Here is an abridged excerpt from “Raise the Nautilus”, a story set during the First World War about an attempt by the Royal Navy to salvage Captain Nemo’s Nautilus and retrieve an artefact that could turn the tide of the conflict. The story was first published in 20,000 Leagues Remembered edited by Steven R. Southard and Kelly A. Harmon and will be reprinted in the upcoming anthology Extraordinary Visions: Stories Inspired by Jules Verne from the North American Jules Verne Society. This will be the first collection of short fiction ever sponsored by the Society. 

South Pacific Ocean
1,700 nautical miles east-northeast of New Zealand
June 1916

Commander Thomas Jennings and the key divisional officers of HMS Euryalus had been briefed by Donald McCabe from the Meta Section of the Directorate of Military Intelligence on the Nautilus file just before their departure from Auckland. Of particular interest to the War Office was a description in the Smith-Harding report, corroborated by earlier accounts from Aronnax, of “a destructive weapon, lightning-like in its effects” that could stun or kill men. His Majesty’s Government was still telling the public that the Great War was going well, but military men like Jennings knew the terrible truth. Such a weapon, in the hands of the British, could break the stalemate on the Western Front.

“The report on the condition of the Nautilus is excellent news,” said Lieutenant-Commander Eugene Seagram. “It means we can proceed with the original salvage plan with little modification.” He spread across the table a schematic diagram of the submarine, copied from a trove of documents seized five years ago during a joint raid by the Directorate of Military Intelligence and the British Army on the ancestral palace of the late Prince Dakkar in the Bundelkhand region of India.

There was one other aspect of the Smith-Harding report that had made an impression on Commander Jennings — the fanatical hatred of Prince Dakkar, later known as Captain Nemo, for the British Empire. How ironic it would be if Nemo’s invention ended up saving it.