A Meeting of Monsters

 

Hearing that Austria and Prussia, after their recent victory over Denmark, were now at war with one another, only convinced me that Europe held progressively less chance for me to find a safe haven.  I therefore looked further afield for a new home and I felt only America might provide this.  My only question was how to get there.

 

First, I sailed from Bremen to Portsmouth.  I had made several such short sea voyages, mostly in the cargo holds of ships crossing the Channel.  As such, if worse came to worse, I might jump ship and swim for shore.  Indeed, I had done so once before.

 

But that would not be an option whilst crossing the vast Atlantic since, after all, were I to be spotted I had nowhere to swim.  Thus I hit upon the idea of using the mails and the banks to hire a shipping company to carry me aboard in a crate.  It would be cramped, but I could carry all my belongings and have a place of refuge should the crew become inquisitive.

 

That having been accomplished, on a particularly cold November morn in 1866, I began by far my longest sea journey as I made my way to America.  I had chosen the Brichester Glory, a cargo ship with scant crew so there would be less chance of my detection.  There were four cabins for passengers, but these were untenanted since few wished to sail these days for fear of the terrible sea monster that had been seen repeatedly in the North Atlantic in the last several months.

*     *     *

After six days at sea, I heard a number of agitated voices from above.  I found a porthole and opened it, hoping to hear better what the fuss above me was.  But I not only heard it, I saw what crew had spotted off the port bow: the sail of a strange craft or the fin of a stranger creature perhaps two nautical miles distant.  Within a few minutes, this black fin had covered half of this distance and was on a direct course for the Glory.  I determined this was no doubt the great sea monster of which the newspapers had written.  From their gasps and prayers, it seemed the crew agreed with my assertion.

 

“It’s the bleedin’ monster what rammed the Scotia!” I heard one gob declare.

 

I had already formed an escape plan in case of such an unlikely encounter: I had intended, if rammed, to make my way to the surface and steal a lifeboat and row myself to America.  But as I looked out at the far-off thing in the water, I realized how poorly thought-out that scheme was.  Offloading a lifeboat from a capsizing ship was a doubtful procedure at best, and offloading a lifeboat before the monster attacked would reveal my presence to the crew.  Moreover, the beast was immense, maybe even longer than the ship itself and could easily gobble up a man.  No doubt I would provide a choice morsel.

 

Nonetheless, I had no intention of greeting Davey Jones without an attempt to save myself.  I made my way up to the hatch and through this opening into broad daylight.  With all attention to port, I easily stole to the starboard lifeboat and began to untie the ropes that held it in place.

 

“It’s gone!” one of the men yelled, behind me.

 

“No!  It’s swimming under the keel!” chimed another.

 

Suddenly the entire ship shook, and the half-loosed lifeboat swung free and struck me with a thousand pounds of force.  This impact knocked me against the railing and would have dropped me into the sea had I not held onto one of the mooring lines.

 

Nonetheless, I was then hanging by that rope off the starboard side of the Glory.  If I thought myself saved, this relief lasted a scant instant for now the mighty behemoth from the depths broke the surface some hundred yards off the starboard side.

 

The sea monster approached the ship once more, but moving slowly, apparently coming up swiftly beside us.  Above me I heard the sailors cry out in terror and pray with all their might and I had for them only sympathy.  In futility, the Mate led the men in a volley from a half dozen small arms, but these only ricocheted off the monster’s skin with a sharp ping.

 

As the sea monster came up beside us I clutched the stout rope and no fear of being discovered by the crew kept me from climbing up, only the jostling of the waves.  It was upon us, rising again.

 

Black it was and massive and every bit as long as the five-hundred ton cargo ship.  The eyes glowed under the waves and I truly felt fear for one of the few times in my existence.  Not fear of loneliness or despair or starvation as I had on occasion before, but fear of my destruction in the jaws of a killer from the depths.  Oh, that I might have a harpoon to drive into the beast’s black hide!

 

It rose even more.  And as it made the final pass, I discerned the plated black skin, the great rivets, and the wide open glass eyes which revealed a lighted chamber within.  And in this chamber stood a man, tall and swarthy, who looked out, vaguely disinterested until he spied me hanging on the side of the ship.  For an instant our eyes locked.

 

Then the great black vessel descended beneath the sea and I spied it never again.  The “sea monster” had passed by, as though curious of us—or perhaps only of me—but ultimately not sufficiently interested to stop.

 

As the strange black monster moved to the aft before sinking beneath the waves, the crew's attention followed it.  In the aftermath of the encounter, and with various repairs to be made to the leaking hull and flooded engines, I was able to sneak onto the deck once more and descend to the relative safety of my crate.

 

Only years later, after the French professor, Pierre Aronnax, published his account of his adventures aboard the submarine Nautilus, did I realize the man standing within the “eye” of the monster was, in fact, Captain Nemo.

 

Few men of this world have lived with whom I might agree with their cause and their beliefs, but Nemo was one of them.  He and I would perhaps, as they say, “see eye-to-eye” as we did for a few brief seconds.

 

 

Read more in MONSTER OF THE WORLD!