人們一定還記得1866年海上發生的一件離奇的、神秘的、無法解釋的怪事。且不說當時哄動沿海居民和世界的各種傳聞，這裏衹說一般航海人員特別激動的心情。歐美的進出口商人、船長和船主、各國的海軍官佐以及這兩大洲的各國政府都非常註意這件事。
這事大體是這樣：不久以前，好些大船在海上碰見了一一個“龐然大物”，一個很長的物體，形狀很像紡錘，有時發出磷光，它的體積比鯨魚大得多，行動起來也比鯨魚快得多。關於這個東西的出現，許多航海日志所記下的事實（如這個東西或這個生物的形狀，在它運動時的難以估計的速度，它轉移的驚人力量，它那種像是夭生的特殊本領等等），大致是相同的。如果這東西是鯨魚類動物，那麽它的體積：是大大超過了生物學家曾經加以分類的鯨魚。居維埃①、。
·拉色別德①、杜梅裏②、卡特法日③，這些生物學家一一除非看見過，也就是說，除非這些科學家本人的眼睛看見過——是不承認有這樣一種怪物存在的。
把多次觀察的結果折中一下來看———方面丟開那些過低的估計，即這個東西衹有二百英尺長，同時也不接受過於誇張的言論，即它有一英裏。寬三英裏長，——我們可以肯定他說，這個奇怪的生物，如果真是存在的話，它的體積是大大超過魚類學家所承認的體積的。這東西既然存在，而事實本身又是不可否認的，那麽，由於人類好奇的心理，我們就不難理解這個怪物的出現會在全世界引起怎樣的騷動。至於說這是荒唐無稽之談，那是决不會有人同意的。
因為，1866年7月20日，加爾各答一布納希汽船公司的喜金孫總督號，在澳大利亞海岸東邊五英裏，碰見了這個遊動的巨大物體。巴剋船長起初還以為這是沒有人知道的、暗礁，他正要測定它的位置的時候，突然這個不可解釋的物體噴出兩道水柱，嘩的一聲射到空中一百五十英尺高。這麽說，除非這座暗礁上邊有間歇噴泉，不然的話，喜金孫總督號面前的東西，就是還沒有人知道的一種海中哺乳類動物，它還從鼻孔中噴出有氣泡的水柱呢。
同年7月23日，西印度-太平洋汽船公司的剋利斯托巴爾哥郎號，在太平洋上也碰到這樣的事。喜金孫總督號看見這怪物以後三天，剋利斯托巴爾哥郎號在相距七百裏的地方也看見了它，由此可知，這個奇特的鯨魚類動物能以掠人的速度從這一處轉移到另一處。
十五天以後，在離上面說的地點有兩千裏遠的地方，國營輪船公司的海爾維地亞號和皇傢郵船公司的山農號，在美國和歐洲之間的大西洋海面上相遇的時候，在北緯42度15分、西經60度35分的地方，同時看到了這個大怪物。根據兩船同時觀察得到的結果，估計這衹哺乳動物的長度至少有三百五十多英尺（約一百零六米），因為山農號和海爾維地亞號兩船連起來，都還比它短，兩船從頭至尾衹有一百米長。可是，最長的鯨魚，像常常出役於阿留申群島的久闌馬剋島和翁居裏剋島①附近海面的那些鯨魚，也衹不過是五十六米，而比這再長的，從來就沒有過。
接連不斷地傳來的消息，橫渡大西洋的貝雷爾號所做的種種觀察，茵曼輪船公司的越提那號跟這個怪物的一次相碰，法國二級軍艦諾曼第號軍官們所寫的記錄，海軍高級參謀弗茲一詹姆斯在剋利德爵士號上所做的很精密的測算，這一切在當時的確曾經哄動一時。在民族性比較浮躁的國傢裏，大傢都拿這件事作為談笑資料，但在嚴肅和踏實的國傢裏，像英國、美國和德國就不同，它們對這事就非常關心。
在各大城市裏，這怪物變成了傢喻戶曉的事件。咖啡館裏歌唱它，報刊上嘲笑它，舞臺上扮演它。謠言正好有了機會，從這怪物身上捏造出各種各樣的奇聞。在一些發行量不多的報刊上，出現了關於各種離奇的巨大動物的報道，從白鯨、北極海中可怕的“莫比·狄剋”①一直到龐大的“剋拉肯”②——這種怪魚的觸須可以纏住一隻載重五百噸的船而把它拖到海底下去——都應有盡有。有些人甚至不惜引經據典，或者搬出古代的傳說如亞裏士多德③和蒲林尼④的見解（他們承認這類怪物的存在）：或者搬出彭土皮丹主教⑤的挪威童話，保羅·埃紀德的記述，以及哈林頓的報告；這報告是不容懷疑的，他說，1857年，他在嘉斯第蘭號上看見過一種大蛇，那種蛇以前衹在那立憲號到過的海面上⑤才能看見。
於是，在學術團體裏和科學報刊中産生了相信者和懷疑者，這兩派人無休止地爭論着。“怪物問題”激動着人們。
自以為懂科學的新聞記者和一嚮自以為多才的文人開起火來，他們在這次值得紀念的筆戰中花費了不少的墨水！甚至有幾個人還流了兩三滴血，因為有人把針對大海蛇的筆鋒移嚮一些態度傲慢的傢夥身上了。
在六個月當中，爭論繼續着。彼此有理，各執一詞。當時流行的小報都興致勃勃地刊登爭論的文章，它們不是攻擊巴西地理學院、柏林皇傢科學院、不列顛學術聯合會或華盛頓斯密孫學院發表的權威論文，就是駁斥印度群島報、摩亞諾神父的宇宙雜志、皮德曼的消息報裏面的討論和法國及其他各國大報刊的科學新聞。這些多才的作傢故意麯解反對派也常引證的林奈①的一句話：“大自然不製造蠢東西”；懇求大傢不要相信北海的大怪魚、大海蛇、“莫比·狄剋”和瘋狂的海員們臆造出來的其它怪物的存在，不要因此而否定了大自然。最後，某一著名尖刻的諷刺報有一位最受歡迎的編輯先生草草了事地發表一篇文章，處理了這個怪物；他像夷包列提②那樣，在大傢的笑聲中，給這佳物最後一次打擊、把它結果了。於是機智戰勝了科學。
在1867年頭幾個月裏，這個問題好像是人了土，不會再復潔了。但就在這個時候，人們又聽說發生了一些新的事件。現在的問題並不是一個急待解决的科學問題，而是必須認真設法避免的一個危險。問題帶了完全不同的面貌。這個怪物變成了小島、岩石、暗礁，但它是會奔馳的、不可捉摸的、行動莫測的暗礁。
1867年8月5日，蒙特利奧航海公司的摩拉維安號夜間駛到北緯27度30分、西經72度15分的地方，船右舷撞上了一座岩石，可是，任何地圖也沒有記載過這一帶海面上有這座岩石。由於風力的助航和四百匹馬力的推動，船的速度達到每小時十三海裏。毫無疑問，如果不是船身質地優良，特別堅固，摩拉維安號被撞以後，一定要把它從加拿大載來的二百三十六名乘客一齊帶到海底去。
事故發生在早晨五點左右天剛破曉的時候。船上值班的海員們立即跑到船的後部；他們十分細心地觀察海面。
除了有個六百多米寬的大漩渦——好像水面受過猛烈的衝擊——以外，他們什麽也沒有看見，衹把事故發生的地點確切地記了下來。摩拉維安號繼續航行，似乎並沒有受到什麽損傷。·它是撞上了暗礁呢，還是撞上了一隻沉沒的破船？
當時沒有法子知道。後來到船塢檢查了船底，纔發現一部分竜骨折斷了。
這事實本身是十分嚴重的，可是，如果不是過了三個星期後，在相同的情況下又發生了相同的事件，它很可能跟許多其他的事件一樣很快被人忘掉了。接着又發生的那一次撞船的事件，單單由於受害船的國籍和它所屬公司的聲望，就足以引起十分廣泛的反響。
英國著名的船主苟納爾的名字是沒有一個人不知道偽。這位精明的企業傢早在1840年就創辦了一傢郵船公司，開闢了從利物浦到哈利法剋斯①的航綫，當時衹有三艘四百匹馬力、載重一千一百六十二噸的明輪木船。八年以後，公司擴大了，共有四艘六百五十匹馬力、載重一千八百二十噸的船。再過兩年，又添了兩艘馬力和載重量更大的船，1853年，苟納爾公司繼續取得裝運政府郵件的特權，一連添造了阿拉伯號、波斯號、中國號、斯備脫亞號、爪哇號、俄羅斯號，這些都是頭等的快船，而且是最寬大的，除了大東方號外，在海上航行的船沒有能跟它們相比的。到1867年，這傢公司一共有十二艘船～八艘明輪的，四艘暗輪的。我所以要把上面的情形簡單地介紹一下，是要大傢知道這傢海運公司的重要性。它由於經營得法，是全世界都聞名的。任何航海企業，沒有比這公司搞得更精明，經營得更成功的了。二十六年來，苟納爾公司的船在大西洋上航行了兩千次，沒有一次航行不達目的地，沒有一次發生遲誤，從沒有遺失過一封信，損失過一個人或一隻船。，因此，，儘管法國竭力要搶它的生意，但是乘客們都一致願意搭苟納爾公司的船，這點從近年來官方的統計文獻中就可以看出來。瞭解這情形以後，便沒有人奇怪這傢公司的一隻汽船遭遇到意外事件會引起那麽巨大的反響。
1867年4月13日，海很平靜，風又是順風，斯備脫亞號在西經15度12分、北緯45度37分的海面上行駛着。它在一千匹馬力的發動機推動下，速度為每小時十三海裏半。
它的機輪在海中轉動，完全正常。它當時的吃水深度是6米70釐米，排水量是6，685方米。
下午四點十六分，乘客們正在大廳中吃點心的時候，在斯各脫亞號船尾、左舷機輪後面一點，似乎發生了輕微的撞擊。
斯各脫亞號不是撞上了什麽，而是被什麽撞上了。憧它的不是敲擊的器械而是鑽鑿的器械。這次衝撞是十分輕微的，要不是管船艙的人員跑到甲板上來喊：“船要沉了：船要沉了！”也許船上的人誰也不會在意。
旅客們起初十分驚慌，但船長安德生很快就使他們安穩下來。危險並不會立刻就發生。斯各脫亞號由防水板分為七大間，一點也不在乎個把漏洞。
安德生船長立即跑到艙底下去。他查出第五間被海水浸人了，海水浸入十分快，證明漏洞相當大。好在這間裏沒有蒸汽爐，不然的話，爐火就要熄滅了。
安德生船長吩咐馬上停船，並且命令一個潛水員下水檢查船身的損壞情形。一會兒，他知道船底有一個長兩米的大洞。這樣一個裂口是沒法堵住的，斯各脫亞號儘管機輪有一半浸在水裏，但也必須繼續行駛。當時船離剋利亞峽還有三百海裏，等船駛進公司的碼頭，已經誤了三天期，在這三天裏，利物浦的人都為它惶惶不安。
斯各脫亞號被架了起來，工程師們開始檢查。他們眼睛所看見的情形連自己也不能相信。在船身吃水綫下兩米半的地方，露出一個很規則的等邊三角形的缺口。鐵皮上的傷痕十分整齊，、就是鑽孔機也不能鑿得這麽準確，弄成這個裂口的銳利器械一定不是用普通的鋼鐵製的，因為，這傢夥在以驚人的力量嚮前猛撞，鑿穿了四釐米厚的鐵皮以後、還能用一種很難做到的後退動作，使自己脫身逃走。
最近這次事件的經過大致就是這樣。結果這又一次使哄動起來。從這時候起，所有從前原因不明的航海遇難事件，現在都算在這個怪物的賬上了。這衹離奇古怪的動物於是負起了所有船衹沉沒的責任。不幸的是船沉的數目相當大，按照統計年鑒的記載，包括帆船和汽船在內，每年的損失約有三千艘左右，至於因下落不明而斷定失蹤：的，每年的數目也不下兩百艘！
不管有沒有冤枉這怪物，人們都把船衹失蹤的原因算在它身上。由於它的存在，五大洲間的海上交通越來越危險了，大傢都堅决要求不惜任何代價清除海上這條可怕盼鯨魚怪。
Jules Verne (1828-1905) published the French equivalents of these words in 1869, and little has changed since. 126 years later, a Time cover story on deep-sea exploration made much the same admission: "We know more about Mars than we know about the oceans." This reality begins to explain the dark power and otherworldly fascination of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
Born in the French river town of Nantes, Verne had a lifelong passion for the sea. First as a Paris stockbroker, later as a celebrated author and yachtsman, he went on frequent voyages-- to Britain, America, the Mediterranean. But the specific stimulus for this novel was an 1865 fan letter from a fellow writer, Madame George Sand. She praised Verne's two early novels Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), then added: "Soon I hope you'll take us into the ocean depths, your characters traveling in diving equipment perfected by your science and your imagination." Thus inspired, Verne created one of literature's great rebels, a freedom fighter who plunged beneath the waves to wage a unique form of guerilla warfare.
Initially, Verne's narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising of Poland against Tsarist Russia. The Poles were quashed with a violence that appalled not only Verne but all Europe. As originally conceived, Verne's Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire family had been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds a fabulous futuristic submarine, the Nautilus, then conducts an underwater campaign of vengeance against his imperialist oppressor.
