Three seconds before Hobson’s letter arrived, I had not thought of hunting the narwhal at all. Three seconds after reading it, I felt that my true calling, the one aim of my life, was to chase this monster and rid the world of it.
I had just come back from a tiring journey, and I longed to see Paris again, my friends, my little apartment and my dear collections. But nothing could hold me back. I accepted the American offer without a moment’s doubt. “Besides,” I thought, “all roads lead back to Europe.” For now, it is true, this road led to the North Pacific, which was a strange way to go home to Paris.
“Conseil!” I called impatiently.
Conseil was my servant, a loyal young man from Flanders who had gone with me on all my travels for ten years. He was calm by nature, orderly by principle, hard-working by habit, and life never surprised him. He would pack his bag for China or the Congo without a word. He was thirty years old; I was forty. Living with me, he had become an expert at classifying animals into their classes and families, though he could not tell one fish from another if he saw them.
“Conseil!” I called again, throwing things together with shaking hands.
This time I was not quite sure of him. This voyage might be long, and dangerous too, since we were hunting an animal that could sink a frigate like a nutshell. What would Conseil say?
“Conseil!” I called a third time.
Conseil appeared. “Did master call?”
“Yes, my boy. Pack my things, and yours too. We leave in two hours.”
“As master pleases,” said Conseil calmly.
“And hurry!”
“And master’s collections?”
“The hotel will keep them.”
“We are not going back to Paris, then?”
“Oh yes, certainly,” I answered, without looking at him, “but we will go a little out of our way. We are sailing on the Abraham Lincoln to hunt the monster, the famous narwhal. A glorious mission, but a dangerous one! We don’t know where we will go. But we are going all the same.”
“As master pleases,” Conseil repeated.
Soon our luggage was on the deck of the frigate, and a sailor took me to Commander Farragut, a good-looking officer, who held out his hand.
“Welcome, Professor. Your cabin is ready for you.”
“We will be comfortable here,” I said to Conseil when I saw it.
“As comfortable, if master allows me to say so, as a hermit crab in its shell,” Conseil answered.
I had arrived just in time. A quarter of an hour later the frigate would have left without me. Thousands of people crowded the shore of Brooklyn, cheering and waving handkerchiefs, as the Abraham Lincoln went down the river and out to sea. By night it was running at full steam over the dark waters of the Atlantic.
Commander Farragut was a good sailor, worthy of his ship. He had no doubt about the monster and allowed no one on board to doubt it. He believed in it as some people believe in miracles, by faith, not by reason. Either he would kill the narwhal, or the narwhal would kill him. And he had promised two thousand dollars to the first man who saw the monster, whether he was a cabin boy, a sailor or an officer. You can imagine how closely the crew watched the sea. Only Conseil showed no interest in the question that excited the rest of us.
The frigate carried every weapon for catching a whale, from the harpoon thrown by hand to a long-range gun. But better still, it had Ned Land, the king of harpooners.
Ned Land was a Canadian, about forty years old, very tall and strongly built, serious and silent, sometimes violent, and quick to anger when anyone disagreed with him. Few whales had ever escaped his harpoon. His family came from Quebec, and he took a liking to me, no doubt because I was French: with me he could speak French, the language of his family. Little by little he began to tell me about his adventures in the polar seas, and he told them like a poet.
I describe this brave companion as I really knew him. We are old friends now, joined by the kind of friendship that is born in great danger. Ah, brave Ned! I only ask to live a hundred more years so that I can remember you longer.
Strangely, Ned was the only man on board who did not believe in the narwhal. One fine evening, July 30, about four weeks after we left New York, we were sitting on deck off the coast of Patagonia, and I led the conversation to the giant narwhal.
“Well, Ned,” I said, “how can you doubt that this animal exists? You, a whaler, who know the great sea animals so well?”
He looked at me for a while, struck his broad forehead with his hand, as he always did when he was thinking, and said at last, “That’s exactly why, Professor. I’ve chased many whales and killed a great many. But however strong they were, neither their tails nor their teeth could even scratch the iron plates of a steamer.”
“But, Ned, there are stories of ships that a narwhal’s horn went right through.”
“Wooden ships, maybe. I’ve never seen it. Until I do, I won’t believe it.”
“Listen, Ned. If such an animal lives in the great depths of the ocean, it must be built incredibly strong. The deeper you go, the harder the water presses on every part of your body. A few kilometers down, it would crush you flat.”
“Good Lord!” said Ned.
“So an animal that lives down there must have a body that can bear that weight.”
“Then it would have to be made of iron plates, like the armored warships!”
“Exactly, Ned. And imagine what such a mass would do if it hit a ship at the speed of an express train.”
“Yes… certainly… perhaps,” said the Canadian. He was shaken, but not ready to give in. “You’ve convinced me of one thing, Professor: if such animals do live at the bottom of the sea, they must be as strong as you say.”
“But if they don’t exist, you stubborn harpooner, how do you explain what happened to the Scotia?”