As I said earlier, Captain Farragut was a very careful man, and he carried all kinds of gear on board for fighting giant cetaceans. It's just that a whaling ship couldn't be more well equipped. We had every kind of weapon on board, from hand-cast harpoons. All the way down to the blooming bullets of the birdshot and the iron arrows fired from the guns. On the fore-deck was mounted a very perfect breech-loading gun, with a thick body and narrow muzzle, a model of which was exhibited at the Universal Exhibition of 1867. This valuable cannon: it was made in the United States and could send out conical shells weighing four kilograms with a range of sixteen kilometers.
Nid. Lang always had an attitude of refusing to be gullible; he deliberately didn't even look at the ocean surface except when it was his turn to watch on deck - at least when no whales had been spotted. His marvelous eyesight was of great use, but for eight hours out of twelve the obstinate Canadian merely read or slept in his cabin, and how often did I reproach him for his coldness and lack of concern.
I groped my way slowly. After five steps, I ran into a wall of iron plates riveted together with screws. Then I turned back and bumped into a wooden table with a couple of square benches sitting beside it. The floor of this prison was covered with a very thick hemp mat, and there was not a sound of footsteps when I walked. The bare walls could not be touched for signs of a questioning window. Conseil came from the opposite direction and touched me; we returned to the middle of this cabin, which was about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. As for the height, Ned,lan, tall as he was, had not been able to measure it.
The whole crew was unanimous in favor of his proposition. Indeed, how could we come across that narwhal in this narrow channel? Most of the sailors were certain that the monster could not pass through the strait, for its body was so large that the channel could not hold it! of the sea, and round this solitary island. It's a rocky outcrop on the southern tip of the American continent. Once upon a time, Dutch sailors gave it the name of their homeland and called it Cape Horn. Now the ship heads northwest, and tomorrow, the engine wheels of the battleship will be churning in the waters of the Pacific.
As soon as we entered, the narrow flap above us immediately closed, and all around us was a pitch-black mass. From the light, suddenly into the darkness, my eyes could see nothing. I felt that my bare feet were firmly planted on an iron ladder. Ned, Lang and Conseil, gripped tightly by people, followed me. A door opened below the iron ladder, and as soon as we stepped inside, it closed with a very loud sound.
Two days passed and the Lincoln made slow progress at a low speed. On the seas where the animal might be encountered, people tried to find ways to get its attention or to stimulate its sluggish nerves. Chunks and chunks of bacon were pulled over the back of the boat, - but I should say that this inwardly gave the sharks great satisfaction. As soon as the Lincoln stopped, many small boats were lowered, and immediately set out on all sides around the battleship, not letting a single spot of sea remain unsearched. the night of November 4 arrived, and still the secret of this latent seabed had not been revealed.
By this time, I was leaning on the starboard side of the bowsprit. Counsell stood beside me, his eyes looking forward. The entire crew, climbing on top of the cable ladder ropes, carefully examined the shrinking and darkening sky. The officers, with their night telescopes, searched the growing darkness on all sides. The moon sometimes spat out a ray of light from between the dotted clouds, making the dark sea shine; for a moment it faded into darkness.
The Lincoln was specially selected and equipped for its new objective. It was a generally fast second-class battleship, fitted with a high-pressure steam engine that could increase air pressure to seven atmospheres. At this pressure, the Lincoln could reach an average speed of eighteen point three nautical miles per hour, which was fast, but still not enough to fight the huge cetacean-like creature.
Only one government could possess such a destructive machine, and in the unfortunate times when people were racking their brains to increase the power of their weapons, it was possible for one country to build such a weapon without the knowledge of other countries. After machine guns came mines, and after mines came submersible blasters, and then one and all sorts of weapons that were mutually restraining, at least that's what I had in mind for myself.
I have allowed myself to be immersed in fantasies again. It is time to stop them, for, as I see it, time has turned them into a terrible reality. I repeat, there was this one opinion as to the nature of the strange affair, that all were unanimous in
recognizing the existence of something magical, which had not the slightest ****ing resemblance to the grotesque sea-serpent.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (French: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers), or translated as Adventures Under the Sea and Sixty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, one of the masterpieces of the French science fiction writer Jules Verne, is an outstanding novel of suspense and science fiction. The novel begins in 1866 with a "monster" on the surface of the sea, frequently attacking the sea ships of various countries, making the public panic, and ends with the Nautilus being swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean vortex, which is a suspenseful and interlocking novel.
At first, it met readers in serialized form from March 20, 1869, to June 20, 1870, in the Magasin d'?ducation et de Récréation, founded by Pierre-Jules Hetzel, including Alphonse de Neuville and 111 illustrations by ?douard Riou. The first part of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was published on November 28, 1869, and the second on June 13, 1870, selling 50,000 copies of the first edition. The novel is considered one of Verne's best works, along with Around the World in Eighty Days and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The novel's Nautilus meticulously describes submarines, which were still primitive at the time.
The novel is a crossover sequel, the second in a trilogy of The Sons and Daughters of Captain Grant, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Mysterious Island.