But in the 1860s France had to treat the Tsar as an ally, and Verne's publisher Pierre Hetzel pronounced the book unprintable. Verne reworked its political content, devising new nationalities for Nemo and his great enemy--information revealed only in a later novel, The Mysterious Island (1875); in the present work Nemo's background remains a dark secret. In all, the novel had a difficult gestation. Verne and Hetzel were in constant conflict and the book went through multiple drafts, struggles reflected in its several working titles over the period 1865-69: early on, it was variously called Voyage Under the Waters, Twenty-five Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, and A Thousand Leagues Under the Oceans.
Verne is often dubbed, in Isaac Asimov's phrase, "the world's first science-fiction writer." And it's true, many of his sixty-odd books do anticipate future events and technologies: From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Hector Servadac (1877) deal in space travel, while Journey to the Center
of the Earth features travel to the earth's core. But with Verne the operative word is "travel," and some of his best-known titles don't really qualify as sci-fi: Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) and Michael Strogoff (1876) are closer to "travelogs"-- adventure yarns in far-away places.
These observations partly apply here. The subtitle of the present book is An Underwater Tour of the World, so in good travelog style, the Nautilus's exploits supply an episodic story line. Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and other rip-roaring adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loose structure gives the novel an air of documentary realism. What's more, Verne adds backbone to the action by developing three recurring motifs: the deepening mystery of Nemo's past life and future intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifying threads tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum.
Other subtleties occur inside each episode, the textures sparkling with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering proves especially authoritative. His specifications for an open-sea submarine and a self-contained diving suit were decades before their time, yet modern technology bears them out triumphantly.
True, today's scientists know a few things he didn't: the South Pole isn't at the water's edge but far inland; sharks don't flip over before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight; sperm whales don't prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding, Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depths before the arrival of Jacques Cousteau and technicolor film.
Lastly the book has stature as a novel of character. Even the supporting cast is shrewdly drawn: Professor Aronnax, the career scientist caught in an ethical conflict; Conseil, the compulsive classifier who supplies humorous tag lines for Verne's fast facts; the harpooner Ned Land, a creature of constant appetites, man as heroic animal.
But much of the novel's brooding power comes from Captain Nemo. Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he's a trail-blazing creation, the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists in popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes or Wolf Larsen. However, Verne gives his hero's brilliance and benevolence a dark underside--the man's obsessive hate for his old enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions: he's a fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there for good; he works to save lives, both human and animal, yet he himself creates a holocaust; he detests imperialism, yet he lays personal claim to the South Pole. And in this last action he falls into the classic sin of Pride. He's swiftly punished. The Nautilus nearly perishes in the Antarctic and Nemo sinks into a growing depression.
Like Shakespeare's King Lear he courts death and madness in a great storm, then commits mass murder, collapses in catatonic paralysis, and suicidally runs his ship into the ocean's most dangerous whirlpool. Hate swallows him whole.
For many, then, this book has been a source of fascination, surely one of the most influential novels ever written, an inspiration for such scientists and discoverers as engineer Simon Lake, oceanographer William Beebe, polar traveler Sir Ernest Shackleton. Likewise Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the sunken Titanic, confesses that this was his favorite book as a teenager, and Cousteau himself, most renowned of marine explorers, called it his shipboard bible.
The present translation is a faithful yet communicative rendering of the original French texts published in Paris by J. Hetzel et Cie.-- the hardcover first edition issued in the autumn of 1871, collated with the softcover editions of the First and Second Parts issued separately in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Although prior English versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation is complete to the smallest substantive detail.
Because, as that Time cover story suggests, we still haven't caught up with Verne. Even in our era of satellite dishes and video games, the seas keep their secrets. We've seen progress in sonar, torpedoes, and other belligerent machinery, but sailors and scientists-- to say nothing of tourists--have yet to voyage in a submarine with the luxury and efficiency of the Nautilus.
