Extraordinary Voyages by Jules Verne

Author:Jules Verne
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Fall River Press
Published: 2011-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

“Thousands of handkerchiefs were waving above those jam-packed masses, hailing the Abraham Lincoln till it reached the waters of the Hudson River.”

1. Tenders are little steamboats that assist the big liners.

CHAPTER IV

NED LAND

Commander Farragut was a fine seaman, worthy of the frigate he commanded. His ship and he were one. He was its soul. On the cetacean matter no doubts ever sprang up in his mind, and he didn’t allow the animal’s existence to be disputed aboard his vessel. He believed in it as certain pious women believe in the leviathan from the Book of Job—out of faith, not reason. The monster existed, and he’d vowed to rid the seas of it. The man was a sort of Knight of Rhodes, a modern-day Dieudonné of Gozo on his way to face the dragon devastating his island. Either Commander Farragut would slay the narwhal, or the narwhal would slay Commander Farragut. No middle of the road for these two.

The ship’s officers shared the views of their leader. While they scanned the vast expanse of the ocean, you couldn’t help hearing them chatter, bicker, debate, and calculate the various chances of meeting up with the creature. Voluntary watches from the crosstrees of the topgallant sail were self-imposed by more than one who would have cursed this chore under any other circumstances. As often as the sun swept over its daily arc, the masts were populated with seamen whose feet itched and couldn’t hold still on the planking of the deck below. And the Abraham Lincoln’s stempost hadn’t even cut the suspicious waters of the Pacific.

As for the crew, all they wanted was to find the unicorn, harpoon it, haul it on board, and slice it up. They surveyed the sea with scrupulous care. What’s more, Commander Farragut had mentioned that a certain sum of $2, 000 was waiting for whoever sighted the animal first, whether cabin boy or sailor, mate or officer. I’ll let the reader decide if people’s eyes got proper exercise aboard the Abraham Lincoln.

As for me, I wasn’t far behind the others and I delegated to nobody my share in this daily watching. Our frigate would have had fivescore good reasons for rechristen-ing itself the Argus, after that mythological beast with a hundred eyes! The lone rebel among us was Conseil, who seemed completely uninterested in the issue exciting us and was out of step with the overall enthusiasm on board.

As I said, Commander Farragut had carefully equipped his ship with the proper gear for catching a gigantic cetacean. No whaling vessel could have been better armed. We had every known mechanism from the hand-hurled harpoon to the blunderbuss that fired barbed arrows and the duck gun with exploding bullets. Mounted on the forecastle was a new and improved breech-loading cannon with a very heavy barrel and narrow bore, a weapon that would figure in the Universal Exhibition of 1867. Made in America, this valuable instrument could fire a nine-pound conical projectile an average distance of ten miles without the least bother.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.