20,000 Leagues Under the Seas (2nd version) | Page 8

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.


CHAPTER 2

The Pros and Cons

DURING THE PERIOD in which these developments were occurring,
I had returned from a scientific undertaking organized to explore the
Nebraska badlands in the United States. In my capacity as Assistant
Professor at the Paris Museum of Natural History, I had been attached
to this expedition by the French government. After spending six
months in Nebraska, I arrived in New York laden with valuable
collections near the end of March. My departure for France was set for
early May. In the meantime, then, I was busy classifying my
mineralogical, botanical, and zoological treasures when that incident
took place with the Scotia.
I was perfectly abreast of this question, which was the big news of the
day, and how could I not have been? I had read and reread every
American and European newspaper without being any farther along.
This mystery puzzled me. Finding it impossible to form any views, I
drifted from one extreme to the other. Something was out there, that
much was certain, and any doubting Thomas was invited to place his
finger on the Scotia's wound.
When I arrived in New York, the question was at the boiling point. The
hypothesis of a drifting islet or an elusive reef, put forward by people

not quite in their right minds, was completely eliminated. And indeed,
unless this reef had an engine in its belly, how could it move about with
such prodigious speed?
Also discredited was the idea of a floating hull or some