“Very well! Suppose this weapon to be six times stronger, and the animal ten times more powerful, launch it at the rate of twenty miles an hour, and you obtain a shock 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 halberd, but with a real spur, as the armored frigates, or the ‘rams’ of war, whose massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time. Thus may this inexplicable 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 supernatural beings. And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the only medium through which these giants (against which terrestrial animals, such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be produced or developed.
The industrial and commercial papers treated the question chiefly from this point of view. The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, the Lloyds’ List, the Packet-Boat and the Maritime and Colonial Review, all papers devoted to insurance companies which threatened to raise their rates of premium, were unanimous on this point. Public opinion had been pronounced. The United States was the first in the field; and in New York they made preparations for an expedition destined to pursue this narwhal. A frigate of great speed, the Abraham Lincoln, was put in commission, as soon as possible. The arsenals were opened to Commander Farragut,8 who hastened the arming of his frigate; but, as it always happens, the moment it was decided to pursue the monster, the monster did not appear. For two months no one heard it spoken of. No ship met with it. It seemed as if this unicorn knew of the plots weaving around it. It had been so much talked of, even through the Atlantic cable, that jesters pretended that this slender fly had stopped a telegram on its passage, and was making the most of it.
So when the frigate had been armed for a long campaign, and provided with formidable fishing apparatus, no one could tell what course to pursue. Impatience grew apace, when, on the 2d of June, they learned that a steamer of the line of San Francisco, from California to Shanghai, had seen the animal three weeks before in the North Pacific Ocean. The excitement caused by this news was extreme. The ship was revictualed and well stocked with coal.
Three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left Brooklyn pier, I received a letter worded as follows:
To M. ARONNAX, PROFESSOR IN THE MUSEUM OF PARIS,
FIFTH AVENUE HOTEL, NEW YORK.
SIR:
If you will consent to join the Abraham Lincoln in this expedition, the government of the United States will with pleasure see France represented in the enterprise. Commander Farragut has a cabin at your disposal.
VERY CORDIALLY YOURS,
J. B. HOBSON
SECRETARY OF MARINE
Chapter III
I Form My Resolution
THREE SECONDS BEFORE THE arrival of J. B. Hobson’s letter, I no more thought of pursuing the unicorn than of attempting the passage of the North Sea.9 Three seconds after reading the letter of the Honorable Secretary of Marine, I felt that my true vocation, the sole end of my life, was to chase this disturbing monster, and purge it from the world.
But I had just returned from a fatiguing journey, weary, and longing for repose. I aspired to nothing more than again seeing my country, my friends, my little lodging by the Jardin des Plantes, my dear and precious collections. But nothing could keep me back! I forgot all—fatigue, friends, and collections—and accepted without hesitation the offer of the American government.
“Besides,” thought I, “all roads lead back to Europe; and the unicorn may be amiable enough to hurry me toward the coast of France. This worthy animal may allow itself to be caught in the seas of Europe (for my particular benefit), and I will not bring back less than half a yard of his ivory halberd to the Museum of Natural History.” But in the meanwhile I must seek this narwhal in the North Pacific Ocean, which, to return to France, was taking the road to the antipodes.
“Conseil,” I called in an impatient voice.
Conseil was my servant, a true, devoted Flemish boy, who had accompanied me in all my travels. I liked him, and he returned the liking well. He was phlegmatic by nature, regular from principle, zealous from habit, evincing little disturbance at the different surprises of life, very quick with his hands, and apt at any service required of him, and, despite his name, never giving advice—even when asked for it.
Conseil had followed me for the last ten years wherever science led. Never once did he complain of the length or fatigue of a journey, never make an objection to pack his portmanteau for whatever country it might be, or however far away, whether China or Congo. Besides all this, he had good health, which defied all sickness, and solid muscles, but no nerves; good morals are understood. This boy was thirty years old, and his age to that of his master as fifteen to twenty. May I be excused for saying that I was forty years old?
But Conseil had one fault—he was ceremonious to a degree, and would never speak to me but in the third person, which was sometimes provoking.
“Conseil,” said I again, beginning with feverish hands to make preparations for my departure.
Certainly, I was sure of this devoted boy. As a rule, I never asked him if it were convenient for him or not to follow me in my travels; but this time the expedition in question might be prolonged, and the enterprise might be hazardous in pursuit of an animal capable of sinking a frigate as easily as a nutshell. Here there was matter for reflection even to the most impassive man in the world. What would Conseil say?
“Conseil,” I called a third time.
Conseil appeared.
“Did you call, sir?” said he, entering.
“Yes, my boy, make preparations for me and yourself too. We leave in two hours.”
“As you please, sir,” replied Conseil quietly.
“Not an instant to lose; lock in my trunk all traveling utensils, coats, shirts, and stockings—without counting—as many as you can, and make haste.”
“And your collections, sir?” observed Conseil.