F. P. WALTER
University of Houston
Units of Measure
CABLE LENGTH In Verne's context, 600 feet
CENTIGRADE 0 degrees centigrade = freezing water
37 degrees centigrade = human body temperature
100 degrees centigrade = boiling water
FATHOM 6 feet
GRAM Roughly 1/28 of an ounce
- MILLIGRAM Roughly 1/28,000 of an ounce
- KILOGRAM (KILO) Roughly 2.2 pounds
HECTARE Roughly 2.5 acres
KNOT 1.15 miles per hour
LEAGUE In Verne's context, 2.16 miles
LITER Roughly 1 quart
METER Roughly 1 yard, 3 inches
- MILLIMETER Roughly 1/25 of an inch
- CENTIMETER Roughly 2/5 of an inch
- DECIMETER Roughly 4 inches
- KILOMETER Roughly 6/10 of a mile
- MYRIAMETER Roughly 6.2 miles
TON, METRIC Roughly 2,200 pounds viii
這事大體是這樣：不久以前，好些大船在海上碰見了一一個“龐然大物”，一個很長的物體，形狀很像紡錘，有時發出磷光，它的體積比鯨魚大得多，行動起來也比鯨魚快得多。關於這個東西的出現，許多航海日志所記下的事實（如這個東西或這個生物的形狀，在它運動時的難以估計的速度，它轉移的驚人力量，它那種像是夭生的特殊本領等等），大致是相同的。如果這東西是鯨魚類動物，那麽它的體積：是大大超過了生物學家曾經加以分類的鯨魚。居維埃①、。
·拉色別德①、杜梅裏②、卡特法日③，這些生物學家一一除非看見過，也就是說，除非這些科學家本人的眼睛看見過——是不承認有這樣一種怪物存在的。
把多次觀察的結果折中一下來看———方面丟開那些過低的估計，即這個東西衹有二百英尺長，同時也不接受過於誇張的言論，即它有一英裏。寬三英裏長，——我們可以肯定他說，這個奇怪的生物，如果真是存在的話，它的體積是大大超過魚類學家所承認的體積的。這東西既然存在，而事實本身又是不可否認的，那麽，由於人類好奇的心理，我們就不難理解這個怪物的出現會在全世界引起怎樣的騷動。至於說這是荒唐無稽之談，那是决不會有人同意的。
因為，1866年7月20日，加爾各答一布納希汽船公司的喜金孫總督號，在澳大利亞海岸東邊五英裏，碰見了這個遊動的巨大物體。巴剋船長起初還以為這是沒有人知道的、暗礁，他正要測定它的位置的時候，突然這個不可解釋的物體噴出兩道水柱，嘩的一聲射到空中一百五十英尺高。這麽說，除非這座暗礁上邊有間歇噴泉，不然的話，喜金孫總督號面前的東西，就是還沒有人知道的一種海中哺乳類動物，它還從鼻孔中噴出有氣泡的水柱呢。
同年7月23日，西印度-太平洋汽船公司的剋利斯托巴爾哥郎號，在太平洋上也碰到這樣的事。喜金孫總督號看見這怪物以後三天，剋利斯托巴爾哥郎號在相距七百裏的地方也看見了它，由此可知，這個奇特的鯨魚類動物能以掠人的速度從這一處轉移到另一處。
十五天以後，在離上面說的地點有兩千裏遠的地方，國營輪船公司的海爾維地亞號和皇傢郵船公司的山農號，在美國和歐洲之間的大西洋海面上相遇的時候，在北緯42度15分、西經60度35分的地方，同時看到了這個大怪物。根據兩船同時觀察得到的結果，估計這衹哺乳動物的長度至少有三百五十多英尺（約一百零六米），因為山農號和海爾維地亞號兩船連起來，都還比它短，兩船從頭至尾衹有一百米長。可是，最長的鯨魚，像常常出役於阿留申群島的久闌馬剋島和翁居裏剋島①附近海面的那些鯨魚，也衹不過是五十六米，而比這再長的，從來就沒有過。
接連不斷地傳來的消息，橫渡大西洋的貝雷爾號所做的種種觀察，茵曼輪船公司的越提那號跟這個怪物的一次相碰，法國二級軍艦諾曼第號軍官們所寫的記錄，海軍高級參謀弗茲一詹姆斯在剋利德爵士號上所做的很精密的測算，這一切在當時的確曾經哄動一時。在民族性比較浮躁的國傢裏，大傢都拿這件事作為談笑資料，但在嚴肅和踏實的國傢裏，像英國、美國和德國就不同，它們對這事就非常關心。
在各大城市裏，這怪物變成了傢喻戶曉的事件。咖啡館裏歌唱它，報刊上嘲笑它，舞臺上扮演它。謠言正好有了機會，從這怪物身上捏造出各種各樣的奇聞。在一些發行量不多的報刊上，出現了關於各種離奇的巨大動物的報道，從白鯨、北極海中可怕的“莫比·狄剋”①一直到龐大的“剋拉肯”②——這種怪魚的觸須可以纏住一隻載重五百噸的船而把它拖到海底下去——都應有盡有。有些人甚至不惜引經據典，或者搬出古代的傳說如亞裏士多德③和蒲林尼④的見解（他們承認這類怪物的存在）：或者搬出彭土皮丹主教⑤的挪威童話，保羅·埃紀德的記述，以及哈林頓的報告；這報告是不容懷疑的，他說，1857年，他在嘉斯第蘭號上看見過一種大蛇，那種蛇以前衹在那立憲號到過的海面上⑤才能看見。
於是，在學術團體裏和科學報刊中産生了相信者和懷疑者，這兩派人無休止地爭論着。“怪物問題”激動着人們。
自以為懂科學的新聞記者和一嚮自以為多才的文人開起火來，他們在這次值得紀念的筆戰中花費了不少的墨水！甚至有幾個人還流了兩三滴血，因為有人把針對大海蛇的筆鋒移嚮一些態度傲慢的傢夥身上了。
在六個月當中，爭論繼續着。彼此有理，各執一詞。當時流行的小報都興致勃勃地刊登爭論的文章，它們不是攻擊巴西地理學院、柏林皇傢科學院、不列顛學術聯合會或華盛頓斯密孫學院發表的權威論文，就是駁斥印度群島報、摩亞諾神父的宇宙雜志、皮德曼的消息報裏面的討論和法國及其他各國大報刊的科學新聞。這些多才的作傢故意麯解反對派也常引證的林奈①的一句話：“大自然不製造蠢東西”；懇求大傢不要相信北海的大怪魚、大海蛇、“莫比·狄剋”和瘋狂的海員們臆造出來的其它怪物的存在，不要因此而否定了大自然。最後，某一著名尖刻的諷刺報有一位最受歡迎的編輯先生草草了事地發表一篇文章，處理了這個怪物；他像夷包列提②那樣，在大傢的笑聲中，給這佳物最後一次打擊、把它結果了。於是機智戰勝了科學。
在1867年頭幾個月裏，這個問題好像是人了土，不會再復潔了。但就在這個時候，人們又聽說發生了一些新的事件。現在的問題並不是一個急待解决的科學問題，而是必須認真設法避免的一個危險。問題帶了完全不同的面貌。這個怪物變成了小島、岩石、暗礁，但它是會奔馳的、不可捉摸的、行動莫測的暗礁。
1867年8月5日，蒙特利奧航海公司的摩拉維安號夜間駛到北緯27度30分、西經72度15分的地方，船右舷撞上了一座岩石，可是，任何地圖也沒有記載過這一帶海面上有這座岩石。由於風力的助航和四百匹馬力的推動，船的速度達到每小時十三海裏。毫無疑問，如果不是船身質地優良，特別堅固，摩拉維安號被撞以後，一定要把它從加拿大載來的二百三十六名乘客一齊帶到海底去。
事故發生在早晨五點左右天剛破曉的時候。船上值班的海員們立即跑到船的後部；他們十分細心地觀察海面。
除了有個六百多米寬的大漩渦——好像水面受過猛烈的衝擊——以外，他們什麽也沒有看見，衹把事故發生的地點確切地記了下來。摩拉維安號繼續航行，似乎並沒有受到什麽損傷。·它是撞上了暗礁呢，還是撞上了一隻沉沒的破船？
當時沒有法子知道。後來到船塢檢查了船底，纔發現一部分竜骨折斷了。
這事實本身是十分嚴重的，可是，如果不是過了三個星期後，在相同的情況下又發生了相同的事件，它很可能跟許多其他的事件一樣很快被人忘掉了。接着又發生的那一次撞船的事件，單單由於受害船的國籍和它所屬公司的聲望，就足以引起十分廣泛的反響。
英國著名的船主苟納爾的名字是沒有一個人不知道偽。這位精明的企業傢早在1840年就創辦了一傢郵船公司，開闢了從利物浦到哈利法剋斯①的航綫，當時衹有三艘四百匹馬力、載重一千一百六十二噸的明輪木船。八年以後，公司擴大了，共有四艘六百五十匹馬力、載重一千八百二十噸的船。再過兩年，又添了兩艘馬力和載重量更大的船，1853年，苟納爾公司繼續取得裝運政府郵件的特權，一連添造了阿拉伯號、波斯號、中國號、斯備脫亞號、爪哇號、俄羅斯號，這些都是頭等的快船，而且是最寬大的，除了大東方號外，在海上航行的船沒有能跟它們相比的。到1867年，這傢公司一共有十二艘船～八艘明輪的，四艘暗輪的。我所以要把上面的情形簡單地介紹一下，是要大傢知道這傢海運公司的重要性。它由於經營得法，是全世界都聞名的。任何航海企業，沒有比這公司搞得更精明，經營得更成功的了。二十六年來，苟納爾公司的船在大西洋上航行了兩千次，沒有一次航行不達目的地，沒有一次發生遲誤，從沒有遺失過一封信，損失過一個人或一隻船。，因此，，儘管法國竭力要搶它的生意，但是乘客們都一致願意搭苟納爾公司的船，這點從近年來官方的統計文獻中就可以看出來。瞭解這情形以後，便沒有人奇怪這傢公司的一隻汽船遭遇到意外事件會引起那麽巨大的反響。
1867年4月13日，海很平靜，風又是順風，斯備脫亞號在西經15度12分、北緯45度37分的海面上行駛着。它在一千匹馬力的發動機推動下，速度為每小時十三海裏半。
它的機輪在海中轉動，完全正常。它當時的吃水深度是6米70釐米，排水量是6，685方米。
下午四點十六分，乘客們正在大廳中吃點心的時候，在斯各脫亞號船尾、左舷機輪後面一點，似乎發生了輕微的撞擊。
斯各脫亞號不是撞上了什麽，而是被什麽撞上了。憧它的不是敲擊的器械而是鑽鑿的器械。這次衝撞是十分輕微的，要不是管船艙的人員跑到甲板上來喊：“船要沉了：船要沉了！”也許船上的人誰也不會在意。
旅客們起初十分驚慌，但船長安德生很快就使他們安穩下來。危險並不會立刻就發生。斯各脫亞號由防水板分為七大間，一點也不在乎個把漏洞。
安德生船長立即跑到艙底下去。他查出第五間被海水浸人了，海水浸入十分快，證明漏洞相當大。好在這間裏沒有蒸汽爐，不然的話，爐火就要熄滅了。
安德生船長吩咐馬上停船，並且命令一個潛水員下水檢查船身的損壞情形。一會兒，他知道船底有一個長兩米的大洞。這樣一個裂口是沒法堵住的，斯各脫亞號儘管機輪有一半浸在水裏，但也必須繼續行駛。當時船離剋利亞峽還有三百海裏，等船駛進公司的碼頭，已經誤了三天期，在這三天裏，利物浦的人都為它惶惶不安。
斯各脫亞號被架了起來，工程師們開始檢查。他們眼睛所看見的情形連自己也不能相信。在船身吃水綫下兩米半的地方，露出一個很規則的等邊三角形的缺口。鐵皮上的傷痕十分整齊，、就是鑽孔機也不能鑿得這麽準確，弄成這個裂口的銳利器械一定不是用普通的鋼鐵製的，因為，這傢夥在以驚人的力量嚮前猛撞，鑿穿了四釐米厚的鐵皮以後、還能用一種很難做到的後退動作，使自己脫身逃走。
最近這次事件的經過大致就是這樣。結果這又一次使哄動起來。從這時候起，所有從前原因不明的航海遇難事件，現在都算在這個怪物的賬上了。這衹離奇古怪的動物於是負起了所有船衹沉沒的責任。不幸的是船沉的數目相當大，按照統計年鑒的記載，包括帆船和汽船在內，每年的損失約有三千艘左右，至於因下落不明而斷定失蹤：的，每年的數目也不下兩百艘！
不管有沒有冤枉這怪物，人們都把船衹失蹤的原因算在它身上。由於它的存在，五大洲間的海上交通越來越危險了，大傢都堅决要求不惜任何代價清除海上這條可怕盼鯨魚怪。
Jules Verne (1828-1905) published the French equivalents of these words in 1869, and little has changed since. 126 years later, a Time cover story on deep-sea exploration made much the same admission: "We know more about Mars than we know about the oceans." This reality begins to explain the dark power and otherworldly fascination of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
Born in the French river town of Nantes, Verne had a lifelong passion for the sea. First as a Paris stockbroker, later as a celebrated author and yachtsman, he went on frequent voyages-- to Britain, America, the Mediterranean. But the specific stimulus for this novel was an 1865 fan letter from a fellow writer, Madame George Sand. She praised Verne's two early novels Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863) and Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), then added: "Soon I hope you'll take us into the ocean depths, your characters traveling in diving equipment perfected by your science and your imagination." Thus inspired, Verne created one of literature's great rebels, a freedom fighter who plunged beneath the waves to wage a unique form of guerilla warfare.
