Reading 20 000 leagues under the sea - Chapter 2

Transcript

This is Anna from annawinters.com. I hope you're enjoying some. 20,000 leaks on the Odyssey.

Chapter 2. Pro and Con. At the period when these events took place, I had just returned from a scientific research in the disagreeable territory of Nebraska, in the United States.

In virtue of my office as assistant professor in the Museum of Natural History in Paris, the French government had attached me to that expedition. After six months in Nebraska, I arrived in New York towards the end of March, laden with a precious collection. My departure for France was fixed for the first days in May.

Meanwhile, I was occupying myself in classifying my mineralogical, botanical and zoological riches when the accident happened to the Scotia. I was perfectly up in the subject which was the question of the day. How could I be otherwise? I had read and re-read all the American and European papers without being any nearer a conclusion.

This mystery puzzled me. Under the impossibility of forming an opinion, I jumped from one extreme to the other. That there really was something could not be doubted, and the incredulous were invited to put their finger on the wound of the Scotia.

On my arrival at New York, the question was at its height. The theory of the floating island in the unapproachable sand bank, supported by minds little competent to form a judgment, was abandoned. And, indeed, unless this soul had a machine in its stomach, how could it change its position with such astonishing rapidity?

From the same cause, the idea of a floating hull of an enormous wreck was given up. There remained, then, only two possible solutions of the question, which created two distinct parties. On one side, those who were for a monster of colossal strength.

On the other, those who were for a submarine vessel of enormous motive power. But this last theory, plausible as it was, could not stand against inquiries made in both worlds. That a private gentleman should have such a machine at his command was not likely.

Where, when, and how was it built? And how could its construction have been kept secret? Certainly a government might possess such a destructive machine.

And in these disastrous times, when the ingenuity of man has multiplied to the power of weapons of war, it was possible that, without the knowledge of others, the state might try to work such a formidable engine. But the idea of a war machine fell before the declaration of governments. As public interest was in question and transatlantic communications suffered, the veracity could not be doubted.

But how admit that the construction of this submarine boat had escaped the public eye? For a private gentleman to keep the secret under such circumstances would be very difficult, and for a state whose every act is persistently watched by powerful rivals, certainly impossible. Upon my arrival in New York, several persons did me the honor of consulting me on the phenomenon in question.

I had published in France a work in quarter, in two volumes, entitled Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds. This book, highly approved of in the learned world, gained for me a special reputation in this rather obscure branch of natural history. My advice was asked.

As long as I could deny the reality of the fact, I confined myself to a decided negative. But soon, finding myself driven into a corner, I was obliged to explain myself point by point. I discussed the question in all its forms, politically and scientifically, and I give here an extract from a carefully studied article which I published in the number of the 30th of April.

It ran as follows. After examining one by one the different theories, rejecting all other suggestions, it becomes necessary to admit the existence of a marine animal of enormous power. The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us.

Something cannot reach them. What passes in those remote depths? What beings live, or can live, 12 or 15 miles beneath the surface of the waters? What is the organization of these animals we can scarily conjecture? However, the solution of the problem submitted to me may modify the form of the dilemma.

Either we do know all the varieties of beings which people or planet, or we do not. If we do not know them all, if nature has still secrets in the deeps for us, nothing is more comfortable to reason than to admit the existence of fishes, or cetaceans, or other kinds, or even new species, of an organization formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings, in which an accident of some sort has brought us at long intervals to the upper level of the ocean. If, on the contrary, we do know all living kinds, we must necessarily seek for the animal in question amongst those marine beings already classed, and, in that case, I should be disposed to admit the existence of a gigantic narwhal.

The common narwhal, or unicorn of the sea, often attains a length of 60 feet. Increase its size fivefold or tenfold, give its strength proportionate to its size, lengthen its destructive weapons, and you obtain the animal required. It will have the proportions determined by the officers of the Shannon, the instrument required by the perforation of the Scotia, and the power necessary to pierce the hull of the steamer.

Indeed, the narwhal is armed with a sort of ivory sword, a hulled bird, according to the expression of certain naturalists. The principled tusk has the hardness of steel. Some of these tusks have been found buried in the bodies of ways which the unicorn always attacks with success.

Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces a barrel. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length and 15 inches in diameter at the base. Very well.

Suppose this weapon, to be six times stronger and the animal ten times more powerful, launches at the rate of 20 miles an hour, and you obtain a shark capable of producing the catastrophe required. Until further information, therefore, I shall maintain it to be a sea unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a hulled bird, but with a real spirit, as the armoured frigates are the realms of war whose massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time. Thus may this pausing phenomenon be explained, unless there be something over and above all that one has ever conjectured, seen, perceived or experienced, which is just within the bounds of possibility.

These last words were cowardly on my part, but up to a certain point, I wished to shelter my dignity as professor and not give too much cause for laughter to the Americans who laugh well when they do laugh. I reserved for myself a way of escape. In effect, however, I admitted the existence of the monster.

My article was warmly discussed, which procured it a high reputation. It rallied round it a certain number of partisans. The solution it proposed gave at least full liberty to the imagination.

The human mind delights in grand conceptions of natural beings, and the sea is precisely the best vehicle, the only medium through which these giants, against which terrestrial animals such as elephants or rhinoceros or as nothing, can be produced or developed. The industrial and commercial papers treated the question of the human mind.