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.
While these
catastrophes were taking place upon the land and the sea, a scene not less
thrilling was enacting in the disordered heavens.
A balloon,
caught in the whirl of a column of air, borne like a ball on the summit of a
waterspout, spinning around as in some aerial whirlpool, rushed through space
with a velocity of ninety miles an hour. Below the balloon, dimly visible
through the dense vapor, mingled with spray, which spread over the ocean, swung
a basket containing five persons.
From whence came
this aerial traveller, the sport of the awful tempest? Evidently it could not
have been launched during the storm, and the storm had been raging five days,
its symptoms manifesting themselves on the 18th. It must, therefore, have come
from a great distance, as it could not have traversed less than 2,000 miles in
twenty-four hours. The passengers, indeed, had been unable to determine the
course traversed, as they had nothing with which to calculate their position;
and it was a necessary effect, that, though borne along in the midst of this
tempest; they were unconscious of its violence. They were whirled and spun
about and carried up and down without any sense of motion. Their vision could
not penetrate the thick fog massed together under the balloon. Around them
everything was obscure. The clouds were so dense that they could not tell the
day from the night. No reflection of light, no sound from the habitations of
men, no roaring of the ocean had penetrated that profound obscurity in which
they were suspended during their passage through the upper air. Only on their
rapid descent had they become conscious of the danger threatening them by the
waves.
Meanwhile the
balloon, disencumbered of the heavy articles, such as munitions, arms, and
provisions, had risen to a height of 4,500
feet … (De The Mysterious Island, de Julio Verne, párrafos
del capítulo 1)
Más
The night passed
and the hurricane ceased.
The voyagers
threw everything they could to try to make the balloon lighter.
The gas was
escaping from the balloon and it was not going to last long.
They were in the
middle of the ocean.
Finally they could
see land in the distance…
Vocabulario
Ballast: lastre
4,500 feet: 1371 metros
El libro
The
Mysterious Island, fue publicada en 1874. El libro
cuenta las aventuras de un grupo de americanos en una isla desconocida en el
Pacifico sur. En setiembre de 1875 Sampson Low, Marston,
Low, y Searle publicaron la primera edición británica. En noviembre Scribners
publicó esta edición en Estados Unidos. El traductor cambió los nombres del héroe
de Smith a Harding, ya que Smith era frecuentemente usado por los gitanos y no
parecía apto para un héroe ingles. También se omitieron algunos pasajes
técnicos o anti-imperialistas del capitán Nemo para no ofender a los lectores
ingleses.
De
la web
The Mysterious Island,
full movie.
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