Initially, Verne's narrative was influenced by the 1863 uprising of Poland against Tsarist Russia. The Poles were quashed with a violence that appalled not only Verne but all Europe. As originally conceived, Verne's Captain Nemo was a Polish nobleman whose entire family had been slaughtered by Russian troops. Nemo builds a fabulous futuristic submarine, the Nautilus, then conducts an underwater campaign of vengeance against his imperialist oppressor.
But in the 1860s France had to treat the Tsar as an ally, and Verne's publisher Pierre Hetzel pronounced the book unprintable. Verne reworked its political content, devising new nationalities for Nemo and his great enemy--information revealed only in a later novel, The Mysterious Island (1875); in the present work Nemo's background remains a dark secret. In all, the novel had a difficult gestation. Verne and Hetzel were in constant conflict and the book went through multiple drafts, struggles reflected in its several working titles over the period 1865-69: early on, it was variously called Voyage Under the Waters, Twenty-five Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Waters, and A Thousand Leagues Under the Oceans.
Verne is often dubbed, in Isaac Asimov's phrase, "the world's first science-fiction writer." And it's true, many of his sixty-odd books do anticipate future events and technologies: From the Earth to the Moon (1865) and Hector Servadac (1877) deal in space travel, while Journey to the Center
of the Earth features travel to the earth's core. But with Verne the operative word is "travel," and some of his best-known titles don't really qualify as sci-fi: Around the World in Eighty Days (1872) and Michael Strogoff (1876) are closer to "travelogs"-- adventure yarns in far-away places.
These observations partly apply here. The subtitle of the present book is An Underwater Tour of the World, so in good travelog style, the Nautilus's exploits supply an episodic story line. Shark attacks, giant squid, cannibals, hurricanes, whale hunts, and other rip-roaring adventures erupt almost at random. Yet this loose structure gives the novel an air of documentary realism. What's more, Verne adds backbone to the action by developing three recurring motifs: the deepening mystery of Nemo's past life and future intentions, the mounting tension between Nemo and hot-tempered harpooner Ned Land, and Ned's ongoing schemes to escape from the Nautilus. These unifying threads tighten the narrative and accelerate its momentum.
Other subtleties occur inside each episode, the textures sparkling with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering proves especially authoritative. His specifications for an open-sea submarine and a self-contained diving suit were decades before their time, yet modern technology bears them out triumphantly.
True, today's scientists know a few things he didn't: the South Pole isn't at the water's edge but far inland; sharks don't flip over before attacking; giant squid sport ten tentacles not eight; sperm whales don't prey on their whalebone cousins. This notwithstanding, Verne furnishes the most evocative portrayal of the ocean depths before the arrival of Jacques Cousteau and technicolor film.
Lastly the book has stature as a novel of character. Even the supporting cast is shrewdly drawn: Professor Aronnax, the career scientist caught in an ethical conflict; Conseil, the compulsive classifier who supplies humorous tag lines for Verne's fast facts; the harpooner Ned Land, a creature of constant appetites, man as heroic animal.
But much of the novel's brooding power comes from Captain Nemo. Inventor, musician, Renaissance genius, he's a trail-blazing creation, the prototype not only for countless renegade scientists in popular fiction, but even for such varied figures as Sherlock Holmes or Wolf Larsen. However, Verne gives his hero's brilliance and benevolence a dark underside--the man's obsessive hate for his old enemy. This compulsion leads Nemo into ugly contradictions: he's a fighter for freedom, yet all who board his ship are imprisoned there for good; he works to save lives, both human and animal, yet he himself creates a holocaust; he detests imperialism, yet he lays personal claim to the South Pole. And in this last action he falls into the classic sin of Pride. He's swiftly punished. The Nautilus nearly perishes in the Antarctic and Nemo sinks into a growing depression.
Like Shakespeare's King Lear he courts death and madness in a great storm, then commits mass murder, collapses in catatonic paralysis, and suicidally runs his ship into the ocean's most dangerous whirlpool. Hate swallows him whole.
For many, then, this book has been a source of fascination, surely one of the most influential novels ever written, an inspiration for such scientists and discoverers as engineer Simon Lake, oceanographer William Beebe, polar traveler Sir Ernest Shackleton. Likewise Dr. Robert D. Ballard, finder of the sunken Titanic, confesses that this was his favorite book as a teenager, and Cousteau himself, most renowned of marine explorers, called it his shipboard bible.
The present translation is a faithful yet communicative rendering of the original French texts published in Paris by J. Hetzel et Cie.-- the hardcover first edition issued in the autumn of 1871, collated with the softcover editions of the First and Second Parts issued separately in the autumn of 1869 and the summer of 1870. Although prior English versions have often been heavily abridged, this new translation is complete to the smallest substantive detail.
Because, as that Time cover story suggests, we still haven't caught up with Verne. Even in our era of satellite dishes and video games, the seas keep their secrets. We've seen progress in sonar, torpedoes, and other belligerent machinery, but sailors and scientists-- to say nothing of tourists--have yet to voyage in a submarine with the luxury and efficiency of the Nautilus.
F. P. WALTER
University of Houston
Units of Measure
CABLE LENGTH In Verne's context, 600 feet
CENTIGRADE 0 degrees centigrade = freezing water
37 degrees centigrade = human body temperature
100 degrees centigrade = boiling water
FATHOM 6 feet
GRAM Roughly 1/28 of an ounce
- MILLIGRAM Roughly 1/28,000 of an ounce
- KILOGRAM (KILO) Roughly 2.2 pounds
HECTARE Roughly 2.5 acres
KNOT 1.15 miles per hour
LEAGUE In Verne's context, 2.16 miles
LITER Roughly 1 quart
METER Roughly 1 yard, 3 inches
- MILLIMETER Roughly 1/25 of an inch
- CENTIMETER Roughly 2/5 of an inch
