chp2.txt

At the period when these events took place, I had just returned from a
scientific research in the disagreeable territory of Nebraska, in the
United States.  In virtue of my office as Assistant Professor in the
Museum of Natural History in Paris, the French Government had attached
me to that expedition.  After six months in Nebraska, I arrived in New
York towards the end of March, laden with a precious collection.  My
departure for France was fixed for the first days in May.  Meanwhile I
was occupying myself in classifying my mineralogical, botanical, and
zoological riches, when the accident happened to the Scotia.

I was perfectly up in the subject which was the question of the day.
How could I be otherwise?  I had read and reread all the American and
European papers without being any nearer a conclusion.  This mystery
puzzled me.  Under the impossibility of forming an opinion, I jumped
from one extreme to the other.  That there really was something could
not be doubted, and the incredulous were invited to put their finger on
the wound of the Scotia.

On my arrival at New York the question was at its height.  The theory
of the floating island, and the unapproachable sandbank, supported by
minds little competent to form a judgment, was abandoned.  And, indeed,
unless this shoal had a machine in its stomach, how could it change its
position with such astonishing rapidity?

From the same cause, the idea of a floating hull of an enormous wreck
was given up.

There remained, then, only two possible solutions of the question,
which created two distinct parties:  on one side, those who were for a
monster of colossal strength; on the other, those who were for a
submarine vessel of enormous motive power.

But this last theory, plausible as it was, could not stand against
inquiries made in both worlds.  That a private gentleman should have
such a machine at his command was not likely.  Where, when, and how was
it built? and how could its construction have been kept secret?
Certainly a Government might possess such a destructive machine.  And
in these disastrous times, when the ingenuity of man has multiplied the
power of weapons of war, it was possible that, without the knowledge of
others, a State might try to work such a formidable engine.

But the idea of a war machine fell before the declaration of
Governments.  As public interest was in question, and transatlantic
communications suffered, their veracity could not be doubted.  But how
admit that the construction of this submarine boat had escaped the
public eye?  For a private gentleman to keep the secret under such
circumstances would be very difficult, and for a State whose every act
is persistently watched by powerful rivals, certainly impossible.

Upon my arrival in New York several persons did me the honour of
consulting me on the phenomenon in question.  I had published in France
a work in quarto, in two volumes, entitled Mysteries of the Great
Submarine Grounds.  This book, highly approved of in the learned world,
gained for me a special reputation in this rather obscure branch of
Natural History.  My advice was asked.  As long as I could deny the
reality of the fact, I confined myself to a decided negative.  But
soon, finding myself driven into a corner, I was obliged to explain
myself point by point.  I discussed the question in all its forms,
politically and scientifically; and I give here an extract from a
carefully-studied article which I published in the number of the 30th
of April.  It ran as follows:

"After examining one by one the different theories, rejecting all other
suggestions, it becomes necessary to admit the existence of a marine
animal of enormous power.

"The great depths of the ocean are entirely unknown to us.  Soundings
cannot reach them.  What passes in those remote depths--what beings
live, or can live, twelve or fifteen miles beneath the surface of the
waters--what is the organisation of these animals, we can scarcely
conjecture.  However, the solution of the problem submitted to me may
modify the form of the dilemma.  Either we do know all the varieties of
beings which people our planet, or we do not.  If we do NOT know them
all--if Nature has still secrets in the deeps for us, nothing is more
conformable to reason than to admit the existence of fishes, or
cetaceans of other kinds, or even of new species, of an organisation
formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings, and which an
accident of some sort has brought at long intervals to the upper level
of the ocean.

"If, on the contrary, we DO know all living kinds, we must necessarily
seek for the animal in question amongst those marine beings already
classed; and, in that case, I should be disposed to admit the existence
of a gigantic narwhal.

"The common narwhal, or unicorn of the sea, often attains a length of
sixty feet.  Increase its size fivefold or tenfold, give it strength
proportionate to its size, lengthen its destructive weapons, and you
obtain the animal required.  It will have the proportions determined by
the officers of the Shannon, the instrument required by the perforation
of the Scotia, and the power necessary to pierce the hull of the
steamer.

"Indeed, the narwhal is armed with a sort of ivory sword, a halberd,
according to the expression of certain naturalists.  The principal tusk
has the hardness of steel.  Some of these tusks have been found buried
in the bodies of whales, which the unicorn always attacks with success.
Others have been drawn out, not without trouble, from the bottoms of
ships, which they had pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces
a barrel.  The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris possesses one
of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length, and
fifteen inches in diameter at the base.

"Very well! suppose this weapon to be six times stronger and the animal
ten times more powerful; launch it at the rate of twenty miles an hour,
and you obtain a shock capable of producing the catastrophe required.
Until further information, therefore, I shall maintain it to be a
sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed not with a halberd, but with
a real spur, as the armoured frigates, or the `rams' of war, whose
massiveness and motive power it would possess at the same time.  Thus
may this puzzling phenomenon be explained, unless there be something
over and above all that one has ever conjectured, seen, perceived, or
experienced; which is just within the bounds of possibility."

These last words were cowardly on my part; but, up to a certain point,
I wished to shelter my dignity as professor, and not give too much
cause for laughter to the Americans, who laugh well when they do laugh.
I reserved for myself a way of escape.  In effect, however, I admitted
the existence of the "monster." My article was warmly discussed, which
procured it a high reputation.  It rallied round it a certain number of
partisans.  The solution it proposed gave, at least, full liberty to
the imagination.  The human mind delights in grand conceptions of
supernatural beings.  And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the
only medium through which these giants (against which terrestrial
animals, such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be
produced or developed.

The industrial and commercial papers treated the question chiefly from
this point of view.  The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, the Lloyd's
List, the Packet-Boat, and the Maritime and Colonial Review, all papers
devoted to insurance companies which threatened to raise their rates of
premium, were unanimous on this point.  Public opinion had been
pronounced.  The United States were the first in the field; and in New
York they made preparations for an expedition destined to pursue this
narwhal.  A frigate of great speed, the Abraham Lincoln, was put in
commission as soon as possible.  The arsenals were opened to Commander
Farragut, who hastened the arming of his frigate; but, as it always
happens, the moment it was decided to pursue the monster, the monster
did not appear.  For two months no one heard it spoken of.  No ship met
with it.  It seemed as if this unicorn knew of the plots weaving around
it.  It had been so much talked of, even through the Atlantic cable,
that jesters pretended that this slender fly had stopped a telegram on
its passage and was making the most of it.

So when the frigate had been armed for a long campaign, and provided
with formidable fishing apparatus, no one could tell what course to
pursue.  Impatience grew apace, when, on the 2nd of July, they learned
that a steamer of the line of San Francisco, from California to
Shanghai, had seen the animal three weeks before in the North Pacific
Ocean.  The excitement caused by this news was extreme.  The ship was
revictualled and well stocked with coal.

Three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left Brooklyn pier, I received a
letter worded as follows:

To M. ARONNAX, Professor in the Museum of Paris, Fifth Avenue Hotel,
New York.

SIR,--If you will consent to join the Abraham Lincoln in this
expedition, the Government of the United States will with pleasure see
France represented in the enterprise.  Commander Farragut has a cabin
at your disposal.

Very cordially yours, J.B. HOBSON, Secretary of Marine.