Eight
Though his stomach was knotted and his pulse raced with growing anxiety, Jules Verne made every effort to eat a large evening meal—knowing full well that this might be his last home-cooked food for some time. He’d read stories of the moldy biscuits and rotten meat served on long sea voyages. When his mother remarked on his appetite, Verne claimed that her cooking was especially good (though an hour after leaving the table he could scarcely remember what the main dish had been).
Verne was determined to make good on his promise, for once. He would not back out of this adventure at the last minute. He would share his dark-haired friend’s desperate situation, though he could not compare his own dull life with Nemo’s helpless straits.
Before he went upstairs to his room, he embraced his parents, terrified they would notice his maudlin attentions. Fortunately, his father was so focused on the newspaper that he wouldn’t have noticed a placard fastened to Verne’s chest. Sophie, sharp-eyed and attuned to her son’s moods, might have detected something in his manner, but she did not comment on it.
His younger brother Paul mercifully fell asleep. As the boy snored, Verne crept about the room in the moonlight, gathering the possessions he insisted on taking with him: copies of Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Last of the Mohicans, as well as Ivanhoe and The Pirate. Over the past two years, Verne and Nemo had shared those novels, since Jacques Nemo had not been able to afford books.
Verne took a bound, blank journal along with several lead pencils so that he could record his experiences and observations. Someday they might be useful to him when he was a respected chronicler of his own adventures.…
As the hours crawled by, he tossed and turned, eager but also terrified. That afternoon he had marched down to the docks to look at the Coralie, a fine and magnificent ship. The brig had a full crew and a full cargo hold. Captain Grant had been on many extended ocean voyages before. All things considered, Verne had nothing to worry about.
Long after his parents were abed, he crept down the flight of stairs, wearing only his nightshirt. He tiptoed to the window where his father kept the telescope pointed toward the clockface of the monastery. Verne peered into the eyepiece, focused, and waited for the moon to emerge from behind a gauzy cloud so that he could read the hands on the dial.
Verne still had an hour to get dressed and make his way down to L’Homme aux Trois Malices. Stumbling about, tripping on his shoelaces, he dressed without lighting a candle or turning up the gas. Paul continued to sleep with little-boy snores, suspecting nothing. Verne’s heartstrings tugged at him, and he thought again of how much he was leaving behind … but he raised his chin and counted the wonderful things he would experience instead.
Aboard the Coralie he would find a new life, and he couldn’t wait for that adventure to begin.…
Verne tiptoed along the evening-moist streets, carrying his sack of belongings over one shoulder. Wharf rats scuttled away from him into the dank alleys, where he heard women giggling and men grunting. He must have looked like a cutpurse creeping along. He was afraid he would be arrested as a vagrant or malicious prankster.
The Coralie would depart with the outgoing tide and travel some thirty miles down the Loire to Paimboeuf on the seacoast. There, she would take on more crew and exchange some of her cargo before Captain Grant pointed the bowsprit out into the wild Atlantic.
Ahead, L’Homme aux Trois Malices welcomed travelers with a glow of orange light from half-shuttered windows. A droning hum of laughter and music came from inside. Verne looked up at the sign hanging above the inn door, depicting a well-dressed man surrounded by a woman, a monkey, and a parrot. It was like no place his father had ever taken him, too noisy, too smelly.
As he hesitated at the door, Nemo stepped out of the shadows. “I wondered if you would come, Jules.”
“I told you I would.” Verne swallowed a defensive tone. “I promised.”
“I know—but still, I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Nemo said with a smile. “Come on, I’ve talked to the innkeeper. My father used to know him, and as a good luck gesture, he’s buying us each a flagon of Breton ale. I bet you’ve never had any of that in a goblet at your dinner table. Let’s go have a toast.”
Uncertain, Verne followed his friend into the smoky room full of strangers and odd human odors, greasy cooking and sour old drink. The thick rafters were stained with soot. Someone was playing a squeezebox and singing off-key. Others howled and laughed, pounding on tables. Some played cards. A few, dead drunk, snored in their chairs.
Seeing Nemo and his red-headed friend, the innkeeper filled two ceramic tankards from a keg behind the counter. Nemo took them and handed one to his friend. They clanked their flagons together. The Verne family drank only French wine, usually diluted—and the yeasty, hoppy taste weighed on his unsettled stomach.
The innkeeper gave a cheer as the boys slurped the foam. “To two lads about to make their fortunes off at sea.” The innkeeper drank from his own mug, then patted his belly. A few others at the bar raised their tankards in the toast, but didn’t seem to realize—or care—what they were celebrating. Around them, the noise continued unabated.
“I thought our going was supposed to be a secret.” Verne hunched away from the myriad bloodshot stares directed at him. He didn’t dare let his father find out.
“The ship sails at dawn,” Nemo said. “By the time word can get to your house and wake anybody up, it’ll be too late.”
Verne took a reflexive swallow of the bitter beer and felt its effects rush to his head. For years, the two of them had concocted schemes to explore the world and go to the exotic places they read about in books and in illustrated Parisian magazines. But now it was real—too real and too soon.
Panic began to rise within Verne, and he wanted to kick himself. Nemo rested a hand on his friend’s forearm. “I told you, you don’t have to go.”
“I do. Yes, I have to go.” Verne repeated it as if to reassure himself. “I have to go … just in case you need rescuing.”
“All right then.” Nemo drained his flagon and stood up. He knew that his red-haired friend would never finish his ale. “Now we have to go, Jules. We have an appointment to say goodbye to Caroline.”