“We will think of them by and by.”
“What! the archiotherium, the hyracotherium, the oreodons, the cheropotamus,l and the other skins?”
“They will keep them at the hotel.”
“And your live Babiroussa,m sir?”
“They will feed it during our absence; besides, I will give orders to forward our menagerie to France.”
“We are not returning to Paris, then?” said Conseil.
“Oh! Certainly,” I answered evasively, “by making a curve.”
“Will the curve please you, sir?”
“Oh! It will be nothing, not quite so direct a road, that is all. We take our passage in the Abraham Lincoln.”
“As you think proper, sir,” coolly replied Conseil.
“You see, my friend, it has to do with the monster—the famous narwhal. We are going to purge it from the seas. The author of a work in quarto, in two volumes, on the ‘Mysteries of the Great Submarine Grounds’ cannot forbear embarking with Commander Farragut. A glorious mission, but a dangerous one! We cannot tell where we may go; these animals can be very capricious. But we will go whether or no; we have got a captain who is pretty wide awake.”
I opened a credit account for Babiroussa, and, Conseil following, I jumped into a cab. Our luggage was transported to the deck of the frigate immediately. I hastened on board and asked for Commander Farragut. One of the sailors conducted me to the poop,n wh
ere I found myself in the presence of a good-looking officer, who held out his hand to me.
“Monsieur Pierre Aronnax?” said he.
“Himself,” replied I. “Commander Farragut?”
“You are welcome, professor; your cabin is ready for you.”
I bowed, and desired to be conducted to the cabin destined for me.
The Abraham Lincoln had been well chosen and equipped for her new destination. She was a frigate of great speed, fitted with high-pressure engines which admitted a pressure of seven atmospheres. Under this the Abraham Lincoln attained the mean speed of nearly eighteen knots and a third an hour—a considerable speed, but, nevertheless, insufficient to grapple with this gigantic cetacean.
The interior arrangements of the frigate corresponded to its nautical qualities. I was well satisfied with my cabin, which was in the after-part, opening upon the gun room.
“We shall be well off here,” said I to Conseil.
“As well, by your honor’s leave, as a hermit crab in the shell of a whelk,” said Conseil.
I left Conseil to stow our trunks conveniently away, and remounted the poop in order to survey the preparations for departure.
At that moment Commander Farragut was ordering the last moorings to be cast loose which held the Abraham Lincoln to the pier of Brooklyn. So in a quarter of an hour, perhaps less, the frigate would have sailed without me. I should have missed this extraordinary, supernatural, and incredible expedition, the recital of which may well meet with some skepticism.
But Commander Farragut would not lose a day nor an hour in scouring the seas in which the animal had been sighted. He sent for the engineer.
“Is the steam full on?” asked he.
“Yes, sir,” replied the engineer.
“Go ahead,” cried Commander Farragut.
The quayo of Brooklyn, and all that part of New York bordering on the East River, was crowded with spectators. Three cheers burst successively from five hundred thousand throats; thousands of handkerchiefs were waved above the heads of the compact mass, saluting the Abraham Lincoln, until she reached the waters of the Hudson, at the point of that elongated peninsula which forms the town of New York. Then the frigate, following the coast of New Jersey along the right bank of the beautiful river, covered with villas, passed between the forts, which saluted her with their heaviest guns. The Abraham Lincoln answered by hoisting the American colors three times, whose thirty-nine stars10 shone resplendent from the mizzen-peak;p then modifying its speed to take the narrow channel marked by buoys placed in the inner bay formed by Sandy Hook Point, it coasted the long sandy beach, where some thousands of spectators gave it one final cheer. The escort of boats and tenders still followed the frigate, and did not leave her until they came abreast of the light-ship whose two lights marked the entrance of New York Channel.
Six bells struck, the pilot got into his boat, and rejoined the little schooner which was waiting under our lee, the fires were made up, the screw beat the waves more rapidly, the frigate skirted the low yellow coast of Long Island; and at eight bells, after having lost sight in the northwest of the lights of Fire Island, she ran at full steam on to the dark waters of the Atlantic.
Chapter IV
Ned Land
CAPTAIN FARRAGUT WAS A good seaman, worthy of the frigate he commanded. His vessel and he were one. He was the soul of it. On the question of the cetacean there was no doubt in his mind, and he would not allow the existence of the animal to be disputed on board. He believed in it as certain good women believe in the leviathanq—by faith, not by reason. The monster did exist, and he had sworn to rid the seas of it. He was a kind of Knight of Rhodes, a second Dieudonné de Gozon, going to meet the serpent which desolated the island. Either Captain Farragut would kill the narwhal, or the narwhal would kill the captain. There was no third course.
