book review. i heard that j. verne was an "amazing" author. sadly i did not see the quality until late chapters after many poor quality chapters.
althoe the first chapter used a clever technique... it was too vague to enjoy. many boring and bad quality chapters before the detailed description of under sea beauty. he wisely started with mystery and excitement. but wrote 7 pages poorly and ignored the possibility that different distant places could indicate many long objects or a new discovery of a longer species of wwhales.
so i replace the first chapter with less vague details.
also the title "under" is vague it seems the depth was thousands of leagues and what is a league anyway?
i suggest a clearer title "the beautiful and long submarine journey" specifying that the journey was long and the story will describe the beauty. also the chapter name is stupid since he specifically wrote moving! and places separated by continents cannot be reef singular. instead better to begin with "the mystery".
chapter one: the mystery
in 1866, people were excited and debated the reports from sailors who claimed they saw an odd whale that was longer than the largest known whale. when reports included mysterious damage to ships, governments were very interested.
if the reports were about the same one in many distant places, then it was faster than any known whale. could many exist? was this a newly discovered species?
the reports corroborated each other that it was at least 200 feet long. they described its rapid movement, faster than any known whale but its shape was odd like a cigar and unlike a whale it lacked a tail. insted both ends seemed to taper.
Many sailors on many ships from various companies reported seeing this long mysterious thing moving rapidly. one reported seeing it moving "east from the east coast of Australia." too soon after that another report "700 leagues" that is 2,800 kilometers away in the Pacific Ocean. could it be the same one thing? "15 days later" sailors reported seeing this thing or things moving in the "Atlantic ocean east from the east coast of canada". It had inexplicably went far and around the continent... had it gone south or north? ships in various places reported seeing it. science directs to accept observations yet such a long thing was unprecedented. some doubted the sailors as the "legends from sailors" of other imaginary beings. Were they reliable witnesses?
newspapers and even science journals debated this discovery. however, more important than a new species, was the new danger. Ships reported collisions in places where no reefs existed. one ship got damaged and water poured in. when it came to port the inspector saw a symmetrical triangular shape cut in thick iron. it seemed unnatural! when a ship crashes against a reef the damage is different. this mysterious harm inflamed excitement and interest.
now that people knew of the new danger, this seemed like the BEST explanation for other mysterious losses, because the best explanation is the one related to "things already known." People demanded that governments must stop this harmful danger.
The u.s. government invited a scientist named Pierre Aronnax to join an expidition to hunt this harmful damager.
chapter 2 the dangerous mission
i, pierre Aronax, heard about the debate. at first i refused to accept this new discovery. However, when a ship got damaged the evidence swayed me that an animal with a horn like a narwhal must have caused the damage. i wrote an article about it and joined the mission aboard the "Abraham Lincoln" to hunt it. Althoe the most recent report of damage was in the Atlantic ocean, we were sent to hunt it in the pacific. [was verne really a good author??]
Each government denied that it built any under-sea ship that collided with any ship. My explanation of a natural cetacean seemed best. our ship sailed from new york city in 1867. crowds cheered. we steamed south passing the tropic of cancer at around 23 degrees north latitude. we continued south-east around the amazon continent, so we crossed the imaginary equator midway between the poles of spin. our ship turned south-west and passed the tropic of capricorn off the east coast of land.
soon we steamed between the mainland and the isles south of it. even the narrow land sufficed to block our way to our destination so we were compelled to go around the south horn of the continent. At which point did the atlantic ocean end and the Pacific ocean border was entered? if we can estimate the area of each then there must be some imaginary line to separate this continuous sea. somewhere we entered the part of sea named Pacific Ocean.
we steaned north-west and again uneventfully crossed the tropic of capricorn then the equator and even the tropic of cancer. by now our excitement had faded.
each day we had searched for the long thing spotted in the Pacific straining to see as far as we could. people watched from both sides to earn the reward for spotting the long whale and killing it before it could collide as we already had experienced.
our ship wandered around the sea until we lost hope of seeing any long narwhal... only after we lost hope... one sailor reported the light at night. the best explanation was a natural phosphorescence based on known glow worms. the Abraham Lincoln fired at it... suddenly it moved toward our ship accelerating as i, and my assistant consiel, watched the light move nearer and nearer... we gripd the rail and braced for the impact of collision.
CRASH it slamd into the side of our ship. consiel and i were knocked upward and i could not hold the rail.
i fell and splashd into the sea near Japan. i started swimming toward the lyt, almost certain our ship was sinking. i was shocked with surprise and horror to find that the collision was with a metallic vehicle! consiel and one other man named ned succeeded at swimming to the lyt before it this iron vehicle moved away from the site of the collision.
NOTE: now we can continue with the adventure! on page 46 replacement for many uneventfull pages and flawed paragraphs and quickly reach the adventure starting with the mention of the unexpected "sheet iron".
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