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The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
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Описание:
The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. The book tells the adventures of five American prisoners of war on an uncharted island in the South Pacific
Автор:
ralpf
Создан:
20 мая 2017 в 23:04
Публичный:
Да
Тип словаря:
Книга
Последовательные отрывки из загруженного файла.
Содержание:
2213 отрывков, 1106893 символа
1 PART 1--DROPPED FROM THE CLOUDS
Chapter 1
"Are we rising again?" "No. On the contrary." "Are we descending?"
"Worse than that, captain! we are falling!" "For Heaven's sake heave out
the ballast!" "There! the last sack is empty!" "Does the balloon rise?"
"No!" "I hear a noise like the dashing of waves. The sea is below the
car! It cannot be more than 500 feet from us!" "Overboard with every
weight! ...
2 everything!"
Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air,
above the vast watery desert of the Pacific, about four o'clock in the
evening of the 23rd of March, 1865.
Few can possibly have forgotten the terrible storm from the northeast,
in the middle of the equinox of that year. The tempest raged without
intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March. Its ravages were
terrible in America, Europe, and Asia, covering a distance of eighteen
hundred miles, and extending obliquely to the equator from the
thirty-fifth north parallel to the fortieth south parallel.
3 Towns were
overthrown, forests uprooted, coasts devastated by the mountains of
water which were precipitated on them, vessels cast on the shore, which
the published accounts numbered by hundreds, whole districts leveled
by waterspouts which destroyed everything they passed over, several
thousand people crushed on land or drowned at sea; such were the traces
of its fury, left by this devastating tempest.
4 It surpassed in disasters
those which so frightfully ravaged Havana and Guadalupe, one on the 25th
of October, 1810, the other on the 26th of July, 1825.
But while so many catastrophes were taking place on land and at sea, a
drama not less exciting was being enacted in the agitated air.
In fact, a balloon, as a ball might be carried on the summit of a
waterspout, had been taken into the circling movement of a column of
air and had traversed space at the rate of ninety miles an hour, turning
round and round as if seized by some aerial maelstrom.
5 Beneath the lower point of the balloon swung a car, containing five
passengers, scarcely visible in the midst of the thick vapor mingled
with spray which hung over the surface of the ocean.
Whence, it may be asked, had come that plaything of the tempest? From
what part of the world did it rise? It surely could not have started
during the storm. But the storm had raged five days already, and the
first symptoms were manifested on the 18th.
6 It cannot be doubted that
the balloon came from a great distance, for it could not have traveled
less than two thousand miles in twenty-four hours.
At any rate the passengers, destitute of all marks for their guidance,
could not have possessed the means of reckoning the route traversed
since their departure. It was a remarkable fact that, although in the
very midst of the furious tempest, they did not suffer from it.
7 They
were thrown about and whirled round and round without feeling the
rotation in the slightest degree, or being sensible that they were
removed from a horizontal position.
Their eyes could not pierce through the thick mist which had gathered
beneath the car. Dark vapor was all around them. Such was the density
of the atmosphere that they could not be certain whether it was day or
night. No reflection of light, no sound from inhabited land, no roaring
of the ocean could have reached them, through the obscurity, while
suspended in those elevated zones.
8 Their rapid descent alone had
informed them of the dangers which they ran from the waves. However,
the balloon, lightened of heavy articles, such as ammunition, arms, and
provisions, had risen into the higher layers of the atmosphere, to a
height of 4,500 feet. The voyagers, after having discovered that the sea
extended beneath them, and thinking the dangers above less dreadful than
those below, did not hesitate to throw overboard even their most useful
articles, while they endeavored to lose no more of that fluid, the life
of their enterprise, which sustained them above the abyss.
9 The night passed in the midst of alarms which would have been death to
less energetic souls. Again the day appeared and with it the tempest
began to moderate. From the beginning of that day, the 24th of March,
it showed symptoms of abating. At dawn, some of the lighter clouds had
risen into the more lofty regions of the air. In a few hours the wind
had changed from a hurricane to a fresh breeze, that is to say, the rate
of the transit of the atmospheric layers was diminished by half.
10 It
was still what sailors call "a close-reefed topsail breeze," but the
commotion in the elements had none the less considerably diminished.
Towards eleven o'clock, the lower region of the air was sensibly
clearer. The atmosphere threw off that chilly dampness which is felt
after the passage of a great meteor. The storm did not seem to have gone
farther to the west. It appeared to have exhausted itself.
 

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