation of Vengeance

On June 1, 1868, the Nautilus arrived at a precise location in the Atlantic: latitude 47° 24' north, longitude 17° 28' west. There, on the seafloor, lay the wreck of the Avenger, a French 74-gun ship that had gone down in 1794 after a heroic battle against the English. Captain Nemo revealed the ship's history and then, surfacing, confronted a warship that had been pursuing the Nautilus. Declaring himself "the law, the tribunal," he rammed the vessel below its waterline, sinking it with all hands. Aronnax, Ned Land, and Conseil watched in horror as the ship went down. Afterward, Captain Nemo retreated to his stateroom, where he knelt before a portrait of a woman and two children and sobbed. The act of vengeance completed, the Nautilus fled northward at tremendous speed, its captain apparently broken.

The Final Escape and the Maelstrom

In the days following the sinking, the Nautilus raced through the North Atlantic, its crew invisible, its captain absent. Ned Land, at the end of his patience, resolved to escape that very night. On the evening of the planned escape, as the three men prepared to launch the skiff, the crew suddenly shouted "Maelstrom! Maelstrom!" The Nautilus had been caught in the great whirlpool off the Norwegian coast. The skiff, still attached to the ship, was torn loose and hurled into the vortex. Aronnax lost consciousness. When he awoke, he was lying in a fisherman's hut on the Lofoten Islands, with Ned Land and Conseil safe beside him. The Nautilus had vanished.

Aftermath and the Unfinished Record

From his refuge in Norway, Aronnax reviewed the narrative of his ten-month, 20,000-league journey. He recorded that Captain Nemo had prepared a manuscript summarizing his life and research, sealed in a small unsinkable device to be thrown into the sea by the last survivor. The professor never learned the captain's true name or nationality, nor the fate of the Nautilus. He could only hope that the submersible had survived the Maelstrom and that its commander had found peace. The year 1868 thus closes not with a resolution but with a question—the same question posed in the Book of Ecclesiastes: "Who can fathom the soundless depths?"