Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/37

 The harpooner looked at me for some seconds before he replied, then striking his forehead with a gesture habitual to him and closing his eyes, as if to collect his thoughts, he said at last, “Perhaps I have, M. Aronnax!”

“Why, Ned! a man like you, a ‘whaler’ by profession, and familiar as you are with all such marine animals—you, whose imagination can easily entertain the hypothesis of an enormous cetacean—you ought to be the very last person to harbour a doubt under such circumstances.”

“It’s just there where you make the mistake, sir,” replied Ned. That common people may believe in wonderful comets, or in the existence of antediluvian monsters inhabiting the centre of the earth, is not surprising; but neither the astronomer nor the geologist will admit such a theory. In the same way the whaler. I have hunted hundreds of cetaceans, harpooned quantities of them, killed them by dozens; but powerful and armed as they were, neither their tails nor their tusks were able to pierce or damage the hull of an iron steamer.”

“But, Ned, there have been cases in which the tooth of the narwhal has pierced ships through.”

“Wooden ships, perhaps,” replied the Canadian. “All the same, I have never seen any. But, on the contrary, I deny that whales, cachalots, or narwhals can produce such an effect.”

“Just listen to me, Ned.”

“No, sir, no. Anything you like, except that. A gigantic polypus, for instance.”

“Still less. The polypus is only a mollusc; and the