The officers on board shared the opinion of their chief. They were ever chatting, discussing, and calculating the various chances of a meeting, watching narrowly the vast surface of the ocean. More than one took up his quarters voluntarily in the cross-trees, who would have cursed such a berth under any other circumstances. As long as the sun described its daily course, the rigging was crowded with sailors, whose feet were burned to such an extent by the heat of the deck as to render it unbearable; still the Abraham Lincoln had not yet breasted the suspected waters of the Pacific. As to the ship’s company, they desired nothing better than to meet the unicorn, to harpoon it, hoist it on board, and dispatch it. They watched the sea with eager attention.
Besides, Captain Farragut had spoken of a certain sum of two thousand dollars, set apart for whoever should first sight the monster, were he cabin-boy, common seaman, or officer.
I leave you to judge how eyes were used on board the Abraham Lincoln.
For my own part, I was not behind the others, and left to no one my share of daily observations. The frigate might have been called the Argus, for a hundred reasons.11 Only one among us, Conseil, seemed to protest by his indifference against the question which so interested us all, and seemed to be out of keeping with the general enthusiasm on board.
I have said that Captain Farragut had carefully provided his ship with every apparatus for catching the gigantic cetacean. No whaler had ever been better armed. We possessed every known engine, from the harpoon thrown by the hand to the barbed arrows of the blunderbuss, and the explosive balls of the duck-gun. On the forecastle lay the perfection of a breech-loading gun, very thick at the breech, and very narrow in the bore, the model of which had been in the Exhibition of 1867. This precious weapon of American origin could throw with ease a conical projectile of nine pounds to a mean distance of ten miles.
Thus the Abraham Lincoln wanted for no means of destruction; and, what was better still, she had on board Ned Land, the prince of harpooners.
Ned Land was a Canadian, with an uncommon quickness of hand, and who knew no equal in his dangerous occupation. Skill, coolness, audacity, and cunning he possessed in a superior degree, and it must be a cunning whale or a singularly “cute” cachalotr to escape the stroke of his harpoon.
Ned Land was about forty years of age; he was a tall man (more than six feet high), strongly built, grave and taciturn, occasionally violent, and very passionate when contradicted. His person attracted attention, but above all the boldness of his look, which gave a singular expression to his face.
Who calls himself Canadian calls himself French; and little communicative as Ned Land was, I must admit that he took a certain liking for me. My nationality drew him to me, no doubt. It was an opportunity for him to talk, and for me to hear, that old language of Rabelais, which is still in use in some Canadian provinces.12 The harpooner’s family was originally from Quebec, and was already a tribe of hardy fishermen when this town belonged to France.
Little by little, Ned Land acquired a taste for chatting, and I loved to hear the recital of his adventures in the polar seas. He related his fishing, and his combats, with natural poetry of expression; his recital took the form of an epic poem, and I seemed to be listening to a Canadian Homer singing the Iliad of the regions of the North.
I am portraying this hardy companion as I really knew him. We are old friends now, united in that unchangeable friendship which is born and cemented amid extreme dangers. Ah, brave Ned! I ask no more than to live a hundred years longer, that I may have more time to dwell the longer on your memory.
Now, what was Ned Land’s opinion upon the question of the marine monster? I must admit that he did not believe in the unicorn, and was the only one on board who did not share that universal conviction. He even avoided the subject, which I one day thought it my duty to press upon him. One magnificent evening, the 25th of June—that is to say, three weeks after our departure—the frigate was abreast of Cape Blanc, thirty miles to leewards of the coast of Patagonia. We had crossed the Tropic of Capricorn, and the Straits of Magellan opened less than seven miles to the south. Before eight days were over, the Abraham Lincoln would be plow
ing the waters of the Pacific.
Seated on the poop, Ned Land and I were chatting of one thing and another as we looked at this mysterious sea, whose great depths had up to this time been inaccessible to the eye of man. I naturally led up the conversation to the giant unicorn, and examined the various chances of success or failure of the expedition. But seeing that Ned Land let me speak without saying too much himself, I pressed him more closely.
“Well, Ned,” said I, “is it possible that you are not convinced of the existence of this cetacean that we are following? Have you any particular reason for being so incredulous?”
The harpooner looked at me fixedly for some moments before answering, struck his broad forehead with his hand (a habit of his), as if to collect himself, and said at last, “Perhaps I have, Mr. Aronnax.”
“But, Ned, you, a whaler by profession, familiarized with all the great marine mammalia—you, whose imagination might easily accept the hypothesis of enormous cetaceans—you ought to be the last to doubt under such circumstances!”
“That is just what deceives you, professor,” replied Ned. “That the vulgar should believe in extraordinary comets traversing space, and in the existence of antediluvian monsters in the heart of the globe, may well be; but neither astronomers nor geologists believe in such chimeras.t As a whaler, I have followed many a cetacean, harpooned a great number, and killed several; but, however strong or well-armed they may have been, neither their tails nor their weapons would have been able even to scratch the iron plates of a steamer.”