Dick Sands, the Boy Captain

Dick Sands, the Boy Captain

By Jules Verne.

Translated by Ellen E. Frewer.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. Part I
   1. I: The Pilgrim
   2. II: The Apprentice
   3. III: A Rescue
   4. IV: The Survivors of the Waldeck
   5. V: Dingo’s Sagacity
   6. VI: A Whale in Sight
   7. VII: Preparations for an Attack
   8. VIII: A Catastrophe
   9. IX: Dick’s Promotion
   10. X: The New Crew
   11. XI: Rough Weather
   12. XII: Hope Revived
   13. XIII: Land at Last
   14. XIV: Ashore
   15. XV: A Stranger
   16. XVI: Through the Forest
   17. XVII: Misgivings
   18. XVIII: A Terrible Discovery
4. Part II
   1. I: The Dark Continent
   2. II: Accomplices
   3. III: On the March Again
   4. IV: Rough Travelling
   5. V: White Ants
   6. VI: A Diving-Bell
   7. VII: A Slave Caravan
   8. VIII: Notes by the Way
   9. IX: Kazonndé
   10. X: Market-Day
   11. XI: A Bowl of Punch
   12. XII: Royal Obsequies
   13. XIII: In Captivity
   14. XIV: A Ray of Hope
   15. XV: An Exciting Chase
   16. XVI: A Magician
   17. XVII: Drifting Down the Stream
   18. XVIII: An Anxious Voyage
   19. XIX: An Attack
   20. XX: A Happy Reunion
5. Endnotes
6. Colophon
7. Uncopyright

Imprint

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Part I

I

The Pilgrim

On the 2nd of February, 1873, the Pilgrim, a tight little craft of 400 tons burden, lay in lat. 43° 57′, S. and long. 165° 19′, W. She was a schooner, the property of James W. Weldon, a wealthy Californian shipowner who had fitted her out at San Francisco, expressly for the whale-fisheries in the southern seas.

James Weldon was accustomed every season to send his whalers both to the Arctic regions beyond Bering Straits, and to the Antarctic Ocean below Tasmania and Cape Horn; and the Pilgrim, although one of the smallest, was one of the best-going vessels of its class; her sailing-powers were splendid, and her rigging was so adroitly adapted that with a very small crew she might venture without risk within sight of the impenetrable ice-fields of the southern hemisphere: under skilful guidance she could dauntlessly thread her way amongst the drifting icebergs that, lessened though they were by perpetual shocks and undermined by warm currents, made their way northwards as far as the parallel of New Zealand or the Cape of Good Hope, to a latitude corresponding to which in the northern hemisphere they are never seen, having already melted away in the depths of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

For several years the command of the Pilgrim had been entrusted to Captain Hull, an experienced seaman, and one of the most dexterous harpooners in Weldon’s service. The crew consisted of five sailors and an apprentice. This number, of course, was quite insufficient for the process of whale-fishing, which requires a large contingent both for manning the whaleboats and for cutting up the whales after they are captured; but Weldon, following the example of other owners, found it more economical to embark at San Francisco only just enough men to work the ship to New Zealand, where, from the promiscuous gathering of seamen of well-nigh every nationality, and of needy emigrants, the captain had no difficulty in engaging as many whalemen as he wanted for the season. This method of hiring men who could be at once discharged when their services were no longer required had proved altogether to be the most profitable and convenient.

The Pilgrim had now just completed her annual voyage to the Antarctic circle. It was not, however, with her proper quota of oil-barrels full to the brim, nor yet with an ample cargo of cut and uncut whalebone, that she was thus far on her way back. The time, indeed, for a good haul was past; the repeated and vigorous attacks upon the cetaceans had made them very scarce; the whale known as “the Right whale,” the “Nord-kapper” of the northern fisheries, the “Sulphur-boltone” of the southern, was hardly ever to be seen; and latterly the whalers had had no alternative but to direct their efforts against the finback or jubarte, a gigantic mammal, encounter with which is always attended with considerable danger.

So scanty this year had been the supply of whales that Captain Hull had resolved next year to push his way into far more southern latitudes; even, if necessary, to advance to the regions known as Clarie and Adélie Lands, of which the discovery, though claimed by the American navigator Wilkes, belongs by right to the illustrious Frenchman Dumont d’Urville, the commander of the Astrolabe and the Zélee.

The season had been exceptionally unfortunate for the Pilgrim. At the beginning of