- DECIMETER Roughly 4 inches
- KILOMETER Roughly 6/10 of a mile
- MYRIAMETER Roughly 6.2 miles
TON, METRIC Roughly 2,200 pounds viii
這些事件發生的時候，我正從美國內布拉斯加州的貧瘠地區做完了科學考察回來。由於我是巴黎自然科學博物館的副教授，法國政府派我參加這次考察.在內布拉斯加州度過了六個月的時間，三月底，我滿載了珍貴的標本回到紐約，我動身回法國的日期定在五月初。所以，我就利用逗留期間，把這次收集來的礦物標本和動、植物標本加以整理，而斯各脫亞號的意外事件就是在這個時候發生的。
我自然也熟悉當時議論紛紛的這個問題，而且我怎能不知道呢？我把美國和歐洲的各種報刊讀了又讀，但沒有獲得進一步的瞭解。因為這個怪物，我作了種種猜測。由於自己拿不定主意，我始終搖擺於極端不同的見解之間。
這是一件真實的事，那是無可置疑的；懷疑這事的人，請他們去摸一摸斯各脫亞號的裂口好了。
當我到紐約的時候，這問題正鬧得熱火朝天。有些不學無術的人曾經說那是浮動的小島，是不可捉摸的暗礁，不過，這種假設,現在完全被推翻了。理由是：，除非這暗礁在腹部有一架機器，不然的話，它怎能這樣快地一會兒到達這裏一會兒又到那裏呢?同樣地，說它是一隻浮動的船殼或是一隻巨大的破船，這假設也不能成立，理由仍然是因為它轉移得那麽快。歸根結底，這問題衹可能有下面兩種解釋，因此人們分成了抱着不同主張的兩派：一派說這是一個力大無窮的怪物，另一派說這是一艘動力十分強大的“潛水艇”。
後面那種假設雖然很可以成立，但到歐美兩洲調查之後，便站不住了。如果說私人可以有這樣一種機器，實在是不大可能的事。在什麽地方，什麽時候。他造了這個東西?他又怎能保守秘密而不泄露呢？
衹有一國政府可以擁有這種破壞性的機器，在人們絞盡腦汁要增強武器威力的不幸時代，一個國傢瞞着其他國傢製造這種武器是可能的。機槍之後有水雷，水雷之後有潛水衝擊機，然後一又是各種互相剋製的武器，至少我自己心中是這樣想的。
但是這個“潛水艇”的假設，由於各國歐府的聲明又站不住了、因為這是有關公共利益的問題，既然海洋交通受到了破壞，各國政府的真誠，當然不容有所懷疑。並且，怎麽能說這衹“潛水艇”的建造竟可以逃避公衆的耳目呢？在這種情形下，就是拿個人來說，要想保守秘密，也十分睏難，對於一國政府，它的行動經常受到敵對國傢的註意，那當然更是不可能的了。
、所以，根據在英國，在法國，在，在普魯士,在西班籲，在意大利，在美國，甚至於在土耳其所做的調查，“潛水艇”的假設，也終於不能不放棄。
這個怪物儘管當時一些報刊對它不斷加以嘲笑，但它又出現在波濤上了，於是人們的想象就從魚類這一方面打主意而造出種種最荒誕不經的傳說來。
當我到紐約的時候，有些人特地來問我對這件怪事的意見占我以前在法國出版過一部八開本的書，共兩册，書名為：《海底的神秘》。這部書特別受到學術界的賞識，使我成為自然科學中這一個相當奧秘的部門的專傢。因此人們纔詢問我的意見。但我衹要能夠否認這事的真實性，我總是作否定的答復。但不久我衹得明確地表示我的意見。
況且《紐約先鋒論壇報》已經約了“巴黎自然科學博物館教。授，可敬的彼埃爾·阿竜納斯先生”，請他發表對這個問題砌意見。
我發表了我的意見。我因為不能沉默，纔不得不悅幾句諸。我從上和學術上來討論這個問題的各個方面。
現在我將我發表在4月30日《論壇報》上的一篇材料很豐富的文章的結論，節錄幾段在下面：“我一個一個研究了各種不同的假設和所有不可能成立的猜想，不得不承認實在有一種力量驚人的海洋動物的存在。“海洋深不可測的底層，我們完全不瞭解。探測器也不徙達到。最下層的深淵裏是怎樣的情形呢？海底二萬二千梅裏或一萬五千海裏的地方有些什麽生物和可能有些什麽生物呢？這些動物的身體構造是怎樣的呢？我們實在很難推測。“可是，擺在我面前的問題可以用‘兩刀論法’的公式來解决。“生活在地球上的各色各樣的生物，或者我們認識，或者我們不認識。”““如果我們不認識所有的生物，而大自然又繼續對我們保守某些魚類學上的秘密，那麽我們就不得不承認在探測器不可及的水層裏還有魚類鯨類的新品種，它們有一個‘不浮的’器官，因為在海底下呆久了，在偶然的情況下，由於一時高興，或者任性，就突然浮到海面上來。這說法還是比較今人情服的。“反過來，如果我們的確認識了地球上所有的生物，那麽我們就必須從已經加以分類的海洋生物中找出我們討論的這個動物；在這種情形下，我就要承認有一種巨大的獨角鯨的存在。“普通常見的獨角鯨，或海麒麟，身長常常達到六十英尺，現在如果把這長度增加五倍，甚至十倍，同時讓這條鯨、魚類動物有和它身材戊比例的力量，再加強它的攻擊武器，這樣就是現在海上的那個動物了。也就是說它有山農號軍官們所測定的長度那麽長，它的角，可以刺穿斯各脫亞號、它的力量可以衝破一隻汽船的船殼。“誠然，這條獨角鯨，如某些生物學家所說，是具有一把：骨質的劍或一把骨質的乾，那麽這一定是一根像鋼鐵一樣：堅硬的長牙，有人曾經在鯨魚身上發現過獨角鯨的牙齒，。獨角鯨用牙齒攻擊鯨魚總是成功的。有人也曾經從船底上撥出過——好容易纔找出來——獨角鯨的牙齒，它鑽通船底就好像利錐穿透木桶那樣。“巴黎醫學院陳列館就藏有一枚這種牙齒，長兩米二十五釐米，底寬四十八釐米!“好吧！現在假定那武器還要厲害十倍，那動物的力量還要大十倍，如果它的前進速度是每小時二十英裏，那麽拿它的體重去乘它的速度平方，就能求出憧壞斯各脫亞號的那股衝擊力。“因此，在還沒有得到更多的材料之前，我認為這是一隻海麒麟，這衹海麒麟身軀非常巨大，身上的武裝不是劍戟，而是真正的衝角，像鐵甲船或戰艦上所裝有的那樣，它同時又具備有戰艦的重量和動力。“這樣便說明了這種神秘不可解的現象。——或者相反地，不管人們所見到的、所感到的是怎樣，實際上什麽都不是；那也是可能的。”
最後幾句話衹能說明我沒有主見，看問題搖擺不定；這是為了在一。定程度上保全我教授的身份，同時不願意讓美國人笑話，因為美國人笑起來，是笑得很厲害的。我於是自下這一條退路。其實我是承認這個“怪物"的存在的。我的文章引起了熱烈的討論，産生了很大的反響。很有一部分人擁護它。而且丈中提出的結論可以讓人隨便去設想，沒有什麽。人們總是對那些神奇怪誕的幻想感倒興趣。、而海洋正是這些幻想的最好泉源，因為衹有海纔是巨大動物可以繁殖和成長的環境，陸上的動物，大象或犀牛之類。跟它們比較起來，簡直渺小得很。一片汪洋大海裏：既然有我們所知道的最巨大的哺乳類動物，說不定也有碩大無比的軟體動物和看起來叫人害怕的甲殼動物，如一百米長的大蝦，或二百噸重的螃蟹！為什麽不能有呢？“從前，跟地質學紀年同時代的陸上動物，四足獸，四手獸，爬蟲類，鳥類，都是按照巨大的模型創造的。造物者甩高大的模型把它們造出來，經過漫長的歲月，這模型漸漸縮小了。在深不可測的海洋底下（因為海洋是永不更改；而地殼幾乎是不斷變化着的），為什麽不能保存從前另一時代的巨大生物的品種呢？海洋內部，為什麽不能藏有那些巨大生物的最後變種，以一世紀為一年，以一千年為一世紀的那些巨大品種呢？我又讓自己浸沉在種種空想中了.現在要停止這些空想，因為，在我看來，時間已經把這些空想變成為可怕的現實。我再說一次，當時對於這件怪事的性質有這一種意見，就是大傢都一致承認有一種神奇東西的存在，而這種東西和怪誕的大海蛇並沒有絲毫共同之點。可是，儘管有一些人把這事看成是一個待解决的純粹科學問題，但另一些比較註意實利的人，特別在美國和英國，這類人很多，他們主張把海洋上這個可怕的怪物清除掠，使海上交通的安全獲得保障。特別是工商界的報刊，都從這個觀點來研究這個問題。《航業商情雜志》,<<來依特公司航海雜志》、《郵船雜志》、《海洋殖民雜志》以及為保險公司宣傳公司要提高保險費的那些報紙，對於清除怪物這一點，都一致表示同意。公衆的意見一提出來，北美合衆國首先發表了聲明，要在紐約作準備，組織清除獨角鯨的遠征隊。一艘裝有衝角的高速度的二級戰艦林肯號定於最近的期間駛出海面。各造船廠都給法拉古司令宮以種種便利，幫助他早一天把這艘二級戰艦裝備起來。事情往往就是這樣，等人們决定要追趕這怪物的時候。怪物再也不出現了。在兩個月的時間內，誰都沒有得到怪物的消息，也沒有海船碰見它。好像這條海麒麟已經得到了人們準備進攻它的情報。因為大傢說得大多了，甚至於用大西洋的海底電綫來說！所以，喜歡說笑話的人說，這個精靈的東西一定在中途偷聽了電報，現在它啓己有了防備。不再隨便出來。因此，這艘用作遠征而且裝有強大打魚機的二級戰艦,現在不知道嚮哪裏開纔好。大傢越來越不耐煩了，忽然，7月2日，舊金山輪船公司從加利福尼亞開往上海的一隻汽船唐比葛號，三星期前在太平洋北部的海面上又看見了這：個東西。這消息引起了極大的騷動。大傢要法拉古司令宮立即出發，二十四小時的遲延都不許可。船中日用品全裝上去了，艙底也載滿了煤。船上各部門的人員一個也不少，都到齊了。現在衹等升火，加熱，解纜了：大傢不容許這船再有：半天的延期：再說，法拉古司令宮本人也巴不得馬上就出發！在株肯號離開布洛剋襪碼頭之前三小時，我收到一封信，信的內容如下：。“遞交紐約第五號路旅館，巴黎自然科學博物館教授阿竜納斯先生。先生：如果您同意加入林肯號遠征隊，合衆國政府很願意看到這次遠征有您代表法國參加。法拉古司令官已留下船上一個艙房供您使用。海軍部長何伯遜敬啓。”
In essence, over a period of time several ships had encountered "an enormous thing" at sea, a long spindle-shaped object, sometimes giving off a phosphorescent glow, infinitely bigger and faster than any whale.
The relevant data on this apparition, as recorded in various logbooks, agreed pretty closely as to the structure of the object or creature in question, its unprecedented speed of movement, its startling locomotive power, and the unique vitality with which it seemed to be gifted. If it was a cetacean, it exceeded in bulk any whale previously classified by science. No naturalist, neither Cuvier nor Lacépède, neither Professor Dumeril nor Professor de Quatrefages, would have accepted the existence of such a monster sight unseen-- specifically, unseen by their own scientific eyes.
Striking an average of observations taken at different times-- rejecting those timid estimates that gave the object a length of 200 feet, and ignoring those exaggerated views that saw it as a mile wide and three long--you could still assert that this phenomenal creature greatly exceeded the dimensions of anything then known to ichthyologists, if it existed at all.
Now then, it did exist, this was an undeniable fact; and since the human mind dotes on objects of wonder, you can understand the worldwide excitement caused by this unearthly apparition. As for relegating it to the realm of fiction, that charge had to be dropped.
In essence, on July 20, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson, from the Calcutta & Burnach Steam Navigation Co., encountered this moving mass five miles off the eastern shores of Australia.
Captain Baker at first thought he was in the presence of an unknown reef; he was even about to fix its exact position when two waterspouts shot out of this inexplicable object and sprang hissing into the air some 150 feet. So, unless this reef was subject to the intermittent eruptions of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had fair and honest dealings with some aquatic mammal, until then unknown, that could spurt from its blowholes waterspouts mixed with air and steam.
Similar events were likewise observed in Pacific seas, on July 23 of the same year, by the Christopher Columbus from the West India & Pacific Steam Navigation Co. Consequently, this extraordinary cetacean could transfer itself from one locality to another with startling swiftness, since within an interval of just three days, the Governor Higginson and the Christopher Columbus had observed it at two positions on the charts separated by a distance of more than 700 nautical leagues.
