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the monster gave forth a very strong, inexplicable light, as described in the reports of several captains. This fantastic irradiation must have been produced by some tremendously powerful illuminating agent.
Godzilla gives off such a light from underwater in the first "Gojira" movie (released in October 1954) and in the famous Disney adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues (released December 1954), in which the Nautilus is powered by atomic energy.
A little later in this passage: "And if it does have the ability to give an electric shock, then it will be the most terrible beast ever to have sprung from the Creator’s hand."
‘The thing in question, port astern!’
Thar she blows! The designated object!
The Shannon and Helvetia’s reports had slightly exaggerated its dimensions, for I estimated its length to be only 250 feet. As for its girth, this was difficult to evaluate, but the animal’s dimensions appeared admirably in proportion.
all this is what she said
‘That is the drawback of not knowing every language,’ commented Conseil, ‘and of not having a universal one.’
blame it on the Babelonians
(groan)
I have broken with society for reasons which I alone have the right to appreciate.
this man is an island, and a moving one
I had never before had the chance to observe living creatures that could move freely in their natural element.
Lacking a submarine with movie-size windows, Ishmael laments in Melville's "Moby-Dick":
"The living whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen at sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out of sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element it is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily into the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations....the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world which must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the mark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very considerable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding out precisely what the whale really looks like."
Suddenly the light came on in the salon. The metal panels closed again. The enchanting vision disappeared.
movie's over
‘Here is real life!’ he added. ‘And I could imagine founding cities in the sea, clusters of submerged dwellings, which, like the Nautilus, would come up each morning to breathe on the surface of the oceans, free towns if ever any were, independent cities! And yet, who knows if some tyrant . . .’
he can call it the New Atlantis or something
‘An accident?’ I asked. ‘No, an incident.’
"Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country" has a line like this about the explosion of the Klingon moon Praxis. That movie also borrows from the 1954 adaptation of "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" the name of a penal colony, Rura Penthe.
The Nautilus has merely run aground here in this incident and will suffer no harm.
‘One can be a cannibal and a good man,’ replied Conseil, ‘just as one can be a glutton and honest. One does not exclude the other.’
"Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian."
- Melville's "Moby-Dick"
When I thought that the marvellous electrical agent not only gave movement, heat, and light, but also protected the Nautilus from external attacks, transforming it into a holy ark* which no desecrator could transgress without being smitten by lightning, my admiration knew no limits;
Spielberg might disagree, but this is a reference to Noah's Ark rather than the Ark of the Covenant, per the translator's endnotes.
I understood that the supply was inexhaustible, for nature’s creative power is beyond man’s destructive bent.
a novel of its time
that terrible American Civil War, that frightful but for ever glorious battle . . .?
This comment and the one about John Brown put the lie to the revisionist claims that the American Civil War was an unjust war by the Union upon a country simply seeking its independence.
Captain Nemo came here whenever he needed to load up with the millions with which he ballasted his Nautilus. It was for him, and him alone, that America had given up its precious metals. He was the direct and only inheritor of the treasures taken from the Incas and others defeated by Hernando Cortez!*
A little anti-imperialism snuck in here past Verne's editor, who wouldn't allow the author to speak about current politics and particularly anything that might offend the governments of France and other great powers.
‘What makes you believe, monsieur, that these riches must be considered wasted if I collect them? Do you think that it is for my own benefit that I take the trouble to gather such treasures? Who told you that I do not put them to good use? Do you think I am unaware there are suffering beings and oppressed races on this planet, wretches to be helped and victims to be avenged? Don’t you understand . . .?’
Robin Hood of the Seas
It has been claimed that these animals can travel round the world in a fortnight.’
Around the World in 14 Days
‘What would be the point? Hunting simply to destroy! We have no use for whale oil on board.’ ‘Nevertheless, monsieur,’ persisted the Canadian, ‘in the Red Sea you authorized us to chase a dugong!’ ‘We needed fresh meat for my crew. Here, it would be killing for killing’s sake. I realize that it is one of man’s privileges, but I cannot condone these murderous pastimes. By destroying the Antarctic whale like the right whale, inoffensive and good creatures as they are, your fellows commit a damnable action, Master Land. They have already emptied the whole of Baffin Bay, and will eventually
...more
Lorax of the Seas
‘They are sperm whales, terrifying animals that I have sometimes encountered in schools of two or three hundred! In their case, it is right to exterminate such cruel and malevolent animals.’
from Lorax to Ahab in 60 seconds
No pity for the ferocious cetaceans. They are only mouth and teeth!’ Mouth and teeth! There was no better way to depict the macrocephalous creature, which sometimes exceeds 25 metres in length. The enormous head of this cetacean occupies about a third of its body.
