A Floating City, and The Blockade RunnersVerne, Jules
History
A Floating City, and The Blockade Runners
Verne, Jules
Great Eastern (Steamship) -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Blockades -- Fiction
I had been obliged to inform Captain Anderson of the incidents relating
to the duel which had taken place on board. The doctors made their
report, and nothing whatever having been found wrong in the death of
Harry Drake, orders were given that the last duties might be rendered to
him on land.
At this moment Cockburn, the statistician, who had not spoken to me the
whole of the voyage, came up and said,—
“Do you know, sir, how many turns the wheels have made during our
passage?”
“I do not, sir.”
“One hundred thousand, seven hundred and twenty-three.”
“Ah! really sir, and the screw?”
“Six hundred and eight thousand, one hundred and thirty.”
“I am much obliged to you, sir, for the information.”
And the statistician left me without any farewell whatever.
Fabian and Corsican joined me at this moment. Fabian pressed my hand
warmly.
“Ellen,” said he to me, “Ellen will recover. Her reason came back to her
for a moment. Ah! God is just, and He will restore her wholly to us.”
Whilst thus speaking, Fabian smiled as he thought of the future. As for
Captain Corsican, he kissed me heartily without any ceremony.
“Good-bye, good-bye, we shall see you again,” he cried to me, when he
had taken his place in the tender where were Fabian and Ellen, under the
care of Mrs. R——, Captain Mac Elwin’s sister, who had come to meet her
brother.
Then the tender sheered off, taking the first convoy of passengers to
the Custom House pier.
I watched them as they went farther and farther away, and, seeing Ellen
sitting between Fabian and his sister, I could not doubt that care,
devotion, and love would restore to this poor mind the reason of which
grief had robbed it.
Just then some one took hold of my arm, and I knew it was Dr. Pitferge.
“Well,” said he, “and what is going to become of you?”
“My idea was, Doctor, since the ‘Great Eastern’ remains a hundred and
ninety-two hours at New York, and as I must return with her, to spend
the hundred and ninety-two hours in America. Certainly it is but a week,
but a week well spent is, perhaps, long enough to see New York, the
Hudson, the Mohawk Valley, Lake Erie, Niagara, and all the country made
familiar by Cooper.”
“Ah! you are going to the Niagara!” cried Dean Pitferge. “I’ll declare I
should not be sorry to see it again, and if my proposal does not seem
very disagreeable to you—”
The worthy Doctor amused me with his crotchets. I had taken a fancy to
him, and here was a well-instructed guide placed at my service.
“That’s settled, then,” said I to him.
A quarter of an hour later we embarked on the tender and at three
o’clock were comfortably lodged in two rooms of Fifth Avenue Hotel.
CHAPTER XXXV.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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