20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (2nd version) | Page 6

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