Of the Monstrous Picture of Whales
The sperm whale is a disgraceful animal, more tadpole than fish, as Frédol remarks. It is poorly constructed, being a failure, so to speak, in the whole left-hand part of its framework, and hardly seeing except through its right eye.
Herman and Jules need to talk
What a battle! Ned Land himself quickly became enthusiastic, and ended up clapping. In the captain’s hands, the Nautilus had become a formidable harpoon. It threw itself at the fleshy masses, cutting right through the animals, leaving behind two flailing halves. The Nautilus was insensible to the frightening blows from the tails striking its sides. Nor did our vessel heed the impacts from its own efforts.
Are you not entertained!
‘Well, monsieur,’ replied the Canadian, whose enthusiasm had diminished; ‘it was a terrible sight indeed. But I am not a butcher, I am a hunter, and this was just butchers’ work.’ ‘It was a massacre of evil animals,’ said the captain, ‘and the Nautilus is not a butcher’s knife.’ ‘I prefer my harpoon.’
Sperm whales don't even prey on baleen whales, as they do in this scene. They do feed on giant squid!
"But I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm whale—squid or cuttle-fish—lurks at the bottom of that sea, because large creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort, have been found at its surface."
- Melville, "Moby-Dick"
The captain told me that numerous herds of seals had formerly lived on these islands, but British and American whalers had massacred adults and pregnant females in a destructive rage, leaving behind them, in place of vivacious life, the silence of death.
back in Lorax mode
And that would have upset Captain Nemo, for he never spills the blood of innocent creatures without good reason.’
Nemo and Ahab, a pair of lambs
Accordingly, seals are suited to receiving a degree of education. They are easily domesticated, and like certain other naturalists, I believe that if properly trained
The 1954 movie took this advice to heart
walruses are excessively hunted, and will soon be destroyed down to the last, since the hunters indiscriminately massacre the pregnant females and their young, destroying in fact more than four thousand of them each year.
the Lorax has a bit of a walrus look, maybe he should hire some bodyguards
At quarter to twelve the golden disc of the sun, at present seen only by refraction, appeared and bestowed its last rays on this lonely continent, on these seas that man had never sailed.
Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain,
and a path for the thunderstorm,
to water a land where no one lives,
an uninhabited desert,
to satisfy a desolate wasteland
and make it sprout with grass?
- Job 38:25-27 (NIV)
I understood what had happened. The Nautilus had started moving very quickly. All the discreet reflections from the walls of ice had then changed into flashing rays. The fire from these myriads of diamonds joined together. The Nautilus, carried on by its propeller, was sailing through a sheath of lightning.
hyperspace in "Star Wars"
I said that Captain Nemo wept as he regarded the waves. His grief was immense. This was the second companion he had lost since we had arrived on board, and what an end! This friend had been crushed, suffocated, and broken by the formidable arms of the squid, then ground in its iron jaws, and so could not rest with his companions in the peaceful waters of the coral cemetery! As for me, it was the cry of despair the wretch uttered in the heart of the battle which had torn at my heart.
I saw their feet and hands up high, as they
were carried off. In agony they cried
to me and called my name—their final words.
As when a fisherman out on a cliff
casts his long rod and line set round with oxhorn
to trick the little fishes with his bait;
when one is caught, he flings it gasping back
onto the shore—so those men gasped as Scylla
lifted them up high to her rocky cave
and at the entrance ate them up—still screaming,
still reaching out to me in their death throes.
That was the most heartrending sight I saw
in all the time I suffered on the sea
- Homer's "Odyssey", Book 12 (Emily Wilson translation)
An enormous object was sinking into the water; and, so as to follow every detail of its death-throes, the Nautilus was descending into the abyss with it. Ten metres away, I could see a hull torn open, water rushing in with the sound of thunder, then the twin ranks of cannons and bulwarks. The deck was covered with black shadows, all moving. The water was rising. The wretches rushed up the rigging, clung on to the masts, twisted under the waters. It was a human ant-heap caught out by the invasion of a sea.
BOAT sinking description
all the happy and unhappy incidents that had marked the Nautilus following my disappearance from the Abraham Lincoln: underwater hunting, the Torres Strait, the savages of Papua, running aground, the coral cemetery, the route under Suez, the island of Santorini, the Cretan diver, Vigo Bay, Atlantis, the ice-cap, the South Pole, imprisonment in the ice, the battle with the squid, the storm on the Gulf Stream, the Vengeur, and that terrible scene of the sinking of the vessel with all hands.
and the slaughter of the sperm whales!
that question which the Book of Ecclesiastes posed six thousand years ago, ‘Hast thou walked in the search of the depth?’
Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?
or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?
- Job 38:16
