The first time Nemo finds Hamlet in the saloon, he commands him to leave and has him forcibly removed when he refuses. "I gave you the run of the ship, sir, but with the condition that you reture to your room when I ordered it. I order it now." Then he sits down at the organ and plays a fugue from memory.
Later he visits Hamlet in his room to invite him to view a shipwreck through the saloon's glass panels. Hamlet is sitting on the bed playing a keyboard invisible to Nemo, a piece seemingly of great complexity and one to which he does not recognize the fingerings. He would like to know what it is.
In the saloon, it is as if there is no view at all: Hamlet taps out his piece on the glass while Nemo talks about the wreck. "It is one of your Danish ships, sir, sunk in battle with the French." Hamlet ignores him; Nemo busies himself constructing a tune around the rhythm tapped on the window. So absorbed is he with melody on harmony that it is a while before he notices that the tapping has stopped. A multitude of small fish swims in and around the wreck; Hamlet looks at them with his forehead on the glass, then turns to Nemo, hollow-eyed. "They watch me. They watch me. I am in a cage for their amusement. Where's..." Nemo closes the panels.
Hamlet moves sideways, like a crab, to the organ, sits down, and starts to play. He was taught the harpsichord as a child in Denmark; the piece is strange, dissonant, not one he learned then.
Nemo sits next to him on the narrow bench and plays the music he wove around the taps on the glass. They fit together perfectly.
