"Jules Verne - The Mysterious Island" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verne Jules)

The Mysterious Island
by Jules Verne 1874

PART 1 - DROPPED FROM THE CLOUDS

Chapter 1

"Are we rising again?" "No. On the contrary." "Are we descending?" "Worse than that, captain! we are falling!" "For
Heaven's sake heave out the ballast!" "There! the last sack is empty!" "Does the balloon rise?" "No!" "I hear a noise
like the dashing of waves. The sea is below the car! It cannot be more than 500 feet from us!" "Overboard with every
weight! ...everything!"

Such were the loud and startling words which resounded through the air, above the vast watery desert of the Pacific,
about four o'clock in the evening of the 23rd of March, 1865.

Few can possibly have forgotten the terrible storm from the northeast, in the middle of the equinox of that year. The
tempest raged without intermission from the 18th to the 26th of March. Its ravages were terrible in America, Europe,
and Asia, covering a distance of eighteen hundred miles, and extending obliquely to the equator from the thirty-fifth
north parallel to the fortieth south parallel. Towns were overthrown, forests uprooted, coasts devastated by the
mountains of water which were precipitated on them, vessels cast on the shore, which the published accounts numbered
by hundreds, whole districts leveled by waterspouts which destroyed everything they passed over, several thousand
people crushed on land or drowned at sea; such were the traces of its fury, left by this devastating tempest. It surpassed
in disasters those which so frightfully ravaged Havana and Guadalupe, one on the 25th of October, 1810, the other on
the 26th of July, 1825.

But while so many catastrophes were taking place on land and at sea, a drama not less exciting was being enacted in the
agitated air.

In fact, a balloon, as a ball might be carried on the summit of a waterspout, had been taken into the circling movement
of a column of air and had traversed space at the rate of ninety miles an hour, turning round and round as if seized by
some aerial maelstrom.

Beneath the lower point of the balloon swung a car, containing five passengers, scarcely visible in the midst of the thick
vapor mingled with spray which hung over the surface of the ocean.

Whence, it may be asked, had come that plaything of the tempest? From what part of the world did it rise? It surely
could not have started during the storm. But the storm had raged five days already, and the first symptoms were
manifested on the 18th. It cannot be doubted that the balloon came from a great distance, for it could not have traveled
less than two thousand miles in twenty-four hours.

At any rate the passengers, destitute of all marks for their guidance, could not have possessed the means of reckoning
the route traversed since their departure. It was a remarkable fact that, although in the very midst of the furious tempest,
they did not suffer from it. They were thrown about and whirled round and round without feeling the rotation in the
slightest degree, or being sensible that they were removed from a horizontal position.

Their eyes could not pierce through the thick mist which had gathered beneath the car. Dark vapor was all around them.
Such was the density of the atmosphere that they could not be certain whether it was day or night. No reflection of
light, no sound from inhabited land, no roaring of the ocean could have reached them, through the obscurity, while
suspended in those elevated zones. Their rapid descent alone had informed them of the dangers which they ran from the
waves. However, the balloon, lightened of heavy articles, such as ammunition, arms, and provisions, had risen into the