The Mysterious Island : Large Print

"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 theequinox of that year.

It was a hurricane lasting without intermission from the 18th to the 26th ofMarch.

Covering a space of 1,800 miles, drawn obliquely to the equator, between the 35(deg) ofnorth latitude and 40(deg) south, it occasioned immense destruction both in America and Europe andAsia.

Cities in ruins, forests uprooted, shores devastated by the mountains of water hurled uponthem, hundreds of shipwrecks, large tracts of territory desolated by the waterspouts whichdestroyed everything in their path, thousands of persons crushed to the earth or engulfed in thesea; such were the witnesses to its fury left behind by this terrible hurricane.

It surpassed indisaster those storms which ravaged Havana and Guadeloupe in 1810 and 1825.