to have devoted considerable effort to scooping up the treasure from the sunken ships in the Bay of Vigo. About a million dollars in gold (pp. 300-01) he sent ashore in the pinnace after his intermediary, one Nicholas Pesca (an amphibious individual who appears to have devoted most of his time to swimming from one island of the Cyclades to another), had, during an evening dip, swum out to the Nautilus (p. 299). The interpretation which Captain Nemo skillfully plants in the professor’s mind (pp. 326-27) is that he, as a friend to all oppressed groups, has devoted his wealth to the Cretans, who at this time were in revolt against Turkish rule. The facts are that he is in the habit of sending part of his takings ashore and that he does have certain connections with civilization which might supply him with data concerning shipping and cargo schedules.
Now, following Watson’s method (since we dare not arrogate to ourselves the techniques of the Master), let us see what conclusions we can come to concerning the puzzling character of the man Nemo:
1. He had a wide educational background-especially in biology, music, sculpture, painting, and history.
2. He must have been a genius of breathtaking stature in the fields of mathematics, physics, and theoretical engineering to have designed such a submersible as the Nautilus.
3. Yet, strange to say, although Nemo surely had a reasonable acquaintance with the handling of ships by the time Professor Aronnax met him, we cannot be quite so certain that his practical maritime experience is very extensive. There seem to be curious lapses here. As a sailor the worthy captain is constantly-and accidentally- bumping into things: three passenger ships (not to be confused with the deliberate rammings), one iceberg, the Maelstrom, and the island of Gilboa. Furthermore, wonderful though the design of the vessel is, it has features which an experienced marine engineer would hardly incorporate into its design. For example, quite unlike almost all large vessels of the last thousand years or more-submarine or surface-it has no cutwater unless the very slight elevation of the deck provided a most inadequate one, for the bow is completely conical as it tapers to a sharply pointed spur. Since the deck elevation is only about a yard above water level, this means that in anything but a dead calm at any speed above the barest crawl tons of water would be constantly deluging the pilot’s cage whenever the Nautilus traveled on the surface. Walking on deck when the vessel was under way must have been a singularly damp-not to say hazardous-procedure. Indeed, the design of the Nautilus is amazing in its total subordination of the everyday needs of navigation to sheer military utility. It is an armored ram, but such a ram as could never be found in any classical trireme, Venetian war gallery, or nineteenth-century ram. It is a cigar shaped cylinder with pointed ends, one surmounted with a spur, retractable pilot and lantern cages, and collapsible railing- streamlined, in fact, so that the entire submarine may pass completely in needlelike fashion through a hostile vessel. So extreme a design is hardly necessary merely to sink a ship, and it reveals an appalling savagery of purpose in the designer which ill consorts with a bitter and disillusioned yet golden-hearted friend to the oppressed.
4. He is clearly a man of commanding and domineering personality, a man who rigidly draws the caste line. This combination of an arrogant personality and a marked distinction between groups is of course to be observed in many walks of life, but it is particularly noticeable in those who follow two professions: officers in military organizations and teachers. Nemo, however, repeatedly shows an extreme aversion to the human race in general, a quality not exceptionally common in military men, but one which is frequently to be found in members of the pedagogical profession after several years spent in the refreshing experience of purveying sweetness and light to large quantities of Youth.
5. Finally, the captain is definitely a man of somewhat dubious ethics. No matter how romantic a light is cast over his activities, he is guilty of destruction of shipping, murder, and possibly theft. To put it bluntly, he is simply a pirate, a pirate who has turned to financial advantage his extraordinary scientific skill and who maintains on land perhaps a small but necessarily a widely distributed network of secret agents, who at prearranged meetings provide him with essential information concerning the shipment of valuable cargoes.
