Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/22

 ists have termed it. It is a tooth of the hardness of steel. Some of these teeth have been discovered in the bodies of whales, which the narwhal can attack with success. They have also been extracted, and not without labour, from the hulls of ships, which they have pierced through and through, as a gimlet pierces a cask. The Museum of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris contains one of these weapons, two metres and a quarter in length, and forty-eight centimetres broad at the base.

“Well, then, suppose a weapon ten times as powerful, and the animal ten times as great as the ordinary narwhal, let it rush through the water at the rate of twenty miles an hour, multiply the mass by the velocity, and you will obtain a resultant capable of producing the shock required.

“So far as information can go, I am of opinion that this monster is a sea-unicorn of colossal dimensions, armed, not merely with a ‘halberd,’ but with a veritable spur like an iron-clad or a ‘ram,’ possessing, at the same time, a force and motive power in proportion.

“Thus I can explain this almost inexplicable phenomenon, unless there is really nothing at all—in spite of all that has been seen, written, and felt—which is still possible.”

These last words were rather weak on my part, but I wished, up to a certain point, to shroud myself in my dignity as a professor, and not to give the Americans anything to ridicule, for they laugh well when they do laugh. I reserved a loophole for myself. In my heart I admitted the existence of the monster.

My article was warmly criticised, and this gave it popularity. It gained a number of adherents. The