20,000 Leagues Under the Sea | Page 3

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TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA by JULES VERNE

PART ONE






CHAPTER I
A SHIFTING REEF
The year 1866 was signalised by a remarkable incident, a mysterious and puzzling
phenomenon, which doubtless no one has yet forgotten. Not to mention rumours which
agitated the maritime population and excited the public mind, even in the interior of
continents, seafaring men were particularly excited. Merchants, common sailors, captains
of vessels, skippers, both of Europe and America, naval officers of all countries, and the
Governments of several States on the two continents, were deeply interested in the
matter.
For some time past vessels had been met by "an enormous thing," a long object,
spindle-shaped, occasionally phosphorescent, and infinitely larger and more rapid in its
movements than a whale.

The facts relating to this apparition (entered in various log-books) agreed in most respects
as to the shape of the object or creature in question, the untiring rapidity of its movements,
its surprising power of locomotion, and the peculiar life with which it seemed endowed.
If it was a whale, it surpassed in size all those hitherto classified in science. Taking into
consideration the mean of observations made at divers times-- rejecting the timid estimate
of those who assigned to this object a length of two hundred feet, equally with the
exaggerated opinions which set it down as a mile in width and three in length--we might
fairly conclude that this mysterious being surpassed greatly all dimensions admitted by
the learned ones of the day, if it existed at all. And that it DID exist was an undeniable
fact; and, with that tendency which disposes the human mind in favour of the marvellous,
we can understand the excitement produced in the entire world by this supernatural
apparition. As to classing it in the list of fables, the idea was out of the question.
On the 20th of July, 1866, the steamer Governor Higginson, of the Calcutta and Burnach
Steam Navigation Company, had met this moving mass five miles off the east coast of
Australia. Captain Baker thought at first that he was in the presence of an unknown
sandbank; he even prepared to determine its exact position when two columns of water,
projected by the mysterious object, shot with a hissing noise a hundred and fifty feet up
into the air. Now, unless the sandbank had been submitted to the intermittent eruption of
a geyser, the Governor Higginson had to do neither more nor less than with an aquatic
mammal, unknown till then, which threw up from its blow-holes columns of water mixed
with air and vapour.
Similar facts were observed on the 23rd of July in the same year, in the Pacific Ocean, by
the Columbus, of the West India and Pacific Steam Navigation Company. But this
extraordinary creature could transport itself from one place to another with surprising
velocity; as, in an interval of three days, the Governor Higginson and the Columbus had
observed it at two different points of the chart, separated by a distance of more than seven
hundred nautical leagues.
Fifteen days later, two thousand