Read in parallel with Laura. Fun, fun, fun!
Quotes:
To put it more concisely, I have done here what any translator does: I have tried to offer the American reader an experience as similar as possible to my own experience of the original work.
Cyrus Smith, born and raised in Massachusetts, was an engineer possessed of a first-rate mind.
There’s always a way to do anything!
No hero invented by Defoe or Wyss, no Selkirk or Raynal shipwrecked at Juan Fernández or in the Auckland archipelago ever found himself as utterly bereft as this. Either they enjoyed an abundant supply of resources from the wreck of their ship—seeds, animals, tools, ammunition—or else some new wreckage was driven to their shore, offering all they required for their survival. Never were they forced to face nature unarmed. No such luck for our castaways: no utensils, no instruments of any sort. Starting from nothing, they would have to create everything!
“As for me,” said the sailor, “may I lose my good name if ever I shrink before a task, and with your help, Mr. Smith, we’ll make our island a little America! We’ll build cities, we’ll construct a railway, we’ll lay telegraph lines, and one fine day, when the island has been completely transformed, completely developed, completely civilized, we’ll go and offer it to the Union!
Lincoln Island was located somewhere between the 35th and 37th parallels, and between the 150th and 155th meridians west of the Greenwich meridian.
“It seems odd to me,” observed Gideon Spilett, “that an island as small as this should have such a varied landscape.
scholars generally agree that one day our world will meet its end, or rather that animal and vegetal life will no longer be possible, owing to the intense cold that will eventually fall over the earth. What they do not agree on is the cause of that cooling.
“In the meantime,” answered Gideon Spilett, “let us occupy this land as if it were to be our home for all eternity. There is no room for half-measures.”
unknown cloth, similar to wool but clearly of vegetal origin
“Ah,” cried Cyrus Smith, “you can weep! Now you are a man again!”
“Supernatural!” cried the sailor, letting out a great puff of tobacco smoke. “You don’t believe our island is supernatural?” “No, Pencroff, but it is surely mysterious,”
a successful bandaging is a far rarer thing than a successful operation.
“You sent for us, Captain Nemo? We have come.”
“They did not die, and an account of your history has since been published, under the title Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.”
Every year the Nautilus grew emptier, until finally Captain Nemo found himself alone on his ship, the last of the small band who had sought independence in the depths of the sea.
There he listened as the colonists recalled their past and contemplated their present and future; there he learned of the terrible war between the two Americas, and of the struggle for the abolition of slavery. Truly, no men could have been more likely to reconcile Captain Nemo to the rest of humanity, and none could have represented human society more worthily!
“Throughout all my travels, I did whatever good was possible, and whatever evil was necessary. Justice does not always mean forgiveness!”
“Captain, your mistake was to believe you could bring back the past. You struggled against progress, which is a good and necessary thing. This is an error that some admire and others condemn, but God alone can judge of its virtue, and human reason can only pardon it. A man who errs through what he believes to be good intentions may well be denounced, but he will always be esteemed. Some may find much to praise in your error, and your name has nothing to fear from the judgment of history. History loves heroic follies, even as it condemns their consequences.”
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