Nautilus (Verne) assembled by Nemo's men on a desert island. "Nautilus" most likely returned to this island and later helped castaways in the novel "The Mysterious Island". After Nemo dies on board, the volcanic island erupts, entombing the Captain and "Nautilus" for eternity. Beside her original appearance in "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" and "The Mysterious Island", "Nautilus" and Captain Nemo have appeared in numerous other works. Submarines feature in some other of Verne's works. In the 1896 novel "Facing the Flag", the pirate Ker Karraje uses an unnamed submarine that acts both as a tug to his schooner "Ebba" and
Jules Verne George Sand and Théophile Gautier among his earliest admirers. Several notable contemporary figures, from the geographer Vivien de Saint-Martin to the critic Jules Claretie, spoke highly of Verne and his works in critical and biographical notes. However, Verne's growing popularity among readers and playgoers (due especially to the highly successful stage version of "Around the World in Eighty Days") led to a gradual change in his literary reputation. As the novels and stage productions continued to sell, many contemporary critics felt that Verne's status as a commercially popular author meant he could only be seen as a mere genre-based storyteller,