The
Mysterious Island, de Julio Verne, narra las aventuras de
varios hombres a bordo de un globo azotado por un tornado en medio del océano…
“Are we going up
again?”
“No. On the
contrary; we are going down!”
“Worse than
that, Mr. Smith, we are falling!”
“For God’s sake
throw over all the ballast!”
“The last sack
is empty!”
“And the balloon
rises again?”
“No!”
“I hear the
splashing waves!”
“The sea is
under us!”
“It is not five
hundred feet off!”
Then a strong,
clear voice shouted:—
“Overboard with
all we have, and God help us!”
Such were the
words which rang through the air above the vast wilderness of the Pacific,
towards 4 o’clock in the afternoon of the 23d of March, 1865:—
Doubtless, no
one has forgotten that terrible northeast gale which vented its fury during the
equinox of that year. It was a hurricane lasting without intermission from the
18th to the 26th of March. Covering a space of 1,800 miles, drawn obliquely to
the equator, between the 35° of north latitude and 40° south, it occasioned
immense destruction both in America and Europe and Asia. Cities in ruins,
forests uprooted, shores devastated by the mountains of water hurled upon them,
hundreds of shipwrecks, large tracts of territory desolated by the waterspouts
which destroyed everything in their path, thousands of persons crushed to the
earth or engulfed in the sea; such were the witnesses to its fury left behind
by this terrible hurricane. It surpassed in disaster those storms which ravaged
Havana and Guadeloupe in 1810 and 1825.