Fifteen days later and 2,000 leagues farther, the Helvetia from the Compagnie Nationale and the Shannon from the Royal Mail line, running on opposite tacks in that part of the Atlantic lying between the United States and Europe, respectively signaled each other that the monster had been sighted in latitude 42 degrees 15' north and longitude 60 degrees 35' west of the meridian of Greenwich. From their simultaneous observations, they were able to estimate the mammal's minimum length at more than 350 English feet;* this was because both the Shannon and the Helvetia were of smaller dimensions, although each measured 100 meters stem to stern. Now then, the biggest whales, those rorqual whales that frequent the waterways of the Aleutian Islands, have never exceeded a length of 56 meters--if they reach even that.
*Author's Note: About 106 meters. An English foot is only 30.4 centimeters.
One after another, reports arrived that would profoundly affect public opinion: new observations taken by the transatlantic liner Pereire, the Inman line's Etna running afoul of the monster, an official report drawn up by officers on the French frigate Normandy, dead-earnest reckonings obtained by the general staff of Commodore Fitz-James aboard the Lord Clyde. In lighthearted countries, people joked about this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England, America, and Germany were deeply concerned.
In every big city the monster was the latest rage; they sang about it in the coffee houses, they ridiculed it in the newspapers, they dramatized it in the theaters. The tabloids found it a fine opportunity for hatching all sorts of hoaxes. In those newspapers short of copy, you saw the reappearance of every gigantic imaginary creature, from "Moby Dick," that dreadful white whale from the High Arctic regions, to the stupendous kraken whose tentacles could entwine a 500-ton craft and drag it into the ocean depths. They even reprinted reports from ancient times: the views of Aristotle and Pliny accepting the existence of such monsters, then the Norwegian stories of Bishop Pontoppidan, the narratives of Paul Egede, and finally the reports of Captain Harrington-- whose good faith is above suspicion--in which he claims he saw, while aboard the Castilian in 1857, one of those enormous serpents that, until then, had frequented only the seas of France's old extremist newspaper, The Constitutionalist.
An interminable debate then broke out between believers and skeptics in the scholarly societies and scientific journals. The "monster question" inflamed all minds. During this memorable campaign, journalists making a profession of science battled with those making a profession of wit, spilling waves of ink and some of them even two or three drops of blood, since they went from sea serpents to the most offensive personal remarks.
For six months the war seesawed. With inexhaustible zest, the popular press took potshots at feature articles from the Geographic Institute of Brazil, the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin, the British Association, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., at discussions in The Indian Archipelago, in Cosmos published by Father Moigno, in Petermann's Mittheilungen,* and at scientific chronicles in the great French and foreign newspapers. When the monster's detractors cited a saying by the botanist Linnaeus that "nature doesn't make leaps," witty writers in the popular periodicals parodied it, maintaining in essence that "nature doesn't make lunatics," and ordering their contemporaries never to give the lie to nature by believing in krakens, sea serpents, "Moby Dicks," and other all-out efforts from drunken seamen. Finally, in a much-feared satirical journal, an article by its most popular columnist finished off the monster for good, spurning it in the style of Hippolytus repulsing the amorous advances of his stepmother Phaedra, and giving the creature its quietus amid a universal burst of laughter. Wit had defeated science.
*German: "Bulletin." Ed.
During the first months of the year 1867, the question seemed to be buried, and it didn't seem due for resurrection, when new facts were brought to the public's attention. But now it was no longer an issue of a scientific problem to be solved, but a quite real and serious danger to be avoided. The question took an entirely new turn. The monster again became an islet, rock, or reef, but a runaway reef, unfixed and elusive.
On March 5, 1867, the Moravian from the Montreal Ocean Co., lying during the night in latitude 27 degrees 30' and longitude 72 degrees 15', ran its starboard quarter afoul of a rock marked on no charts of these waterways. Under the combined efforts of wind and 400-horsepower steam, it was traveling at a speed of thirteen knots. Without the high quality of its hull, the Moravian would surely have split open from this collision and gone down together with those 237 passengers it was bringing back from Canada.
This accident happened around five o'clock in the morning, just as day was beginning to break. The officers on watch rushed to the craft's stern. They examined the ocean with the most scrupulous care. They saw nothing except a strong eddy breaking three cable lengths out, as if those sheets of water had been violently churned. The site's exact bearings were taken, and the Moravian continued on course apparently undamaged. Had it run afoul of an underwater rock or the wreckage of some enormous derelict ship? They were unable to say. But when they examined its undersides in the service yard, they discovered that part of its keel had been smashed.
This occurrence, extremely serious in itself, might perhaps have been forgotten like so many others, if three weeks later it hadn't been reenacted under identical conditions. Only, thanks to the nationality of the ship victimized by this new ramming, and thanks to the reputation of the company to which this ship belonged, the event caused an immense uproar.
No one is unaware of the name of that famous English shipowner, Cunard. In 1840 this shrewd industrialist founded a postal service between Liverpool and Halifax, featuring three wooden ships with 400-horsepower paddle wheels and a burden of 1,162 metric tons. Eight years later, the company's assets were increased by four 650-horsepower ships at 1,820 metric tons, and in two more years, by two other vessels of still greater power and tonnage. In 1853 the Cunard Co., whose mail-carrying charter had just been renewed, successively added to its assets the Arabia, the Persia, the China, the Scotia, the Java, and the Russia, all ships of top speed and, after the Great Eastern, the biggest ever to plow the seas. So in 1867 this company owned twelve ships, eight with paddle wheels and four with propellers.
If I give these highly condensed details, it is so everyone can fully understand the importance of this maritime transportation company, known the world over for its shrewd management. No transoceanic navigational undertaking has been conducted with more ability, no business dealings have been crowned with greater success. In twenty-six years Cunard ships have made 2,000 Atlantic crossings without so much as a voyage canceled, a delay recorded, a man, a craft, or even a letter lost. Accordingly, despite strong competition from France, passengers still choose the Cunard line in preference to all others, as can be seen in a recent survey of official documents. Given this, no one will be astonished at the uproar provoked by this accident involving one of its finest steamers.
On April 13, 1867, with a smooth sea and a moderate breeze, the Scotia lay in longitude 15 degrees 12' and latitude 45 degrees 37'. It was traveling at a speed of 13.43 knots under the thrust of its 1,000-horsepower engines. Its paddle wheels were churning the sea with perfect steadiness. It was then drawing 6.7 meters of water and displacing 6,624 cubic meters.
At 4:17 in the afternoon, during a high tea for passengers gathered in the main lounge, a collision occurred, scarcely noticeable on the whole, affecting the Scotia's hull in that quarter a little astern of its port paddle wheel.
The Scotia hadn't run afoul of something, it had been fouled, and by a cutting or perforating instrument rather than a blunt one. This encounter seemed so minor that nobody on board would have been disturbed by it, had it not been for the shouts of crewmen in the hold, who climbed on deck yelling:
"We're sinking! We're sinking!"
At first the passengers were quite frightened, but Captain Anderson hastened to reassure them. In fact, there could be no immediate danger. Divided into seven compartments by watertight bulkheads, the Scotia could brave any leak with impunity.
Captain Anderson immediately made his way into the hold. He discovered that the fifth compartment had been invaded by the sea, and the speed of this invasion proved that the leak was considerable. Fortunately this compartment didn't contain the boilers, because their furnaces would have been abruptly extinguished.
Captain Anderson called an immediate halt, and one of his sailors dived down to assess the damage. Within moments they had located a hole two meters in width on the steamer's underside. Such a leak could not be patched, and with its paddle wheels half swamped, the Scotia had no choice but to continue its voyage. By then it lay 300 miles from Cape Clear, and after three days of delay that filled Liverpool with acute anxiety, it entered the company docks.
The engineers then proceeded to inspect the Scotia, which had been put in dry dock. They couldn't believe their eyes. Two and a half meters below its waterline, there gaped a symmetrical gash in the shape of an isosceles triangle. This breach in the sheet iron was so perfectly formed, no punch could have done a cleaner job of it. Consequently, it must have been produced by a perforating tool of uncommon toughness-- plus, after being launched with prodigious power and then piercing four centimeters of sheet iron, this tool had needed to withdraw itself by a backward motion truly inexplicable.
This was the last straw, and it resulted in arousing public passions all over again. Indeed, from this moment on, any maritime casualty without an established cause was charged to the monster's account. This outrageous animal had to shoulder responsibility for all derelict vessels, whose numbers are unfortunately considerable, since out of those 3,000 ships whose losses are recorded annually at the marine insurance bureau, the figure for steam or sailing ships supposedly lost with all hands, in the absence of any news, amounts to at least 200!
Now then, justly or unjustly, it was the "monster" who stood accused of their disappearance; and since, thanks to it, travel between the various continents had become more and more dangerous, the public spoke up and demanded straight out that, at all cost, the seas be purged of this fearsome cetacean.
