Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/458

 This was the first time he had not addressed me in the third person.

The Canadian and I raised him up, we rubbed his paralysed arms, and when this inveterate classifier recovered his senses he murmured:

“Class, cartilaginous; order, chondropterygians; sub-order, selacians; family, rays; genus, torpedos.”

“Yes, my friend,” I replied; “it is a torpedo that has knocked you over in this way.”

“Ah, Monsieur may believe me, I will be revenged on that animal.”

“How?”

“By eating him.”

Which was done that same evening, but in pure reprisal, for, to tell the truth, he was very tough.

The unfortunate Conseil had been attacked by a torpedo of the most dangerous species—the cumana. This curious animal in a medium conductor like water can give a shock to fish at several yards distance, so great is its power in the electric organs, the two principal surfaces of which measure twenty-seven square feet at least.

During the following day, the 12th April, the Nautilus approached the Dutch coast near the mouth of the Maroni. There were several herds of lamantins here; they were manatees, which, like the dugong and the stellera, belong to the syrenian order. These beautiful animals, peaceable and inoffensive, measured between eighteen and twenty-one feet in length, and weighed at least three tons (4,000 kilos). I told Ned Land and Conseil that Nature had assigned a very important part to these mammals. They, like the seals, are intended to feed upon the submarine prairies, and so destroy the accumulations of plants which block the mouths of tropical rivers.