20.000 Lieues sous les mers

The year 1866 was marked by a bizarre event, an unexplained and inexplicable phenomenon that surely no one has forgetten. Leaving aside the rumors that troubled the people living in the ports and got the public living inland worked up, seafarers were particularly disturbed. Merchants, shipowners, captains, skippers, and master mariners from Europe and America, navy officers from every country, and, after them, governments from various nations on the two continents, all were extremely worried about this event.

Because, over a period of some time, several ships had encountered "an enormous thing" at sea, a long, spindle-shaped object which was sometimes luminous and was infinitely larger and faster than a whale.

The details of this apparition, recorded in various log books, were almost identical regarding the structure of the object or being in question, the unprecedented speed of its movements, its surprising locomotive power, the distinctive life it seemed to be endowed with. If it was a cetacean, it was larger than any so far classified by science. Neither Cuvier, nor Lacépède, nor Mr. Dumeril, nor Mr. de Quatrefages would have admitted such a monster existed—at least, not without seeing it with their own scientific eyes.

In considering only the reasonable observations of these repeated sightings—rejecting the tentative evaluations that stated the object was 200 feet long and dismissing the exaggerated opinions that said it was a mile wide and three long—one could assert, nevertheless, that this phenomenal being was much larger than all dimensions so far acknowledged by ichthyologists—if it existed, that is.

Now, it existed, that fact was no longer deniable, and, with the human brain’s propensity toward the fantastic, we can understand the excitement this supernatural apparition brought to the entire world. As for relegating it to fable, that idea had to be abandoned.