我自然也熟悉當時議論紛紛的這個問題，而且我怎能不知道呢？我把美國和歐洲的各種報刊讀了又讀，但沒有獲得進一步的瞭解。因為這個怪物，我作了種種猜測。由於自己拿不定主意，我始終搖擺於極端不同的見解之間。
這是一件真實的事，那是無可置疑的；懷疑這事的人，請他們去摸一摸斯各脫亞號的裂口好了。
當我到紐約的時候，這問題正鬧得熱火朝天。有些不學無術的人曾經說那是浮動的小島，是不可捉摸的暗礁，不過，這種假設,現在完全被推翻了。理由是：，除非這暗礁在腹部有一架機器，不然的話，它怎能這樣快地一會兒到達這裏一會兒又到那裏呢?同樣地，說它是一隻浮動的船殼或是一隻巨大的破船，這假設也不能成立，理由仍然是因為它轉移得那麽快。歸根結底，這問題衹可能有下面兩種解釋，因此人們分成了抱着不同主張的兩派：一派說這是一個力大無窮的怪物，另一派說這是一艘動力十分強大的“潛水艇”。
後面那種假設雖然很可以成立，但到歐美兩洲調查之後，便站不住了。如果說私人可以有這樣一種機器，實在是不大可能的事。在什麽地方，什麽時候。他造了這個東西?他又怎能保守秘密而不泄露呢？
衹有一國政府可以擁有這種破壞性的機器，在人們絞盡腦汁要增強武器威力的不幸時代，一個國傢瞞着其他國傢製造這種武器是可能的。機槍之後有水雷，水雷之後有潛水衝擊機，然後一又是各種互相剋製的武器，至少我自己心中是這樣想的。
但是這個“潛水艇”的假設，由於各國歐府的聲明又站不住了、因為這是有關公共利益的問題，既然海洋交通受到了破壞，各國政府的真誠，當然不容有所懷疑。並且，怎麽能說這衹“潛水艇”的建造竟可以逃避公衆的耳目呢？在這種情形下，就是拿個人來說，要想保守秘密，也十分睏難，對於一國政府，它的行動經常受到敵對國傢的註意，那當然更是不可能的了。
、所以，根據在英國，在法國，在，在普魯士,在西班籲，在意大利，在美國，甚至於在土耳其所做的調查，“潛水艇”的假設，也終於不能不放棄。
這個怪物儘管當時一些報刊對它不斷加以嘲笑，但它又出現在波濤上了，於是人們的想象就從魚類這一方面打主意而造出種種最荒誕不經的傳說來。
當我到紐約的時候，有些人特地來問我對這件怪事的意見占我以前在法國出版過一部八開本的書，共兩册，書名為：《海底的神秘》。這部書特別受到學術界的賞識，使我成為自然科學中這一個相當奧秘的部門的專傢。因此人們纔詢問我的意見。但我衹要能夠否認這事的真實性，我總是作否定的答復。但不久我衹得明確地表示我的意見。
況且《紐約先鋒論壇報》已經約了“巴黎自然科學博物館教。授，可敬的彼埃爾·阿竜納斯先生”，請他發表對這個問題砌意見。
我發表了我的意見。我因為不能沉默，纔不得不悅幾句諸。我從上和學術上來討論這個問題的各個方面。
現在我將我發表在4月30日《論壇報》上的一篇材料很豐富的文章的結論，節錄幾段在下面：“我一個一個研究了各種不同的假設和所有不可能成立的猜想，不得不承認實在有一種力量驚人的海洋動物的存在。“海洋深不可測的底層，我們完全不瞭解。探測器也不徙達到。最下層的深淵裏是怎樣的情形呢？海底二萬二千梅裏或一萬五千海裏的地方有些什麽生物和可能有些什麽生物呢？這些動物的身體構造是怎樣的呢？我們實在很難推測。“可是，擺在我面前的問題可以用‘兩刀論法’的公式來解决。“生活在地球上的各色各樣的生物，或者我們認識，或者我們不認識。”““如果我們不認識所有的生物，而大自然又繼續對我們保守某些魚類學上的秘密，那麽我們就不得不承認在探測器不可及的水層裏還有魚類鯨類的新品種，它們有一個‘不浮的’器官，因為在海底下呆久了，在偶然的情況下，由於一時高興，或者任性，就突然浮到海面上來。這說法還是比較今人情服的。“反過來，如果我們的確認識了地球上所有的生物，那麽我們就必須從已經加以分類的海洋生物中找出我們討論的這個動物；在這種情形下，我就要承認有一種巨大的獨角鯨的存在。“普通常見的獨角鯨，或海麒麟，身長常常達到六十英尺，現在如果把這長度增加五倍，甚至十倍，同時讓這條鯨、魚類動物有和它身材戊比例的力量，再加強它的攻擊武器，這樣就是現在海上的那個動物了。也就是說它有山農號軍官們所測定的長度那麽長，它的角，可以刺穿斯各脫亞號、它的力量可以衝破一隻汽船的船殼。“誠然，這條獨角鯨，如某些生物學家所說，是具有一把：骨質的劍或一把骨質的乾，那麽這一定是一根像鋼鐵一樣：堅硬的長牙，有人曾經在鯨魚身上發現過獨角鯨的牙齒，。獨角鯨用牙齒攻擊鯨魚總是成功的。有人也曾經從船底上撥出過——好容易纔找出來——獨角鯨的牙齒，它鑽通船底就好像利錐穿透木桶那樣。“巴黎醫學院陳列館就藏有一枚這種牙齒，長兩米二十五釐米，底寬四十八釐米!“好吧！現在假定那武器還要厲害十倍，那動物的力量還要大十倍，如果它的前進速度是每小時二十英裏，那麽拿它的體重去乘它的速度平方，就能求出憧壞斯各脫亞號的那股衝擊力。“因此，在還沒有得到更多的材料之前，我認為這是一隻海麒麟，這衹海麒麟身軀非常巨大，身上的武裝不是劍戟，而是真正的衝角，像鐵甲船或戰艦上所裝有的那樣，它同時又具備有戰艦的重量和動力。“這樣便說明了這種神秘不可解的現象。——或者相反地，不管人們所見到的、所感到的是怎樣，實際上什麽都不是；那也是可能的。”
最後幾句話衹能說明我沒有主見，看問題搖擺不定；這是為了在一。定程度上保全我教授的身份，同時不願意讓美國人笑話，因為美國人笑起來，是笑得很厲害的。我於是自下這一條退路。其實我是承認這個“怪物"的存在的。我的文章引起了熱烈的討論，産生了很大的反響。很有一部分人擁護它。而且丈中提出的結論可以讓人隨便去設想，沒有什麽。人們總是對那些神奇怪誕的幻想感倒興趣。、而海洋正是這些幻想的最好泉源，因為衹有海纔是巨大動物可以繁殖和成長的環境，陸上的動物，大象或犀牛之類。跟它們比較起來，簡直渺小得很。一片汪洋大海裏：既然有我們所知道的最巨大的哺乳類動物，說不定也有碩大無比的軟體動物和看起來叫人害怕的甲殼動物，如一百米長的大蝦，或二百噸重的螃蟹！為什麽不能有呢？“從前，跟地質學紀年同時代的陸上動物，四足獸，四手獸，爬蟲類，鳥類，都是按照巨大的模型創造的。造物者甩高大的模型把它們造出來，經過漫長的歲月，這模型漸漸縮小了。在深不可測的海洋底下（因為海洋是永不更改；而地殼幾乎是不斷變化着的），為什麽不能保存從前另一時代的巨大生物的品種呢？海洋內部，為什麽不能藏有那些巨大生物的最後變種，以一世紀為一年，以一千年為一世紀的那些巨大品種呢？我又讓自己浸沉在種種空想中了.現在要停止這些空想，因為，在我看來，時間已經把這些空想變成為可怕的現實。我再說一次，當時對於這件怪事的性質有這一種意見，就是大傢都一致承認有一種神奇東西的存在，而這種東西和怪誕的大海蛇並沒有絲毫共同之點。可是，儘管有一些人把這事看成是一個待解决的純粹科學問題，但另一些比較註意實利的人，特別在美國和英國，這類人很多，他們主張把海洋上這個可怕的怪物清除掠，使海上交通的安全獲得保障。特別是工商界的報刊，都從這個觀點來研究這個問題。《航業商情雜志》,<<來依特公司航海雜志》、《郵船雜志》、《海洋殖民雜志》以及為保險公司宣傳公司要提高保險費的那些報紙，對於清除怪物這一點，都一致表示同意。公衆的意見一提出來，北美合衆國首先發表了聲明，要在紐約作準備，組織清除獨角鯨的遠征隊。一艘裝有衝角的高速度的二級戰艦林肯號定於最近的期間駛出海面。各造船廠都給法拉古司令宮以種種便利，幫助他早一天把這艘二級戰艦裝備起來。事情往往就是這樣，等人們决定要追趕這怪物的時候。怪物再也不出現了。在兩個月的時間內，誰都沒有得到怪物的消息，也沒有海船碰見它。好像這條海麒麟已經得到了人們準備進攻它的情報。因為大傢說得大多了，甚至於用大西洋的海底電綫來說！所以，喜歡說笑話的人說，這個精靈的東西一定在中途偷聽了電報，現在它啓己有了防備。不再隨便出來。因此，這艘用作遠征而且裝有強大打魚機的二級戰艦,現在不知道嚮哪裏開纔好。大傢越來越不耐煩了，忽然，7月2日，舊金山輪船公司從加利福尼亞開往上海的一隻汽船唐比葛號，三星期前在太平洋北部的海面上又看見了這：個東西。這消息引起了極大的騷動。大傢要法拉古司令宮立即出發，二十四小時的遲延都不許可。船中日用品全裝上去了，艙底也載滿了煤。船上各部門的人員一個也不少，都到齊了。現在衹等升火，加熱，解纜了：大傢不容許這船再有：半天的延期：再說，法拉古司令宮本人也巴不得馬上就出發！在株肯號離開布洛剋襪碼頭之前三小時，我收到一封信，信的內容如下：。“遞交紐約第五號路旅館，巴黎自然科學博物館教授阿竜納斯先生。先生：如果您同意加入林肯號遠征隊，合衆國政府很願意看到這次遠征有您代表法國參加。法拉古司令官已留下船上一個艙房供您使用。海軍部長何伯遜敬啓。”
In essence, over a period of time several ships had encountered "an enormous thing" at sea, a long spindle-shaped object, sometimes giving off a phosphorescent glow, infinitely bigger and faster than any whale.
The relevant data on this apparition, as recorded in various logbooks, agreed pretty closely as to the structure of the object or creature in question, its unprecedented speed of movement, its startling locomotive power, and the unique vitality with which it seemed to be gifted. If it was a cetacean, it exceeded in bulk any whale previously classified by science. No naturalist, neither Cuvier nor Lacépède, neither Professor Dumeril nor Professor de Quatrefages, would have accepted the existence of such a monster sight unseen-- specifically, unseen by their own scientific eyes.
Striking an average of observations taken at different times-- rejecting those timid estimates that gave the object a length of 200 feet, and ignoring those exaggerated views that saw it as a mile wide and three long--you could still assert that this phenomenal creature greatly exceeded the dimensions of anything then known to ichthyologists, if it existed at all.
