Pro And Con

: PART ONE
: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea

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

d parture 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.