Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the second chapter of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

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Today we'll be continuing 20,000 leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne chapter two pro and con 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 hypothesis of the floating island and the unapproachable sandbank, supported by mines 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 hole 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 hypothesis, 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.

After the shast pose came the torpedoes.

After the torpedoes, the submarine rams.

Then the reaction.

At least I hope so.

But the hypothesis of a war machine fell before the declaration of governments.

As a public interest was in question and transatlantic communications suffered.

Their veracity could not be doubted.

But how?

Admit that the construction of the 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.

After inquiries made in England, France, Russia, Prussia, Spain, Italy and America, even in Turkey, the hypothesis of a submarine monitor was definitely rejected.

Upon my arrival in New York, several persons did me the honor of consulting me on the phenomenon in question.

I had published in France a work in Cordo 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 categorically.

And even the honorable Pierre Erenax, professor in the museum of Paris, was called upon by the New York Herald to express a definite opinion of some sort.

I did something.

I spoke for want of power to hold my tongue.

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 30 April.

It ran as follows.

After examining one by one the different hypotheses, 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 15 miles beneath the surface of the waters?

What is the organization 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 and ichthyology 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 organization formed to inhabit the strata inaccessible to soundings, in which an accident of some sort, either fantastical or capricious, has brought it long intervals to the upper level of the ocean.

If, on the contrary, we do know all living things, 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 60ft.

Increase its size fivefold or tenfold, give its 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 whole of the steamer.

Indeed, the narwhal is armed with the 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 in Paris possesses one of these defensive weapons, two yards and a quarter in length and 15 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 20 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 armored 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 a high reputation.

It rallied, rounded 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, or is 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 the 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 exhibition 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 2 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 revictual and well stocked with coal.

3 hours before the Abraham Lincoln left Brooklyn Pier, I received a letter worded as follows, to M.

Aranax, 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 cabinet.

Your disposal.

Very cordially yours, JB Hobson, secretary of marine.

Thank you for joining.

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Again, my name is Brie Carlyle, and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of 20,000 leagues under the sea.

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