On the basis of these conclusions I think that we can now advance the hypothesis which has already occurred to the reader: It is not likely that the portrait of Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is a portrayal of a sinister figure well known to us-Professor James Moriarty? Let us examine some of the resemblances-or apparent lack of resemblances:
(a) Physical appearance: At first glance Nemo and Moriarty seem to have little in common save their high foreheads and stature, but consideration of their respective ages will modify this assumption. When first encountered in 1867 Captain Nemo is described as between thirty-five and fifty years of age, but when one realizes his strength, endurance, and agility, it is evident that between thirty-five and forty would be a much more accurate estimate. There seem to be no differences that the passage of twenty-five years will not account for. (In passing we may note that the Nemo-Moriarty identification here solves a problem which must have puzzled many Sherlockians: no matter how enraged Moriarty was, how willing to die, and how tricky the footing at Reichenbach may have been, he never would have hoped that a stooped, sedentary, elderly ex-mathematics professor could succeed, without even employing the element of surprise, in a physical assault upon a thirty-eight year old, six-foot athlete well known for his boxing, wrestling, and single-stick ability. Those of us in the teaching profession have often eyed the athletes infesting the rear row with thoughts of homicide drifting through our minds; yet we would only dream of a bare handed assault. If Moriarty were Nemo, though, the picture changes: a former athlete at the age of sixty or so may still possess great physical strength, and the consciousness of his youthful prowess and experience in violent conflict gives him the mental attitude which in a moment of desperation would make such an attack possible.
Captain Nemo could hardly have been born later than 1831; Mr. Edgar Smith has speculated that Moriarty was born about 1846, but so late a date seems improbable. It would make Moriarty about forty-six years old at the time of his death; yet the descriptions of his physical appearance in the “Final Problem” (pp. 544-45) and the Valley of Fear (p. 910) are more appropriate to a man in the sixties or even in the seventies than to a man in the forties. If we placed his birth about 1830 he would be around sixty-two at the time of his death, an age which agrees with the physical descriptions and with the approximate birth-date of Nemo.
(b) Educational level: Mr. Smith indicates that Moriarty came from a cultured background, as Nemo did. Both men were fond of art. Nemo had thirty old masters and Moriarty kept, at considerable risk, a very expensive Greuze in his study (Valley of Fear, pp. 910-11).
(c) Manner: Moriarty was a teacher, a member of a family with some military tradition (his brother, we know, was a colonel), and of so forceful and dominant a personality that the unhappy Porlock wobbled in his dishonest boots at a mere glance from the Napoleon of Crime. He obviously had little devotion to humanity in general. All are traits we have noted in Nemo.
(d) Biographical data: We know surprisingly little about Moriarty’s life, Certainly it would have been possible for him to drop out of sight for three or four years during his thirties without Holmes’ taking any particular notice of it. So brilliant a criminal could have buried all tracks so effectively that even the master could not uncover the Nemo episode after a quarter of a century.
(e) Mathematical and scientific genius: This has been amply demonstrated for both men.
(f) Another curious point of resemblance is to be found in Nemo’s interest in scientific men. Clearly the only sensible thing for a pirate captain to do when he found Aronnax, Land, and the valet squatting on top of the Nautilus was to attach a few heavy weights and drop them overboard. A man who practiced wholesale murder could have had no moral scruples about so trifling a gesture, but Nemo, a proficient amateur biologist, had discovered that one of these men was an internationally famous zoologist whose works were in his own library-and by this time the captain, whose only associates were a crew of hardbitten buccaneers, must have been desperately lonely for intellectual companionship. Consequently he saved Aronnax. (Incidentally, observe the smug satisfaction with which Nemo-Moriarty impresses his superiority upon a professional colleague such as M. Aronnax. There can be no doubt that this man was a college teacher.)
(g) A young mathematical genius of criminal tendencies is very likely to start his illegal career by engaging in some activity in which he can exploit his special talents. Only later, when Moriarty had the time, the capital, and the foundation provided by his information service for the Nautilus, would he develop a vast organization of pickpockets, burglars, thugs, and gunmen. Members of these particular criminal strata are not found on the campus in very great numbers.
It is, therefore, difficult indeed for the writer to resist the identification of Professor Moriarty and Captain Nemo and to refrain from suggesting that here we have the first major step up in a spectacular criminal career whose final step down was a long one to the bottom of Reichenbach Falls.
