The Coral Funeral

The Coral Funeral is the most intimate and moving ritual aboard the Nautilus, the only occasion on which Captain Nemo and his crew openly mourn one of their own. It takes place in a hidden clearing deep within an immense underwater forest of petrified trees and precious coral, a site Nemo has consecrated as his crew's eternal cemetery. The ceremony reveals that beneath the captain's implacable exterior lies a capacity for profound grief and a fierce determination to protect his dead from the world that has rejected him.

Cause of Death and Preparation

The crewman who dies is a man of about forty, with strongly molded features that suggest an Anglo-Saxon origin. He has suffered a horrible wound: his cranium was smashed open by a blunt instrument during a collision that cracked one of the Nautilus's engine levers, leaving the naked brains exposed and the cerebral matter deeply abraded. Professor Aronnax, who is a physician, examines the man and finds both contusion and concussion of the brain, with paralysis of movement and sensation already setting in. He pronounces that the man will be dead within two hours. Captain Nemo, who has tears sliding from eyes Aronnax had thought incapable of weeping, accepts the verdict without protest. The dying man is left in his cabin, and by the next morning he has passed away.

The Procession to the Coral Cemetery

At eight o'clock the following morning, Captain Nemo invites Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land to put on their diving suits for an underwater excursion. A dozen crewmen accompany them, and four of them carry an oblong object on their shoulders—the body of their dead comrade, wrapped in white fabric made from filaments of the fan mussel. The party descends to a depth of about 300 meters, the lowermost limit at which coral can begin to form. There they enter an immense forest of mineral vegetation: enormous petrified trees linked by garlands of elegant hydras, all decked out in shades and gleams. At the center of a huge clearing surrounded by tall tree forms, a cross of coral stands on a pedestal of roughly piled rocks, its long arms looking as if they were made of petrified blood. The seafloor swells at certain points from low bulges encrusted with limestone deposits, arranged with a symmetry that betrays the hand of man—the graves of those who have gone before.

The Burial Rite

At a signal from Captain Nemo, one of his men steps forward, detaches a mattock from his belt, and begins to dig a hole a few feet from the coral cross. The grave digging goes slowly; fish flee as their retreat is disturbed, and the pick rings on the limestone soil, its iron tip sometimes giving off sparks when it hits a stray piece of flint. The hole grows longer, wider, and soon is deep enough to receive the body. The pallbearers then approach and lower the wrapped corpse into its watery grave. Captain Nemo, arms crossed over his chest, kneels in a posture of prayer, and all the friends of the dead man do the same. Aronnax, Conseil, and Ned Land bow reverently. The grave is then covered over with the rubble dug from the seafloor, forming a low mound. When this is done, Captain Nemo and his men stand, approach the grave, sink again on bended knee, and extend their hands in a sign of final farewell.

Nemo's Philosophy of the Sea as Sanctuary

After the funeral party returns to the Nautilus, Aronnax confronts Captain Nemo on the platform. The captain confirms that the dead man now rests beside his companions in the coral cemetery, forgotten by the world but not by them. He explains that they dig the graves and then entrust the polyps with sealing away their dead for eternity. When Aronnax observes that at least the dead can sleep serenely there, out of the reach of sharks, Nemo replies solemnly: "Yes, sir, of sharks and men!" This remark crystallizes his view of the ocean as the only safe refuge from the twin threats of nature's predators and humanity's cruelty. The coral cemetery becomes the physical embodiment of Nemo's severance from the land: his dead will never be disturbed by the world that has wronged him, and his own grave already lies ready in the impenetrable depths.

Thematic Significance and Connection to Nemo's Vengeance

The Coral Funeral marks a turning point in Aronnax's understanding of Captain Nemo. The scene reveals that Nemo has not completely stifled his heart; he is capable of tears, of loyalty to his men, and of a quasi-religious devotion to their memory. Yet the ceremony also foreshadows the darker dimensions of Nemo's character. The same man who kneels in prayer at a comrade's grave will later commit mass murder by ramming and sinking a warship, an act he justifies as righteous vengeance. The coral cemetery, with its cross of petrified blood, stands as a silent monument to the cost of Nemo's war against humanity—a war that claims his own followers as readily as his enemies. When Aronnax later sees the wreck of the Avenger, the French warship that Nemo has come to honor, the connection between burial and vengeance becomes explicit: Nemo's dead are not merely mourned but avenged, and the ocean floor serves as both a peaceful graveyard and a battlefield archive.