Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - (Illustrated Edition of World Children's Literature)

Author: Jules Verne (France)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: A Flying Reef – In 1886, something strange happened, an unexplained phenomenon that may still be vividly remembered. Regardless of the rumors that caused the port residents to be on edge and the inland public to be astonished, even those who made a living at sea were greatly shaken. The merchants involved in large-scale trade, ship owners, captains, fishermen, naval officers from various countries, and the governments of the two continents, Europe and America, all showed great concern about this matter. Because, for some time, many ships had encountered a "giant creature" at sea – a long, boat-shaped object that sometimes glowed with phosphorescence. Compared to whales, this "giant creature" was much larger and moved much faster. The accounts of this enormous object's appearance in the logbooks of different ships were remarkably consistent: the thing, or the animal, had the same shape, moved with the same incredible speed, and possessed the same astonishingly powerful momentum, as if it were born with extraordinary vitality. If this were a type of whale, its size would be much larger than any whale that had been classified scientifically up to that point. Whether it was Cuvier, Lacepede, Mr. Demerli, or Mr. Catralla, none of them would acknowledge the existence of this giant creature – they only acknowledged what they had seen, that is, what they considered to have been examined by their scholarly eyes. A conservative estimate placed its length at two hundred feet; an exaggerated estimate claimed it was one mile wide and three miles long. Setting aside both estimates, taking the middle ground from multiple observations, we can also be certain that if this creature truly existed, its size would be much larger than any fisherman had ever seen before – assuming, of course, that this creature actually exists. However, the existence of this creature cannot be denied; based on people's tendency to believe in the miraculous, we can understand the kind of sensation such an unbelievable phenomenon would cause worldwide. As for dismissing this matter as nonsense, such behavior is unworthy of note. In fact, on July 20, 1866, the steamship "Governor Higginson," operated by the Calcutta-Benark Steamship Company, encountered this moving giant five miles off the east coast of Australia. At first, Captain Back thought he had hit an unfamiliar reef and even planned to measure its exact location; but at that moment, two water columns, each one hundred fifty feet high, from the strange object and shot into the sky with a roar. So, unless this reef had intermittent springs, then the "Governor Higginson" had indeed encountered some kind of marine mammal. It was an animal unknown to science at that time, capable of spraying water columns mixed with air and steam through its nostrils. On the same year, July 23, the steamship "Christopher Columbus," operated by the West India-Pacific Steamship Company, also saw something similar in the Pacific. This means that this extraordinary whale-like creature could move at an incredible speed from one place to another, because the "Governor Higginson" and the "Christopher Columbus" saw it at two different locations, seven hundred leagues apart, with only three days separating the sightings.