Sir," said Captain Nemo, showing me the instruments hanging on the walls of his room, "here are the apparatus I need to navigate in the deepest parts of the sea. The Nautilus is all that I possess. I built it myself, piece by piece, in the greatest secrecy.

"You understand now," he continued, "that I have the right to be the man I am. The sea does not belong to me any more than to you, but it belongs to me just as much. I travel across it freely, without asking permission of any government. It does not belong to despots. Upon its surface they can still exercise their iniquitous rights, fighting, devouring each other, absorbing each other with all the horrors of land. But thirty feet below its level, their power ceases, their influence dies out, their might disappears. Ah, sir, live, live within the heart of the seas! There alone is independence! There I recognize no masters! There I am free!

Captain Nemo had suddenly grown animated in this declaration of liberty. Then, in a calmer tone, he added: "I will add that the sea is the vast reservoir of nature, wherein roll waters whose dimensions defy all imagination. The entire globe is covered with water over four-fifths of its surface.

The land offers no continents as vast as the sea. Dry land represents only the thirty-seventh part of the globe, and of that solid being, that island, we know only a small portion. How many unknown regions! How many peoples whose existence is ignored! How many lands awaiting their discoverers!

The sea supplies all my wants. Sometimes I cast my nets, and I bring back fish in abundance. Sometimes I go hunting in those distant forests that are the domain of the sea. There grow gigantic trees and strange plants. It is a world apart, a world that belongs to no one, where I am at home.

The sea feeds me, clothes me, warms me. Its salt preserves my food. Its distilled water gives me the pure water I need. Its action provides me with the sodium that makes my electricity. And that electricity animates my whole vessel, heats it, lights it.

Since it is not possible for me to have relations with the land, I have been able to obtain, with the aid of the sea, everything I require.

I am what I am, and I am not what others would have me be. I have broken with society as a whole for reasons that I alone have the right to weigh. I have no need of judges, still less of confidants. I do not believe that humanity is destined to misery, but I believe that the efforts of men must not end in works of destruction. I am for peace, and I hate war.

I am for those who struggle," he murmured with a strange passion, "for the oppressed nations, and I am with them until death!

There is in the ocean a perfect solitude, but one that the sea animates and makes alive. The ocean is the sanctuary where passions grow calm. I have no one to answer to for my actions. I belong to the sea, and I live by the sea. What would they have of me? I am free, absolutely free, and my freedom knows no bounds. I flee from the world to live in the world of the sea, where man may walk free of all servitude.