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  Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

  ISBN #978-1-78184-066-5

  ©Copyright Marie Sexton 2012

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright July 2012

  Edited by Claire Siemaszkiewicz

  Total-E-Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2012 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-sizzling and a sexometer of 2.

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  TWENTY THOUSAND LEAGUES

  UNDER THE SEA

  A Clandestine Classic

  Jules Verne & Marie Sexton

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  Dedication

  To Jules Verne, who made this entirely too easy.

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  Author’s Note

  A few random notes about this project:

  First, the title. The French title of this novel is Vingt mille lieues sous les mers. This is accurately translated as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (plural). Verne’s novel features a tour of the major oceans, and the term ‘leagues’ in the title is used as a measure of distance rather than depth.

  Second, Nemo’s name. It is interesting to note that ‘nemo’ is Latin for ‘no one’ and can also be translated in Greek as ‘I give what is due’. Both are quite appropriate.

  Lastly, the endnotes. In tackling this project, we debated whether to keep Jules Verne’s text in its entirety, or whether to abridge it. In the end, we decided to split the difference.

  There are several places where extended monologues or lists of plant and/or animal species have been deleted from the story.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  A Runaway Reef

  The year 1866 was marked by a bizarre development, an unexplained and downright inexplicable phenomenon that surely no one has forgotten. Without getting into those rumours that upset civilians in the seaports and deranged the public mind even far inland, it must be said that professional seamen were especially alarmed. Traders, shipowners, captains of vessels, skippers, and master mariners from Europe and America, naval officers from every country, and at their heels the various national governments on these two continents, were all extremely disturbed by the business.

  In essence, over a period of time several ships had encountered ‘an enormous thing’ at sea, a long spindle-shaped object, sometimes giving off a phosphorescent glow, infinitely bigger and faster than any whale.

  The relevant data on this apparition, as recorded in various logbooks, agreed pretty closely as to the structure of the object or creature in 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 two-hundred 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 one-hundred and fifty 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 seven-hundred nautical leagues.

  Fifteen days later and two-thousand 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 signalled 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 three-hundred and fity English feet.

  This was because both the Shannon and the Helvetia were of smaller dimensions, although each measured one-hundred metres 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 fifty-six metres—if they reach even that.

  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 dramatised it in the theatres. 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 five-hundred-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 sceptics 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 sea serpents to the most offensive personal remarks.

  For six months the war seesawed. With inexhaustible zest, the popular press took potshots at feature articles from the Geographic Institute of Brazil, the Royal Academy of Science in Berlin, the British Association, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., at discussions in The Indian Archipelago, in Cosmos published by Father Moigno, in Petermann’s Bulletin, and at scientific chronicles in the great French and foreign newspapers.

  When the monster’s detractors cited a saying by the botanist Linnaeus that ‘nature doesn’t make leaps’, witty writers in the popular periodicals parodied it, maintaining in essence that

  ‘nature doesn’t make lunatics’, and ordering their contemporaries never to give the lie to nature by believing in krakens, sea serpents, ‘Moby Dicks’, and other all-out efforts from drunken seamen. Finally, in a much-feared satirical journal, an article by its most popular columnist finished off the monster for good, spurning it in the style of Hippolytus repulsing the amorous advances of his stepmother Phædra, and giving the creature its quietus amid a universal burst of laughter. Wit had defeated science.

  During the first months of the year 1867, the question seemed to be buried, and it didn’t seem due for resurrection, when new facts were brought to the public’s attention. But now it was no longer an issue of a scientific problem to be solved, but a quite real and serious danger to be avoided. The question took an entirely new turn. The monster again became an islet, rock, or reef, but a runaway reef, unfixed and elusive.

  On March 5, 1867, the Moravian from the Montreal Ocean Co., lying during the night in latitude 27 degrees 30’ and longitude 72 degrees 15’, ran its starboard quarter afoul of a rock marked on no charts of these waterways. Under the combined efforts of wind and four-hundred-horsepower steam, it was travelling at a speed of thirteen knots. Without the high quality of its hull, the Moravian would surely have split open from this collision and gone down together with those two-hundred and thirty-seven passengers it was bringing back from Canada.

  This accident happened around five o’clock in the morning, just as day was beginning to break. The officers on watch rushed to the craft’s stern. They examined the ocean with the most scrupulous care. They saw nothing except a strong eddy breaking three cable lengths out, as if those sheets of water had been violently churned. The site’s exact bearings were taken, and the Moravian continued on course apparently undamaged. Had it run afoul of an underwater rock or the wreckage of some enormous derelict ship? They were unable to say.

  But when they examined its undersides in the service yard, they discovered that part of its keel had been smashed.

  This occurrence, extremely serious in itself, might perhaps have been forgotten like so many others, if three weeks later it hadn’t been reenacted under identical conditions. Only, thanks to the nationality of the ship victimised by this new ramming, and thanks to the reputation of the company to which this ship belonged, the event caused an immense uproar.

  No one is unaware of the name of that famous English shipowner, Cunard. In 1840 this shrewd industrialist founded a postal service between Liverpool and Halifax. No transoceanic navigational undertaking has been conducted with more ability, no business dealings have been crowned with greater success. In twenty-six years Cunard ships have made two-thousand Atlantic crossings without so much as a voyage cancelled, a delay recorded, a man, a craft, or even a letter lost. Accordingly, despite strong competition from France, passengers still choose the Cunard line in preference to all others, as can be seen in a recent survey of official documents. Given this, no one will be astonished at the uproar provoked by this accident involving one of its finest steamers.

  On April 13, 1867, with a smooth sea and a moderate breeze, the Scotia lay in longitude 15 degrees 12’ and latitude 45 degrees 37’. It was travelling at a speed of 13.43 knots under the thrust of its one-thousand-horsepower engines. Its paddle wheels were churning the sea with perfect steadiness. It was then drawing 6.7 metres of water and displacing six-thousand-six-hundred and twenty-four cubic metres.

  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 metres 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 three-hundred 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 metres 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 centimetres 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 three-thousand 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 two-hundred!

  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 Two

  The Pros and Cons

  During the period in which these developments were occurring, I had returned from a scientific undertaking organised 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 atta
ched 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 other enormous wreckage, and again because of this speed of movement.

  So only two possible solutions to the question were left, creating two very distinct groups of supporters—on one side, those favouring a monster of colossal strength; on the other, those favouring an ‘underwater boat’ of tremendous motor power.

  Now then, although the latter hypothesis was completely admissible, it couldn’t stand up to inquiries conducted in both the New World and the Old. That a private individual had such a mechanism at his disposal was less than probable. Where and when had he built it, and how could he have built it in secret?

  Only some government could own such an engine of destruction, and in these disaster-filled times, when men tax their ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that, unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn will lead to the world putting its foot down. At least I hope it will.