Now then, it did exist, this was an undeniable fact; and since the human mind dotes on objects of wonder, you can understand the worldwide excitement caused by this unearthly apparition. As for relegating it to the realm of fiction, that charge had to be dropped.
In essence, on July 20, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson, from the Calcutta & Burnach Steam Navigation Co., encountered this moving mass five miles off the eastern shores of Australia.
Captain Baker at first thought he was in the presence of an unknown reef; he was even about to fix its exact position when two waterspouts shot out of this inexplicable object and sprang hissing into the air some 150 feet. So, unless this reef was subject to the intermittent eruptions of a geyser, the Governor Higginson had fair and honest dealings with some aquatic mammal, until then unknown, that could spurt from its blowholes waterspouts mixed with air and steam.
Similar events were likewise observed in Pacific seas, on July 23 of the same year, by the Christopher Columbus from the West India & Pacific Steam Navigation Co. Consequently, this extraordinary cetacean could transfer itself from one locality to another with startling swiftness, since within an interval of just three days, the Governor Higginson and the Christopher Columbus had observed it at two positions on the charts separated by a distance of more than 700 nautical leagues.
Fifteen days later and 2,000 leagues farther, the Helvetia from the Compagnie Nationale and the Shannon from the Royal Mail line, running on opposite tacks in that part of the Atlantic lying between the United States and Europe, respectively signaled each other that the monster had been sighted in latitude 42 degrees 15' north and longitude 60 degrees 35' west of the meridian of Greenwich. From their simultaneous observations, they were able to estimate the mammal's minimum length at more than 350 English feet;* this was because both the Shannon and the Helvetia were of smaller dimensions, although each measured 100 meters stem to stern. Now then, the biggest whales, those rorqual whales that frequent the waterways of the Aleutian Islands, have never exceeded a length of 56 meters--if they reach even that.
*Author's Note: About 106 meters. An English foot is only 30.4 centimeters.
One after another, reports arrived that would profoundly affect public opinion: new observations taken by the transatlantic liner Pereire, the Inman line's Etna running afoul of the monster, an official report drawn up by officers on the French frigate Normandy, dead-earnest reckonings obtained by the general staff of Commodore Fitz-James aboard the Lord Clyde. In lighthearted countries, people joked about this phenomenon, but such serious, practical countries as England, America, and Germany were deeply concerned.
In every big city the monster was the latest rage; they sang about it in the coffee houses, they ridiculed it in the newspapers, they dramatized it in the theaters. The tabloids found it a fine opportunity for hatching all sorts of hoaxes. In those newspapers short of copy, you saw the reappearance of every gigantic imaginary creature, from "Moby Dick," that dreadful white whale from the High Arctic regions, to the stupendous kraken whose tentacles could entwine a 500-ton craft and drag it into the ocean depths. They even reprinted reports from ancient times: the views of Aristotle and Pliny accepting the existence of such monsters, then the Norwegian stories of Bishop Pontoppidan, the narratives of Paul Egede, and finally the reports of Captain Harrington-- whose good faith is above suspicion--in which he claims he saw, while aboard the Castilian in 1857, one of those enormous serpents that, until then, had frequented only the seas of France's old extremist newspaper, The Constitutionalist.
An interminable debate then broke out between believers and skeptics in the scholarly societies and scientific journals. The "monster question" inflamed all minds. During this memorable campaign, journalists making a profession of science battled with those making a profession of wit, spilling waves of ink and some of them even two or three drops of blood, since they went from sea serpents to the most offensive personal remarks.
For six months the war seesawed. With inexhaustible zest, the popular press took potshots at feature articles from the Geographic Institute of Brazil, the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin, the British Association, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., at discussions in The Indian Archipelago, in Cosmos published by Father Moigno, in Petermann's Mittheilungen,* and at scientific chronicles in the great French and foreign newspapers. When the monster's detractors cited a saying by the botanist Linnaeus that "nature doesn't make leaps," witty writers in the popular periodicals parodied it, maintaining in essence that "nature doesn't make lunatics," and ordering their contemporaries never to give the lie to nature by believing in krakens, sea serpents, "Moby Dicks," and other all-out efforts from drunken seamen. Finally, in a much-feared satirical journal, an article by its most popular columnist finished off the monster for good, spurning it in the style of Hippolytus repulsing the amorous advances of his stepmother Phaedra, and giving the creature its quietus amid a universal burst of laughter. Wit had defeated science.
*German: "Bulletin." Ed.
During the first months of the year 1867, the question seemed to be buried, and it didn't seem due for resurrection, when new facts were brought to the public's attention. But now it was no longer an issue of a scientific problem to be solved, but a quite real and serious danger to be avoided. The question took an entirely new turn. The monster again became an islet, rock, or reef, but a runaway reef, unfixed and elusive.
On March 5, 1867, the Moravian from the Montreal Ocean Co., lying during the night in latitude 27 degrees 30' and longitude 72 degrees 15', ran its starboard quarter afoul of a rock marked on no charts of these waterways. Under the combined efforts of wind and 400-horsepower steam, it was traveling at a speed of thirteen knots. Without the high quality of its hull, the Moravian would surely have split open from this collision and gone down together with those 237 passengers it was bringing back from Canada.
This accident happened around five o'clock in the morning, just as day was beginning to break. The officers on watch rushed to the craft's stern. They examined the ocean with the most scrupulous care. They saw nothing except a strong eddy breaking three cable lengths out, as if those sheets of water had been violently churned. The site's exact bearings were taken, and the Moravian continued on course apparently undamaged. Had it run afoul of an underwater rock or the wreckage of some enormous derelict ship? They were unable to say. But when they examined its undersides in the service yard, they discovered that part of its keel had been smashed.
This occurrence, extremely serious in itself, might perhaps have been forgotten like so many others, if three weeks later it hadn't been reenacted under identical conditions. Only, thanks to the nationality of the ship victimized by this new ramming, and thanks to the reputation of the company to which this ship belonged, the event caused an immense uproar.
No one is unaware of the name of that famous English shipowner, Cunard. In 1840 this shrewd industrialist founded a postal service between Liverpool and Halifax, featuring three wooden ships with 400-horsepower paddle wheels and a burden of 1,162 metric tons. Eight years later, the company's assets were increased by four 650-horsepower ships at 1,820 metric tons, and in two more years, by two other vessels of still greater power and tonnage. In 1853 the Cunard Co., whose mail-carrying charter had just been renewed, successively added to its assets the Arabia, the Persia, the China, the Scotia, the Java, and the Russia, all ships of top speed and, after the Great Eastern, the biggest ever to plow the seas. So in 1867 this company owned twelve ships, eight with paddle wheels and four with propellers.
If I give these highly condensed details, it is so everyone can fully understand the importance of this maritime transportation company, known the world over for its shrewd management. No transoceanic navigational undertaking has been conducted with more ability, no business dealings have been crowned with greater success. In twenty-six years Cunard ships have made 2,000 Atlantic crossings without so much as a voyage canceled, a delay recorded, a man, a craft, or even a letter lost. Accordingly, despite strong competition from France, passengers still choose the Cunard line in preference to all others, as can be seen in a recent survey of official documents. Given this, no one will be astonished at the uproar provoked by this accident involving one of its finest steamers.
On April 13, 1867, with a smooth sea and a moderate breeze, the Scotia lay in longitude 15 degrees 12' and latitude 45 degrees 37'. It was traveling at a speed of 13.43 knots under the thrust of its 1,000-horsepower engines. Its paddle wheels were churning the sea with perfect steadiness. It was then drawing 6.7 meters of water and displacing 6,624 cubic meters.
At 4:17 in the afternoon, during a high tea for passengers gathered in the main lounge, a collision occurred, scarcely noticeable on the whole, affecting the Scotia's hull in that quarter a little astern of its port paddle wheel.
The Scotia hadn't run afoul of something, it had been fouled, and by a cutting or perforating instrument rather than a blunt one. This encounter seemed so minor that nobody on board would have been disturbed by it, had it not been for the shouts of crewmen in the hold, who climbed on deck yelling:
"We're sinking! We're sinking!"
At first the passengers were quite frightened, but Captain Anderson hastened to reassure them. In fact, there could be no immediate danger. Divided into seven compartments by watertight bulkheads, the Scotia could brave any leak with impunity.
Captain Anderson immediately made his way into the hold. He discovered that the fifth compartment had been invaded by the sea, and the speed of this invasion proved that the leak was considerable. Fortunately this compartment didn't contain the boilers, because their furnaces would have been abruptly extinguished.
Captain Anderson called an immediate halt, and one of his sailors dived down to assess the damage. Within moments they had located a hole two meters in width on the steamer's underside. Such a leak could not be patched, and with its paddle wheels half swamped, the Scotia had no choice but to continue its voyage. By then it lay 300 miles from Cape Clear, and after three days of delay that filled Liverpool with acute anxiety, it entered the company docks.
The engineers then proceeded to inspect the Scotia, which had been put in dry dock. They couldn't believe their eyes. Two and a half meters below its waterline, there gaped a symmetrical gash in the shape of an isosceles triangle. This breach in the sheet iron was so perfectly formed, no punch could have done a cleaner job of it. Consequently, it must have been produced by a perforating tool of uncommon toughness-- plus, after being launched with prodigious power and then piercing four centimeters of sheet iron, this tool had needed to withdraw itself by a backward motion truly inexplicable.
This was the last straw, and it resulted in arousing public passions all over again. Indeed, from this moment on, any maritime casualty without an established cause was charged to the monster's account. This outrageous animal had to shoulder responsibility for all derelict vessels, whose numbers are unfortunately considerable, since out of those 3,000 ships whose losses are recorded annually at the marine insurance bureau, the figure for steam or sailing ships supposedly lost with all hands, in the absence of any news, amounts to at least 200!
Now then, justly or unjustly, it was the "monster" who stood accused of their disappearance; and since, thanks to it, travel between the various continents had become more and more dangerous, the public spoke up and demanded straight out that, at all cost, the seas be purged of this fearsome cetacean.