ed, or
experienced; which is just within the bounds of possibility."

These last words were cowardly on my part; but, up to a certain point,
I wished to shelter my dignity as professor, and not give too much
cause for laughter to the Americans, who laugh well when they do laugh.
I reserved for myself a way of escape. In effect, however, I admitted
the existence of the "monster." My article was warmly discussed, which
procured it a high reputation. It rallied round it a certain number of
partisans. The solution it proposed gave, at least, full liberty to
the imagination. The human mind delights in grand conceptions of
supernatural beings. And the sea is precisely their best vehicle, the
only medium through which these giants (against which terrestrial
animals, such as elephants or rhinoceroses, are as nothing) can be
produced or developed.

The industrial and commercial papers treated the question chiefly from
this point of view. The Shipping and Mercantile Gazette, the Lloyd's
List, the Packet-Boat, and the Maritime and Colonial Review, all papers
devoted to insurance companies which threatened to raise their rates of
premium, were unanimous on this point. Public opinion had been
pronounced. The United States were the first in the field; and in New
York they made preparations for an expedition destined to pursue this
narwhal. A frigate of great speed, the Abraham Lincoln, was put in
commission as soon as possible. The arsenals were opened to Commander
Farragut, who hastened the arming of his frigate; but, as it always
happens, the moment it was decided to pursue the monster, the monster
did not appear. For two months no one heard it spoken of. No ship met
with it. It seemed as if this unicorn knew of the plots weaving around
it. It had been so much talked of, even through the Atlantic cable,
that jesters pretended that this slender fly had stopped a telegram on
its passage and was making the most of it.

So when the frigate had been armed for a long campaign, and provided
with formidable fishing apparatus, no one could tell what course to
pursue. Impatience grew apace, when, on the 2nd of July, they learned
that a steamer of the line of San Francisco, from California to
Shanghai, had seen the animal three weeks before in the North Pacific
Ocean. The excitement caused by this news was extreme. The ship was
revictualled and well stocked with coal.

Three hours before the Abraham Lincoln left Brooklyn