The secret of the island E-Book

Jules Verne.

• Herausgeber: Jules Verne
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

This book is a sequel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. A party of British adventurers, who had been ballooning, but whose trip had ended by being cast away on a Pacific island, have various setbacks due to both pirates and convicts who had escaped from jails in mainland Australasia.

Leseprobe

The Secret of the Island

by W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne).

Introduction.

The Secret of the Island was another of the series of Voyages Extraordinaires which ran through a famous Paris magazine for younger readers, the Magasin Illustre. It formed the third and completing part of the Mysterious Island set of tales of adventure. We may count it, taken separately, as next to Robinson Crusoe and possibly Treasure Island, the best read and the best appreciated book in all that large group of island-tales and sea-stories to which it belongs. It gained its vogue immediately in France, Great Britain, and overseas besides being translated, with more or less despatch, into other European tongues. M. Jules Verne must indeed have gained enough by it and its two connective tales to have acquired an island of his own. The present book was translated into English by the late W.H.G. Kingston; and is printed in Everyman's Library by special exclusive arrangement with Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd., 1909.

Jules Verne's works are published in an authorised and illustrated edition by Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd.

CHAPTER ONE.

LOST OR SAVED--AYRTON SUMMONED--IMPORTANT DISCUSSION--IT IS NOT THE DUNCAN--SUSPICIOUS VESSEL--PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN--THE SHIP APPROACHES--A CANNON-SHOT--THE BRIG ANCHORS IN SIGHT OF THE ISLAND-- NIGHT COMES ON.

It was now two years and a half since the castaways from the balloon had been thrown on Lincoln Island, and during that period there had been no communication between them and their fellow-creatures. Once the reporter had attempted to communicate with the inhabited world by confiding to a bird a letter which contained the secret of their situation, but that was a chance on which it was impossible to reckon seriously. Ayrton, alone, under the circumstances which have been related, had come to join the little colony. Now, suddenly, on this day, the 17th of October, other men had unexpectedly appeared in sight of the island, on that deserted sea!

There could be no doubt about it! A vessel was there! But would she pass on, or would she put into port? In a few hours the colonists would definitely know what to expect.

Cyrus Harding and Herbert having immediately called Gideon Spilett, Pencroft, and Neb into the dining-room of Granite House, told them what had happened. Pencroft, seizing the telescope, rapidly swept the horizon, and stopping on the indicated point, that is to say, on that which had made the almost imperceptible spot on the photographic negative--

"I'm blessed but it is really a vessel!" he exclaimed, in a voice which did not express any great amount of satisfaction.

"Is she coming here?" asked Gideon Spilett.

"Impossible to say anything yet," answered Pencroft, "for her rigging alone is above the horizon, and not a bit of her hull can be seen."